When I was in school, I was in a program called G.A.T.E. For those of you who don't know, it was for students who were Gifted And Talented in Education. So right, how did the kid with a GPA teetering anywhere between zero and 2.50 get into the special club for nerds? And Hell, who would want to be in it? High School is a tough time for kids, and know they'll drift into the groups for the cutters and the D&D nerds and the jocks and the ugly kids, but G.A.T.E. was the cream of the socially-retarded crop. Huh, maybe that might explain it.
This wasn't a club for smart kids. It was for kids with high GPAs, but any idiot could tell you that GPA doesn't show how smart you are. It might show you have a good work ethic, but these kids were the furthest things from smart that you could imagine. A lot of them were ugly, too. Oh Christ, that was something. Granted I was pretty ugly in High School, some of these kids looked disgusting enough to make me of all people reevaluate my self-image and go "Well, it could be worse. I could've been mauled by a dog." As my girlfriend lovingly put it, she believed the acronym actually stood for Generating Abstinence Throughout Education. I think this might've explained why it took so long for us to eventually have sex, but that's another story for another time.
There was only one real, legitimate reason to stay in this club. On the last month of school, we would get to go to Great America for free. All day. We would miss an entire day of school to have a "largely" all expenses paid trip to a theme park. I never understood it, honestly. Why would you take a bunch of pale greasy kids who wasted most of the semester locked in their rooms grinding away at homework to an amusement park? Have they even seen one? I don't think they would have televisions in their households, and the internet wasn't completely ingrained into our culture at this point so fuck all if that made any sense. How did that conversation go?
"So staff, how are we going to reward these kids?"
"Well Mr. Leland, all these kids are nerds right?"
"Yeah pretty much."
"So they probably are out-of-shape and sickly, right?"
"Oh absolutely. Especially that 'Steve' kid before Lucas put him in the hospital."
"Let's take them to a place that will completely exploit their weak physical constitutions. I'm thinking a theme park."
"Hmm..."
"And they're pasty and white from being indoors all day studying, right? The June sun will burn them good."
"That might work, although I think Charles Finnegan might be pale because he's an albino."
"Either way, these losers need some excitement in their lives, so it's perfect."
"Agreed. TO GREAT AMERICA!"
Not that I was complaining. Granted I was pasty and out of shape and sickly and had a weak physical constitution, I knew how to handle amusement park rides. I didn't know if Amelia could, though. Oh right, there was a spare ticket since a student couldn't make it at the last moment. A kid by the name of Peter Williams tried killing himself after walking in on his whore of a sister being mercilessly fucked by an eighth grade midget who would eventually die in a tragic pizzeria accident. But right, Ami came from a poor family and thus had never been to an amusement park. Some kids usually take their parents. My dad was working a lot and my mother was tending to the home's supply of liquor so that was out of the question. Mr. Leland let the girl come along, and this made for a rather entertaining experience.
Now since my family was poor and my dad didn't give me any money, my brother entrusted me with twenty dollars for this entire trip. That's not a lot of money since an 8-oz. can of soda from an amusement park cost a liter's worth of blood from your firstborn child since they apparently have to distill it and mine for the aluminum there at the food stand. And all be it, it got stolen when I got there. When I got off the bus, a few feet and I noticed I didn't feel the bill in my pocket.
"Well... that doesn't bode well."
"Hmm?" my girlfriend's very fickle attention span was caught.
"I don't think that twenty's in my pocket anymore." I said.
"...Are you serious?" Her voice sounded exasperated.
"Uh... heh heh... whoops?"
"...You idiot."
Yet right behind us, Sam Falker and his ugly friends were marveling at the 20-dollar bill they said one of the kids dropped. They had to be idiots. They had to have heard that conversation I just had. Sam Falker was actually a football player, and generally a bastard. He got good grades, but he was as dumb as a post.
"Hey, can we get that back?" I asked.
"Get what back?" he didn't hear a damn thing my girlfriend and I were discussing.
"I dropped that."
"Like hell you did." He got defensive.
"Does it have a tear in the right corner of the bill?" I asked.
"Uh..." he quickly looked at it with his big dumb eyes. "Yeah, why?"
"I know that because it's mine."
"Bullshit, you just saw it. I just pulled this out of my pocket." Now he was lying.
"You just said you found a twenty that one of the dumbass students dropped." my girlfriend interjected.
"No I didn't."
"You clearly did." I said. My voice was getting a bit rough as I spoke.
"Shut the fuck up and piss off." he belched out. What a stubborn mule. But he was a mule, and I was a malnourished boy. He would kick my ass if I provoked him any further. I left defeated and hungry as my girlfriend's snide sharp remarks cut into me for most of the day.
Of course I got to hear her shut up after I took her on her first ride ever, which happened to be the Grizzly. I don't know if you people know what the Grizzly is. The Grizzly is an entire roller coaster made out of wood and nails and other primitive tools of the trade. This ride could've been built in the middle ages, and it might've been. The first ride your girlfriend goes on should not be the most rickety coaster in the entire park where you're fearing death at every turn from the thing violently shaking itself apart. My girlfriend was a borderline mute, but I honestly had no idea she could scream that loud. I heard car alarms that were quieter than this girl. And after all of it was said and done she said "DON'T YOU EVER TAKE ME ON ANOTHER RIDE LIKE THAT AGAIN, THAT WAS BULLSHIT! I THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO FUCKING DIE!" And after that yelling not a peep out of the bitch for the rest of the day.
Eventually Mr. Leland saw me hungry and poor and asked what was wrong.
"A shame everyone couldn't come, huh?" he asked me.
"Yeah, I guess."
"Like Steve."
"Don't bring up Steve, Mr. Leland."
"Or Peter."
"He's kind of a pussy, Mr. Leland."
"Or Charles Finnegan."
"Yeah, a shame about the gasoline fire."
"He was a good kid.
"Yeah he was, Mr. Leland."
Eventually I brought up how I lost the 20 I brought with me, and the man handed me a bill and told me to get something to eat. The man's generosity to this day remains in my mind. Amelia had the energy to start talking again after she managed to ingest half of a large pizza that cost every penny we had, while her sweet-talking managed to get us a single soda to share. The girl must've lost about 5 pounds from all the screaming she did. Things were good again, then I took her on Drop Zone and then she screamed some more and then threw up, and then slapped me for ever suggesting that ride in the first place. Not my fault she ate a shitload of pizza beforehand. She may be an idiot, but at least she's my idiot. Eventually the sun was beginning to set so it was time to go home. But some unfinished business remained.
My girlfriend and I managed to convince Sam Falkner's longtime girlfriend that he was cheating on her. Why did we do this? Revenge is a ghost, and that meant my girlfriend was some kind of malicious banshee out for blood. Sam and his girlfriend got into a fight and eventually broke up. The beauty behind it was by sheer stroke of luck the dumb son of a bitch actually was cheating on her. He suspected it was us, but he couldn't prove a fucking thing. Ami and I laughed our asses off at the entire ordeal. We managed to destroy a relationship that lasted nearly two years over twenty dollars.
That makes us petty, but at least those fuckers know we're smarter than they are.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Monday, May 24, 2010
An Essay: What my Political Science class has taught me.
I tried to come up with a clever title for this political essay, but whatever random witticism that usually comes to my mind eluded me during the making of this essay. Now considering the broad and ridiculous amount of topics that we've covered this semester, I would find it practically impossible to zero down what I've learned to five things. But Hell, the word "practically" never meant much to me, so let's give this a shot. While there are only a handful of specific things involving politics that this class taught me, the class has moreso taught me about the concept of how people argue and how they articulate their points and the interpretation of human morality ever so blatantly present in the discussion of politics. I already knew about a lot of these things, but interacting with people in this field has advanced my opinions behind them. Let's get this started then, and I'm going to try and make this entertaining to read because God-forbid you read anything dull.
First off, one of the most important things I've learned was how facts aren't really "facts" and they're frequently undermined in the art of debate and politics. That's an ugly truth people don't want to look at, do they? Both political sides have their own separate sets of facts to validate the arguments they're attempting to make, while both of them are often omitting important merits of discussion, usually provided by the other side coincidentally enough. A source isn't immediately valid in this day and age because of the possibility of ill-refined research or how researchers might place a personal stake in the information to slant or skew it in their particular direction. It's difficult if not impossible to find research that isn't being reinterpreted due to some sort of personal bias. But the facts can still shine through under these circumstances; if you have enough sources that appear to be pointing towards some general point, then chances are that your information is pretty stable. And sometimes it's just common sense anyway, so who gives a fuck?
This brings me to the second ugly truth that this class has taught me; people are bastard-coated bastards with bastard filling and bias will always exist, even in the interpretation and presentation of facts. Understanding the psychology of people will get you a Hell of a way through Politics. It's how Burke, Paine and Locke developed wholly different stances on revolution and the reconstruction of government. It's why stupid shit like Terrorism exists. It's why Patriotism exists. People are inherently selfish by nature and serve to only save their own asses. That may seem good to them, but in a bloated and complicated political system like the American Democracy, someone will always be getting unjustly screwed over. People know this and take advantage of it. This is why corruption will always be in politics; they just go hand-in-hand. The facts are important, but the basic idea of manipulating human psychology is what wins the political wars. It's how people can overlook and misinterpret facts for their own benefits.
Which brings us to the third thing that I learned, and perhaps the most important; the art of manipulation through language. There's that old saying that people can talk a lot yet manage to say so little, and the reason that old saying was created was because of politicians. And lawyers. But mainly politicians. Your public image is the most important thing when you're a politician, so you have to choose your words and language use carefully so you come across to the ignorant uninformed populace in a particular way that lets them know you're smarter than they are but are still "just like the average joe" as your fly private industrial airliner to political conferences collecting 100,000 dollar donations that you'll spend on manipulating them to vote you into office. Or you can come across as a completely unlikeable jackass even though you might occasionally have some valid points to put forth; no one comes to mind faster than Steve Milloy in his book "Green Hell". The man is fairly intelligent and does call environmentalists on a lot of bullshit they do with legitimate arguments, but his manner of speech is so pompous, derogatory and riddled with malice that it's almost impossible to take him seriously. In fact if it weren't for the book, I wouldn't be entirely sure if the man was literate.
This leads me to the fourth nail in my coffin of fatalistic views; Utopias are a pathetic man's dream that will never exist. This ties into the previous points being made. The quintessential concept of a Utopia will never exist without a masterful level of psychological manipulation and propaganda brought on by the government. The government has to shape and condition the populace's standards for living in order to create the illusion of happy or healthy living. This means complete control and regulation of information brought on by the government. Pretty much a Totalitarian nations are the kinds of a government where faux Utopias can emerge, but you can only keep the populace in that reverie for so long before it all goes down the shitter far enough to be rattling the plumbing in Satan's apartment.
Finally, perhaps the most important or second-most important thing your class has taught me. And that is that we're fucked. There's no elegant or sophisticated way of saying it because there's nothing elegant or sophisticated about an inevitable social and economic collapse in America. That would be like attempting to find an elegant way to watch the Hindenburg crash. America it outsourcing the living Hell out of itself, Universal Healthcare is bullshit, we have a war, we have illegals both damaging our economy while simultaneously making us dependent on them, it just spells doom. Before we knew that Business and Government were in bed with each other, now they're just fucking wildly out in the open like stray dogs during heat. The level of corruption and change intermingling at the same time is enough to keep a man stuck in his chair for a week.
So there you have it. Your class has taught me about the art of manipulating language and information so that greedy politicians will feed their own selfish and corrupt ambitions while our country is on the highway to Hell and how you say you'll be gone when we have to put up with it. Your class has managed to reinforce my already-prevalent beliefs in fatalism to an unhealthy degree. Now if you excuse me, I'm getting my tin-foil hat while I crawl into my basement waiting for the inevitable arrival of the dystopian future due to the motherland's collapse.
First off, one of the most important things I've learned was how facts aren't really "facts" and they're frequently undermined in the art of debate and politics. That's an ugly truth people don't want to look at, do they? Both political sides have their own separate sets of facts to validate the arguments they're attempting to make, while both of them are often omitting important merits of discussion, usually provided by the other side coincidentally enough. A source isn't immediately valid in this day and age because of the possibility of ill-refined research or how researchers might place a personal stake in the information to slant or skew it in their particular direction. It's difficult if not impossible to find research that isn't being reinterpreted due to some sort of personal bias. But the facts can still shine through under these circumstances; if you have enough sources that appear to be pointing towards some general point, then chances are that your information is pretty stable. And sometimes it's just common sense anyway, so who gives a fuck?
This brings me to the second ugly truth that this class has taught me; people are bastard-coated bastards with bastard filling and bias will always exist, even in the interpretation and presentation of facts. Understanding the psychology of people will get you a Hell of a way through Politics. It's how Burke, Paine and Locke developed wholly different stances on revolution and the reconstruction of government. It's why stupid shit like Terrorism exists. It's why Patriotism exists. People are inherently selfish by nature and serve to only save their own asses. That may seem good to them, but in a bloated and complicated political system like the American Democracy, someone will always be getting unjustly screwed over. People know this and take advantage of it. This is why corruption will always be in politics; they just go hand-in-hand. The facts are important, but the basic idea of manipulating human psychology is what wins the political wars. It's how people can overlook and misinterpret facts for their own benefits.
Which brings us to the third thing that I learned, and perhaps the most important; the art of manipulation through language. There's that old saying that people can talk a lot yet manage to say so little, and the reason that old saying was created was because of politicians. And lawyers. But mainly politicians. Your public image is the most important thing when you're a politician, so you have to choose your words and language use carefully so you come across to the ignorant uninformed populace in a particular way that lets them know you're smarter than they are but are still "just like the average joe" as your fly private industrial airliner to political conferences collecting 100,000 dollar donations that you'll spend on manipulating them to vote you into office. Or you can come across as a completely unlikeable jackass even though you might occasionally have some valid points to put forth; no one comes to mind faster than Steve Milloy in his book "Green Hell". The man is fairly intelligent and does call environmentalists on a lot of bullshit they do with legitimate arguments, but his manner of speech is so pompous, derogatory and riddled with malice that it's almost impossible to take him seriously. In fact if it weren't for the book, I wouldn't be entirely sure if the man was literate.
This leads me to the fourth nail in my coffin of fatalistic views; Utopias are a pathetic man's dream that will never exist. This ties into the previous points being made. The quintessential concept of a Utopia will never exist without a masterful level of psychological manipulation and propaganda brought on by the government. The government has to shape and condition the populace's standards for living in order to create the illusion of happy or healthy living. This means complete control and regulation of information brought on by the government. Pretty much a Totalitarian nations are the kinds of a government where faux Utopias can emerge, but you can only keep the populace in that reverie for so long before it all goes down the shitter far enough to be rattling the plumbing in Satan's apartment.
Finally, perhaps the most important or second-most important thing your class has taught me. And that is that we're fucked. There's no elegant or sophisticated way of saying it because there's nothing elegant or sophisticated about an inevitable social and economic collapse in America. That would be like attempting to find an elegant way to watch the Hindenburg crash. America it outsourcing the living Hell out of itself, Universal Healthcare is bullshit, we have a war, we have illegals both damaging our economy while simultaneously making us dependent on them, it just spells doom. Before we knew that Business and Government were in bed with each other, now they're just fucking wildly out in the open like stray dogs during heat. The level of corruption and change intermingling at the same time is enough to keep a man stuck in his chair for a week.
So there you have it. Your class has taught me about the art of manipulating language and information so that greedy politicians will feed their own selfish and corrupt ambitions while our country is on the highway to Hell and how you say you'll be gone when we have to put up with it. Your class has managed to reinforce my already-prevalent beliefs in fatalism to an unhealthy degree. Now if you excuse me, I'm getting my tin-foil hat while I crawl into my basement waiting for the inevitable arrival of the dystopian future due to the motherland's collapse.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
The lost art of forgiveness.
Let's stop and talk about forgiveness and apologizing for a second. I would like to believe that I am a very forgiving person. WHAT? I am, fuck you. When you're as neurotic and as easily prone to being upset as I am, I believe it's practically a necessity if you don't want to end up cold, alone and dead. That's something I never really understood about angry people in general; they're often aware of the voracious tempers they have, yet most of them have their heads stuck too far up their asses to realize that they need to stop grinding the axe every once in a while. And there's a dirty joke in that last sentence, but I'm too busy making a point to work with it.
Forgiveness is taken for granted far too much in this day and age. Really. For people who screw up a lot, they often fail to appreciate how much that little personality trait has let them get away with so much shit. And even if most of the screw-ups are forgiven, they're unapologetic; how many people who are forgiven for doing something prone to doing it again? Far too much than I'm comfortable with, frankly. There are those people who deserve to be forgiven, because they intend on at least trying to make sure it doesn't happen again. Then there are others who will stay the same no matter what, and it's selfish is what it is.
