The hour badly spent

 

That is NOT the Joy Luck Club. Sunday, my roommate Hyun Wook cooked dinner downstairs in the dorm kitchen. He invited a bunch of friends, including yours truly.

He sauteed beef. Medium rare. He plunked it into a tupperware dish, where Angie sliced it up with a pair of scissors.

We picked up the bite-sized pieces with sharpened sticks, dipped them in hot red pepper paste, and enjoyed our fill.

"Sorry, no vegetable," Quan said. No problem; there was something very satisfying about stabbing at bits of meat with pointy sticks. "Yummy," I replied between bites. "Ah, this word I know! Yummy yummy!" Quan said, doing a little dance.

"Come eat, Ajoshi," Dorie said. Later I asked Hyun Wook why they call him Ajoshi. "It means ‘big brother,’" he explained. "But Korean men don’t like it."

"If you are old man and you have many young relatives, then they can call you ‘Ajoshi.’"

"So it’s like they’re calling you an old man?" He’s the same age as I am.

Dorie was ravenous. She looked at the steak like she hadn’t seen food all week. It was delicious. Wookie also cooked salmon. Then he produced another round of steak. And another round of salmon. We stabbed and wolfed it down. Then he boiled ramen.

Quan counted bowls. Not enough for everyone. She looked at me: "I guess you can use the pressure cooker." Then she did a another little dance.

She explained the reason for this dorm feast; Saturday was Mid-Autumn day in China. "Like Thanksgiving. Family have reunion. Only they eat moon cake, not roasted turkey."

Angie went upstairs for a while and came back with a bowl of dumplings. She nuked them and offered them to the rest of us. She explained that in English they would be called rice cakes, but they’re special Korean desserts.

"Is not for every day. Only holiday," she said. "Yesterday was Korean Thanksgiving."

Snow and Quan discussed this for a minute. Then they pointed at Angie. "Our mid-autumn festival, same day as you, different name."

The treats were rice dumplings with sweet paste inside; it was like a bean paste with honey. Dorie took a bite, held it in her mouth, and began to moan, wiggle, and hold her ears.

Naturally, I laughed. Quan explained why she was being silly. "In China, when people are very hot, they do like this."

When we were all finished and Angie and Quan were washing dishes together, Dorie stood in front of Hyun Wook; "Thank you very much Ajoshi," she said, smiling. Wookie rubbed her stomach. Everyone around us suddently got a WTF look on their faces. Then Dorie slapped him twice. It reminded me of GTO.

I picked up a vial of mystery pills standing in line outside of the Electric Daisy Carnival. It was a rave! Fifty thousand of Los Angeles’ most annoyingly young, all in one spot and dressed like the X-Men.

Woody, Silly Question and I had been standing in line to get into the actual party for about two hours, intending — along with Fernando (yeah, who are these fucking people anyway? Don’t worry; it’s not that important, and none of us dressed up) — to meet Solomon and Manuel at the V.I.P section, then run away before a bouncer could kick our asses.

While we were in line, Fernando disappeared.

Woody, you’ve got his number. Call him. Good thinking, no?

It won’t work. I’ve got his phone.

Why in the world would you have his phone?

He asked me to hold it.

Why in the world would anybody even ask somebody else to hold his phone?

Why, indeed. He produced it from his pocket: an iPhone. It was silver and liquidey. It looked like a jewel.

You should let me hold it. I’ve got better pockets.

I was wearing my corduroy hipster jacket. It makes me look dashing and protects me from the Hulk. Plus it’s got a bunch of pockets.

So there we were, still in line, not even technically at the party yet and already we’ve lost someone. The line hadn’t moved in thirty minutes. Around us, ravers were getting out of line and rushing somewhere else. That’s when I saw the bottle of mystery pills and, anticipating a pocket check at the gate, stuffed them into my sock.

Silly Question made as if to swat the bottle out of my hand, gave me her hand-wringing screed about ingesting foreign objects, and assured me that I wouldn’t have to resort to popping mystery pills. She had some X and intended to share.

Great! So when can I have it?

Just wait.

Wait for what?

I waited.

