ANTICHRIS_

By Chris Garvey

My name is Chris—Christopher, actually. But I’ve always been Garvey or Garv, G or even G-Mann with two n’s and a hint of irony. My brother is also a Garv, so is my father, and my grandfather was, too. But technically speaking, they aren’t Garveys and neither am I.

My grandfather, Pop Pop, wasn’t born a Garvey but a Henn. This is something I don’t like to admit, but I have to admit, I’m not really good at not admitting shit. I mean, I once shared my ‘questionably homoerotic Cantonese massage’ story on a first date. I can’t remember the woman’s name, but she enjoyed my T.M.I.-tale so much that she gave me some S.E.X. later that night.

While I don’t know the names of all the women I’ve slept with, I do know that I’m of Irish descent and proud of that fact. Over the years, I’ve repeatedly heard that Garvey doesn’t sound very Irish.  But it is, so piss off. I come from the County Kerry Garveys who hail from the O’ Garbhain tribe on the southeastern coast of the isle. In addition, my mother’s father was a McKiniry, her mother a Boyle. What’s the point?  Henn is German. And while that quarter of my ancestry came to America long before the Third Reich, and although I enjoyed my brief jaunt through Germany—picking up a sweet beer stein along the way—I shun my German lineage for my Irish roots.

Around the time of World War II, Pop Pop Henn was in the Navy, and for whatever reason he changed his surname. He said it was because of anti-German sentiment and his hatred for Nazis. That may have played a part, but you see when Pop Pop was 11, his mother died of polio. Shortly after, his father hung himself from a rafter in their garage. Regardless of its hopelessly romantic connotations, Pop Pop and his two brothers became orphans, separated from each other and sent to foster homes in different states, never again rekindling their brotherhood. So whether Pop Pop’s decision was influenced by his disdain for the Krauts or for his suicidal father and the last name that linked them, I guess I’ll never know.

Life was hard during The Great Depression, especially for unwanted orphans. Unfortunately, I don’t know much about Pop Pop’s life because he never shared much. I do remember him telling me about a man he lived with in Illinois. The guy would force him to kneel on a triangular piece of wood. The prolonged kneeling would deaden the nerve endings in his knees, so he couldn’t stand or walk. Then he’d be told to march, and when he couldn’t he’d get beat with a belt. Needless to say, Pop Pop was a crotchety son-of-a-bitch. He was tall and intimidating, loud and explosive, and he had this weird water-retention thing that bloated his pelvic region. Sort of like my grade-school music teacher, Mrs. Keinard. I’m pretty sure she was German, too.

But what if my great-grandmother hadn’t contracted polio and died? What if my great-grandfather hadn’t ‘offed’ himself?  Would I have been a Henn or, like half the other males in my high school graduating class, just another Chris? I don’t know. I do know that like sharing a borderline inappropriate T.M.I. story, admitting to something that you don’t want to feels pretty good. Not nearly as good as the full body-scrubbing, the milk, honey and sea salt-lathering and the back-beating massage I received from that middle-aged man back in China, but it’ll do for now.

By Chris Garvey

I was sitting in an overcrowded smoking lounge at Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport, having my second of four pre-flight, duty-free Dunhills and talking with a guy named Alan.

Through the smoky haze and wall of Chinese men, I saw a beautiful, middle-aged African woman walking through the terminal towards us. She had those catlike eyes, full Nubian lips and high cheekbones. Her legs were long and toned, her dreadlocks thin and lengthy, her skin smooth and dark. I was transfixed. She was confident and sexy as hell, and after weeks of pasty faces shielded by umbrellas and sun-visors, I was slightly aroused just watching her glide by with the determination that comes from needing a cigarette.

Alan was originally from Wuhan but lived in Atlanta with his wife and two hyper and much Americanized sons. He owned two Chinese restaurants down there and had done well for himself, but it had taken him twenty years of working long hours in shitty takeout joints in a few American cities to get there. Brooklyn was one of them. The Nubian queen sat down across from me and lit a Marlboro as Alan talked about his time in East New York—one of the few non-gentrifying neighborhoods in Brooklyn, and a rough area where I had worked for a year as a junior high school teacher.

“So, did you like New York?” I asked him.

“No,” he replied without hesitation.

“Why’s that?”

“Too many niggers,” he said, dragging deeply on a blue-filtered Chinese cigarette.