The word "sorry" is probably the cheapest word in the English language. If you betray someone's trust or are offering condolences to someone for tragedy and that brief, ugly, two-syllable word is all you have with you, then I recommend grabbing a dictionary and start bullshitting your way through a conversation until you pick up on something else. People think it's the magic fix-all word. Piss me off? "I'm sorry." That's all they think it takes, and they usually don't end up doing a damn thing to change their behavior so it doesn't happen again. Which again, is selfish. Others will only choose to accommodate themselves so much and be forgiving before the screw-up is given up on.
The people who deserve forgiveness go beyond that; they don't just use the words, they show it. They might try to alter themselves a bit to accommodate the people around them, or they might try to perform a gesture they wouldn't normally do under most circumstances that says "I mean it this time." What if they screw up again? Well hell, at least they could say that they didn't try. Failure isn't a begrudging thing if they were trying. Unless you try too little and you're just sort of half-assing it, but most people can pick up on that usually.
On the most trivial and petty level, apologizing and forgiveness is about who's right and who's wrong. But when it actually matters, it has little or nothing to do with who's right or who's wrong. It just means that you value your relationship with that person more than your ego, which is what a lot of people seem to overlook. A large ego is the worst thing to have in a friendship or relationship, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you should be quick to forgive, either. Some people need that ego to keep their judgments and standards realistic, so it's also possible to have too small of an ego. You know those people. Those people who say they're sorry for everything, so they just completely undermine the hell out of its meaning. At least when somebody with an enormous ego says they're sorry, you know it means something.
Realistically speaking though, do some people deserve to be forgiven for everything? No. Not saying that people can't always change, but sometimes both just have to know when to throw in the towel and go "You know, we can only do so much before we realize that something isn't working here and this is no longer worth it." Giving up isn't the sunshine, candies and lovely ending people wish for if they think they can tough it out, but sometimes that's what it takes to move on to greener pastures. Hell, sometimes it takes more strength to admit when something isn't working than to stick with it until the bitter end.
So there's your moral lesson for the day. The people who need to read this the most probably won't, so that's all I have to say on that.
Forgiveness is taken for granted far too much in this day and age. Really. For people who screw up a lot, they often fail to appreciate how much that little personality trait has let them get away with so much shit. And even if most of the screw-ups are forgiven, they're unapologetic; how many people who are forgiven for doing something prone to doing it again? Far too much than I'm comfortable with, frankly. There are those people who deserve to be forgiven, because they intend on at least trying to make sure it doesn't happen again. Then there are others who will stay the same no matter what, and it's selfish is what it is.
The word "sorry" is probably the cheapest word in the English language. If you betray someone's trust or are offering condolences to someone for tragedy and that brief, ugly, two-syllable word is all you have with you, then I recommend grabbing a dictionary and start bullshitting your way through a conversation until you pick up on something else. People think it's the magic fix-all word. Piss me off? "I'm sorry." That's all they think it takes, and they usually don't end up doing a damn thing to change their behavior so it doesn't happen again. Which again, is selfish. Others will only choose to accommodate themselves so much and be forgiving before the screw-up is given up on.
The people who deserve forgiveness go beyond that; they don't just use the words, they show it. They might try to alter themselves a bit to accommodate the people around them, or they might try to perform a gesture they wouldn't normally do under most circumstances that says "I mean it this time." What if they screw up again? Well hell, at least they could say that they didn't try. Failure isn't a begrudging thing if they were trying. Unless you try too little and you're just sort of half-assing it, but most people can pick up on that usually.
On the most trivial and petty level, apologizing and forgiveness is about who's right and who's wrong. But when it actually matters, it has little or nothing to do with who's right or who's wrong. It just means that you value your relationship with that person more than your ego, which is what a lot of people seem to overlook. A large ego is the worst thing to have in a friendship or relationship, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you should be quick to forgive, either. Some people need that ego to keep their judgments and standards realistic, so it's also possible to have too small of an ego. You know those people. Those people who say they're sorry for everything, so they just completely undermine the hell out of its meaning. At least when somebody with an enormous ego says they're sorry, you know it means something.
Realistically speaking though, do some people deserve to be forgiven for everything? No. Not saying that people can't always change, but sometimes both just have to know when to throw in the towel and go "You know, we can only do so much before we realize that something isn't working here and this is no longer worth it." Giving up isn't the sunshine, candies and lovely ending people wish for if they think they can tough it out, but sometimes that's what it takes to move on to greener pastures. Hell, sometimes it takes more strength to admit when something isn't working than to stick with it until the bitter end.
So there's your moral lesson for the day. The people who need to read this the most probably won't, so that's all I have to say on that.
Monday, May 17, 2010
A love letter.
Once upon a time there was a boy and girl. Where? At a school. Because where the hell else would a boy and a girl just frequently meet? Not the bar, not the boardwalk, but a school. Because all the world's great stories of romance, adventure and drama inevitably start at school. Let's call the boy Danny and the girl Evelyn. Dan and Eve were childhood friends so to speak; they grew up as neighbors in the same ol' boring neighborhood for fucking years. Their families were neighbors, and like all good parents they booted their kids outside to play and romp together while the adults were doing adult things like filing taxes, writing the list of people getting this year's Christmas card, and fucking each other senselessly while on edge that the kids might walk in on them locked in the evocative passions of lust and boredom.
Dan and Eve were both very normal kids growing up. Dan was kind of tall and gangly and enjoyed sitting in his room playing video games whenever he wasn't forced outside, and thus was just a bit reclusive and snide. But he was incredibly smart and well-rehearsed despite how little he got out. Eve was a short and sweet girl with a penchant for writing and while buried in indifference most of the time let her emotions bleed into her writing. And her writing was fantastic because she expressed everything she felt in it. Except anger. Eve was a tiny girl with tiny amounts of patience, and thus was quick to lose her temper. She never understood why Dan played videogames so much. She saw them like every other ignorant judgmental bitch saw them; mindless entertainment and killing, and in her case deprived of artistic value and story. She would always come over to Dan's house in an attempt to drag him outside and do random teenager things like filing stories, writing the list of people she's inviting to her sweet 16, and fucking each other senselessly while on edge that their parents might walk in on them locked in the evocative passions of lust and boredom.
Or not. Dan and Eve never really saw each other in that way. Granted Dan was kind of scrawny and pale, he might've had women crooning for him if he left the god-damn house. And Eve was short and slightly underdeveloped for her age, but she could certainly get a date. Dan and Eve as they got older both grew apart and grew closer at the same time. Dan still played videogames but Eve managed to drag him out of the house a bit more to have fun. They would have random talks on the boardwalk as Eve stuffed her tiny cheeks with cotton candy.
"Sitting out here in the sunlight makes me feel like writing." she said while spitting cotton candy up on accident.
"Eh, the weather's pretty nice I guess."
"Days like these make me feel like writing poetry."
"Have you tried getting anything published yet?" Dan asked.
"Well... no, not yet. I've tried, but I keep getting rejection letters..." A hint of exasperation was heard in her voice.
"If you had people proofread your work, then you could probably tighten it up more when you submit it. Hell, I could do i--"
"NO!" she yelled.
"For someone who talks about how much they enjoy writing and how much they write, you sure seem adamant to let anybody see your work."
"I don't want YOU reading it!" Eve seemed flustered.
"What the hell am I going to do, laugh?"
And laugh he did. Dan wasn't particularly the romantic type. He was cynical, embittered and antisocial. He father left his family for being cheated on, his mother held down a job and was sleeping around, and his brother went with his father. He was alone, in a broken family, and jaded by it. Eve wrote a lot of touchy-feely love stories and love poems and they often went over the head of Dan. Throughout this time period she kept bringing up her poem, the big one that would get her published. Dan never saw it. She worked feverishly on it by her lonesome. But she always brought it up, which baited Dan's curiosity, which never did much good anyway because would never see it. She wanted to write a memoir about love, but the short, angry girl with glasses was unexperienced in that topic. She was a hopeless romantic.
"I'll write a memoir about love eventually, just you watch." she always told him.
"You're too damn picky, you'll never find somebody anyway." Dan sardonically muttered. Eve's tiny cheeks turned red as her glasses became crooked.
"Well EXCUSE ME for having standards, you clod!" Eve was getting angry. "My perfect man is out there somewhere, and I'll find him eventually!"
"There's no such thing as a perfect person. You're wasting your time." he said.
"OH SHUT UP!" she then proceeded to grab her diary and beat Dan with it until he left. This repeated throughout their friendship ad-nausem, but like Alzheimer patients Dan and Eve still got together usually at that same boardwalk, still discussed the topic, and it still ended with some threat on Dan's stupid oblivious life that he didn't much care about at this point. Maybe that's why he found the threats so hollow.
As they got into High School, neither Dan or Eve dated each other nor did they date other people. Dan was cold and bitter and bored with the concept, and was a tall gangly pale giant to be intimidated by. Eve was such a hopeless romantic that she never saw that perfect boy to go out with. And if she did, she never said a damn thing. Remember that outside of the anger, Eve was a fairly antisocial, shy and indifferent person. And she stayed tiny throughout High School. She never got taller than 4'11", her breasts never got larger than an A cup and she never weighed more than 100 pounds. As she got older she felt just a bit more inadequate with herself and Dan was still a bastard. And this made things worse between them since Eve's happy family was beginning to frown. Her parents were getting divorced and this meant that they would eventually lose the house. At the end of her senior year Eve would have to move.
"So not much time left, huh?" Dan asked one evening they were walking home from the boardwalk.
"...Yeah."
"I'm never going to see that poem, am I?"
"Hell no you aren't." she coldly replied. Dan sighed.
"Why not?"
"Because."
"Bullshit, give me a reason."
"No." Dan's patience was wearing thin.
"You're such a pain in the ass to deal with sometimes, you know that?" his voice was raising.
"Says YOU! You're always so damn cynical, I'm surprised I put up with you this long!"
"Good Christ, is this what I get for taking an interest in what you're writing. Stop being such a bitch and you might actually be with somebody." That was cold. Dan was stupid for saying that, and Eve let him know it. She started crying and slapped him across the face.
"You're a monster..." she could hardly speak. "You want to read it? Fine!" She tore out a page of her notebook and threw it in his face. She ran off in tears as Dan stood on the boardwalk. He opened the crumbled paper and read it.
I don't love you anymore.
I would hate myself if I ever said
I care about you and cherish you.
That would be naive.
I couldn't bring myself to love you.
I would never say
that I need you.
And I will always feel inside my aching heart
You need to be forgotten.
I will be lying to you if I said
I love you.
Because that's the way it needs to be.
So I must tell the truth...
Dan didn't like what he read. He thought it was beautifully written, but it twisted his stomach. He didn't like what he felt when he read it. It made him uneasy. But he sat on it. He couldn't talk to her about it. He didn't much like the prospect.
Dan and Eve didn't talk to each other after that. Weeks passed without them saying a word to each other. Senior year closed to an end quickly. Dan went back to never leaving his house, and Eve sat in her house furiously writing while taking those occasional walks to the boardwalk, this time by herself. But when Dan was at school the other day, he overheard that Eve did in fact get that poem published. It appeared in the local newspaper.
"It's not much, but I guess it's a start." he thought to himself. His house got the paper, but his mother never bothered to read it in the morning since she was still sleeping during the day. She worked the nightshift. It was still out on the yard, in a pile next to the rest of them. Dan wondered why his mother wasted money ordering them if she never read them, but didn't question it this time since it seemed to benefit him. He opened the paper to the section for short stories, poems and other various bugger for published works. And there was Eve's poem. Dan still felt a twist in his gut when he read it, until he got to the end. It was a single line added. He sighed, muttered to himself and closed the paper.
As he expected, there Eve was, writing on the boardwalk's edge like she always did. She felt a tap on the back of her small head that made her look behind her.
"So you finally got published."
"Yeah, so? What of it?" her tone was hostile.
"You're just as short-tempered as always, I see." he muttered.
"What do you want?" she sharply asked.
"Am I not allowed to talk to you anymore?"
"Why don't you just leave me the hell alone?" her voice was beginning to crack.
"Well fine, I guess I'll just leave if that's all you have to say to me." But as he began to walk away, he heard her mutter.
"I love you." she choked out.
"I'm sorry, what?"
"I SAID I LOVE YOU, YOU FUCKING IDIOT! YOU'RE ONE OF THE MOST HEARTLESS PEOPLE I'VE EVER MET BUT I DON'T CARE! I KNOW THAT I'M IN THE BACK CORNER OF RELEVANCE IN YOUR MIND, AND THAT THERE'S PROBABLY SOMEBODY BETTER TO CONSIDER! AND EVEN IF I WANTED IT TO GO SOMEWHERE, I KNOW WE DON'T HAVE A GHOST'S CHANCE IN HELL IN MAKING IT WORK!" She was breathing heavily. She began to start tearing up.
"...I-I-I know the answer will be no." Her composure was crumbling.
"I know that. So the only thing I can do is to make you hate me, and to make you forget about me. To make myself irrelevant. That's the only way I can know for sure. And it would mean something. At least I would see something from you. I don't care what it is at this point anymore. If I can see something and then just let it die, then that's all I could ask for. Now hurry up and reject me so I can get some closure and move on with my life."
Dan sighed and sat down next to her. She was weeping uncontrollably. Her outburst drew a lot of attention from people passing by, but one glare from that crazy bastard Dan thinned out whatever crowd managed to gather.
"You're such an idiot, you know that?" he said.
"SHUT UP, YOU IDIOT!" she screamed. "I HATE YOU FOR DOING THIS TO ME YOU BASTARD! JUST GO ROT IN HELL AND LEAVE ME ALO-" Dan silenced her with his mouth and she began to calm down. As they parted, she was still crying and hiccuping.
"Pull yourself together, it's done now." He smirked as he pulled her to her feet and they began the walk home. Eve never left that senior year. Despite being a deadbeat mother who slept around, Eve decided to move in with Dan at the end of the year as they went to college together. She did end up writing that memoir about love, but she wrote it in third person to dissociate herself with that silly trifle.
That last line she added to the poem was "Read this upwards."
Dan and Eve were both very normal kids growing up. Dan was kind of tall and gangly and enjoyed sitting in his room playing video games whenever he wasn't forced outside, and thus was just a bit reclusive and snide. But he was incredibly smart and well-rehearsed despite how little he got out. Eve was a short and sweet girl with a penchant for writing and while buried in indifference most of the time let her emotions bleed into her writing. And her writing was fantastic because she expressed everything she felt in it. Except anger. Eve was a tiny girl with tiny amounts of patience, and thus was quick to lose her temper. She never understood why Dan played videogames so much. She saw them like every other ignorant judgmental bitch saw them; mindless entertainment and killing, and in her case deprived of artistic value and story. She would always come over to Dan's house in an attempt to drag him outside and do random teenager things like filing stories, writing the list of people she's inviting to her sweet 16, and fucking each other senselessly while on edge that their parents might walk in on them locked in the evocative passions of lust and boredom.
Or not. Dan and Eve never really saw each other in that way. Granted Dan was kind of scrawny and pale, he might've had women crooning for him if he left the god-damn house. And Eve was short and slightly underdeveloped for her age, but she could certainly get a date. Dan and Eve as they got older both grew apart and grew closer at the same time. Dan still played videogames but Eve managed to drag him out of the house a bit more to have fun. They would have random talks on the boardwalk as Eve stuffed her tiny cheeks with cotton candy.
"Sitting out here in the sunlight makes me feel like writing." she said while spitting cotton candy up on accident.
"Eh, the weather's pretty nice I guess."
"Days like these make me feel like writing poetry."
"Have you tried getting anything published yet?" Dan asked.
"Well... no, not yet. I've tried, but I keep getting rejection letters..." A hint of exasperation was heard in her voice.
"If you had people proofread your work, then you could probably tighten it up more when you submit it. Hell, I could do i--"
"NO!" she yelled.
"For someone who talks about how much they enjoy writing and how much they write, you sure seem adamant to let anybody see your work."
"I don't want YOU reading it!" Eve seemed flustered.
"What the hell am I going to do, laugh?"
And laugh he did. Dan wasn't particularly the romantic type. He was cynical, embittered and antisocial. He father left his family for being cheated on, his mother held down a job and was sleeping around, and his brother went with his father. He was alone, in a broken family, and jaded by it. Eve wrote a lot of touchy-feely love stories and love poems and they often went over the head of Dan. Throughout this time period she kept bringing up her poem, the big one that would get her published. Dan never saw it. She worked feverishly on it by her lonesome. But she always brought it up, which baited Dan's curiosity, which never did much good anyway because would never see it. She wanted to write a memoir about love, but the short, angry girl with glasses was unexperienced in that topic. She was a hopeless romantic.
"I'll write a memoir about love eventually, just you watch." she always told him.
"You're too damn picky, you'll never find somebody anyway." Dan sardonically muttered. Eve's tiny cheeks turned red as her glasses became crooked.
"Well EXCUSE ME for having standards, you clod!" Eve was getting angry. "My perfect man is out there somewhere, and I'll find him eventually!"
"There's no such thing as a perfect person. You're wasting your time." he said.