Silly Question’s shoulder was getting tired. "Hold this," she said to Woody, handing off her spinach-green satchel.

Rumour held it that off to the left, another gate was actually open and that the line was actually moving while ours wasn’t.

Hey, I’m gonna just go check out the other line; see if it exists, divine its true purpose. Wait here. I’ll be back.

I found the gents’ then checked out the other gate. It did exist, it was moving, and it brings a message of peace and compassion. When I went back to the old line, Woody was gone.

He went to look for you.

Why? I took a leak and was gone for like three minutes.

He also took my bag.

"…"

It had my wallet and stuff in it.

Naturally. Why would you even have handed it off to him in the first place?

She explained.

Yeah, your back hurts or whatever, but so what? You can’t just switch shoulders?

After twenty minutes he still hadn’t shown up, so fuck it, we went to the mythopoetic alternate gate, where we got in after five minutes (I survived the pat-down with my mystery maybe-poison pills). We wandered around for a while, looking to and fro, hoping for Woody to materialize. An hour later he texted: I’m at the front gate.

Can we, umm, take the stuff now?

I wanna wait til later. Meet up with everyone and then do it all together.

Life is short. Why wait?

We met up with Solomon and Manuel, but still no sign of Fernando. He had gone missing hours ago, far back in line, so we circled the front area hoping he was just now reaching the entrance and he’d just happen to notice the rest of us as he finally trudged in, dejected and alone. That plan sucked and didn’t work. Sol had a new one.

From now on we gotta stick together.

Be realistic. There’s six of us. Well, five of us. And fifty thousand people swarming around like desert sands. At some point we will get separated. We need a backup plan. A meeting place.

Right here. Front gate.

Front gate?

Front gate.

Front gate it is.

The vodka I had been sipping out of a Gatorade bottle while we were in line was starting to wear off.

Losing buzz, gimme drugs!

Not yet.

It’s already ten. What are we waiting for?

We decided to go into the Coliseum and do the thing. After we popped the pills Solomon wanted to head back to the VIP lounge and I wanted to hit the football field, which was packed wall-to-wall with naked gyrating hipsters. We agreed to split up and meet back in the cheap seats, and if we didn’t see each other there, we’d fall back to the Front Gate Backup Plan.

Silly Question and I maneuvered our way down into the field, shoving our way as close to the stage as we could. There was also a woman dressed like the Amazing Spider-Stripper threading her way up, down, and all over a big steel cage in the middle of the field. At midnight, we headed back to the cheap seats, as planned, and seeing nobody there, made for the front gate. At some point along the way, Silly Question made a left while I went straight, or vice versa, and we lost each other. FRONT GATE: that was the plan, right? I made it there and waited. Silly Question didn’t show. While I was chain smoking, Solomon and Manuel showed up, grinning and sweating like — well, we don’t make that kind of simile on this blog, but you get the idea.

Where’s Silly Question?

We got lost. I’m waiting for her to show.

The pills work?

No.

That sucks. I am feelin pretty good right now.

Then they left: we’re going to the bathroom, we’ll be right back.

Later on, talking about this with the Poetess, she observed that a rave probably wouldn’t be fun if you weren’t high. She’s right. I was getting pissed. If we’d hit the X earlier, I would have known before one in the morning that the shit wouldn’t work. Then I could have made contingency plans. I could have made vodka plans. In Russia, vodka plan YOU!

Silly Question finally texted me; she was standing out on a hill beside the Coliseum, under a floodlight. Christ, what ever happened to "THE FRONT GATE!" When I found her I let her have it. FRONT GATE FRONT GATE FRONT GATE I said. We went back to the FRONT GATE to wait for Solomon.

A half hour later it was pretty clear he wasn’t gonna show. And I was STILL NOT HIGH. Fuck it, I said. We headed back into the Coliseum to try and dance with the raging hordes. What was the point of coming up with a plan nobody would follow?

We stood near the top of the stadium, facing down the same midnight-black soup of naked hipsters we had been wading through hours ago, peppered gently with their glowey, spinney accessories.

