Angstiety: April 2011

The Charmed Life of Cody Gunningham:

"What! Is! Up man! You want some of Buzz's special? It's got turkey on it." A tall, skinny, well dressed boy slides onto the stool next to me smiling.

"No thanks man! I'm trying to cut meat from my diet."

"Ah, you doing that vegan shit?"

"No, just lately I get this feeling when I'm eating meat, I don't know I just feel like I'm eating like... flesh. And I don't really need to at all. I was fixing hamburger the other day and..."

Jake had asked me to get lunch with him at his school. It was weird driving to a "college" located in the middle of down town Cincinnati. It was a drastic change from the Thomas More College life I've known. No one I saw was wearing sweat pants. NO ONE. When Jake and I first walked up to the building there was a wall of students smoking cigarettes. Their college looks like Urban Outfitters. Thats where I feel like I am right now. No one at Thomas More wears real clothes, smokes cigarettes, smiles at strangers, or is really all that nice at all come to think of it.

I had met Cody once before at Jake's apartment. Then I had just assumed he was a carbon copy of every other down town hipster that passed through Jake's. He looks just like the man from 101 Dalmatians, Roger. He looks just like Roger, dresses like him too. He's tall. Taller than me which isn't all that common among boys my age. He wears very classy clothes and is lanky and quirky. Today he wears a brown sweater, blue shoes, a euro beanie and he wears a nice pair of anti-hipster circular framed glasses.

He pulls from his pocket and sets on the table a bullet shell. Just the bottom half and its a little dirty and bent.

"I've been keeping up on what's going on in Japan lately." He fumbles with the bullet shell "I've been listening to the radio on my phone." He stares in thought at the shell. "I found this on the ground today. I picked it up, I thought it was kind of neat. I want to do a piece about Japan and I want to use this as my reference."

Immediately I smile to myself and think of Steve Martin in Baby Mama. Then even go as far as to say "You want it to have the essence of the shell." You can tell he probably reads GQ. They probably keep the latest issue in all the guys bathrooms at the Art Academy, laminated on stall walls. Style tips while you shit.

I sit and watch Jake and Cody go back and forth. Jake is the kind of person who interviews everyone he meets, kind of like me but more outgoing. He could pull questions out of thin air for days, and Cody seems to be the kind of person who could ramble for hours and everything he would say would be the most interesting thing I'd ever heard. I follow them around the city, we walk from the Art Academy, to Jake's, to Cody's apartment where we run into an old man, the apartment building owner it turns out. Cody sits and talks to him for almost half an hour. They have similar last names. Cody would like to start planting in the garden outside the apartment. There should be more benches, but you know that encourages loitering. The most random comments and questions pour out of this kids mouth and it cracks me up.

It cracks me up because he can't be for real. He's super intelligent, always bringing up books he's read and art he's seen. Documentary this, vegetables and gardening that. He's a constant expression of himself. The way he dresses, super classy but with his unconventional certain quirky attributes. The round glasses. Those kill me more than anything. I've never seen someone so hip that they DON'T wear thick square framed glasses. I think about that every time I see him now. His euro-beanie (with just the front of his long bed head hair pushed up in it) and his anti-hipster glasses. But it all works for him, because its all just honestly who he is. He walks around listening to political radios on his phone. Not because he wants to look culturally versed, but because he gives a shit about whats going on in the world and he wants to do an art piece on it. Its almost comical how oblivious Cody is to his swag. He just walks around not paying attention to anything but whats on his mind, leaving a trail of abstract doodles and coffee rings everywhere he goes.

We finally get up to his apartment and I'm just tingling with anticipation. Just to see more of what this kid is like. His door's bright red, and when you enter its like Ikea has punched you in the gut. The perfect slightly rustic slightly aged white walls with art covering nearly every inch, but all in the right places. Perfect design. He's added his own little flare to every niche, every corner. Still just a further extension of himself. He makes Jake and I coffee and I sit and listen to them talk more. There's a lovely collage hanging above us as we sit on the couch, Cody points to a blurry line and tells us that that was the first grocery store receipt from moving into the apartment. Its forever long. Its things like that that I appreciate in people. The tiny details, when you can weave who you are into everything you do. This kid has done it. You look at something in his house, you see something tiny that you think is a happy accident, and really theres a whole history lurking behind it. Thats Cody Gunningham. Subtle, well rounded, very classy but then theres the details. That history lurking behind him, and if you're around for more than five minutes you're sure to get a glimpse.