"OH SHUT UP!" she then proceeded to grab her diary and beat Dan with it until he left. This repeated throughout their friendship ad-nausem, but like Alzheimer patients Dan and Eve still got together usually at that same boardwalk, still discussed the topic, and it still ended with some threat on Dan's stupid oblivious life that he didn't much care about at this point. Maybe that's why he found the threats so hollow.
As they got into High School, neither Dan or Eve dated each other nor did they date other people. Dan was cold and bitter and bored with the concept, and was a tall gangly pale giant to be intimidated by. Eve was such a hopeless romantic that she never saw that perfect boy to go out with. And if she did, she never said a damn thing. Remember that outside of the anger, Eve was a fairly antisocial, shy and indifferent person. And she stayed tiny throughout High School. She never got taller than 4'11", her breasts never got larger than an A cup and she never weighed more than 100 pounds. As she got older she felt just a bit more inadequate with herself and Dan was still a bastard. And this made things worse between them since Eve's happy family was beginning to frown. Her parents were getting divorced and this meant that they would eventually lose the house. At the end of her senior year Eve would have to move.
"So not much time left, huh?" Dan asked one evening they were walking home from the boardwalk.
"...Yeah."
"I'm never going to see that poem, am I?"
"Hell no you aren't." she coldly replied. Dan sighed.
"Why not?"
"Because."
"Bullshit, give me a reason."
"No." Dan's patience was wearing thin.
"You're such a pain in the ass to deal with sometimes, you know that?" his voice was raising.
"Says YOU! You're always so damn cynical, I'm surprised I put up with you this long!"
"Good Christ, is this what I get for taking an interest in what you're writing. Stop being such a bitch and you might actually be with somebody." That was cold. Dan was stupid for saying that, and Eve let him know it. She started crying and slapped him across the face.
"You're a monster..." she could hardly speak. "You want to read it? Fine!" She tore out a page of her notebook and threw it in his face. She ran off in tears as Dan stood on the boardwalk. He opened the crumbled paper and read it.
I don't love you anymore.
I would hate myself if I ever said
I care about you and cherish you.
That would be naive.
I couldn't bring myself to love you.
I would never say
that I need you.
And I will always feel inside my aching heart
You need to be forgotten.
I will be lying to you if I said
I love you.
Because that's the way it needs to be.
So I must tell the truth...
Dan didn't like what he read. He thought it was beautifully written, but it twisted his stomach. He didn't like what he felt when he read it. It made him uneasy. But he sat on it. He couldn't talk to her about it. He didn't much like the prospect.
Dan and Eve didn't talk to each other after that. Weeks passed without them saying a word to each other. Senior year closed to an end quickly. Dan went back to never leaving his house, and Eve sat in her house furiously writing while taking those occasional walks to the boardwalk, this time by herself. But when Dan was at school the other day, he overheard that Eve did in fact get that poem published. It appeared in the local newspaper.
"It's not much, but I guess it's a start." he thought to himself. His house got the paper, but his mother never bothered to read it in the morning since she was still sleeping during the day. She worked the nightshift. It was still out on the yard, in a pile next to the rest of them. Dan wondered why his mother wasted money ordering them if she never read them, but didn't question it this time since it seemed to benefit him. He opened the paper to the section for short stories, poems and other various bugger for published works. And there was Eve's poem. Dan still felt a twist in his gut when he read it, until he got to the end. It was a single line added. He sighed, muttered to himself and closed the paper.
As he expected, there Eve was, writing on the boardwalk's edge like she always did. She felt a tap on the back of her small head that made her look behind her.
"So you finally got published."
"Yeah, so? What of it?" her tone was hostile.
"You're just as short-tempered as always, I see." he muttered.
"What do you want?" she sharply asked.
"Am I not allowed to talk to you anymore?"
"Why don't you just leave me the hell alone?" her voice was beginning to crack.
"Well fine, I guess I'll just leave if that's all you have to say to me." But as he began to walk away, he heard her mutter.
"I love you." she choked out.
"I'm sorry, what?"
"I SAID I LOVE YOU, YOU FUCKING IDIOT! YOU'RE ONE OF THE MOST HEARTLESS PEOPLE I'VE EVER MET BUT I DON'T CARE! I KNOW THAT I'M IN THE BACK CORNER OF RELEVANCE IN YOUR MIND, AND THAT THERE'S PROBABLY SOMEBODY BETTER TO CONSIDER! AND EVEN IF I WANTED IT TO GO SOMEWHERE, I KNOW WE DON'T HAVE A GHOST'S CHANCE IN HELL IN MAKING IT WORK!" She was breathing heavily. She began to start tearing up.
"...I-I-I know the answer will be no." Her composure was crumbling.
"I know that. So the only thing I can do is to make you hate me, and to make you forget about me. To make myself irrelevant. That's the only way I can know for sure. And it would mean something. At least I would see something from you. I don't care what it is at this point anymore. If I can see something and then just let it die, then that's all I could ask for. Now hurry up and reject me so I can get some closure and move on with my life."
Dan sighed and sat down next to her. She was weeping uncontrollably. Her outburst drew a lot of attention from people passing by, but one glare from that crazy bastard Dan thinned out whatever crowd managed to gather.
"You're such an idiot, you know that?" he said.
"SHUT UP, YOU IDIOT!" she screamed. "I HATE YOU FOR DOING THIS TO ME YOU BASTARD! JUST GO ROT IN HELL AND LEAVE ME ALO-" Dan silenced her with his mouth and she began to calm down. As they parted, she was still crying and hiccuping.
"Pull yourself together, it's done now." He smirked as he pulled her to her feet and they began the walk home. Eve never left that senior year. Despite being a deadbeat mother who slept around, Eve decided to move in with Dan at the end of the year as they went to college together. She did end up writing that memoir about love, but she wrote it in third person to dissociate herself with that silly trifle.
That last line she added to the poem was "Read this upwards."
Saturday, May 15, 2010
The schizophrenic mariachi band.
Peter Williams and Richard Tory were two students in High School. One of them dies at the end of the school year.
Peter and Richie were two very different kids. Peter was a meek, scrawny and malnourished boy who shouldn't be out in the sun as often as he should've. Peter was meek, soft-spoken and cowardly for a good reason. Peter was not allowed to act out. His mother was on antidepressants and completely oblivious to her surroundings while his father was a manager of a Rite Aid struggling to meet conditional standards for his store. His father was also a High School dropout not necessarily pleased with how his life turned out, but didn't choose to express that too often. Except he became much more open about expressing it all over Peter whenever he was ingesting alcohol, which happened to be virtually every evening.
Peter also had a sister named Alice. Alice was 14 and a freshman in Peter's High School but already has had more sex than her brother, still a virgin. There were even rumors that she's had an abortion at one point or another, but it remained unconfirmed even after her inevitable suicide during her sophomore year in High School due a Vicodin overdose. One thing was for certain, and it was that she knew how to handle a cock. Both in the sexual term and in the sense that her father was a bastard of a human being and she knew how to evade her family's malice. She was unplanned, and therefore unwanted in her family, which seemed to emphasize the need for her to fill the void in her heart and the void between her legs. At least you could call it a void by this point after how much sex she's had.
Peter suffered from social isolation at school and talked to no one. Yet who would want to listen? He emitted a benign vapidness that clenched the souls of everybody around him and made everybody avoid him like the plague spreading disease, which was ironic considering the blight spreading disease was someone like Alice that everybody flocked to. Peter was depressing to be around, and Richard Tory made this clear whenever he decided to bully him. Richard Tory was a Junior who came from a rich family and was a football player. Everybody liked Richard Tory because he was nice and friendly and criticized others for being weak, most notably Peter Williams. He was the star of Sierra High School, and all the women swooned over him when he drove into the parking lot in his fancy-ass blue sports car.
Everyone was so eager to do favors for Richard Tory, to help him out when he needed it, to support the man at every turn because he was doing so much. Richard Tory was a young man with ambition; he was stretching himself to the greatest limits to succeed, and while he let no obstacle stand in his way, he was modest enough to admit when he needed help. Everyone had nigh-impossible expectations for Richard Tory but he would die to meet them. On the other hand, everyone ignored little Peter and his aura of adolescent melancholy. And "everyone" was a liberal use of the word. Richard Tory, Christina the sophomore with DD breasts, the autistic kid who was nearly murdered, even that ugly social outcast high on vicodin and his short sexy girlfriend avoided him in disgust. He even considered that unsettlingly feminine freshman boy who fucked his sister senseless, but apparently he was burned to death later that semester in some unfortunate pizzeria accident.
Peter stole his mother's antidepressants a lot to calm himself down. Of course this wasn't a great idea to take into consideration that he was suicidal on many occasions. This was something that antidepressants capitalized on by ironically having increased risk of suicide as one of their possible side-effects due to the miracles of the medical industry. He didn't care. And every week he teetered closer and closer to the brink of ending himself, while things for Richard Tory kept getting grander and grander throughout the school year.
Then one spring morning he woke up, and went down the halls while his parents were at work. He could hear behind the locked door of his sister's room her erotic moans as the bedpost banged against the wall. Business as usual. After breakfast he went he went digging through his parents' bedroom. Deep in the closet he found the .45 handgun his father always talked about. The hunting rifle was unfortunately missing, but this would do just as well, he thought. He took as many clips as he could with him, and figured today would be a lovely day for a school shooting to occur.
Nothing was different. He was quiet, depressing and unlikeable like every other day. But a lot of students were as well. He looked at them with disgust. They gave him no pity. He'll give them none, either. The only thing he intended to do was to give them sweet release. And most notably, to kill that bronze idol Richard Tory. That heartless bastard that had everyone behind him, everyone rooting for him. While he sat in the shadows with nothing. During lunch, he went near the overhang. He pulled out the gun and started shooting indiscriminately into the crowd. People started fleeing while they heard the gunshots. He was looking for Richard Tory through the fleeing crowd. He wanted to see the coward running away like everyone else, or using them as a shield so he could get by. But he didn't see him. He shot 23 shots. He hit 17. 6 kids died while this unfolded. People heard 24 shots, but one shot was not coming from Peter Williams but going into him. The ugly social outcast just showed up to school with a deer rifle and it only took one well-place bullet through the chest to kill Peter Williams almost instantly.
Peter Williams never found out that Richard Tory wasn't at school that day. He was in the hospital after a suicide attempt. He tried to put a bullet through his head but the kickback from the gun was surprising enough to scalp him across the forehead and draw enough attention to be subdued before another round could be fired. He eventually did kill himself. At the beginning of the following school year, so there's your technicality. Alice had somebody selling her vicodin that she eventually overdosed on sometime in November during her Sophomore year. The perpetrator involved was never caught, but was thought to be tied to the murder of Peter Williams.
Peter and Richie were two very different kids. Peter was a meek, scrawny and malnourished boy who shouldn't be out in the sun as often as he should've. Peter was meek, soft-spoken and cowardly for a good reason. Peter was not allowed to act out. His mother was on antidepressants and completely oblivious to her surroundings while his father was a manager of a Rite Aid struggling to meet conditional standards for his store. His father was also a High School dropout not necessarily pleased with how his life turned out, but didn't choose to express that too often. Except he became much more open about expressing it all over Peter whenever he was ingesting alcohol, which happened to be virtually every evening.
Peter also had a sister named Alice. Alice was 14 and a freshman in Peter's High School but already has had more sex than her brother, still a virgin. There were even rumors that she's had an abortion at one point or another, but it remained unconfirmed even after her inevitable suicide during her sophomore year in High School due a Vicodin overdose. One thing was for certain, and it was that she knew how to handle a cock. Both in the sexual term and in the sense that her father was a bastard of a human being and she knew how to evade her family's malice. She was unplanned, and therefore unwanted in her family, which seemed to emphasize the need for her to fill the void in her heart and the void between her legs. At least you could call it a void by this point after how much sex she's had.
Peter suffered from social isolation at school and talked to no one. Yet who would want to listen? He emitted a benign vapidness that clenched the souls of everybody around him and made everybody avoid him like the plague spreading disease, which was ironic considering the blight spreading disease was someone like Alice that everybody flocked to. Peter was depressing to be around, and Richard Tory made this clear whenever he decided to bully him. Richard Tory was a Junior who came from a rich family and was a football player. Everybody liked Richard Tory because he was nice and friendly and criticized others for being weak, most notably Peter Williams. He was the star of Sierra High School, and all the women swooned over him when he drove into the parking lot in his fancy-ass blue sports car.
Everyone was so eager to do favors for Richard Tory, to help him out when he needed it, to support the man at every turn because he was doing so much. Richard Tory was a young man with ambition; he was stretching himself to the greatest limits to succeed, and while he let no obstacle stand in his way, he was modest enough to admit when he needed help. Everyone had nigh-impossible expectations for Richard Tory but he would die to meet them. On the other hand, everyone ignored little Peter and his aura of adolescent melancholy. And "everyone" was a liberal use of the word. Richard Tory, Christina the sophomore with DD breasts, the autistic kid who was nearly murdered, even that ugly social outcast high on vicodin and his short sexy girlfriend avoided him in disgust. He even considered that unsettlingly feminine freshman boy who fucked his sister senseless, but apparently he was burned to death later that semester in some unfortunate pizzeria accident.
Peter stole his mother's antidepressants a lot to calm himself down. Of course this wasn't a great idea to take into consideration that he was suicidal on many occasions. This was something that antidepressants capitalized on by ironically having increased risk of suicide as one of their possible side-effects due to the miracles of the medical industry. He didn't care. And every week he teetered closer and closer to the brink of ending himself, while things for Richard Tory kept getting grander and grander throughout the school year.
Then one spring morning he woke up, and went down the halls while his parents were at work. He could hear behind the locked door of his sister's room her erotic moans as the bedpost banged against the wall. Business as usual. After breakfast he went he went digging through his parents' bedroom. Deep in the closet he found the .45 handgun his father always talked about. The hunting rifle was unfortunately missing, but this would do just as well, he thought. He took as many clips as he could with him, and figured today would be a lovely day for a school shooting to occur.
Nothing was different. He was quiet, depressing and unlikeable like every other day. But a lot of students were as well. He looked at them with disgust. They gave him no pity. He'll give them none, either. The only thing he intended to do was to give them sweet release. And most notably, to kill that bronze idol Richard Tory. That heartless bastard that had everyone behind him, everyone rooting for him. While he sat in the shadows with nothing. During lunch, he went near the overhang. He pulled out the gun and started shooting indiscriminately into the crowd. People started fleeing while they heard the gunshots. He was looking for Richard Tory through the fleeing crowd. He wanted to see the coward running away like everyone else, or using them as a shield so he could get by. But he didn't see him. He shot 23 shots. He hit 17. 6 kids died while this unfolded. People heard 24 shots, but one shot was not coming from Peter Williams but going into him. The ugly social outcast just showed up to school with a deer rifle and it only took one well-place bullet through the chest to kill Peter Williams almost instantly.
Peter Williams never found out that Richard Tory wasn't at school that day. He was in the hospital after a suicide attempt. He tried to put a bullet through his head but the kickback from the gun was surprising enough to scalp him across the forehead and draw enough attention to be subdued before another round could be fired. He eventually did kill himself. At the beginning of the following school year, so there's your technicality. Alice had somebody selling her vicodin that she eventually overdosed on sometime in November during her Sophomore year. The perpetrator involved was never caught, but was thought to be tied to the murder of Peter Williams.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
An intricate look into the married life of an internet madman.
Repost from February 21st.
I think the most beautiful things in life are free. I don't believe the greatest rewards are materialistic objects, hell no. There are some points growing up when you realize that a bunch of possessions aren't going to bring you happiness; it's people. And emotion. And other flowery things like that for anyone with a vagina.
My car's been in the shop for the entire week so I've resorted to that unsavory method of transportation, public transit. I don't much mind this; I enjoy walking from place to place since it gives me time to think, and I can't drink while I'm driving. Well, I can't drink out in public either, but it's not nearly as difficult to avoid getting caught. I just start dancing around outside, enjoying the scenery as I spend less time at home. Plus it means more time away from the missus because the worthless cunt can't drive yet. Good Christ I hate that sadistic little dictator; I hope the miserable old hag dies in a ditch.
So it was around 6 or 7pm and I didn't have to be home for another 3 hours, meaning I have some time to kill. This was good, since that was usually enough time to sober up so I could come home without the wife knowing I was out getting plastered out of my mind 4 nights a week. I could go to "Joe's", a small dingy bar in Oakland where I could just kick up and relax. As I stumbled in, I decided to enjoy some of Joe's finest that he freshly brewed in his bath tub earlier this month. You could smell the cleanser he used to wash his bathroom with in the booze. It was enough to make any normal man light-headed, but being as drunk as I was I couldn't notice any difference.