After a few minutes of inhaling, exhaling and waiting out the awkward silence, he left. I was ashamed of being part of that exchange. My ears were hot. The Nubian queen must have heard, but she remained unfazed, even as the other smokers stared and said things under their breath. I tried to apologize with my eyes, but I don’t think it worked. 

“Hello,” I finally said.

“Hello,” she responded, with what I think was a Nigerian accent.

“Sorry about that,” I confessed, pointing my thumb at the door that Alan had exited from moments before.

“It’s all right,” she told me. 

She took out another Marlboro and was about to light it off her first when I offered her my lighter; she leaned forward to accept. Her hand graced mine as she shielded the flame from the air vents that were circulating the smoke around the yellow-stained room. Her touch, her mauve-painted nails and the contrast of our skin, darker-lighter, younger-older, was beautiful. To guarantee a few more minutes with her, I lit another cigarette. We made small talk about our long flights that lay ahead: hers to London, mine to New York via Los Angeles. Then it was time to say goodbye. She extinguished her cigarette, I put out mine and we wished each other well.

I don’t remember the Nubian queen’s name, but I do remember the way her breasts bounced the way breasts are supposed to, the way her dreads barely touched the small of her sloped back and the way her round, tight ass swayed under a thin layer of cream-colored linen. But most of all, I remember the over-the-shoulder look she threw back at me when she was almost out of sight, and how the farewell was slightly tainted by Alan’s kids jumping on the seats next to me, asking the kinds of questions that annoying American kids tend to ask.

By Chris Garvey

Of all the terrible fates that befall millions of people everyday, having a snow blower stolen isn’t that bad. But when you’re twelve, and when it’s your dad who took it, along with your artificial Christmas tree and half of everything else in your house, it sort of is.

Shovels work; they have for thousands of years. But forced regression is never easy or natural. Doesn’t matter if you have to repeat kindergarten or trade in your Cadillac for a Kia. Growing up, we, like most of our neighbors, had a snow blower. That was before we didn’t. Prior to its theft, I remember the comfort I’d feel hearing it rev up, knowing my old man was out there clearing the way for us. Comfort’s not a constant, though, and that sound and feeling was replaced with the clanging of aluminum on frozen pavement; and the realization that my mom was out there tackling a 100-foot driveway by herself. 

It would have been less an unkind gesture had my father been moving to a home with his own driveway, one that would benefit from or require a snow blower. But he wasn’t. Like most apartment complexes, his monthly maintenance fees included snow removal, so his reason for taking it, along with the tree, VCR, stereo, living room furniture, tools, computer and half of our bath towels was selfishness, or spite, I guess.

In our snow blower days, snow was a friend. It got you out of school, gave you hills to sled on and made things seem peaceful. In our non-snow blower days, snow was work, getting up early, sore shoulders, resentment, feeling bad for my mom, yelling at my brother, hating my father. On Tuesday nights, he’d pick up my brother and sister and take them to his apartment for a frozen food dinner. If my mom had been able to pull out of the driveway that morning, or if in the afternoon we got a few more inches, I’d be out shoveling when he’d pull in. He didn’t pull in, though; he’d back in or park on the street and wait for them to come out to him. I’d light a cigarette, lean on my shovel and fantasize about splitting his skull open with it.    

For about eleven years, I think our neighbors lent us a hand twice. The rest of the time, they’d come out while we were mid-shovel, avert their eyes, snow blow their driveway, wheel it back into the garage, go inside, get cleaned up and go to work. We’d still be outside shoveling. My brother and I would scowl as they drove by. But in their defense, dirty looks don’t inspire people to help you.

I read somewhere that Bill Cosby had radiant heat panels installed under the slate sidewalks of his Upper West Side brownstone. He did this to lessen the chances of someone slipping, falling and suing him. Makes sense, especially if you have something to lose. We didn’t, but we had sidewalks. Sidewalks are town property, but their upkeep is the responsibility of the homeowner who lives behind them. That became clear one nor’easter afternoon, when a manly and not very polite policewoman came by to inform us that if we didn’t clear ours by nightfall, she’d write us a ticket. It was a whiteout. No one was walking because no one could see, and with the snowdrifts and plow-pack (snow heaved from snow plows) it was impossible to spot our non-shoveled sidewalks from her squad car. I assume one of our neighbors had called to report us. It took me another hour and a half to do those two 60-foot strips. Cosby’s sidewalk heat panels would’ve come in handy.