Sorry I yelled at you about the front gate. It’s just that we made a plan. A simple plan. If you’re lost, do this. I thought you, of all people, would just follow it. There are fifty thousand people up in here. Of course we’d get separated! My own effing parents could be down there having wild koala sex and I’d never even know it. That’s why we made the plan. Front gate.

She nodded.

Look at them now! Fifty thousand skanks, with their fishnets and their glowsticks. Elbowing their way through spikey-haired tweakers. Tripping over lovers and empty water bottles. Making out with each other. Look at them now; here and there one lights something up and makes it spin. They have all come together, not knowing how beautiful they look from up here. But you and I don’t matter to them one bit.

Dude, I think your pill is kicking in.

Hm. I guess it must be. Yours isn’t having any effect?

Manuel is holding mine.

Jeez, how long ago did we go through this? You’re gonna thrash this high that I only became aware of mere seconds ago. Happiness is fleeting, like glitter in the moonlight. I know, right? That’s the drugs talking. Mostly.

The night was finally picking up. And yes, I still have these:

Silver Bullet’s friend Andy is in at least one band, and last night they played at the Malibu Inn (it’s not an actual inn). We picked up Andy’s sister Greta and made the trek up Pacific Coast Highway to Malibu.

The first act was acoustic; skinny black guy — Emory Davis — and his guitar. A girl chimed in for some duets. I liked her voice — it was operatic — but when she wasn’t singing, which was most of the time, she just sort of sat there. Greta was even more annoyed than I.

Gretta’s Jetta: Didn’t he say "she sings like an angel?"
Silver Bullet:   Apparently angels only sing falsetto.
Silver Bullet:   I don’t know about guys in those low-cut V-neck shirts. It disturbs me.

Cattiness or genuine dislike? I didn’t know what to make of any of this either. The guy’s shirt did hang too loosely on him and you could almost see nipple. Oh skinny emo dude, are you trying too hard or not trying hard enough? Does any of this matter? Music is soooo confusing.

 

They finished up and a team got the stage ready for the next band. A guy who looked like Jesus fiddled with some equipment then said "check one check two" into the mic, repeating this about ten times. "All sound guys look alike," Greta said.

After that, Andy’s band — Echo Division — hit the stage.

"I saw them at the Light House a few weeks ago and they were trying to be all pop-ish," Silver Bullet said. "It wasn’t working. They’re ten times better tonight."

True to form, I wasn’t impressed. They sounded kind of dull and the lead singer had this Dylanesque wheezey thing going on.

After a while even Andy started getting bored on the stage, because near the end of their set he started flashing gang signs. Then it was another band’s turn.

"Does anyone know who John Hinckley is?"

The name sounds familiar, but the category I picked tonight was "music for $10" and not "I know something you don’t" so maybe we could get on with the music thing. Hey, just for kicks, why don’t you go ahead and tell us who he is, lead singer? Thanks! Servicey!

Apparently, he shot Ronald Reagan so that Jodie Foster would notice him! It was love! Love drives us mad! That’s what the next song is about! Thanks professor; the lecture was much better than your music. Zing!

"I think these are all church bands," Silver Bullet said.

Makes sense. They all sound like Jars of Clay. You ever hear a rock band in church? They’ve got a captive audience, so they just keep going and going and going with the same languid Guitar Solo Of The Lord until you are begging, begging for the chance to sit down and hear a sermon.

I actually liked the next band. Andy was the drummer in this one. They were loud and upbeat. Then the lead singer wanted to, like, talk to us.

"Who here knows who John Calvin is?"

What is it with these nerdy musicians and their pop quizzes tonight?

Actually, he never explained who John Calvin is; only that "I’m a geek and I write songs about theology." Wankerish, but the music wasn’t bad, although it did not succeed with the stated goal of establishing the moral authority of the church. But this was a tough crowd for that anyway. It’s Malibu! We passed a Scientology church stronghold down the street on the way here.

Everyone knows I’m pretty flakey. Still, my movie-nerd friend, Silver Bullet, made sure to remind me that I had promised to go with her to her sister Erica’s wedding in Palm Springs.

"Sure. Again, when is it?"

"June something."