While I was sitting at the counter drinking, a man had the discourtesy to bump into me while he walked by. I told him to watch where he was going, but for some reason he turned around infuriated and started yelling at me. Don't you hate these kinds of people? THEY commit an act of rudeness, and yet they're the victims when you decided to call them out on it. He grabbed me by the collar, but I splashed my beer in his face to get him to let go. Then I remembered the amount of detergent that Joe uses to clean his bathtub, and the man's face started burning intensely. At least that's what I could gauge from looking at the peeling skin and listening to how loud his blood-curdling screams were. Good Christ, he needs to suck it up; I was drinking it earlier. Eventually I wanted to give him something he could really cry about, so I shattered the mug and plunged the mangled handle into his gut as I rammed him out one of the windows. Joe wasn't too happy about that though, so unfortunately that was the last time I was going to taste his delicious bleach booze again.
I drunkenly stumbled through the streets smelling like a pristine bathroom, which didn't exactly make me inconspicuous. I was getting a lot of shady looks from the local neighbors, but none dared approach me. A few pointed at me as I occasionally heard whispers of "He's the one who killed Black Balls" and the like, but I didn't pay much attention to them. Eventually a cop pulled up alongside of me. Before he could say anything, I pulled out my gun and shot the man three times. Why did I have a gun? BECAUSE I'M IN OAKLAND. His cop car was just there, the engine already warmed up with the heat on. I figured driving it was going to be easier than walking, so I thought why the hell not?
Obviously still a bit angry at being banned from Joe's, I had nothing better to do than to head home early. Oh boy oh boy, I can just imagine the glare from the dictator waiting for me when I show up. She wasn't a physically imposing woman in the least; about 5'2" or so, and light enough to hurl across the room. She was oriental, because well that's the primary choice I have out here in the Bay Area. Of course when I open the door there she was, clearly flustered. I let out a sigh as she started yelling at me. Come on, I just got home. I'll explain why there's a cop car parked in our garage in the morning. But not tonight; I wasn't going to be sleeping tonight. She was yelling until she was red in the face, and I didn't know what she was yelling about. Her voice gets high enough that it sounded like a dolphin inhaled helium, so I just kind of give up until she calms down. But this literally went on for hours; us just yelling back and forth at each other. I lost track of what we were actually arguing about in the first place, but all I remember is her mocking my penis size and I called her flat chested.
As I got ready to walk into the bedroom, a shock went throughout my head and a slammed against the wall, shaking a bit. What was this... she threw a potted plant at me. That's... no. Violence is not the answer here. I don't like being assaulted, especially not without my permission first. I regained my footing and tried to make my way into the bedroom, but she grabbed my arm with a certain level of intensity that was unfounded at this point. After being nailed in the back of my head and now this death grip, my composure finally crumbled. I punched her. Right in the face. Not a hook, an actual punch into the center of her face as I literally threw all of my weight into it. Her nose literally exploded from the impact as she stumbled and hit the ground. She started crying as I grimaced and relocated one of my bloody knuckles. I walked over and just started stomping and beating the living hell out of her. I don't really know why, I got my revenge. Maybe it was from all the pent-up rage of our marriage. Maybe it's because we haven't had sex in 5 months, but for some reason I just completely cut loose. By the time I was done, that woman was literally inching closer and closer to death as she loudly sobbed. Good lord, she's acting like she just got raped. She finally passed out, so I carried her to our bed, readjusted her nose and gently embraced her as I fell asleep.
The next morning was pretty normal. The sheets were a bit bloody, but nothing the wash couldn't get rid of. She had a black eye, swollen cheek and a few cracked ribs but she's a tough ol' bird. She sweetly greeted me as I made my way into the kitchen for my morning coffee before I made it to work. We talked about random events while I read the paper, and after a simple peck on the cheek I was off to college. I scratched my side since it was particularly itchy. I lifted my shirt and notice a scar on my abdomen. Apparently after being passed out drunk in bed she stole one of my kidneys. The clever little bitch.
Ah, the joys of being married.
* * *
I think the most beautiful things in life are free. I don't believe the greatest rewards are materialistic objects, hell no. There are some points growing up when you realize that a bunch of possessions aren't going to bring you happiness; it's people. And emotion. And other flowery things like that for anyone with a vagina.
My car's been in the shop for the entire week so I've resorted to that unsavory method of transportation, public transit. I don't much mind this; I enjoy walking from place to place since it gives me time to think, and I can't drink while I'm driving. Well, I can't drink out in public either, but it's not nearly as difficult to avoid getting caught. I just start dancing around outside, enjoying the scenery as I spend less time at home. Plus it means more time away from the missus because the worthless cunt can't drive yet. Good Christ I hate that sadistic little dictator; I hope the miserable old hag dies in a ditch.
So it was around 6 or 7pm and I didn't have to be home for another 3 hours, meaning I have some time to kill. This was good, since that was usually enough time to sober up so I could come home without the wife knowing I was out getting plastered out of my mind 4 nights a week. I could go to "Joe's", a small dingy bar in Oakland where I could just kick up and relax. As I stumbled in, I decided to enjoy some of Joe's finest that he freshly brewed in his bath tub earlier this month. You could smell the cleanser he used to wash his bathroom with in the booze. It was enough to make any normal man light-headed, but being as drunk as I was I couldn't notice any difference.
While I was sitting at the counter drinking, a man had the discourtesy to bump into me while he walked by. I told him to watch where he was going, but for some reason he turned around infuriated and started yelling at me. Don't you hate these kinds of people? THEY commit an act of rudeness, and yet they're the victims when you decided to call them out on it. He grabbed me by the collar, but I splashed my beer in his face to get him to let go. Then I remembered the amount of detergent that Joe uses to clean his bathtub, and the man's face started burning intensely. At least that's what I could gauge from looking at the peeling skin and listening to how loud his blood-curdling screams were. Good Christ, he needs to suck it up; I was drinking it earlier. Eventually I wanted to give him something he could really cry about, so I shattered the mug and plunged the mangled handle into his gut as I rammed him out one of the windows. Joe wasn't too happy about that though, so unfortunately that was the last time I was going to taste his delicious bleach booze again.
I drunkenly stumbled through the streets smelling like a pristine bathroom, which didn't exactly make me inconspicuous. I was getting a lot of shady looks from the local neighbors, but none dared approach me. A few pointed at me as I occasionally heard whispers of "He's the one who killed Black Balls" and the like, but I didn't pay much attention to them. Eventually a cop pulled up alongside of me. Before he could say anything, I pulled out my gun and shot the man three times. Why did I have a gun? BECAUSE I'M IN OAKLAND. His cop car was just there, the engine already warmed up with the heat on. I figured driving it was going to be easier than walking, so I thought why the hell not?
Obviously still a bit angry at being banned from Joe's, I had nothing better to do than to head home early. Oh boy oh boy, I can just imagine the glare from the dictator waiting for me when I show up. She wasn't a physically imposing woman in the least; about 5'2" or so, and light enough to hurl across the room. She was oriental, because well that's the primary choice I have out here in the Bay Area. Of course when I open the door there she was, clearly flustered. I let out a sigh as she started yelling at me. Come on, I just got home. I'll explain why there's a cop car parked in our garage in the morning. But not tonight; I wasn't going to be sleeping tonight. She was yelling until she was red in the face, and I didn't know what she was yelling about. Her voice gets high enough that it sounded like a dolphin inhaled helium, so I just kind of give up until she calms down. But this literally went on for hours; us just yelling back and forth at each other. I lost track of what we were actually arguing about in the first place, but all I remember is her mocking my penis size and I called her flat chested.
As I got ready to walk into the bedroom, a shock went throughout my head and a slammed against the wall, shaking a bit. What was this... she threw a potted plant at me. That's... no. Violence is not the answer here. I don't like being assaulted, especially not without my permission first. I regained my footing and tried to make my way into the bedroom, but she grabbed my arm with a certain level of intensity that was unfounded at this point. After being nailed in the back of my head and now this death grip, my composure finally crumbled. I punched her. Right in the face. Not a hook, an actual punch into the center of her face as I literally threw all of my weight into it. Her nose literally exploded from the impact as she stumbled and hit the ground. She started crying as I grimaced and relocated one of my bloody knuckles. I walked over and just started stomping and beating the living hell out of her. I don't really know why, I got my revenge. Maybe it was from all the pent-up rage of our marriage. Maybe it's because we haven't had sex in 5 months, but for some reason I just completely cut loose. By the time I was done, that woman was literally inching closer and closer to death as she loudly sobbed. Good lord, she's acting like she just got raped. She finally passed out, so I carried her to our bed, readjusted her nose and gently embraced her as I fell asleep.
The next morning was pretty normal. The sheets were a bit bloody, but nothing the wash couldn't get rid of. She had a black eye, swollen cheek and a few cracked ribs but she's a tough ol' bird. She sweetly greeted me as I made my way into the kitchen for my morning coffee before I made it to work. We talked about random events while I read the paper, and after a simple peck on the cheek I was off to college. I scratched my side since it was particularly itchy. I lifted my shirt and notice a scar on my abdomen. Apparently after being passed out drunk in bed she stole one of my kidneys. The clever little bitch.
Ah, the joys of being married.
Sunday, May 9, 2010
That god-damned love story, part trois.
So now it was official. Although saying it was "official" always seemed like a pretty stupid way of putting it to me. Marriage is official. They give you paperwork and everything. A scrawny ugly boy in High School hanging out with a short reserved blond wasn't anything official. There wasn't some kind of honor guard saluting us as it happened. "Going out" was always a stupid term to me as well. We already did that. We went out a lot. In fact, you know what changed? Nothing. NOTHING. FUCKING NOTHING. The only thing that changed was that feeling of awkwardness, where we clearly wanted it to go somewhere, but none of us had the will to bring it up. That was gone now. And with that big enormous wall out of the way, why would we want anything else?
You know what we did now that we were together in that special way? Nothing different. There were no romantic rides on the beach, no special dinners, no "IT'S SO SWEET, LET'S GO BE LOVEY-DOVEY SOMEWHERE" kind of bullshit nonsense. And that's the way we wanted it to be. I always wondered about that myself, personally. Those couples who always couldn't wait for prom, couldn't wait for the vacation, couldn't wait for the honeymoon. "The relationship would truly indulge itself and blossom then," they thought. Those 'big moments' that defined their relationship, that justified it. Couples, or individuals swept up in these moments or waiting for them to happen, I can tell you that I've seen a lot of relationships bomb on that premise. They're supposed to be special events. You should not base the foundation of your relationship, you should not test its longevity on a fleeting moment. Your blossoming and personal growth with your significant other should not be decided by such a ridiculously uncommon and superfluous situation. They're special once-in-a-lifetime moments for a reason, asshole.
"Well then Deoxic, your relationship must've been pretty shallow, mundane and boring, right?" Heh heh, WRONG. You know what's a good sign of a person you've grown attached to is something special? When they make the mundane worth doing. When they make the average entertaining. When they make those moments you're going to experience over and over again ad-nauseum always fresh, something you'd bitch and moan at the thought of doing alone. All the seemingly insignificant moments. Sitting in the school parking lot on Jimmy Fitch's car talking about how much of a dick he is while scratching it with your fingernails. Going to the store looking for frozen TV dinners. Walking home by the local theater and just deciding on a whim to watch an awful movie. Browsing in Hollywood videos for those games you say you're going to rent but you'll never get around to. Going to Carls Jr. sharing a single meal because you're both too poor to afford two of them. Bullshitting your way through homework in the library while whispering about how flat-chested that bitch Maureen is. A relationship will never be built entirely of those enormous singular moments; it's a bunch of those tiny ones where you realize "Well now I'm actually looking forward to doing this same-old boring shit, as long as I get to do it with you." And that was it. Neither of us had particularly exuberant lives because we lived in the middle of fucking nowhere, but we were able to make even the smallest things count, and that was what mattered.
I remember one particular moment where we both snuck out at night to meet up at the local movie theater. This was after my father bailed on my family and before her mother died. With my brother working 50-hour weeks and my mother tending to all the beer, I had free reign on what I could do. My brother lent me 30 bucks for the week so I told her we should go blow it at the cinema. I honestly couldn't tell you what the hell we watched when we went there. It might've been Hero, because they were still showing that movie for a few months at the local movie theater. But that isn't the point. We almost didn't even pay attention to the movie. It was a school night, so it was practically empty. We had it all to ourselves. We just... talked. And occasionally raided the cafeteria. We were both malnourished, underweight children; the obese cashier was wondering if we were eating it or hiding it under the seats in the theater for them to clean it up. We were doing both. After the movie we left the theater and made out behind the alley. Not a nice place to do it, but it was cold, oddly serene, and completely quiet aside from the kitty following us.
"You know, it's hard to feel you up when we have this damn cat following you around."
"Be nice."
"It's killing the mood. Well, whatever mood we could salvage in the back alley of a movie theater." She stopped groping me and started petting the cat.
"I think he's cute." she said.
"So do I. I honestly wish I could be stroking some pu--"
"No."
"What WHAT?"
"I said no."
"Oh the irony of being cockblocked by a pu--"
"LUCAS NO."
It followed us to her apartment and it became a permanent impromptu guest by the name of Louie. This wouldn't be the first time this cat prevented me from getting laid, but that's another story for another day. This was by no means a special night in that context of the word, but it was certainly a night that made us realize why we enjoyed each other's company so much.
Did we occasionally fight? Why the hell wouldn't we? It's normal. It's maintenance for any relationship with any people, ever. It's a tune-up to make you look at the shit you're doing wrong and then you can tweak it and either work with it or get rid of it entirely. If there are big moments meant to define a relationship, then it's the fighting. If you're forced to come to grips with some major detrimental personality flaw with your significant other or you're forced to confront yourself, then that's important. It's after those moments that if you're still standing, then you might be onto something special. You always notice it's the abusive psychotic Italian and Irish couples that are married for 10 or 20 years instead of the average marital lifespan of a fortnight in this day and age.
We were forced to leave our oblivious little reverie and check the situation deteriorate around us. Ah, High School romance is so fleeting. It's a fast time in our lives, and we couldn't keep our our own lives in check, let alone each other's. We had to start facing the ugly monstrosities currently wrecking havoc on our personal lives. We started fighting a bit more. And it started taking a bit longer to fix it every time. And I have to tell you, we were a lot similar in the sense that we were both extremely shy people by nature, but when provoked we could be rather... cruel per say. I was (am?) loud, blunt, and antagonistic when angry. I could harass somebody mercilessly. She managed to be completely indirect, always attempting to drag on an agonizing vocal exchange without so much as flinching. I personally found this entertaining as hell, and against my better judgment occasionally exploited it. What? Well she was always so damn meek and shy, so it's pretty badass to watch her murderous-rage shine through and verbally dismantle anybody who managed to get her angry with the cold elegant efficiency of rapid-fire ten-syllable single-sentence wordsmithing.
After my father left, she caught me drinking. That went over reaaaaaaaaaaal well. Better her than my mother or brother.
"Don't judge." I said.
"I will."
"Well that's just silly." I was not taking this conversation seriously.
"It's hypocritical."
"Yeah, probably."
She took the can of watered-down Keystone out of my hand and poured it down the sink.
"I think the beauty of this is that my mother will think she was drinking it." Again, still not taking the conversation seriously.
"Is this why you were showing up late to school?" she asked. And this is the longest sentence you'll see her say.
"I wouldn't doubt it."
"Stop it." A slap across the face. With the acne coming it, it hurt like hell.
With that, I stopped. Or at least I tried to. Funny thing about those habits; they're really hard to quit once you get going. I was not handling the rapidly degenerating household I lived in incredibly well. This was bad for two reasons; one, it takes my mind off what we were doing together. And two; you can't have two completely fucked-up people in a relationship. That's not how it can work. When both of you have personal demons that need tending to, it's hard to keep juggling that. She was a shy and detached girl with an occasionally blunt or dry sense of humor. She was not the kind of person who radiated empathy. In fact, a running joke among a few people who actually knew that we were in a relationship (something we rabidly hid from everybody around us) was that she was the man of the relationship, and I was the touchy-feely "TELL ME YOUR FEELINGS" woman. So she struggled to help me. But sometimes she lacked that subtlety.
She wasn't without her problems either. Her father was a complete bastard, mind you. I only had the indecency of meeting him once; real stand-up guy, mind you. Also an alcoholic, but physically abusive. No surprise that he was drunk when I accidentally saw him. I didn't get a chance to meet her mother. She died later that year. I never figured out how, either. Ami wouldn't tell me. Which was pretty insulting, mind you; when you know somebody that long and are around them that often, the thought of keeping secrets seemed arbitrary, especially at this point. Being the empathetic person I was, it was borderline torturing to watch somebody struggle with a tragedy yet they refuse to let you help. It was an appalling similarity with my mother I didn't really want to acknowledge.
