Author Archives: mike

About mike

I'm Michael James Schneider, and I create. I'm an interior designer, an artist, a writer, and I do theatrical design. Lots of people tell me I'm great at everything. These people usually turn out to be liars. Please lower your expectations and follow me on Intragram and Vine (@BLCKSMTH), and on Twitter (@BLCKSMTHdesign).

The New Yorker

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I wake up much later than the alarm clock says I should. I sit up in the bed, the sheet falls away. I take in the room: decent sized, comfy queen bed, there is a vintage bike mounted up high on one wall. Maybe it’s not vintage maybe it’s just dusty? Anyway. There are books and comic books high on the other wall. The light through the window is high and hitting the floor, it’s almost noon here. There is no one else in the bed, I slept alone, but then a memory comes fast and sneakily: a perfect morning almost two years ago, not this bed, when I had flown in overnight and got under the covers. I kissed the back of his neck repeatedly; he made a soft, pleased murmur in his half-sleep every time I kissed it, his neck always got so so bristly in between haircuts. I shake my head, literally swat the memory away. Ugh, that again? And then another even more disorienting thought: Wait, where am I?

Oh. That’s right! I’m in New York. Continue reading →

Up, Up, and Away

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The flight is bumpy, the flight is turbulent, the flight is a flight designed to turn my knuckles white.

It touches down in Albuquerque at midnight. My hometown airport is almost deserted except for a few huddled families. I realize for a small self-pitying moment that no one has ever met me inside an airport. I roll my eyes and call a Lyft to take me to my dad’s place. He volunteered to pick me up at midnight. I politely declined but was secretly horrified: what the fuck, dad? You are 83. You are not picking me up at the airport at midnight. Continue reading →

My Anxiety, A Love Story

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Anxiety is the shoe that never drops, the anticipated alarm that never goes off, the gift in the middle of the night that keeps on giving. Here are a few recent times my anxiety reared its ugly head and painted a reality different than the actual one.

 

I thought my beard looked like pubes.

I looked in the mirror one day before work, and was suddenly convinced that my beard looked like it was composed entirely of pubic hair. The entire rest of the day when talking to coworkers or clients, I thought that they thought the exact same thing.

 

I took a bumpy plane ride and got covered in Xanax gravy.

I’ve had a debilitating fear of flying since I had an unusually turbulent flight through the Rockies once. There’s nothing more hilariously disorienting than the adrenaline rush of realizing you left your backpack (containing your keys and wallet) back on your plane, right before your connecting flight, while you’re under the heavy Xanax blanket. Continue reading →

Homecoming

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I feel it the minute I get off the plane: the air itself is different. It’s warmer, drier, thicker, if the air was a tortilla chip it would be stone ground. I leave the terminal, look for my rideshare. I glance across the airport at the Theme Building, the midcentury UFO-with-landing-gear, whose restaurant closed a few months after I left this city in 2013. It’s then that the chorus swells with the noises I rarely hear in Portland: the car horns raise their frantic duck voices in harmony, I hear the nearby lilt of a family speaking Spanish and I smile. I’m in Los Angeles. I am home.

Los Angeles is everything people say it is. LA is shallow, LA is awful traffic, LA is that guy on Tinder you matches with you and never, ever replies. LA is a city of broken dreams and loosely made promises. Los Angeles is an acquired taste, if you like the taste of garbage. LA is that spoiled child that falls down and looks around to see if anyone is watching before starting to cry.

What I mean to say is: I love every inch of LA. Continue reading →

Ray of Light

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You are afraid of the sound of your own heart.

You whispered this over dinner, a secret you had only told a few men in your life. You would wake suddenly when your head was sideways on the pillow, you would hike with your headphones in and rip them out when, in between songs, the timpani of your pulse would pound in your ears. It’s not the sound, you explained to him, it’s the fear of it suddenly stopping. You’re afraid you will hear the moment your heart just stops.