June something took place last week. Wednesday night we picked up the groom’s brother Donnie and the groom’s brother’s wife Palim from the airport at 11 at night and right away headed to the little resort town.

We got there two hours later, dead tired. Silver Bullet and I checked in; the room was massive. We sat around, amazed at its sheer amazingness. Then we fucked and conked out for the night.

Her phone rang sometime Thursday morning. Erica was perkily inviting us down to the pool for drinks. And swimming, one assumes. We were still groggy and tired, so no. She hung up and we fucked again, which I was almost too sleepy to do at all, and didn’t even have the presence of mind to make her get on top. Thanks for nothing, doggiestyle.

We woke up for real much much later.

"Is it really noon?"

"It’s the curtains. Hotel rooms always make you feel like it’s twilight outside."

Silver Bullet’s phone went off again; sister still bugging us to come outdoors and socialize, so we did. The pool seemed kind of small for a pricey resort in the middle of the desert. This disappointment, however, was mitigated by the open bar and the fact that everyone was dressed to show off as much skin as possible, which I believe is the only upside to California weather.

Donnie ordered me a vodka tonic, then a screwdriver, then another one, which I noticed they made with tequila instead of vodka. Strange, but best to do as the natives do; in Russia, vodka make YOU!

When we were done swimming, Silver Bullet and I walked around in search of a place to eat. The town is really just a big strip mall and everything looks the same. We settled on a Mexican place. The food wasn’t terrific and neither were the margueritas but at least they were big. Evidently I sucked mine down too fast, because when we got back to our room I lost my lunch.

Then I slept.

I woke up hours later, groggy again, but in time to get ready for the ceremony.

"Hey, if you still feel sick you can just hang out in the room during the wedding. I’ll come back afterwards."

"No, I can do this. This is why ya brought me right?" I got dressed and we walked down and across the street to wherever the ceremony was taking place (my memory’s a little tequilic) and took our seats.

So. The wedding happened. Priest, walk down the aisle, speech, kiss, yadda yadda. I’m sure I was supposed to be feeling something — everyone else looks happy and moved or whatever — but I think the tequila was feeling it for me, leaving me to sit around and be bored. When the thing was done everyone walked further up the street, to a bar and grill where reservations had been made. Still bored, I decided the time had come to start shit.

"So, most of your sister’s friends are assholes, right? Which one is the worst?"

"Christina."

"Which one is she?"

"You see the girl back there in the blacknwhite dress? She’s blonde. Yeah, her."

Later on I sat down with the rest of the family — well, the ones who seemed drunk — and asked the same question: which one of Erica’s friends was most turdish? Christina was universally agreed upon as the most vile, smelly turd in the entourage. Awesome! Although I prefer to actually know and associate with gossip targets (it makes the feel gossip much juicier), this was exactly the kind of thing I’d been waiting for! Besides the sex, of course. Sadly, only Silver Bullet was willing to provide a concrete example of said turdism:

"Once I overheard her say something really mean. It was kind of behind my back, but the way she said it, I know she meant me to hear it."

"Well?"

"She said, ‘if I were as fat as Silver Bullet I’d probably kill myself.’"

It doesn’t get much more douchey than that, does it? Silver Bullet is about the nicest girl I know (most of the time); you’d have to be pretty mean to insult her like that — just condescension, no provocation. Maybe Christina should just kill herself anyway.

"Thing is, she used to be really fat. It took time, but I’m pretty sure she only lost that weight from snorting coke."

"Whaddya mean used to be? Also: cocaine is a helluva drug!"

"Are you still drunk?"

"Fuckin tequila. Yes."

The last time we met: one day before I left for Los Angeles. A spring afternoon, in her car. I reached over to hug her bye.

"Don’t try to cop a feel."

I wasn’t. Really. But I probably should have.

This may have been the last time we would ever see each other, and really this was all we had to say to each other?

Really?

When I first met her, it seemed as though I could tell her anything. Anything.

Months later, showing her my favorite movie, she buried her face under a blanket and started crying and we could barely talk about it.

After that, we only spoke to each other in this flat, burnt-out tone. Around her, conversation was weird, alien, like we were really only just gesturing to each other in a dark room. She told me I was always trying to figure her out. And she was right. I just wanted to reach her. Why was it so difficult?