On my last day of junior high school, my father finally moved out. In the two years leading up to that day, he lived in our old TV room. He’d eat and smoke in there, and with a travel lock, would lock himself in every night before bed. We never knew why he did that, still don’t, but I know how it made us feel. It was war. Maybe he thought we’d steal from him or kill him in his sleep, and although it made us want to, we never did. I did smash an acoustic guitar on his back once. He was drunk, though, not asleep. 

I wasn’t there on the day of his exodus. Instead, I was drinking beer, inhaling butane and practicing smoking Marlboros. But my little brother and sister were, seeing it all through their seven and two-year old eyes. Trying to process it with their little minds. I imagine for them, seeing their Christmas tree taken away hurt more than the snow blower being wheeled into the U-Haul.

“He’s taking our Christmas tree, mommy,” my brother said.

“I know, honey. We’ll get our own—a real one,” she replied.

And we always did, but Saturday I’ll see my father’s fake tree again, with its plastic branches straining from an excess of gaudy ornaments. My brother, sister and I will be at his apartment, and I’ll wonder why I’m there. But grudges and silent treatments drain more from you than the person against whom you’re directing them. Plus his Chinese wife—she’s an innocent—doesn’t know the things her second husband has done. She misses her own daughter back home in Guangzhou and likes to see us for a couple hours. So really, I go more for her than him. I’d like to share with her some of my stories, but she wouldn’t understand, and I don’t speak Cantonese. But even if I could, it wouldn’t make a difference. They’re retiring to China in a couple months, and I may never see them again. Unless I’m running from the law or overwhelming failure and need somewhere cheap to hide out for a while.

So, I’ll leave his place this Saturday after ‘our last Christmas’ and a few beers, as removed from him as when I walked in. I will, however, have an eight-pack of double-A batteries and some replacement parts for a Crest electric toothbrush that I don’t own anymore. I’ll walk through the courtyard of his apartment complex, Christmas trees glowing from behind sliding glass doors. There may even be some dudes out there snow blowing, and I may wonder how my associations with snow blowers would have been different—our relationship with our neighbors and my sense of community—had he just left us with the snow blower. Then I’ll get to my moms where our tree will be real and our connection genuine. I’ll find comfort knowing that now she has her own crew of dudes snow blowing her little parking lot, and that all she has to do on a cold winter morning is warm up her Mazda, scrape the ice from the windows and go to work.

By Chris Garvey

Bruno once ate two ecstasy pills and he tripped for a day. That was back in ’96; I was 19 at the time. I had been around my share of people fucked up on various chemicals, including myself, but I’d never once been that freaked out. I wasn’t on anything, but it was my ecstasy, and it was my fault. Bruno was 18 months old.

Ecstasy trips or ‘rolls’ aren’t generally scary. They’re not as heady as other hallucinogenic experiences. You don’t have profound realizations or tear-inducing laughing sessions. There’s no purple and green geometric matrix in front of your eyes, but you don’t bug out and think people are talking about you, either. It’s mostly a body-high: some euphoria, thirstiness, heightened senses and a lot of sweat. Then the comedown, when you feel like complete shit.

It was Bruno’s first time rolling. He didn’t plan on it; it was an accident. His baseball-sized jaw muscles could eat and destroy anything, and he did. Candles, books, windowsills, car gear-shifters, table legs, sweaters, pillows, CDs…I pulled socks, pantyhose and shit-laden plastic grocery bags from his ass—several times. I’d find pennies and Heineken bottle caps in his poop. He’d regularly risk asphyxiation by swallowing my girlfriends’ panties, and I’d wake up to him barfing them up. It sounded like a plunger. I’d stand over him, patting his back until he regurgitated a pair of green thongs, for example. Then I’d pull them from the pile of bile-covered kibble and throw them in the garbage before my girlfriend could realize she’d lost another pair of skivvies. It was a compliment really. He must have loved her smell. I did, too, but I never ate her panties, and up until that point, he’d never eaten any controlled substances. Except for the Phenobarbital I gave him twice daily for his occasional seizures.