I remember the day it ended. I hadn't seen her in a few days. Things weren't going well. It was Friday, the 17th of December. My birthday was Tuesday. No one remembered. Except my brother. He gave me money and said to run down to Game Crazy and buy something nice for myself. I wanted to get Baten Kaitos. On Wednesday, and I was extremely sick. Bronchitis, hadn't eaten breakfast or Lunch. I didn't care, I wanted my damn gift to myself. I got it, got lost on the way home, felt sick as a dog and probably should've been hospitalized. My mom didn't care. When I started talking to Ami again, neither did she. To be fair, she was swept up in her mother's death. This happened around the end of November. But ignoring my birthday, ignoring the fact that I virtually killed myself just for something to make me happy and bring that day up. It wasn't her to do it. I got angry. She got angry. We both calmed down, and took a long hard glance at how fucked-up our lives were at that moment.
"...We're in trouble, aren't we?" I said.
"Probably."
"...I don't think we're going to make it."
"...Probably."
There was silence while we sat on a bench near the school parking lot. It was cloudy, but it wasn't raining. We looked at each other and smiled. It was forced as hell. I don't like smiling much anymore for this reason.
"I'll see you around." I said.
"Alright."
I walked her home, and there was little or nothing uttered during those 10 or 15 minutes. Nothing needed to be said.
Then the weekend came. I didn't see her waiting for me that Monday morning on the walk to school. Or the next day. Or the day after that. We occasionally caught glances of each other, but we didn't say a thing to each other. That year didn't end well. Christmas would've completely sucked if my drunkard mom didn't spend my dad's child support money and got me a DS. So there's that.
One particular day in Spring of 2005 I saw her at the bus stop. She was smoking. I caught her eye.
"...Don't judge." she said.
"...I won't."
"You smell like alcohol." she muttered.
"You smell like cigarette smoke."
"Does this make me a hypocrite?" she asked.
"Yeah, probably."
We both laughed. She smiled at me, and I smiled back. She caught the bus and waved as she left. That was the last time I would ever speak to her. She moved over the summer. I don't know where, I couldn't get much out of one of her friends. That same friend told me her life went to Hell when I left. That made me depressed to hear it, but ironically enough I started laughing my ass off. Not much people knew her, so it was like that shy little phantom was effectively erased from memory. So it goes.
We were both one in the same, it turns out. After everything was said and done, neither of us had the gall to admit that we helped each other cope, whether we admitted it or not. That twinge of regret didn't sit well with me for a while. But life goes on, and I have to say that 14 months for a a first budding High School relationship wasn't too bad, given the circumstances.
That's it. What, do you want some profound moral to the story? Here it is; there is no perfect relationship, because there's no such thing as a perfect person. For people holding out for one, you're going to die alone. A 'perfect' relationship in the subjective sense of the word is being able to see and cope with somebody's imperfections perfectly. So you're going to get stuck with stupid shit no matter who you're with, it's just a matter of if you're willing to wade it out.
And that's all I have to say on that matter. I hate you people for making me write this.
You know what we did now that we were together in that special way? Nothing different. There were no romantic rides on the beach, no special dinners, no "IT'S SO SWEET, LET'S GO BE LOVEY-DOVEY SOMEWHERE" kind of bullshit nonsense. And that's the way we wanted it to be. I always wondered about that myself, personally. Those couples who always couldn't wait for prom, couldn't wait for the vacation, couldn't wait for the honeymoon. "The relationship would truly indulge itself and blossom then," they thought. Those 'big moments' that defined their relationship, that justified it. Couples, or individuals swept up in these moments or waiting for them to happen, I can tell you that I've seen a lot of relationships bomb on that premise. They're supposed to be special events. You should not base the foundation of your relationship, you should not test its longevity on a fleeting moment. Your blossoming and personal growth with your significant other should not be decided by such a ridiculously uncommon and superfluous situation. They're special once-in-a-lifetime moments for a reason, asshole.
"Well then Deoxic, your relationship must've been pretty shallow, mundane and boring, right?" Heh heh, WRONG. You know what's a good sign of a person you've grown attached to is something special? When they make the mundane worth doing. When they make the average entertaining. When they make those moments you're going to experience over and over again ad-nauseum always fresh, something you'd bitch and moan at the thought of doing alone. All the seemingly insignificant moments. Sitting in the school parking lot on Jimmy Fitch's car talking about how much of a dick he is while scratching it with your fingernails. Going to the store looking for frozen TV dinners. Walking home by the local theater and just deciding on a whim to watch an awful movie. Browsing in Hollywood videos for those games you say you're going to rent but you'll never get around to. Going to Carls Jr. sharing a single meal because you're both too poor to afford two of them. Bullshitting your way through homework in the library while whispering about how flat-chested that bitch Maureen is. A relationship will never be built entirely of those enormous singular moments; it's a bunch of those tiny ones where you realize "Well now I'm actually looking forward to doing this same-old boring shit, as long as I get to do it with you." And that was it. Neither of us had particularly exuberant lives because we lived in the middle of fucking nowhere, but we were able to make even the smallest things count, and that was what mattered.
I remember one particular moment where we both snuck out at night to meet up at the local movie theater. This was after my father bailed on my family and before her mother died. With my brother working 50-hour weeks and my mother tending to all the beer, I had free reign on what I could do. My brother lent me 30 bucks for the week so I told her we should go blow it at the cinema. I honestly couldn't tell you what the hell we watched when we went there. It might've been Hero, because they were still showing that movie for a few months at the local movie theater. But that isn't the point. We almost didn't even pay attention to the movie. It was a school night, so it was practically empty. We had it all to ourselves. We just... talked. And occasionally raided the cafeteria. We were both malnourished, underweight children; the obese cashier was wondering if we were eating it or hiding it under the seats in the theater for them to clean it up. We were doing both. After the movie we left the theater and made out behind the alley. Not a nice place to do it, but it was cold, oddly serene, and completely quiet aside from the kitty following us.
"You know, it's hard to feel you up when we have this damn cat following you around."
"Be nice."
"It's killing the mood. Well, whatever mood we could salvage in the back alley of a movie theater." She stopped groping me and started petting the cat.
"I think he's cute." she said.
"So do I. I honestly wish I could be stroking some pu--"
"No."
"What WHAT?"
"I said no."
"Oh the irony of being cockblocked by a pu--"
"LUCAS NO."
It followed us to her apartment and it became a permanent impromptu guest by the name of Louie. This wouldn't be the first time this cat prevented me from getting laid, but that's another story for another day. This was by no means a special night in that context of the word, but it was certainly a night that made us realize why we enjoyed each other's company so much.
Did we occasionally fight? Why the hell wouldn't we? It's normal. It's maintenance for any relationship with any people, ever. It's a tune-up to make you look at the shit you're doing wrong and then you can tweak it and either work with it or get rid of it entirely. If there are big moments meant to define a relationship, then it's the fighting. If you're forced to come to grips with some major detrimental personality flaw with your significant other or you're forced to confront yourself, then that's important. It's after those moments that if you're still standing, then you might be onto something special. You always notice it's the abusive psychotic Italian and Irish couples that are married for 10 or 20 years instead of the average marital lifespan of a fortnight in this day and age.
We were forced to leave our oblivious little reverie and check the situation deteriorate around us. Ah, High School romance is so fleeting. It's a fast time in our lives, and we couldn't keep our our own lives in check, let alone each other's. We had to start facing the ugly monstrosities currently wrecking havoc on our personal lives. We started fighting a bit more. And it started taking a bit longer to fix it every time. And I have to tell you, we were a lot similar in the sense that we were both extremely shy people by nature, but when provoked we could be rather... cruel per say. I was (am?) loud, blunt, and antagonistic when angry. I could harass somebody mercilessly. She managed to be completely indirect, always attempting to drag on an agonizing vocal exchange without so much as flinching. I personally found this entertaining as hell, and against my better judgment occasionally exploited it. What? Well she was always so damn meek and shy, so it's pretty badass to watch her murderous-rage shine through and verbally dismantle anybody who managed to get her angry with the cold elegant efficiency of rapid-fire ten-syllable single-sentence wordsmithing.
After my father left, she caught me drinking. That went over reaaaaaaaaaaal well. Better her than my mother or brother.
"Don't judge." I said.
"I will."
"Well that's just silly." I was not taking this conversation seriously.
"It's hypocritical."
"Yeah, probably."
She took the can of watered-down Keystone out of my hand and poured it down the sink.
"I think the beauty of this is that my mother will think she was drinking it." Again, still not taking the conversation seriously.
"Is this why you were showing up late to school?" she asked. And this is the longest sentence you'll see her say.
"I wouldn't doubt it."
"Stop it." A slap across the face. With the acne coming it, it hurt like hell.
With that, I stopped. Or at least I tried to. Funny thing about those habits; they're really hard to quit once you get going. I was not handling the rapidly degenerating household I lived in incredibly well. This was bad for two reasons; one, it takes my mind off what we were doing together. And two; you can't have two completely fucked-up people in a relationship. That's not how it can work. When both of you have personal demons that need tending to, it's hard to keep juggling that. She was a shy and detached girl with an occasionally blunt or dry sense of humor. She was not the kind of person who radiated empathy. In fact, a running joke among a few people who actually knew that we were in a relationship (something we rabidly hid from everybody around us) was that she was the man of the relationship, and I was the touchy-feely "TELL ME YOUR FEELINGS" woman. So she struggled to help me. But sometimes she lacked that subtlety.
She wasn't without her problems either. Her father was a complete bastard, mind you. I only had the indecency of meeting him once; real stand-up guy, mind you. Also an alcoholic, but physically abusive. No surprise that he was drunk when I accidentally saw him. I didn't get a chance to meet her mother. She died later that year. I never figured out how, either. Ami wouldn't tell me. Which was pretty insulting, mind you; when you know somebody that long and are around them that often, the thought of keeping secrets seemed arbitrary, especially at this point. Being the empathetic person I was, it was borderline torturing to watch somebody struggle with a tragedy yet they refuse to let you help. It was an appalling similarity with my mother I didn't really want to acknowledge.
I remember the day it ended. I hadn't seen her in a few days. Things weren't going well. It was Friday, the 17th of December. My birthday was Tuesday. No one remembered. Except my brother. He gave me money and said to run down to Game Crazy and buy something nice for myself. I wanted to get Baten Kaitos. On Wednesday, and I was extremely sick. Bronchitis, hadn't eaten breakfast or Lunch. I didn't care, I wanted my damn gift to myself. I got it, got lost on the way home, felt sick as a dog and probably should've been hospitalized. My mom didn't care. When I started talking to Ami again, neither did she. To be fair, she was swept up in her mother's death. This happened around the end of November. But ignoring my birthday, ignoring the fact that I virtually killed myself just for something to make me happy and bring that day up. It wasn't her to do it. I got angry. She got angry. We both calmed down, and took a long hard glance at how fucked-up our lives were at that moment.
"...We're in trouble, aren't we?" I said.
"Probably."
"...I don't think we're going to make it."
"...Probably."
There was silence while we sat on a bench near the school parking lot. It was cloudy, but it wasn't raining. We looked at each other and smiled. It was forced as hell. I don't like smiling much anymore for this reason.
"I'll see you around." I said.
"Alright."
I walked her home, and there was little or nothing uttered during those 10 or 15 minutes. Nothing needed to be said.
Then the weekend came. I didn't see her waiting for me that Monday morning on the walk to school. Or the next day. Or the day after that. We occasionally caught glances of each other, but we didn't say a thing to each other. That year didn't end well. Christmas would've completely sucked if my drunkard mom didn't spend my dad's child support money and got me a DS. So there's that.
One particular day in Spring of 2005 I saw her at the bus stop. She was smoking. I caught her eye.
"...Don't judge." she said.
"...I won't."
"You smell like alcohol." she muttered.
"You smell like cigarette smoke."
"Does this make me a hypocrite?" she asked.
"Yeah, probably."
We both laughed. She smiled at me, and I smiled back. She caught the bus and waved as she left. That was the last time I would ever speak to her. She moved over the summer. I don't know where, I couldn't get much out of one of her friends. That same friend told me her life went to Hell when I left. That made me depressed to hear it, but ironically enough I started laughing my ass off. Not much people knew her, so it was like that shy little phantom was effectively erased from memory. So it goes.
We were both one in the same, it turns out. After everything was said and done, neither of us had the gall to admit that we helped each other cope, whether we admitted it or not. That twinge of regret didn't sit well with me for a while. But life goes on, and I have to say that 14 months for a a first budding High School relationship wasn't too bad, given the circumstances.
That's it. What, do you want some profound moral to the story? Here it is; there is no perfect relationship, because there's no such thing as a perfect person. For people holding out for one, you're going to die alone. A 'perfect' relationship in the subjective sense of the word is being able to see and cope with somebody's imperfections perfectly. So you're going to get stuck with stupid shit no matter who you're with, it's just a matter of if you're willing to wade it out.
And that's all I have to say on that matter. I hate you people for making me write this.
That god-damned love story, part deux.
So right, about that stupid story people made me feel obligated to write...
I for one, don't preach what's being done here. I think letting the ol' guiding rod do all the thinking for you initially is just a bad idea. I would like to think that as important as looks can be, it shouldn't be something you should use as a cornerstone of your relationship. I think most teens and hell, even college students make this mistake. Not saying you should suddenly hook up with the nearest fatty or victim of a mauling, and if you're in a relationship that you should let yourself go and become ugly as all hell. It suddenly doesn't matter about how attractive they are if they have a nice personality. If you have that methodology of thinking, then congratulations; you're going to be friendzoned very, VERY often. I believe that people are more or less attracted to how that person chooses to pride themselves on their appearance more than anything else. While a lot of shallow bastards could stare at a woman and go "Dude she's fucking ugly" or "She's not really my type", if that person can carry themselves or at least take SOME care in their appearance, any kind of aural shortcomings can be... overlooked for a lack of a better word. This my friends is why some 'ugly' people are getting laid and you aren't.
And I never learned this lesson faster than when I first saw Amelia clean herself up for school pictures one particular day. Oh right, I forgot to mention that her name is Amelia. A lovely name, isn't it? It just sounds like a rather opulent and delicate name. Names are pretty important, too. It might not mean much initially, but if a woman had a name like Bertha or Olga or Barbara, then you might understand. And if any women have those names and were offended by that joke, then email me pictures of yourselves to sway my opinion. But wait, where was I going with this again? Oh right, pride in appearances.
I think I mentioned before that Ami (pronounced Ah-me) was a bit... homely. Hoodies, sweatshirts, usually jeans and sneakers. You could tell she was attractive, but the girl dressed like a vagrant. Her long blond hair was always in a ponytail, or scuffled into an untidy bun looking like she just woke up. She never really wore much make-up, either; this did not help the fact that she had very pale ivory skin. You could press marble against her face and they would have the same tonal value. At first glance, as like mine, she appeared to be a fairly cute girl who didn't really take care of herself. Again until picture day. Her ruffled blond hair was straightened out and neat. Make-up added a bit of color to her cheeks. Black skirt, black vest, white collared shirt clean and pressed. She drew a lot of attention. God-damn, I could see why she dressed like a boy; given how shy she is, she probably would've had to beat off the adolescent boys with a stick, and good lord that is a very poor choice of words. Anyways the point is that she was fucking gorgeous she was probably drawing more attention to herself than she would've liked.
But there was one thing I noticed. One thing in particular. One thing that just really caught... well, everybody's eye including mine. Given the fact that she always wore things like hoodies and baggy clothing to prepare for the drought, and given her height, nobody never really expected much in THAT particular region where girls start to develop in at that particular age. It's like somebody's concealed weapons were finally uncovered while I, as several others were caught off guard and had our eyes assaulted. I calmly approached the situation, trying to pry my eyes away from them, and in an ever-so-subtle manner...
"Good Christ, where the hell did THOSE come from and how come I never noticed them?"
SMACK. Right across my face.
"No." was the only cold response to be heard. I pushed my luck more.
"I'm serious, did you steal them or something? I mean holy hell!"
SMACK. Right in the same the same place. Red as a strawberry, she didn't utter a word to me for the rest of the day as she slipped away. That slap would become a frequent occurrence in what would soon follow between us. And I believe this is also where my tendencies towards masochism began to take root.
Now granted I was joking around and letting that vulgar sense of humor begin to shine through, I believe she took what I said the wrong way. Well, it wasn't a "wrong way" per say, but a misinterpretation would probably be a better way of saying it. Up until this point aside from a few occasional quips I never honestly commented on how she looked before. So things were a bit awkward over the next couple of days. Eventually we were outside the Rite Aid. She was eating Ice Cream and I had a chocolate bar in my hand. We sat quietly on the bench at around 4pm. That's the one thing I do remember. It was the middle of October, but holy Hell it was about ninety-degrees that day. It was still rather quiet. Until the tension broke.
"You know I was joking, right?"
"Yes."
"You clearly don't."
"I do."
"Then stop acting so damn weird."
"Clarify how I'm acting weird."
"I make those kinds of jokes all the time, alright? I knew I embarrassed you and I said I was sorry. Everybody forgot about it already, so let it go. God-damn."
Despite that, I got a response I didn't really expect.
"Were you serious?" she asked.
"Wait what."
"Did I stutter?"
"Uh..."
"Come on, out with it."
"I was caught off guard."