One morning I woke up in her bed. Fully clothed.

I had drunk A LOT the night before and my head felt like someone parked an Oldsmobile inside it.

Right then, I had to go. I hadn’t meant to pass out there in the first place. I needed some water and I needed it to taste like aspirin and I needed to go, and I needed all this very badly. But her hair was also right there in my face. Smelling not like chemicals or cleanliness but like her, fresh and sweet. I couldn’t move. Not yet. Even though I had to go, even though I knew that everything would be spoiled when she woke up, and I knw that this was the best it would ever get, and for the rest of the day I would both just go back to being in pain all the time and talking to her like.

It struck me, that morning, that this feeling of unnamed, dreary, half-hidden pain, illuminated this morning by sunlight and hangover, is actually always there. That it might in fact be the reason this thing between me and her, whatever it is, always feels so difficult.

And if I was ever going to cop a feel, that would have been the moment.

The Poetess recently gave voice to the existential horror of attending an informal gathering of English professors: "I’m not smart enough."

Well, yes you are, and that’s really no big deal. English professors are just like the rest of us. Nobody comes to a party to be outsmarted. They just want you to listen to them, get their jokes, seek explanations for what you don’t understand, and squeeze their asses when no one else is looking (Professor Dodd will use colourful pants to indicate her receptivity. But do not try this with the Saucy Aussie. I saw her first!).

Your best strategy is to figure out what everybody thinks of everybody else, which you can use for leverage when you ascend to the top of a multinational crime syndicate. This exercise is all about self-effacement. You are not here to show off your resplendent panoply of grace and charm. And if you have enough grace and charm to impress the English professors then I hate you already.

So don’t name-drop, like I did with Princess Glitter Bunny ("Oh of course I know what you’re talking about. Unlike the other undergrads, I’ve read Derrida! Har har har!") That’s just wankerish. Rather, just ask questions. Find an old man, with a bow tie and bushy eyebrows, who is already drunk. He is the best place to start. He is a font of experience, good humor, and as a bonus, he is actually kind of awesome. Ask about what he’s written, what he likes to read — Milton, apparently — where he’s travelled, etc. Let him do the work. He’s just itching to unload some jovial backstabbey nugget about one of his peers. Just wait. I promise it will be funny. You should also probably try to make yourself as drunk as he is.

Do not sit next to Rhymes With Flan. You did not dress well enough for that, and this fact will gnaw at you every second you are there. She is tall, slender, blonde, stylish, and her diction is flawless. If she were your age, she’d be a wholesome sorority frenemy. You, by contrast, mumble and stutter (which is partly why you’re listening and not talking); your sartorial contribution is a wrinkled green docent shirt your ex gave you seven years ago. You wore it today because you really don’t have a windbreaker, but next to Rhymes With Flan, you look like you’re homeless.

Eventually, something underminerey like this will happen:

The Hour Badly Spent:  Do you mind if I smoke?
Rhymes With Flan:       Oh. Please, don’t. Ew [shudders].
The Hour Badly Spent:  Oh, okay.
Rhymes With Flan:       Yech.

If you closed your eyes, drifted away for a second, and paid attention not to what you actually heard but rather what you thought you heard, you’ll realize that the terminal "yech" was not directed at your cancer stick. It was directed at you.

 

You’ll see the Perverted Shakespeare Professor. In class, he’s so upbeat, almost cheerleaderey; this evening, long after class, he might seem somehow jaded and weary. We suspect the production of ‘Tis Pitty Shee’s A Whore must have been stressful, what with all the preparations being made during those weeks after spring break where everybody goes through a ceaseless gauntlet of exams and term papers and projects. That is why the cast only met for their first full rehearsal a day before curtain time.

I don’t know shit about Jacobean drama. Or any type of drama, for that matter. But I’ll talk about it anyway. The performance — Saturday night, wish you were there! — was fun and celebratory, and slightly campy; just like the Professor conducts his classes, except with slightly more incest. My favorite actor was the Roman soldier: his uniform was a polo shirt with some pinned-on medals.