Back to the E-pills. I bought them from a hippy drug dealer friend of mine. The plan was to take them with my girlfriend, cost me forty bucks but we never got the chance. He told me they were speedy and kids were getting spun on one, so to eat half. If you don’t know already, ecstasy is derived from MDMA, but often times it’s cut with other substances like heroin, amphetamine or acetaminophen. The cut makes the source MDMA go further, and, therefore, makes more money for those who manufacture it. Of course, this makes the effects of the high vary while also making it more dangerous for the user, as they have no idea what they’re ingesting. In Bruno’s case, he had no clue at all.

At the time, I was taking a break from college to work as a housepainter, live in a rough neighborhood in Hartford, Connecticut and learn how hard the real world really is. I shared a huge, three-floor, early 20th Century townhouse with a former high school classmate. He ran a skateboard company out of the 2nd floor. His parents owned the building and me and another friend shared the top floor—two full rooms for two-hundred-fifty bucks a month. What I’d give for rent like that now.

Sorry, I’m getting off topic. So, I’d go to work early and get home early. My boss was a pretty good guy; he knew a motivated crew could do in six and a half hours what another couldn’t do in eight, so we’d wrap up early. We ended up getting into a fight, my boss and I. On a jobsite, the homeowners were there, so were a bunch of construction workers. It was a bad scene. We grappled on an ice-covered stoop for thirty seconds, trying to get stable enough to punch each other. Neither of us really landed one. He’d been staining stairway banisters and had on rubber gloves that were slick with fumy Minwax. He stuck his hand in my face. It stung my eyes so I bit down hard on his thumb, tearing rubber and breaking skin. He screamed like a banshee. I got in my car and sped away, my face the color of burnt sienna, like the white actors who stole roles from real Indian dudes in old Westerns. Needless to say, he fired me.

Again, I’m digressing. So, before the fight, Bruno tripped. I remember it was a Wednesday, and as I walked through our front door, I could hear him barking. He never barked. He was howling in a strange tone. He never howled. When I got to the top floor, he was cowering. He never cowered. I bent down to pet him, and his ears were swollen three-quarters of an inch thick, his eyebrows all puffed-up.

I immediately called my veterinarian. I had worked for Dr. F for a few years before I got Bruno. We were friends, still are. He’s a great vet, a great guy and was always good to us. He let me pay off my bills in time and with no interest. It was the only way I could’ve, considering how much I was there in Bruno’s first few years. First, it was the seizures, then two surgeries to correct elbow dysplasia, and two more to remove a chunk of rubber and then a metal zipper that he ate and got stuck in him. And then of course this.

Dr. F figured it was an allergic reaction to a spider bite or something. He gave him a shot of prednisone, a prescription and sent us on our way. I stopped by my mom’s house. We were all perplexed by Bruno’s behavior. We’d never seen him like this. By the time I got back home it was 9 o’clock, and I was still in my painter’s outfit. I never left the house without scrubbing the paint and putty from under my fingernails and changing my clothes. I was getting ready to take a shower when I looked down at Bruno. He was panting. He’d seemed content, smiling the way dogs do, but then the house would creak from the wind, he’d grow visibly worried.

Then it hit me: the E-pills. I had stashed them in a camping backpack that I’d received from smoking Marlboros and keeping the ‘miles,’ which were just UPC codes. My old man was a bartender, so he’d collect them for me. In no time, I had enough for the large pack where I had put the baggie of ecstasy in a side pouch. On the zipper was a yellow toggle strap that made it easier to open if you had a pair of gloves on. It also made it possible for Bruno to unzip the pouch with his mouth and scoff down the baggie with its contents. I looked at him, frightened. He looked at me. I grew frantic and started crying. I thought he’d die—I thought I’d killed my dog. He was already on opiates for his seizures, and now he had two speedy E-pills in his system. It definitely wasn’t a spider bite.

I called Dr. F back and left a message with his emergency service. He called me back five minutes later.

“Dr. F, it wasn’t a spider bite. Bruno ate ecstasy,” I told him.

“I don’t even know what that is, bring him in.”

I raced to the vet, hysterical. I tried to soothe Bruno as we flew a few towns over in my ’90 Sentra. Dr. F lived above his office, so he was there waiting for me. We went inside. I was beside myself. I loved Bruno so much. I was young, but I was a good dog owner. I never ignored even the smallest symptom, no matter what little money I had, but now I had bought some drugs on a whim, drugs that could have taken him away from me.