You explain this to him, you drop it like a cat dropping a dead bird at his feet. This is what you do, you play the clown so often you may as well have a red foam nose. Maybe he laughs. Maybe he nods solemnly, understanding completely. This beautiful bearded one tilts his head, his lips purse. It is not you, you say to yourself, and offer to get him another beer when you get up. “I’m not good at giving compliments” he says later, handing you the most beautiful red flag you have ever seen. This cruelty is a kindness. Continue reading →

The Compassion Crisis

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I made my first YouTube video! Wow I’m only like, 10 years behind the trend. In this video, I talk about the “empathy void” we seem to have found ourselves in lately, and what we can do about it in the future. Please take a look, and let me know what you think. The transcript of the video is below the jump. Continue reading →

A Better Version of Me

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I’m slogging through the holidays, like I do every year. They’re a combination of sweet and hectic: this is my busy season at my day job, and it makes December rush by in a blur. It’s colder than usual, so cold that when I walk and fart I’m scared people walking behind me can see it billowing out, a beautiful white cumulus smelling of my colon that expands forever, slowly engulfing Portland. I’m lonely, too. All I really want is a boyfriend for the winter I can cut open like a TaunTaun and nestle inside wait not that.

I spot the guy on social media, he is my type, maybe even My Type: tiny. Bearded. Professional. We hit it off, follow the steps, I follow the  script to the tee. “Super handsome, how’s your week? I’m Mike.” “Wanna get off this app? I don’t get notifications, text is easier for me.” “Want to grab grub sometime? I promise I’m not a psycho.” The joke is on him, because I am actually a raging psycho. I make sure he is truly single: the hot trend is guys on social media who are in super committed relationships who pretend to be single online just to be more popular. Continue reading →

Making Spirits Bright

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So a busy day turns into a busy week, and then a busy week turns into two, into three. And then you realize that you’ve forgotten to tell your readers that you’re taking your usual December off to recharge and focus on friends and work, and that you’ll be back in January and that there are really great things in the works for the BLCKSMTH blog. So then you finally do tell them this, a couple days before the New Year.

A sincere Happy New Year from Ned and I, and it’s my wish that 2017 is a better one than this year. Onward and upward!

How to be Okay

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Set the story in the winter of 2015, in Portland. You will have just been broken up with by a dude you were bonkers in love with, in a way that rattled you to your core. Go grocery shopping, feel it coming on, leave the grocery store before you burst into tears on the way home. Think to yourself, Can we all agree that grocery stores should not play slow, sad Christmas songs any fucking more, please? Or at least have a trigger warning beforehand? Imagine it like that, fully: a red and green-striped rotating light descends from the grocery store ceiling, spins silently. Shoppers look up: some keep shopping but others abandon their carts, drop their baskets. Eggs shatter, a ball of iceberg lettuce rolls down the aisle as they leave the store in a row: the lonely old cat lady in her housecoat, the gutter punk in the pleather jacket, the middle aged bearded gay man wiping back his tears. Behind them, the beginning strains of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” start playing in Safeway. Continue reading →

On the Pulse of Mourning

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You wake up the next morning, Wednesday morning, and you hope it has been a nightmare. The rain falls outside in the black Oregon morning like tears and you realize it was not a dream. You log into social media and see the grief, the fear, and occasional glib comments, the jokes about moving to Canada. There is little uglier than the gloating of uneducated white people when their side wins.

How did we get here? you think to yourself. I thought this was locked down. But that’s it, isn’t it? You had been living in an insulated bubble for so long with like-minded friends whose values were the same. You lived in Los Angeles for 12 years before Portland, and now having been in Portland for 3 1/2 years; it has been easy to think that the rest of the country could see through the charlatan peddling snake oil. Hell, it appeared sometimes like even he was incredulous about his odds, that he was there just to symbolically show everyone how ridiculous the system was. On election day, you went to work with confidence bordering on hubris. That evening, as you headed to a bar to meet friends to watch the results, you stared at your phone with a creeping dread and disbelief. Continue reading →

When Three’s Not a Crowd

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You bike home from the coffee shop in the crisp early fall drizzle, your legs pumping the pedals as fast as they will go, which is not very fast. You have a rainjacket on but you also know that you’ll be soaked by the time you get home. This was not a Good Date. It started inauspiciously anyway, when he told you that he just came from another date. Having a date tell you he just came from another date is like watching someone coming out of a bathroom stall chewing on food. Continue reading →

A Very Long Engagement

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I’ve been in Portland three years. I love the summers here; they seem like they go on forever and then disappear in the blink of an eye. They say summer is a great season to fall in love. It’s been a while since I fell in love. I’m not on the dating apps: they alternately bore and frustrate me. But once in a while, someone catches my eye in real life and I give it a go. This is one of those stories, this is a story of my worst date, if not ever, then certainly this month. This is the story of my date with Mike Schneider. Continue reading →

How to Break Up

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Damnit. It’s over. I know it in my heart, I can feel it every time he and I touch: the magic is gone. What do I do when our love has reached its expiration date? How do I tell someone who trusts me completely and might still be crazy in love with me that I don’t feel the same way? 