You might hear about studentfucking. Kind of interesting, but it’s really to be expected, and it’s only juicy if you actually know either of the parties involved, which you don’t, because you don’t know anybody, which is why you’re drinking with English professors on Thursday night and the following Friday afternoon. So put the hearsay out of your mind, because (A) you don’t want to get anyone fired, and (B) you’re not an earnest do-goodey cockblocker. Also: don’t shout out "studentfucker!" in the middle of a lecture (Sorry about that! It was noisy! How was I supposed to know the dean would hear me?).

You might also hear of dumb stuff the students have said — about ethnic minorities and such. It won’t be so bad. All the real wingnuts either go into engineering or polisci. Don’t worry about who, exactly, said what; there’s a good chance you’ll find out soon enough who this person is, based on your ability to stereotype better than she can (a gender neutral pronoun would be really nice right about now!). She will get a column in the Collegian. She will bring guns to class. She will run for student government. She will meet a soldier who will love her for her "values," and they will marry young and have lots of little douchebags, who will attend K-State.

You, however, will not find love. You will find rum, which is just a different kind of love.

Speaking of which, in time, the Most Annoying English-Major Couple will make an appearance. They really are cute together. They will sit next to each other, of course; bemusedly chatting about their plans for the future. They will lightly stroke each others’ arms, but not excessively; they will smile at each others’ literary puns, but not excessively; and one of them will drink. Excessively. And that is the real secret to shmoozing with people who have more intelligence, class, and wit than you.

Thursday night the Perverted Shakespeare Professor jokingly claimed to "personify radical chic." Suspecting a ring of truth in this, The Hour Badly Spent immediately launched an investigation, and in the process, found out why I never scored a date with any of the hotties in that class: everyone wants to have sex with him.

This irrepressible sexual attraction cuts across all boundaries. It makes no difference whether the student is male, female, gay, straight, promiscuous, or celibate. Yeah, even the virgins.

Later on, the Saucy Aussie and Princess Glitter Bunny turned the tabloidy tables on me.  The Hour Badly Spent is not used to being asked direct personal questions. So, when grilled about who, exactly, I supposedly wanted to snog that night up on the hill, I suddenly got all shy and evasive. I didn’t really want to keep anyone in suspense. It was Saucy Aussie. Umm, duh.

Forgive me: I was afraid saying it would bring the drunken revelry to an awkward halt, and then I’d have no one to sit next to duing Tis Pity She’s a Whore. PRIORITIES!! Additionally, where my friend — Atomic Fireball Candy — is going for her doctorate, there are explicit rules against such fraternization. Hey! Don’t ruin this for me with news like that, I begged her, but it was too late. Also, someone recently told me that I "come on too strong." That’s putting it mildly. Between trying to crank out witty sex-related banter and playing like I am not in fact that interested, I probably come off looking half-insane.

Didn’t mean to get all livejournaley there. Anyway, so, I also tried to find out which professor’s raging sex drive has done the most damage to the integrity of the English department. Apropos of nothing, we discovered that East Midlands men have a reputation for being bad in bed. If this is so, how is it that they apparently manage to bone enough lit students to even acquire a reputation? Clearly I’ve been going about this all wrong. My old shtick was to find someone I really like, impress her with my ribald wit, and later on go down on her gently and lovingly for long periods of time. From now on, I will just work on timing my ejaculations to coincide with the ends of Ballykissangel commercial breaks.

Few things are more awkward than when a girl brings her friends with her on a date. Like backup in case the evening goes south, and the guy knows it. Saturday night I got to be one of those judgemental cockblockers; Ariana was meeting a soldier for drinks at Mae’s, and she invited everyone along with her.

As soon as I went down the stairs, I was greeted by a bunch of reporters in red T-Shirts. The Collegionnaires were pubcrawling tonight! "Hey, come with us across the street to Pat’s" said Brett King. Hey Brett & Co., just because I may have, on occasion, posted a few unflattering comments about  a tiny portion of your writings, this does not mean we can’t be friends, right?