Dr. F gave him a shot of Thorazine. He grabbed me by the shoulders and told me to calm down.

“You see all those diplomas on the wall?”

“Yeah.”

Tufts, Columbia…

“You know how many hits of acid I took before I got those?”

“No,” I wasn’t getting the correlation.

“My point is I’m fine. You’ve had your fun and you’re fine, right?

“Right,” I said, uncertainly.

“He’s a dog, they forget, they’re resilient. He’s gonna ride this out, sleep it off, and tomorrow he’ll be the same old Bruno.”

Okay, I thought. My wallet wouldn’t be quite the same after adding another $190 to my tab, but I had to take his word for it. He’d been right about everything else. We drove back to Hartford. Bruno was rolling his ass off, looking out the window, and my right arm was behind me petting him, apologizing and telling him everything was gonna be all right.

By Chris Garvey

Strangely enough, I have something in common with the character ‘Kenneth the Page,’ from the television show, 30 Rock. Well, not exactly, but still, whenever I watch the program, I can’t help but wonder, “What if I’d been an NBC page?”  

At NBC and other television networks, they have what are called pages. Pages are recent college graduates looking to start a career in the broadcasting and entertainment industry. From what I understand, a page’s tasks include things like giving tours of studios, seating audience members at live tapings, and apprenticing in a department within the organization: marketing, television writing, etc. ‘Kenneth the Page,’ played by Jack McBrayer, is the subservient jack-of-all-trades for 30 Rock’s fictitious sketch comedy show, The Girlie Show. Some of his duties have included throwing himself down a flight of stairs and rubbing a constipated boa constrictor’s stomach until it pooped.    

Many well-known people began their careers as NBC pages: Regis Philbin, Disney CEO Michael Eisner and Captain Kangaroo, to name a few. The pay’s next to nothing, and you have to be overwhelmingly perky, but it beats digging ditches in a heat wave, which I’ve done. Well, not a ditch, but 2 six-foot holes for posts to support some rich dude’s cantilevered balcony. I sweated, pissed and cried in those holes. It was a tough day.  

So, after my digging stint, after painting houses with Vietnam vets, ex-cons and some dudes from St. Lucia, after cleaning dog shit at a kennel where I got bit several times by a standard poodle named Marcus, and after delivering pizzas to wealthy divorcees who never once tried to seduce me, I graduated from Central Connecticut State University with a Communications degree. That was December 2001. I was 24 years old, and all I had was a vague dream of moving to New York and getting some kind of creative job in some kind of creative field.  

So, I emailed, faxed and sent my resume to NBC for a spot in the page program.  Six months later, I received a letter in the mail, notifying me of my interview date. I went out and bought a suit at Syms, got the day off from waiting tables and went to my first real job interview in the midst of a nasty New York heat wave. I was painfully nervous. I felt unworthy and a bit older than the other candidates. I assumed most of them had ‘Colgates’ and ‘Temples’ on their resumes.  Unfortunately, I did not, and I began to think this was some sort of charity interview.  

I had prayed for a woman to interview me. Instead I got Evan, or Ethan, I can’t remember. Not much of a difference—he had a bourgeois southern accent and was arrogant. But in retrospect, he was probably just professional and self-assured. As the interview progressed, I began sweating profusely. So much so that I had to take the small towel I had in my bag and dry off my dripping face. Evan looked at me awkwardly. Tunnel vision kicked in. My voice echoed. I didn’t have a clue what I was saying. I wanted to run.  

“What department would you like to apprentice in?” Evan asked.

“Writing. I’d like to be a comedy writer,” I uttered.

“Okay, so what show could you see yourself writing for?”

“Scrubs,” was what came out of my mouth.   

Now, I’d never once seen an episode of Scrubs in my life. I hated it without having seen it. I hated Zach Braff’s weak-chin and voice before suffering through Garden State (in all fairness, I’m probably a bit envious). But having dreamt of this opportunity, having obsessed over where life could have taken me if I had become a page. Considering the number of applicants (with more promise than I) I had somehow surpassed with tenacity or just luck. Considering the endless stream of dead-end jobs I’d suffered through to pay for school, and to live and to get here. To have fucked it up because of a word that slipped from my nervous subconscious—I was crushed. And the interview wasn’t even over yet.  

“Well, as you probably know, Scrubs took a big ratings hit last season, what would you do to change that?”