"Hmm?"
"You look like you could share my wardrobe, so it was a bit surprising to see you in more girly clothes."
"Hmm."
"Wait why were you asking if I was serious?"
A snap of my chocolate bar could be heard. If the tension was any thicker, I would've been gagging for air.
"Chocolate?" I asked.
"No."
"You ran out of ice cream."
"So?"
"It's deliciooooooooooous." I was waving the bar in her face. She attempted to make a grab, but being the bastard I was, I pulled it out her incredibly short reach.
"What the hell? You said I could have some."
"You were being stingy, too late." I taunted as the bar stuck out of my mouth. What happened next managed to unnerve me for a week.
"GIMME!" A loud crack as she bit the bar clean from my lips. My face bright red as she stared at me, triumphantly chomping on the chocolate she pillaged from my mouth. I put another piece in my mouth and held it with my teeth.
"Try that again." I muttered. Those frigid glassy eyes didn't flinch. She leaned in. And that first kiss tasted like chocolate, unsurprisingly enough. I walked her home, and there was little or nothing uttered during those 10 or 15 minutes. Nothing needed to be said. She waved goodbye and closed the door.
And so we became a couple.
And this is turning out longer than I expected. I guess I'll finish it up eventually. ANOTHER PART LATER.
I for one, don't preach what's being done here. I think letting the ol' guiding rod do all the thinking for you initially is just a bad idea. I would like to think that as important as looks can be, it shouldn't be something you should use as a cornerstone of your relationship. I think most teens and hell, even college students make this mistake. Not saying you should suddenly hook up with the nearest fatty or victim of a mauling, and if you're in a relationship that you should let yourself go and become ugly as all hell. It suddenly doesn't matter about how attractive they are if they have a nice personality. If you have that methodology of thinking, then congratulations; you're going to be friendzoned very, VERY often. I believe that people are more or less attracted to how that person chooses to pride themselves on their appearance more than anything else. While a lot of shallow bastards could stare at a woman and go "Dude she's fucking ugly" or "She's not really my type", if that person can carry themselves or at least take SOME care in their appearance, any kind of aural shortcomings can be... overlooked for a lack of a better word. This my friends is why some 'ugly' people are getting laid and you aren't.
And I never learned this lesson faster than when I first saw Amelia clean herself up for school pictures one particular day. Oh right, I forgot to mention that her name is Amelia. A lovely name, isn't it? It just sounds like a rather opulent and delicate name. Names are pretty important, too. It might not mean much initially, but if a woman had a name like Bertha or Olga or Barbara, then you might understand. And if any women have those names and were offended by that joke, then email me pictures of yourselves to sway my opinion. But wait, where was I going with this again? Oh right, pride in appearances.
I think I mentioned before that Ami (pronounced Ah-me) was a bit... homely. Hoodies, sweatshirts, usually jeans and sneakers. You could tell she was attractive, but the girl dressed like a vagrant. Her long blond hair was always in a ponytail, or scuffled into an untidy bun looking like she just woke up. She never really wore much make-up, either; this did not help the fact that she had very pale ivory skin. You could press marble against her face and they would have the same tonal value. At first glance, as like mine, she appeared to be a fairly cute girl who didn't really take care of herself. Again until picture day. Her ruffled blond hair was straightened out and neat. Make-up added a bit of color to her cheeks. Black skirt, black vest, white collared shirt clean and pressed. She drew a lot of attention. God-damn, I could see why she dressed like a boy; given how shy she is, she probably would've had to beat off the adolescent boys with a stick, and good lord that is a very poor choice of words. Anyways the point is that she was fucking gorgeous she was probably drawing more attention to herself than she would've liked.
But there was one thing I noticed. One thing in particular. One thing that just really caught... well, everybody's eye including mine. Given the fact that she always wore things like hoodies and baggy clothing to prepare for the drought, and given her height, nobody never really expected much in THAT particular region where girls start to develop in at that particular age. It's like somebody's concealed weapons were finally uncovered while I, as several others were caught off guard and had our eyes assaulted. I calmly approached the situation, trying to pry my eyes away from them, and in an ever-so-subtle manner...
"Good Christ, where the hell did THOSE come from and how come I never noticed them?"
SMACK. Right across my face.
"No." was the only cold response to be heard. I pushed my luck more.
"I'm serious, did you steal them or something? I mean holy hell!"
SMACK. Right in the same the same place. Red as a strawberry, she didn't utter a word to me for the rest of the day as she slipped away. That slap would become a frequent occurrence in what would soon follow between us. And I believe this is also where my tendencies towards masochism began to take root.
Now granted I was joking around and letting that vulgar sense of humor begin to shine through, I believe she took what I said the wrong way. Well, it wasn't a "wrong way" per say, but a misinterpretation would probably be a better way of saying it. Up until this point aside from a few occasional quips I never honestly commented on how she looked before. So things were a bit awkward over the next couple of days. Eventually we were outside the Rite Aid. She was eating Ice Cream and I had a chocolate bar in my hand. We sat quietly on the bench at around 4pm. That's the one thing I do remember. It was the middle of October, but holy Hell it was about ninety-degrees that day. It was still rather quiet. Until the tension broke.
"You know I was joking, right?"
"Yes."
"You clearly don't."
"I do."
"Then stop acting so damn weird."
"Clarify how I'm acting weird."
"I make those kinds of jokes all the time, alright? I knew I embarrassed you and I said I was sorry. Everybody forgot about it already, so let it go. God-damn."
Despite that, I got a response I didn't really expect.
"Were you serious?" she asked.
"Wait what."
"Did I stutter?"
"Uh..."
"Come on, out with it."
"I was caught off guard."
"Hmm?"
"You look like you could share my wardrobe, so it was a bit surprising to see you in more girly clothes."
"Hmm."
"Wait why were you asking if I was serious?"
A snap of my chocolate bar could be heard. If the tension was any thicker, I would've been gagging for air.
"Chocolate?" I asked.
"No."
"You ran out of ice cream."
"So?"
"It's deliciooooooooooous." I was waving the bar in her face. She attempted to make a grab, but being the bastard I was, I pulled it out her incredibly short reach.
"What the hell? You said I could have some."
"You were being stingy, too late." I taunted as the bar stuck out of my mouth. What happened next managed to unnerve me for a week.
"GIMME!" A loud crack as she bit the bar clean from my lips. My face bright red as she stared at me, triumphantly chomping on the chocolate she pillaged from my mouth. I put another piece in my mouth and held it with my teeth.
"Try that again." I muttered. Those frigid glassy eyes didn't flinch. She leaned in. And that first kiss tasted like chocolate, unsurprisingly enough. I walked her home, and there was little or nothing uttered during those 10 or 15 minutes. Nothing needed to be said. She waved goodbye and closed the door.
And so we became a couple.
And this is turning out longer than I expected. I guess I'll finish it up eventually. ANOTHER PART LATER.
Friday, May 7, 2010
That god-damned love story, part un.
Somebody told me to write a love story. I can't believe the nerve. Do I seem like the kind of person who's been in love, let alone someone who would write about it? Trick question, asshole. Because I have and I will. Although the whole concept of writing about romance is appalling, especially in this hayday of Twilight and shitty teenage dramas. People who choose to romanticize romance depress me. Some people are so swept up with the idea of being in love that they probably never will be, and choosing to look back and dwell on a past relationship doesn't sit well with me. I'm not the most well-rounded person in a relationship anyway, and I'm definitely not the person to look to for a touching story or some point to be made about them. What the hell do I know? I just tell stories; I can't drive something like that home when I don't have much experience in it. And that's really all I have to say on that.
So there's this girl I met in High School. Because that's how all of these kinds of stories begin. You can already bear witness to the laughable cliches that are about to unfold, the unmanageable amount of teenage angst you're about to watch. Judging people for it is pretty silly, though. Whether we admit it or not, it happened a lot in High School to each and every one of us. I think most people are disgusted by it because they know it happened to them too, and when they look back on it they don't like what they see, and they don't like being reminded that each and every one of us was that fucking stupid and naive and unrealistic and inexperienced at that time. Eh, that happens. But right, the story.
I remember it... not exactly clearly. For the most part, everything that happens in this story is true save some exaggerations. It's true in my head at least, and that's all that matters. I spent most of those days in High School practicing escapism by forgetting, blocking or altering my memories, and a few times a week just drinking and drinking and drinking and taking loads of vicadin just to get through the day. Honestly I can't recall a damn thing from most of my High School years. So all be it from me to remember perfectly what happened.
She was short. About 4'9" or 4'10". Pale as the sun with equally pale blonde hair. Despite her height, fucking gorgeous. Somebody you would expect to be completely out of my league, or most people's leagues for that matter. But it's pretty easy to be out of my league. I was an ugly kid in High School. Yeah there's no beating around the bush there. I'm serious. There are literally no pictures of me from High School for this reason. I was the kid they used in the "Before" pictures in the Proactiv commercials, but not in a literal sense. I hate to go off on a tangent already, but chances are your self-image is crippled enough as it is by your skin problems, so how much money would they have to pay somebody to have their photo put on national television to go "HE USED TO BE UGLY, BUT NOW HE ISN'T"? I've yet to see the "After" picture, but I'm managing better now.
Also I was pale, sickly, dangerously underweight and without muscle mass. Of course that was from the lack of food in my house and I had to scavenge like my great Native American Ancestors did to feed myself. Compounding all of this, you'd think that if I was from the Middle Ages that the peasants would run screaming from me in fear because they'd suspect that I had the Black Death. I looked like an emaciated Jew who just dodged the furnace at Auschwitz. And people don't like that comparison for two reasons. For one, it's insensitive and distasteful and offensive and disturbing, but predominantly because it's fucking right and it's an ugly thing to think about. Not nearly as ugly as me, but it was close.
So how did I meet her? Well one thing I do remember was that I was in class and I got called up to the board to do something. I tripped and smacked my head on the board, yet got up and still continued to do the work. I was bleeding from my forehead apparently, so my teacher figured that going to the nurse's office would've been a great idea at that point. And I'm not sure how it happened, but I was running to the office, and despite being a 110-pound 5'2" freshman at that time, I was certainly bigger than she was. I think that might explain why I knocked her down so easily, but I was struck with cupid's arrow when I first saw her. Even on the ground clearly unconscious she was something. A bit homely; she didn't really know how to dress. She was always in hoodies, which was a shame since they really undermined how attractive she was.
So the nurse didn't really like the idea of seeing a kid stumble in with his forehead bleeding helping a jarred girl walk. She thought she didn't hear the bomb go off. I didn't, either. But that's a hell of an icebreaker isn't it? Injuring somebody when you first meet them? Hoo boy, hearing stories like that around the water cooler were pretty interesting. But right, she pulls out a GBASP while lying down and starts playing it. An opportunity. I don't exactly remember what she was playing, but that might've been due to the concussion I gave myself on the whiteboard. But all I remember is that she uttered two or three words and then it was dead. Awkward. Silence. 'Huh, well she's shy,' I thought. Of course I had no room to talk, either. I was extremely shy and awkward in High School myself. I had a face that not even a mother could love, but my mother didn't love me anyway because she was a self-centered bitch, so I might be misusing that metaphor.
But eventually we started seeing each other a bit more around the campus, mostly during lunch time. They were brief and awkward conversations initially, and being the lonely bastard I was, I tended to talk. A lot. A lot. A LOT. I would talk this poor girl's ear off for the entire lunch period. I was verbally molesting her. But... she never minded. Mainly because she didn't talk too much due to being so damn shy. But again I didn't care; as long as somebody was there to listen. Until videogames were brought up, then she might have more to say. She talked about things like the Dreamcast and PS2, foreign systems to me at this time because my family was poor and thus I stuck primarily to Nintendo consoles. But for once I decided to listen to somebody else.
And thus we became friends.
And this is pretty fucking long. I don't need to bombard you people with so much at once. I'll add the second part in a bit.
So there's this girl I met in High School. Because that's how all of these kinds of stories begin. You can already bear witness to the laughable cliches that are about to unfold, the unmanageable amount of teenage angst you're about to watch. Judging people for it is pretty silly, though. Whether we admit it or not, it happened a lot in High School to each and every one of us. I think most people are disgusted by it because they know it happened to them too, and when they look back on it they don't like what they see, and they don't like being reminded that each and every one of us was that fucking stupid and naive and unrealistic and inexperienced at that time. Eh, that happens. But right, the story.
I remember it... not exactly clearly. For the most part, everything that happens in this story is true save some exaggerations. It's true in my head at least, and that's all that matters. I spent most of those days in High School practicing escapism by forgetting, blocking or altering my memories, and a few times a week just drinking and drinking and drinking and taking loads of vicadin just to get through the day. Honestly I can't recall a damn thing from most of my High School years. So all be it from me to remember perfectly what happened.
She was short. About 4'9" or 4'10". Pale as the sun with equally pale blonde hair. Despite her height, fucking gorgeous. Somebody you would expect to be completely out of my league, or most people's leagues for that matter. But it's pretty easy to be out of my league. I was an ugly kid in High School. Yeah there's no beating around the bush there. I'm serious. There are literally no pictures of me from High School for this reason. I was the kid they used in the "Before" pictures in the Proactiv commercials, but not in a literal sense. I hate to go off on a tangent already, but chances are your self-image is crippled enough as it is by your skin problems, so how much money would they have to pay somebody to have their photo put on national television to go "HE USED TO BE UGLY, BUT NOW HE ISN'T"? I've yet to see the "After" picture, but I'm managing better now.
Also I was pale, sickly, dangerously underweight and without muscle mass. Of course that was from the lack of food in my house and I had to scavenge like my great Native American Ancestors did to feed myself. Compounding all of this, you'd think that if I was from the Middle Ages that the peasants would run screaming from me in fear because they'd suspect that I had the Black Death. I looked like an emaciated Jew who just dodged the furnace at Auschwitz. And people don't like that comparison for two reasons. For one, it's insensitive and distasteful and offensive and disturbing, but predominantly because it's fucking right and it's an ugly thing to think about. Not nearly as ugly as me, but it was close.
So how did I meet her? Well one thing I do remember was that I was in class and I got called up to the board to do something. I tripped and smacked my head on the board, yet got up and still continued to do the work. I was bleeding from my forehead apparently, so my teacher figured that going to the nurse's office would've been a great idea at that point. And I'm not sure how it happened, but I was running to the office, and despite being a 110-pound 5'2" freshman at that time, I was certainly bigger than she was. I think that might explain why I knocked her down so easily, but I was struck with cupid's arrow when I first saw her. Even on the ground clearly unconscious she was something. A bit homely; she didn't really know how to dress. She was always in hoodies, which was a shame since they really undermined how attractive she was.
So the nurse didn't really like the idea of seeing a kid stumble in with his forehead bleeding helping a jarred girl walk. She thought she didn't hear the bomb go off. I didn't, either. But that's a hell of an icebreaker isn't it? Injuring somebody when you first meet them? Hoo boy, hearing stories like that around the water cooler were pretty interesting. But right, she pulls out a GBASP while lying down and starts playing it. An opportunity. I don't exactly remember what she was playing, but that might've been due to the concussion I gave myself on the whiteboard. But all I remember is that she uttered two or three words and then it was dead. Awkward. Silence. 'Huh, well she's shy,' I thought. Of course I had no room to talk, either. I was extremely shy and awkward in High School myself. I had a face that not even a mother could love, but my mother didn't love me anyway because she was a self-centered bitch, so I might be misusing that metaphor.
But eventually we started seeing each other a bit more around the campus, mostly during lunch time. They were brief and awkward conversations initially, and being the lonely bastard I was, I tended to talk. A lot. A lot. A LOT. I would talk this poor girl's ear off for the entire lunch period. I was verbally molesting her. But... she never minded. Mainly because she didn't talk too much due to being so damn shy. But again I didn't care; as long as somebody was there to listen. Until videogames were brought up, then she might have more to say. She talked about things like the Dreamcast and PS2, foreign systems to me at this time because my family was poor and thus I stuck primarily to Nintendo consoles. But for once I decided to listen to somebody else.
And thus we became friends.
And this is pretty fucking long. I don't need to bombard you people with so much at once. I'll add the second part in a bit.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
A poem, and a few other things.
So right... still working on that god-damned love story. Normally I could find it rather easy to take a story from my personal life and translate it into something dark or funny, but I'm have a great deal of trouble with this. "But Deoxic, why don't you just make it depressing and roll with that?" BECAUSE THIS BLOG ISN'T SUPPOSED TO BE FOR SERIOUS BUSINESS, DAMMIT. I hate writing memoirs. That narrative voice for these particular stories are key in how they'll unfold. To strike a dark tone without being depressing; to be malicious and morbid while still being approachable or funny. I give my reasoning to this in the beginning of the story. I want something to be fun to write, and as the process stands, it's been anything but. But right, the poem.
***
According to my therapist...
I shouldn't think of breast metaphors in class.
I shouldn't enforce racial stereotypes.
I shouldn't think of Japan's obsession with rape.