They looked like they were having fun. And I did want to go with them, badly. Nevertheless, I had made a promise to Ariana. You know that I’m like the least manly person you know? That’s true, but it’d be great to have you there anyway. Besides, I really want you to meet him. By the time I showed up (an hour fashionably late), everyone was already drunk and surprisingly huggy - Ariana (felt good!), Cate (felt good!), Carolyn (felt good!), Cherry (slightly awkward!).

I spent an hour or so floating between Ariana, Ariana’s date, and Carolyn, who was kind of down because the football player she was seeing got mad at her for no apparent reason and slammed a door on her foot. That’s a definite no-no. He’s supposed to do that to the other team’s girlfriends!

When the soldier went to the bathroom, Ariana turned to me. You’re not trying to get with Carolyn are you?

Probably not, I said, drinking something that was in front of me. I’m not really in a flirty mood, and besides, my type looks and sounds much more like Ariana (reddish hair!) than Carolyn (skinny & blonde).

And then she hugged me again. Why is she so huggy tonight?

So how are you, The Hour Badly Spent? Her vowels are normally long anyway. Tonight all her small talk comes out like singing.
Super!
You know you can talk to me.
About what?
About anything. I search out her eyes. Maybe she really does want to get to know the real me.
How drunk are you?

By this time, Cherry had surrounded herself with guys, all of them much older and taller than her. One of them was like 50. Looking at her daddy issues on display from across the bar, I couldn’t help but feel cold and dark inside, like I was watching a puppy in a ritual sacrifice, except I can’t tell who’s the puppy and who’s the knife-wielding priest, who exactly is fucking whom, and maybe they are all victims with no predators or maybe they are all predators with no victims or maybe it’s just extreeemely creepy seeing some kid with old guys floating around her like stormclouds. If they’re going to swarm and compete to stroke this girl’s ego, why not just put their dicks on a chessboard? That’s a game I could play, because I get erect in an L-pattern.

At any rate, I settled into a booth, just sort of fading into the scenery. Ariana’s talking to her date. Carolyn left a while ago. Cherry’s doing whatever it is she does with clusters of older guys. I could sit here forever. I could also just go.

So I did.

Outside I tried to catch up with the Collegiannaires. How sick is it that although they’re snotty red-staters I really wanted to drink with them? The streets were full of people, cigarette butts, and vomit. There were purple T-shirts. Baseball caps. Girls with short skirts, long legs. Douchebag guys with their douchebag friends. A girl, frantically crying and pleading to an annoyed cop; her friend being responsible, "Christina, settle down. He’s not gonna do anything." No journalists. Starting with Pat’s, I went from bar to bar (the back of O’Malley’s smelled like gin and semen), skipping the ones with cover charges, peering through and around girls with impossibly clear skin, wriggling around more baseball caps, more short skirts, more long legs, more purple tees. Still no reporters. I went back into Mae’s and told Ariana that I was heading home.

The Poetess tries to peek at my diary journal every time I’m out with her. Thursday night I finally just said what the fuck and handed it over for inspection.

"I won’t judge you for anything I find in here." Not that it’s human nature or anything.

So, as she paged through, I felt the nerves and vessels under my skin getting all twisty. I drummed my fingers on the table. I fidgeted with my beard. I wiggled my leg up and down, insanely fast, like a meth-addled hummingbird. I noticed she was lingering on one page.

"Find something interesting?"

"It’s kind of sad."

The passage under scrutiny: I’m an optical illusion. That’s my secret. Look away and I disappear. Turn off the light and I don’t exist.

Breaking: when no one’s looking, I write reams of angsty, self-indulgent prattle. I’ve also apparently jotted down fragments of Pablo Neruda poetry. And that is definitely the worst of it what was in there (the prattle, not the Pablo). No sordid PILF fantasies (none that I’ve written down, anyway). No shocking gossip. No chronicling private embarrassing habits (I masturbate. A LOT). Am I really so dull that I have nothing to hide? Apparently so.

Therefore, the next night, chain-smoking at a party with Ariana and the usual frenemies, when Limitless Are Leaves asked about taking a peek through the big black book of secrets, I had no objection. And when Brandon, too, wanted to see it, I didn’t mind, although he did sort of seem like he was actually studying it and not just surfing pages.