“Yeah, well, um that’s a good question. Ah, I’d take the black guy from Clueless and ah, I’d have him get back together with that, the blonde chick, or the Puerto Rican one I mean. The main dude—brown-haired guy—I’d make him, um, head nurse or something like that, you know to stir things up.”

“Okay,” he responded. 

He was bewildered. I almost empathized with him for what I was putting him through. I felt guilty for tainting the reputation of every other CCSU graduate who hoped of one day becoming an NBC page. I envisioned some ambitious young girl having her dreams wrecked because of some clause put into place after my unbearable representation. I always believed that it was better to be lucky than good. That day, I was neither.    

Evan and I shook hands. I thanked him, turned and walked through 30 Rockefeller Center with the NBC Universal pass I’d been so proud to clip to my jacket just 40 minutes before. I slipped past the other pages, ashamed. I hated them for their (what I assumed were) stellar interview skills. I was going back to slinging fajitas and arguing with Guatemalan cooks; they were going to continue rubbing elbows with Conan and Al Roker.  

I could, of course, say that I’ve moved past Evan, and the heat wave, and the towel and the dream of being an NBC page like Kenneth. But I’d be lying. I could take solace in the adage that no one has character until they have regrets. But that doesn’t help so much when I’m trying to enjoy 30 Rock or trying to avoid a commercial for Scrubs. Which is now on ABC by the way.

By Chris Garvey

I started drinking shortly after I’d woken up. It was Sunday and hopes for gloomy weather had been ruined by sunny skies. After walking around for an hour or so, I went into a Barnes & Noble, not for a book, but a bathroom.

Inside, people sipped lattes, anguished over which bookmark fit their personality best and navigated aisles with double-decker Scandinavian strollers. I was envious of them—they seemed like normal people doing normal things. Normalcy is subjective, of course, and it may not even exist, but some activities must be a bit more normal than others: a morning jog, brunch with a friend and an afternoon shopping for a new book, or one spent alone drinking whiskey?

You see, I don’t go on ski trips with old college buddies, make breakfast in bed for a girlfriend or play pickup games of Ultimate Frisbee in the park. And I’ve always been more than OK with that. But I’m thinking it may be time to join a chess club or something. I’d just have to learn how to play chess first. And learn how to enjoy being around people for periods of time. And learn how to spend those periods of time without imbibing. Shit, that’s a lot.

The other day I heard something, made me think. Two guys were walking down Desbrosses Street having a seemingly normal conversation. I was sitting on a sliver-of-sun-covered stoop having a smoke. “He’s like a second father to me,” one said. “Yeah, I hear ya,” the other one replied.

I heard him, too, but didn’t understand. I don’t know from one father, let alone two. But it did make me think of my old man and the activities we did together. Besides smoking cigarettes and not talking, there weren’t too many. He wasn’t the type of dad who wanted to do anything with you. He wanted to be alone, and he got his wish when I was twelve.

So now here I am, 20 years later, a man (of sorts), one who isolates himself, whose manic social spurts are usually followed by spans of crucial seclusion. I’m aware of this proclivity that’s probably equal parts ‘nature’ and ‘nurture,’ and I guess that’s a good start, but I still wonder how can I prevent this cycle of less-than-social behavior from overtaking me?

Well, Thanksgiving is at my house this year, so tomorrow I will take some steps. I will sit down with my family: my mother, my brother and his wife, my sister and her boyfriend, her French Bulldog and another bulldog she will be dog-sitting. I will be grateful, for the food we’re bound to receive but for more than that as well. Up until a few weeks ago, our Thanksgiving had been more or less cancelled due to familial fighting. These issues have been, if not fully resolved, slightly mended, so now it’s back on and I’m thankful for that.

As for my father, he won’t be there, not in body or spirit but, unfortunately, in un-fond memory. And soon that’s all that will be left of him. In 2010, he’ll further isolate himself by retiring to Guangzhou, China, where he’ll live with his Chinese wife and spend the rest of his days doing what he does best—smoking cigarettes and not talking. (She knows little English, he knows zero Cantonese).

I guess his departure could pass for some closure, but I’m pretty sure closure requires a resolution. That’s not coming, but the New Year is and I’ve already chosen my resolution and I’m pretty excited by it—never enter a Barnes & Noble again.