I shouldn't laugh at the holocaust.
I shouldn't call "fuck" the swiss army knife of words.
I shouldn't joke about death or suicide.
And most important my therapist said
I shouldn't be glad I'm sprinting into the maw of Hell
laughing the entire way there.
I shouldn't think of breast metaphors in class.
I shouldn't enforce racial stereotypes.
I shouldn't think of Japan's obsession with rape.
I shouldn't laugh at the holocaust.
I shouldn't call "fuck" the swiss army knife of words.
I shouldn't joke about death or suicide.
And most important my therapist said
I shouldn't be glad I'm sprinting into the maw of Hell
laughing the entire way there.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Wikipedia is the devil, among a few other things.
So yeah that stupid love story. It's coming, but as it stands I'm scrapping and tweaking the current build. Far too depressing for my tastes, so I'm reworking it to take a slightly more sardonic or exasperated narration. The story should be entertaining to read with a few bits of irony, but something just flat-out rip-your-heart-to-pieces depressing are things I generally don't post, let alone write. So yeah, it's coming. But not now.
***
There's this guy, see? His name is Jim Patterson. I fucking hate him. I see him every day in class as I pull up to the college in my maroon 2001 Hyundai Elantra. John isn't a smart guy, see? The man is a complete narcissist. I don't have much room to talk, but I'm nowhere nearly as bad as John. The guy believes a simple glance at Wikipedia will make him an expert, and he uses this ploy as a basis for every argument he has in out political science class. Jethro loves arguing semantics, and that's how he feigns intelligence whenever he decides to get his hands dirty. I find this taxing, personally.
So one day I stumble across the man before class, on the computer, reading up on tonight's discussion topic.
"Gob, what the hell are you doing?"
"Why do you care?"
Now that simply wasn't very nice. You don't answer a question with a question. That's rule one of arguing. This amateur is doing it wrong.
"Answer my question first."
"Why should I?"
...I can see this wasn't going to be getting anywhere. I continued looking over his shoulder.
"Huh... you know reading that won't do you much good in class. Most of those sources aren't even cited properly."
"But it's on there, it has to be anchored in something."
"You can't prove that."
"It's on the page, that's good enough unless someone can argue against it."
"They will."
"I doubt it. No one usually argues against me."
That's rule two of arguing. Cite proper sources. Johan didn't know how to do this either. I was tempted to get into my 2004 Camry out in the parking lot and plow it into the side of the learning commons. I was going to, but my girlfriend advised against it since I just got the thing and I didn't want to damage the beautiful cobalt paint job. Instead we decided we were going to sabotage Jebediah in a different way.
He left his computer to go get a snack. That fat bastard is always eating. Did I mention he was fat? Jin was the size of a beached walrus, with two front teeth just as large. The man could eat my 1991 Teal Ford Taurus if I drove it anywhere near him, the cow. Anyways, me and my lady stole his chair and decided to edit the page he was looking on. We had to be quick; it took Jack about 3 minutes and 12 seconds to load his pudgy arms up with Hostess cakes before returning to the computer desk. After enough proper wiki sabotaging we believed that we might have achieved victory this time around. The porker shuffled his stubby legs back over to his computer table as he snickered and crammed his gullet with twinkies.
So my squeeze and I got into my 1966 orange Mustang and decided to go to In-N-Out and kill some time until class. When I got up to the drivethrough, I started belching out random words and see if it was on the secret menu or not. They gave us a a Vietnamese orphan glazed in secret sauce while his ass was stuffed with crispy fries. Huh, who would've guessed? Although my whore has a fetish for shota, so I threw him in the dumpster and just got a burger instead.
"Hmm... do you think he's going to get by?" she asked.
"They're Vietnamese. Our shit's probably considered a valuable import commodity to them. He'll be fine."
"No, I meant Joseph."
"Oh, that fatass? Bah, we'll be fine. After studying that, he's just going to make an idiot of himself again."
"You sure?"
"I'm positive." I brushed the food off my lap. "Now let's have sex before anyone in the parking lot notices us."
"But I just ate..."
"PLEASE?"
"...Alright." There was a long awkward pause as she took her clothes off. "Hngh... you're bigger than usual."
"......Sweetie, that's the stick shift."
You wouldn't believe how difficult it was to drive back to the college. I couldn't keep a good grip on the damn thing. Times like this make me wish my 2006 Ivory BMW was an automatic, but oh well. But right, how was the situation with Jesus going? He was in class, and ironically enough I think he bought into the idea that semen was being used as an alternative energy source in Lichtenstein, and then proclaimed that he could be an avid supporter of solving the energy crisis through this method. Of course everyone laughed. My teacher, old and crotchety but sharp as hell just went out and said it.
"Jimbo-bob, you're stupid as hell. I'm booting you from the class because all you do is get stupid sources."
Jaykwon didn't take this well. He ran from the class crying. At least that's what I assumed. I was lying face-down on my desk sleeping, but I felt the ground quaking tremendously. The the most recent time me and my cunt saw him was on the news from a live helicopter feed as he jumped off the i-580 overpass. He bounced and hit the ground pretty hard, then a bigrig smacked him on the ground while the remaining traffic shredded him into yesterday's memory like a bag of garbage being spewed all over the freeway. So it goes. I laughed at the thought of all the children being scarred as they watched the 6 'o'clock news tonight, so then I edited Jaberwalker's wikipedia page into saying that he died when he uncovered an illegal government operation and was executed by being shot into the sun.
There's this guy, see? His name is Jim Patterson. I fucking hate him. I see him every day in class as I pull up to the college in my maroon 2001 Hyundai Elantra. John isn't a smart guy, see? The man is a complete narcissist. I don't have much room to talk, but I'm nowhere nearly as bad as John. The guy believes a simple glance at Wikipedia will make him an expert, and he uses this ploy as a basis for every argument he has in out political science class. Jethro loves arguing semantics, and that's how he feigns intelligence whenever he decides to get his hands dirty. I find this taxing, personally.
So one day I stumble across the man before class, on the computer, reading up on tonight's discussion topic.
"Gob, what the hell are you doing?"
"Why do you care?"
Now that simply wasn't very nice. You don't answer a question with a question. That's rule one of arguing. This amateur is doing it wrong.
"Answer my question first."
"Why should I?"
...I can see this wasn't going to be getting anywhere. I continued looking over his shoulder.
"Huh... you know reading that won't do you much good in class. Most of those sources aren't even cited properly."
"But it's on there, it has to be anchored in something."
"You can't prove that."
"It's on the page, that's good enough unless someone can argue against it."
"They will."
"I doubt it. No one usually argues against me."
That's rule two of arguing. Cite proper sources. Johan didn't know how to do this either. I was tempted to get into my 2004 Camry out in the parking lot and plow it into the side of the learning commons. I was going to, but my girlfriend advised against it since I just got the thing and I didn't want to damage the beautiful cobalt paint job. Instead we decided we were going to sabotage Jebediah in a different way.
He left his computer to go get a snack. That fat bastard is always eating. Did I mention he was fat? Jin was the size of a beached walrus, with two front teeth just as large. The man could eat my 1991 Teal Ford Taurus if I drove it anywhere near him, the cow. Anyways, me and my lady stole his chair and decided to edit the page he was looking on. We had to be quick; it took Jack about 3 minutes and 12 seconds to load his pudgy arms up with Hostess cakes before returning to the computer desk. After enough proper wiki sabotaging we believed that we might have achieved victory this time around. The porker shuffled his stubby legs back over to his computer table as he snickered and crammed his gullet with twinkies.
So my squeeze and I got into my 1966 orange Mustang and decided to go to In-N-Out and kill some time until class. When I got up to the drivethrough, I started belching out random words and see if it was on the secret menu or not. They gave us a a Vietnamese orphan glazed in secret sauce while his ass was stuffed with crispy fries. Huh, who would've guessed? Although my whore has a fetish for shota, so I threw him in the dumpster and just got a burger instead.
"Hmm... do you think he's going to get by?" she asked.
"They're Vietnamese. Our shit's probably considered a valuable import commodity to them. He'll be fine."
"No, I meant Joseph."
"Oh, that fatass? Bah, we'll be fine. After studying that, he's just going to make an idiot of himself again."
"You sure?"
"I'm positive." I brushed the food off my lap. "Now let's have sex before anyone in the parking lot notices us."
"But I just ate..."
"PLEASE?"
"...Alright." There was a long awkward pause as she took her clothes off. "Hngh... you're bigger than usual."
"......Sweetie, that's the stick shift."
You wouldn't believe how difficult it was to drive back to the college. I couldn't keep a good grip on the damn thing. Times like this make me wish my 2006 Ivory BMW was an automatic, but oh well. But right, how was the situation with Jesus going? He was in class, and ironically enough I think he bought into the idea that semen was being used as an alternative energy source in Lichtenstein, and then proclaimed that he could be an avid supporter of solving the energy crisis through this method. Of course everyone laughed. My teacher, old and crotchety but sharp as hell just went out and said it.
"Jimbo-bob, you're stupid as hell. I'm booting you from the class because all you do is get stupid sources."
Jaykwon didn't take this well. He ran from the class crying. At least that's what I assumed. I was lying face-down on my desk sleeping, but I felt the ground quaking tremendously. The the most recent time me and my cunt saw him was on the news from a live helicopter feed as he jumped off the i-580 overpass. He bounced and hit the ground pretty hard, then a bigrig smacked him on the ground while the remaining traffic shredded him into yesterday's memory like a bag of garbage being spewed all over the freeway. So it goes. I laughed at the thought of all the children being scarred as they watched the 6 'o'clock news tonight, so then I edited Jaberwalker's wikipedia page into saying that he died when he uncovered an illegal government operation and was executed by being shot into the sun.
Monday, May 3, 2010
Black Balls, among other things.
So right, before I get to the story, an update. Somebody told me to write a love story. I don't know what the fuck that was about, but I started working on it and then became morbidly depressed. So I can say this story won't be particularly obscene or funny, but perhaps a bit charming and something more along the lines of being a soapbox for me to preach whatever retarded concept I have of love or some stupid shit like that. So next story will probably be srs bzns. If you don't like it, then there's the X up to the right. If you see it, click that X and don't irritate or pity or harass me about it. With that being said, another stupid story that should've gotten me banned from NS2 but God question the logic those people possess.
It was 2am at a dank bar in Oakland. Amidst the dampening rain, an old neon sign flickered and reflected the drops off the ground. Whenever the door swung open, a melodious sax could be heard singing from inside the sleezy parlor. Inside only the seediest men sat alone, letting the sax man sing for them. Smoke filled the decrepit bar as men drowned their misery in liquor; it was not a place to be for the weak. Only men harrowed of emotion and embittered by life walked there. A single rickety pool table was the only source of entertainment, yet no one played. Not with HIM in the corner. Everyone was afraid of HIM. None knew his name, but they still called him something.
Black Balls.
A negro standing 7 feet 3 inches and built like an ox, he was a master of the craft. He always played by himself, because he bet with his life. And he never lost. He worked the 8-ball like a voo-doo doctor, and they didn't even mention his stick of choice he played with, but apparently it was the same stick he used when he clubbed the players who lost against him to death. His seedy eyes darted constantly across the room as he played, awaiting any challengers who stood before him and test his mettle. But no one did. Those dead eyes he aimed at others scared everyone off, even those who just came in to partake in a drink. Eventually though, one man late at night stumbled in. A tall, placid man with an emaciated appearance. Eyes shielded by sunglasses, and pale sweaty skin that clearly did a poor job of masking his health. He had a bottle of Midleton's finest as he grabbed a stick ready to play. The whole bar went dead silent and looked at the man who seemed completely oblivious to what he just invoked.
"Well, what the fuck are you people staring at?"
I was on another one of my late night drunken wanderings unaware that I managed to make it two cities over into a random bar in Oakland. And why is this enormous black guy looking at me like I was going to get raped? No matter, I wanted to play some stick ball. My BAL was .18 and my fever was soaring at 101 so I didn't care if he was monopolizing this table or something. We started playing, and well as the game went on I noticed he was getting progressively angrier. Why? It was a perfectly enjoyable match. I think I was winning though; I'm not too sure since I don't play Stick Ball that often. He got especially upset when I think I set him up to knock the 8-ball in one of the pockets. I started laughing when he eventually flipped the table in anger. "Dude, it's just a game. It's not like your life depended on it." Of course before I said that, the man pulled out a gun and shot himself in the head. His arms went limp to his side and he stood for a few seconds before I gently blew on him and he fell over and hit the ground with a loud enough thud to shake the foundation of the building. There was a long pause as most people kind of just stood around.
"Uh... wow. Is nobody going to get that? The guy... uh, he looks dead."
They started cheering as a few of the drunks grabbed his body, and threw it into a nearby fireplace in the bar. My eyebrow raised as this was a bit disturbing for my tastes. They cheered me on and praised me. I was apparently a hero to them. The man I later became to know as Black Balls effectively held the bar hostage with his intimidating demeanor. As much as I was glad to help, a man still just killed himself and they're burning his corpse in celebration. These people scared the shit out of me, so I left without saying a thing.
I heard that in that particular neighborhood, apparently there's a tale about a man named Stikanbawls who slayed a giant and saved them from poverty. I don't know what the hell that was about.
* * *
It was 2am at a dank bar in Oakland. Amidst the dampening rain, an old neon sign flickered and reflected the drops off the ground. Whenever the door swung open, a melodious sax could be heard singing from inside the sleezy parlor. Inside only the seediest men sat alone, letting the sax man sing for them. Smoke filled the decrepit bar as men drowned their misery in liquor; it was not a place to be for the weak. Only men harrowed of emotion and embittered by life walked there. A single rickety pool table was the only source of entertainment, yet no one played. Not with HIM in the corner. Everyone was afraid of HIM. None knew his name, but they still called him something.
Black Balls.
A negro standing 7 feet 3 inches and built like an ox, he was a master of the craft. He always played by himself, because he bet with his life. And he never lost. He worked the 8-ball like a voo-doo doctor, and they didn't even mention his stick of choice he played with, but apparently it was the same stick he used when he clubbed the players who lost against him to death. His seedy eyes darted constantly across the room as he played, awaiting any challengers who stood before him and test his mettle. But no one did. Those dead eyes he aimed at others scared everyone off, even those who just came in to partake in a drink. Eventually though, one man late at night stumbled in. A tall, placid man with an emaciated appearance. Eyes shielded by sunglasses, and pale sweaty skin that clearly did a poor job of masking his health. He had a bottle of Midleton's finest as he grabbed a stick ready to play. The whole bar went dead silent and looked at the man who seemed completely oblivious to what he just invoked.
"Well, what the fuck are you people staring at?"
I was on another one of my late night drunken wanderings unaware that I managed to make it two cities over into a random bar in Oakland. And why is this enormous black guy looking at me like I was going to get raped? No matter, I wanted to play some stick ball. My BAL was .18 and my fever was soaring at 101 so I didn't care if he was monopolizing this table or something. We started playing, and well as the game went on I noticed he was getting progressively angrier. Why? It was a perfectly enjoyable match. I think I was winning though; I'm not too sure since I don't play Stick Ball that often. He got especially upset when I think I set him up to knock the 8-ball in one of the pockets. I started laughing when he eventually flipped the table in anger. "Dude, it's just a game. It's not like your life depended on it." Of course before I said that, the man pulled out a gun and shot himself in the head. His arms went limp to his side and he stood for a few seconds before I gently blew on him and he fell over and hit the ground with a loud enough thud to shake the foundation of the building. There was a long pause as most people kind of just stood around.
"Uh... wow. Is nobody going to get that? The guy... uh, he looks dead."
They started cheering as a few of the drunks grabbed his body, and threw it into a nearby fireplace in the bar. My eyebrow raised as this was a bit disturbing for my tastes. They cheered me on and praised me. I was apparently a hero to them. The man I later became to know as Black Balls effectively held the bar hostage with his intimidating demeanor. As much as I was glad to help, a man still just killed himself and they're burning his corpse in celebration. These people scared the shit out of me, so I left without saying a thing.
I heard that in that particular neighborhood, apparently there's a tale about a man named Stikanbawls who slayed a giant and saved them from poverty. I don't know what the hell that was about.
Sunday, May 2, 2010
James Randall and the New York Pizzeria.
This is story about poor little James Randall, an old classmate of mine who ended up getting viciously murdered at a New York Pizzeria. Now people I know say this was entirely an accident, but they are wrong. I knew what happened to the unfortunate bastard, and it was murder. Callous, ruthless murder. He did not trip into an oversized pizza oven and have it wedged shut on accident, because accidents like that just don't happen. The police reports circulated; he had a concussion on the back of his head at the time of his pitiable demise in that pizzeria oven. One blow; just one. James did not repeatedly ram his head into the oven door to get out, and the people who drew this conclusion are in denial. They are in denial because they couldn't comprehend why anyone would do such a thing to sweet James Randall, the young little boy who died in the New York Pizzeria.