Okay, hold on a sec. Is it actually over? The more empathetic you are, the earlier you’ll be able to tell when the feelings are fading for you. If you catch it early enough, you can talk it out with your partner and see if the fading feelings are mutual, or if it’s something just one of you feels, and the two of you agree to try to rekindle the feelings.

Uh but the feelings are fading, dude.

Um, did you just call me “dude”? Anyway, don’t confuse fading love with just being in that comfortable, “boring” stage: Continue reading →

Pride

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You do this: you ride the bumpiest, smallest plane on the planet from San Francisco to Albuquerque. You have white knuckles and the Xanax is taking the edge off the anxiety you feel, but just barely. You wonder if the plane falls out of the sky will it spin or tumble. Maybe it will just dive down nosefirst, and for a beautiful minute everyone will be weightless in the freefall inside the cabin. You decide that if that happens, you will unbuckle your seatbelt, you will enjoy the last few moments of your life like an astronaut. Continue reading →

Digital Witless

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It’s usually like this: you catch his eye, usually it’s online, maybe it’s in person, you get his attention. He sees past your currently questionable facial hair choices to the real you. Maybe he is good at texting back, though more often than not he’s not: “Sorry I’m bad at reminding you I’m interested in you wait why am I still single?” You flirt back and forth and you’re excited for when the two of you spend time together, which is frustratingly seldom because your work schedules are opposite. You’re eager to explore this because this one is local, for once you’re not FaceTiming or coordinating time zones or coming up with clever photo ideas to send him selfies. A few hours before a dinner date with him he texts you his apology and promises to stay connected. “I didn’t feel the chemistry but let’s still be friends” is nice to hear, but it’s also the sound of never hearing from someone again for the rest of your life.

Continue reading →

This Ends Badly, A Webseries

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“What? Another webseries announcement?” A few years ago I came up with the idea of pulling some of the dating horror stories from the blog and making them into an original series. It would take place in three cities! It would involve a cast of thousands! Well, then reality hit as I did the math and realized that this was a really ambitious project for my first time out of the gate. I’m still in love with the idea of How To Save Your Own Life, and it’ll always be percolating in the back of my mind until I have the resources to execute it properly.

In the meantime, I’m thrilled to present “This Ends Badly”! Continue reading →

Oh, the Places You’ll Go

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You’re in the waiting room of the doctor’s office, you are called in by a tight-lipped nurse. You sit in the examining room, look around. It’s the usual suspects: the boxes of latex gloves, the canister of cotton swabs, the paper-covered vinyl-cushioned examining table. The doctor’s assistant comes in, updates your information. She’s warm and sharp as a tack: she remembers that you live in the neighborhood, that you moved from California a few years back. She notices you haven’t had a refill for the Xanax you take to fly lately, asks if you need  more. “No,” you exhale, “I’m not flying as much anymore. That relationship ended.” Suddenly without warning David’s ghost is there in the room with the two of you, standing behind her. He never says anything, this ghost that appears sometimes, his blue eyes just stare at you. Continue reading →

Synonyms For Spring

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You do it like this: you get through the anniversaries, one at a time. Your first FaceTime date, his first trip out to Portland from Milwaukee, your first trip together to New York. Sometimes your brain plays tricks on you, you dream of an alternate universe where the two of you are still together, but it happens less and less often. He’s like an actor making appearances in your dreams that the writers are trying to write out slowly, making just cameos, then finally his contract running out.