James Randall was a High School freshman at the time of my Sophomore year. He was a tiny little boy even in comparison to the other High School freshman, standing at an intimidating four-feet seven inches. Well, nobody but him thought it was intimidating. James had a Napoleon complex. You know those people, right? Those people who are exceptionally small, and thus have an urge to over-assert themselves around everybody to compensate for the fact that they're probably not going to get laid in High School. Well he doesn't, because he ends up getting murdered in a New York Pizzeria. Which is a shame, because aside from him trying to act tough, James was also a remarkably sweet young boy. At least that's what he convinced people he was, mainly because he's small and tiny and had that boyish charm that would make an all-female Catholic High School locker room a bit more humid. Take that as you will.
That's what he would've wanted anyway; he certainly exerted himself a lot to convince people how sweet and earnest he was. But as I mentioned, he often abused this to his advantage to hide the fact that he was far more conniving than we would expect from a little man with such a little head. And who could blame him? When one is an androgynous four-and-a-half foot freshman in High School, what wouldn't they do to get by? He certainly had better options than I: short but not short enough to take advantage of it, malnourished and incredibly underweight, and right in the middle of pubescence and with enough acne to get pity from burn victims. Not from him, though. When he becomes a burn victim he'll be dead. But on that note, how I ended up with a girlfriend for the better of of year is beyond me.
Speaking of which, poor little James Randall made that one mistake against me and my girlfriend. I was a sophomore now, immediately out of that status quo everyone would make an effort to torture. He was in it now, and I was not. The unspoken rule is that you don't fuck with a sophomore, and in this case, sweet tiny James was attempting to do it in both a metaphorical and literal sense. My girlfriend was an incredibly short girl, even as a sophomore. Standing at a whopping four-foot nine inches, she was what one would call "fun-sized". But she was on the opposite end of the spectrum of that particular complex; she was an extremely quiet and shy girl, which again is all the more baffling considering how loud and obnoxious your humble narrator could be. But she looked just young enough to lure this panting slobbering freshman over. His charm did not work on her. She was taller than he was, which I found extremely depressing, and I made this point very clear to my girlfriend. I certainly couldn't blame him, because despite how "homely" she dressed she was extremely attractive. "Why is she with that ugly kid" kind of attractive.
But I did not approve, and neither did she. She told him no, yet he persisted. He said she was as cute as a doll--which was true--but she was my doll. As her boyfriend, I felt a need to step in after the third week this was going on. Why three weeks? Because she was teasing me for having a stalker and this was my way of enacting revenge on her. And I had to. It got to the point where she slapped him. This infuriated me because he would force her to do that, but largely because she only slapped me at this point and thus felt like I was cheated on. That beautiful ivory palm was supposed to only propel itself into MY face. He got ready to pin her against the locker, but again being smaller than she was, did not work out as planned. Especially after I grabbed him by the collar and pulled him off. I threw him off and he slammed his head against the corner of a stone planter. This was not the aforementioned concussion to the back of the head he took when he was trapped in that New York Pizzeria oven and burned to death. But this got his ire and said it would be the death of me and my girlfriend. Apparently his father had some mob connections. He didn't look Italian, though. James Randall wasn't even an Italian name. But he made a threat on my life, and as soon as the teacher showed up he started crying and saying I gave him a concussion. This particular teacher knew the history of violence I had, and thus wouldn't listen to my rationalizations of the story despite telling the entirety of the truth this time. He was still suspicious of how a former student with Aspergers died from having his eyes gouged out in a local hospital about a year ago, and considered me the primary suspect. I was suspended for the rest of the day.
This upset me a great deal, so I went to the New York Pizzeria in town to mope. I had an hour to kill, so I drank and I ate and I ate and I drank until I was completely nauseated. My girlfriend was meeting me there after school, and I would guess that sweet little James Randall would be following her. And all be it, he was. He saw me in there and grimaced.
"What a dingy little Pizza place. I should get father to buy me it."
I said nothing.
"The pizza probably tastes like shit though. If I fired the management, I could make this place great."
I started grinding my teeth.
"And it would be a great place to burn the bodies father deals with. You wouldn't believe the people father deals with."
I smirked in agreement.
"And I would probably have that sweet little girl Amelia to myself."
My girlfriend gagged.
"You don't have long, you know. You shouldn't fuck with me."
He said this while peering around the ovens. Everyone was in the stockroom while little James Randall looked at the authentic New York Pizzeria ovens. I grabbed my beer bottle and struck him in the back of the head with as much force as possible. This was that one blow to the head he took. My girlfriend sighed but didn't seem to care. I hoisted his worming body up into the oven and slammed the door shut. These were big ovens meant to house a lot of pizzas with them, but they were also just big enough to house sweet James in there as well. I grabbed an iron rod and wedged it into the door handle. When he regained consciousness, he noticed me cranking on the oven to max heat. He started screaming and yelling at me, but I couldn't hear a damn thing he was saying, and neither could the owners in the backroom. They were soundproof, and being from New York I wouldn't doubt if they were used to burn bodies at some point. I didn't stick around to see what happened. Apparently the iron rod felt out at one point and his charred shrieking body slumped out onto the door. Before I saw that, I told my girlfriend that my mom isn't home and we should go play some Melee until my brother gets home. He won't be ordering pizza tonight, at least not from the New York Pizzeria.
By the way, fantastic pizzeria. If you're in Manteca by any chance, I would wholeheartedly recommend stopping by there. Tell Frank I said hello.
James Randall was a High School freshman at the time of my Sophomore year. He was a tiny little boy even in comparison to the other High School freshman, standing at an intimidating four-feet seven inches. Well, nobody but him thought it was intimidating. James had a Napoleon complex. You know those people, right? Those people who are exceptionally small, and thus have an urge to over-assert themselves around everybody to compensate for the fact that they're probably not going to get laid in High School. Well he doesn't, because he ends up getting murdered in a New York Pizzeria. Which is a shame, because aside from him trying to act tough, James was also a remarkably sweet young boy. At least that's what he convinced people he was, mainly because he's small and tiny and had that boyish charm that would make an all-female Catholic High School locker room a bit more humid. Take that as you will.
That's what he would've wanted anyway; he certainly exerted himself a lot to convince people how sweet and earnest he was. But as I mentioned, he often abused this to his advantage to hide the fact that he was far more conniving than we would expect from a little man with such a little head. And who could blame him? When one is an androgynous four-and-a-half foot freshman in High School, what wouldn't they do to get by? He certainly had better options than I: short but not short enough to take advantage of it, malnourished and incredibly underweight, and right in the middle of pubescence and with enough acne to get pity from burn victims. Not from him, though. When he becomes a burn victim he'll be dead. But on that note, how I ended up with a girlfriend for the better of of year is beyond me.
Speaking of which, poor little James Randall made that one mistake against me and my girlfriend. I was a sophomore now, immediately out of that status quo everyone would make an effort to torture. He was in it now, and I was not. The unspoken rule is that you don't fuck with a sophomore, and in this case, sweet tiny James was attempting to do it in both a metaphorical and literal sense. My girlfriend was an incredibly short girl, even as a sophomore. Standing at a whopping four-foot nine inches, she was what one would call "fun-sized". But she was on the opposite end of the spectrum of that particular complex; she was an extremely quiet and shy girl, which again is all the more baffling considering how loud and obnoxious your humble narrator could be. But she looked just young enough to lure this panting slobbering freshman over. His charm did not work on her. She was taller than he was, which I found extremely depressing, and I made this point very clear to my girlfriend. I certainly couldn't blame him, because despite how "homely" she dressed she was extremely attractive. "Why is she with that ugly kid" kind of attractive.
But I did not approve, and neither did she. She told him no, yet he persisted. He said she was as cute as a doll--which was true--but she was my doll. As her boyfriend, I felt a need to step in after the third week this was going on. Why three weeks? Because she was teasing me for having a stalker and this was my way of enacting revenge on her. And I had to. It got to the point where she slapped him. This infuriated me because he would force her to do that, but largely because she only slapped me at this point and thus felt like I was cheated on. That beautiful ivory palm was supposed to only propel itself into MY face. He got ready to pin her against the locker, but again being smaller than she was, did not work out as planned. Especially after I grabbed him by the collar and pulled him off. I threw him off and he slammed his head against the corner of a stone planter. This was not the aforementioned concussion to the back of the head he took when he was trapped in that New York Pizzeria oven and burned to death. But this got his ire and said it would be the death of me and my girlfriend. Apparently his father had some mob connections. He didn't look Italian, though. James Randall wasn't even an Italian name. But he made a threat on my life, and as soon as the teacher showed up he started crying and saying I gave him a concussion. This particular teacher knew the history of violence I had, and thus wouldn't listen to my rationalizations of the story despite telling the entirety of the truth this time. He was still suspicious of how a former student with Aspergers died from having his eyes gouged out in a local hospital about a year ago, and considered me the primary suspect. I was suspended for the rest of the day.
This upset me a great deal, so I went to the New York Pizzeria in town to mope. I had an hour to kill, so I drank and I ate and I ate and I drank until I was completely nauseated. My girlfriend was meeting me there after school, and I would guess that sweet little James Randall would be following her. And all be it, he was. He saw me in there and grimaced.
"What a dingy little Pizza place. I should get father to buy me it."
I said nothing.
"The pizza probably tastes like shit though. If I fired the management, I could make this place great."
I started grinding my teeth.
"And it would be a great place to burn the bodies father deals with. You wouldn't believe the people father deals with."
I smirked in agreement.
"And I would probably have that sweet little girl Amelia to myself."
My girlfriend gagged.
"You don't have long, you know. You shouldn't fuck with me."
He said this while peering around the ovens. Everyone was in the stockroom while little James Randall looked at the authentic New York Pizzeria ovens. I grabbed my beer bottle and struck him in the back of the head with as much force as possible. This was that one blow to the head he took. My girlfriend sighed but didn't seem to care. I hoisted his worming body up into the oven and slammed the door shut. These were big ovens meant to house a lot of pizzas with them, but they were also just big enough to house sweet James in there as well. I grabbed an iron rod and wedged it into the door handle. When he regained consciousness, he noticed me cranking on the oven to max heat. He started screaming and yelling at me, but I couldn't hear a damn thing he was saying, and neither could the owners in the backroom. They were soundproof, and being from New York I wouldn't doubt if they were used to burn bodies at some point. I didn't stick around to see what happened. Apparently the iron rod felt out at one point and his charred shrieking body slumped out onto the door. Before I saw that, I told my girlfriend that my mom isn't home and we should go play some Melee until my brother gets home. He won't be ordering pizza tonight, at least not from the New York Pizzeria.
By the way, fantastic pizzeria. If you're in Manteca by any chance, I would wholeheartedly recommend stopping by there. Tell Frank I said hello.
Saturday, May 1, 2010
A story about Steve in Chemistry class.
So one afternoon I was walking to school because my mom was a deadbeat drunk who couldn't take me. Also it was the afternoon because I was up all night drinking and I was too hung-over to make it to second period. I think I'm seeing a pattern here, but I can't quite put my finger on it. Anyway, I show up to chemistry still slightly hungover. I will be the first to tell you that it's not a bright idea to show up to a class full of volatile chemical compounds while slightly inebriated. So Mr. Courtney started lecturing us on the properties of magnesium. Apparently this shit is brighter than the sun when it burns.
My friend Steve was sitting to me. You know Steve, right? Steve ain't too bright. He's also kind of lonely. I think Steve has Aspergers or something, but he was always so damn fidgety. Steve was also socially oblivious to the moods and feelings of those around him. So while it was pretty obvious to everyone who could smell the booze in the air, Steve didn't know I've been drinking and thus everyone in the class probably knew what was going to unfold here. As part of the experiment, we were going to light some while wearing safety goggles. I believe in safety third, so I wore my sunglasses. My girlfriend, the shy and inquisitive girl she is told me that it wasn't necessarily a bright idea to wear them. After laughing and mocking her for that terrible pun, I turn around and there Steve is, holding burning magnesium right up to my face. "HEY BOB, ISN'T IT COOL? THIS STUFF IS SO AMAZING!" I don't know whether I blacked out from the rage or my retinas being seared shut, but when I was able to see again my girlfriend was mortified going "DON'T YOU HAVE ANY RESTRAINT?" while the staff was hosing Steve down with fire extinguishers and he was lying on the floor twitching with shards of a beaker embedded in his chest. Needless to say, Mr. Courtney wasn't pleased.
So I went to the Principal's office to discuss the endeavor. Apparently what I did was bad, and Steve's parents were pretty upset about it. While they considered jailing me, I also considered suing the shit out of Steve for destroying my eyes with magnesium making me legally blind in 47 states. That fucker's the reason I never take off my sunglasses. So after some negotiations, I work it out with the principal that if I went to the hospital to apologize to Steve, then things would be fine, and any legal ramifications would be settled. I reluctantly agreed. My girlfriend was out there to meet me after I told her the story and how I was going to go out there.
"...You aren't going to apologize, are you?" she asked.
"Probably not."
"You're going to kill him, aren't you?"
"Probably." My girlfriend let out a sigh and shook her head.
"Well, my dad's going to be out this weekend so come on by later and we'll have dinner."
"Alright." With that, she trotted off and I made my way to the hospital.
Now being almost legally blind, this was kind of a hassle. While my mom dropped me off at the hospital, I pondered what exactly I was going to do. I went into there since it was visiting hours, and I swear I must've killed at least 5 people before I actually found the room with Steve in it. I had a tendency to make a mistake with my victims, but I couldn't fucking see so what the hell did you expect? The hospital probably thought I was a CIA operative. When I saw Steve sleeping, I figured what I might do. I can't apologize to him. I did nothing wrong. And I can't kill him either, I don't think it's entirely necessary. So what did I do? I gagged him, tied him down to his bed, then grabbed the plastic spork from his food tray and gouged both of his eyes out. They were in decent condition, and while Steve's eyesight wasn't perfect it was certainly better than mine. My girlfriend knew a back alley surgeon who could operate and give them to me, so from that day forward I had brown eyes.
Although in an ironic twist, I tripped over Steve's IV while his eye sockets made him bleed to death, but you win some you lose some, I guess.
My friend Steve was sitting to me. You know Steve, right? Steve ain't too bright. He's also kind of lonely. I think Steve has Aspergers or something, but he was always so damn fidgety. Steve was also socially oblivious to the moods and feelings of those around him. So while it was pretty obvious to everyone who could smell the booze in the air, Steve didn't know I've been drinking and thus everyone in the class probably knew what was going to unfold here. As part of the experiment, we were going to light some while wearing safety goggles. I believe in safety third, so I wore my sunglasses. My girlfriend, the shy and inquisitive girl she is told me that it wasn't necessarily a bright idea to wear them. After laughing and mocking her for that terrible pun, I turn around and there Steve is, holding burning magnesium right up to my face. "HEY BOB, ISN'T IT COOL? THIS STUFF IS SO AMAZING!" I don't know whether I blacked out from the rage or my retinas being seared shut, but when I was able to see again my girlfriend was mortified going "DON'T YOU HAVE ANY RESTRAINT?" while the staff was hosing Steve down with fire extinguishers and he was lying on the floor twitching with shards of a beaker embedded in his chest. Needless to say, Mr. Courtney wasn't pleased.
So I went to the Principal's office to discuss the endeavor. Apparently what I did was bad, and Steve's parents were pretty upset about it. While they considered jailing me, I also considered suing the shit out of Steve for destroying my eyes with magnesium making me legally blind in 47 states. That fucker's the reason I never take off my sunglasses. So after some negotiations, I work it out with the principal that if I went to the hospital to apologize to Steve, then things would be fine, and any legal ramifications would be settled. I reluctantly agreed. My girlfriend was out there to meet me after I told her the story and how I was going to go out there.
"...You aren't going to apologize, are you?" she asked.
"Probably not."
"You're going to kill him, aren't you?"
"Probably." My girlfriend let out a sigh and shook her head.
"Well, my dad's going to be out this weekend so come on by later and we'll have dinner."
"Alright." With that, she trotted off and I made my way to the hospital.
Now being almost legally blind, this was kind of a hassle. While my mom dropped me off at the hospital, I pondered what exactly I was going to do. I went into there since it was visiting hours, and I swear I must've killed at least 5 people before I actually found the room with Steve in it. I had a tendency to make a mistake with my victims, but I couldn't fucking see so what the hell did you expect? The hospital probably thought I was a CIA operative. When I saw Steve sleeping, I figured what I might do. I can't apologize to him. I did nothing wrong. And I can't kill him either, I don't think it's entirely necessary. So what did I do? I gagged him, tied him down to his bed, then grabbed the plastic spork from his food tray and gouged both of his eyes out. They were in decent condition, and while Steve's eyesight wasn't perfect it was certainly better than mine. My girlfriend knew a back alley surgeon who could operate and give them to me, so from that day forward I had brown eyes.
Although in an ironic twist, I tripped over Steve's IV while his eye sockets made him bleed to death, but you win some you lose some, I guess.
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