In the meantime, you cautiously put your toe back into the dating waters. The last time was way too soon, it was a disaster and you weren’t ready yet, you took things too fast (dated pop-culture references not to say when having sex with someone for the first time: 1. “Brace for impact”  2. “Can you smell what The Rock is cooking?” 3. “Autobots, ROLL OUT!”). This time you decide to take it slower. It’s funny, you muse to yourself before a beer with a handsome guy you met on Tinder, I was one of those guys who used to be like “Let’s go on a date, let’s not call it “hanging out”. Now you realize that this is all the energy you have for anyone anymore. You can’t call it a date yet. Maybe you’re waiting for the thunderclap that hit you when you first saw David in person for the first time. Maybe you’re scared you’ll never feel that again for anyone. Continue reading →

Dear BLCKSMTH: Bad Advice For Good People

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Dear BLCKSMTH: What’s the biggest mistake you’ve regretted?

Tweeting a comparison last week between the death of the baby dolphin in Argentina and the demise of my last relationship. Haha! Heh. Ugh.

Dear BLCKSMTH: You look really young for your advanced age, and you seem so full of energy! What’s your secret?

Honestly, between my day job and the writing, I don’t even know when I find time to hate myself so much! But the secret to looking young:

  1. Cry a lot, it’s nature’s “collagen injection” for the area around your eyes!  2. Get in debt  3. Rub your face in silky cat fur at least twice daily  4. Cry some more!

Dear BLCKSMTH: I’m on Scruff and I’ve noticed a guy who I would really love to get with. He’s really flirty and seems genuinely interested back, but when I see him out, he clams up, doesn’t make eye contact, and seems really awkward. What is going on? Signed, J. in Portland Continue reading →

My Own Worst Enemy

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You keep it together like this: you wake up, you get groceries, you pick up cat food for Ned from the vet. You do this all successfully without crying! You celebrate these little victories since the breakup, these small signs that you’re getting better. You get online on the dating apps (major shout out to the dudes trying to look serious and smoldering in their profile pictures, who come off looking crazy and murder-y). You look at the New York guys to see who might be available to date once you move out there, but instead you’re interrupted by a vivid mental image of every single one of them taking turns on your ex who lives there, all of them lining up for a chance at him, the line extending around the block, extending across the Brooklyn bridge into Manhattan, all the men eager with hungry, mean eyes and bodies far more muscular than yours, and at the head of the line your former love’s door, occasionally opening, letting one out, letting another in, him closing the door gently like he used to with only you, and now a revolving door of sex with anyone but you. You shake your head of this image, grab your keys, head to your first therapy appointment. You have no clue what you talk to therapists about, it’s probably a bad fit because he’s not even gay and what the fuck would he know about your life. You go up to his office, greet each other, look at his walls lined with books. Maybe one of the books has the right sequence of words to make you better again, the magic incantation to make you as good as you were with David. The therapist says: “What would you like to talk about?”

You burst the fuck into tears. Continue reading →

My Brother’s Keeper, My Brother’s Killer, Part 5: The End of Everything

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Part 5 of 5. To read previous parts, click here for Part 1.

It’s the holiday season in 1991, and I’m a freshman in college. I’m coming back home to Albuquerque from spending time in Los Alamos, New Mexico, with my first boyfriend Max. I met Max’s family there, saw Star Trek 6 with him in an empty movie theater while I whispered the complicated galactic politics to him. We secretly made out whenever possible: to this day, I have a soft, nostalgic spot for the Drakkar Noir cologne he wore. We get back to our dorms on the UNM campus, and I get the call from my sister: something is wrong, come to the house right away.

I open the front door to my parents’ house, and my life is never the same after that. I see my sister’s tear-stained face, she’s in the living room with her husband Bob. My Dad is stoic but barely keeping it together while my grandmother shuffles around in her slippers, not understanding exactly what happened. My mom is wandering from room to room in the old Victorian house, incoherent, apoplectic, wailing with grief. I know then that my big brother John is dead. This is what it looks like when a family explodes from the inside out. Continue reading →

The Gift That Keeps On Giving

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I was honored to be interviewed for Matt Baume’s Sewers Of Paris podcast series. *Thrill* as I recount stories of my childhood sci-fi crushes! (I didn’t give Quantum Leap-era Scott Bakula’s legs due credit in the podcast; apologies Scott) *Wonder* as I recall formative music of my youth like Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814! *Cringe* as I audibly start crying when I talk about my ex! My gift to you is the feeling of being profoundly uncomfortable, so please click here to listen to the podcast.