The party room was so full of Swear Not By The Moon’s laughter that it spilled out through the windows and into the parking lot where the smokers were hanging out. Did she do coke again? No, she’s just always like that. Maybe she’s always high on coke.

I honestly think she is always high. Coke — so I hear, mind you — makes you feel hyper and really important, a perfect party drug. Swear Not By The Moon is a party girl. She’s got the look: annoyingly thin and blonde. She is sometimes fun but she also kind of sneers at you when you talk to her. She powerless to curb her ways. Because of the drugs, you see. Although I’m probably just mad because she never offers me any.

I and Limitless Are Leaves really only came to drink, not to party, so we sort of kept to ourselves and our vodka and let the cool kids do their thing (which, again, may or may not have been coke). It’s a good thing I was really drunk. It’s the only way to deal with certain situations and certain people. Or in my case, all situations and all people. It also somewhat explains why she and I ended up making out on the floor.

The Frowny Townie texted me late last night, urging me to come to Auntie Mae’s to celebrate the waning hours of her 22nd birthday. When I arrived, she was sitting at a booth, across from a guy named Johann, who was not saying a thing. Seriously, he placed himself just so the light could cast dark circles under his eyes, and spent all night sitting there and looking menacing while Frowny Townie talked.

And talked.

And talked.

That girl can fit the word "I" into a single sentence 58,000 times. Is this what passes for conversation these days? But with charmingly brooding fellows like Johann - good for nothing except inarticulate indifference - I guess it’s the best anyone can hope for.

Ever and anon more of her friends trickled in. Her brother. Her brother’s girlfriend, Caitlin. Jen. Jessica. Cassandra. Michael. They all sort of segmented off, not bothering to say hi to anyone they didn’t know. If she remembered to, Frowny Townie occasionally introduced people, but what’s the point; why introduce me to people who will neither talk to me nor remember my fucking name? Then they even actually migrated to the next booth and ignored the people left at mine. Exclusion is the new inclusion. I tried striking up a conversation with Johann; what’s your major, how do you know The Frowny Townie, what else can you do, but he just grunted and looked sullen. Why do people come out to bars if they’re just going to sit there and sulk? But at least he had the polite inertia to sit across from me. No one else even looked in my direction. Even when I stood there and said something like "Hi, I’m The Hour Badly Spent, how are you?" Nothing. As if a joke just flew over their heads.

These are annoyingly young snerts. Try introducing yourself to one and you get a cattlesque stare, a neutron star of civility. Try to strike up a conversation and they whip out cellphones to text-message old boyfriends. No wonder I feel all stabby whenever I hang out with people. For the longest I thought it was because I was somehow repulsive and inept, but no; it’s because they actually do just plain suck.

Whatever. I decided to sit back and see where their conversations led them. Frowny Townie and Ryan, my RA, swapped judgements on their classes. Ryan has taken American Survey courses; Frowny Townie has taken the British ones. I haven’t taken either yet, so I listened closely to those two, and actually learned some things in the process.

I had hoped that British Survey 2 would talk about some 20th century authors, like Dylan Thomas, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, et cetera. But the course is apparently full of Victorian Lit, which Frowny Townie seems to be convinced is somehow relevant and "cool." Get the knack. Victorian everything is depressing. Nobody looks back on those good ol’ days fondly. George Eliot went out of style before your great-grandparents were born. Unfortunately, my only other option is American Survey; I would rather take a bath in a blender than slog through Moby Dick. So Charlotte Bronte, pucker up.

The subject of religion came up. Jessica chimed in, with an excitingly subversive syllogism to share.

"If you’re a Catholic priest, then you’re married to God. Therefore, God is gay."

Ryan took it and ran with it. "No, God loves everyone. He’s bisexual!"

"No he’s not," I piped up. "My church always made it pretty clear that God hates women."

Then someone called me a misogynist.

A while ago this would have sent me into paroxysms of shame and apologies. But fuck it; I’m no longer going to cave in to someone else’s earnest, numb-skulled missing of the point. If you’re too full of your own misguided indignation to understand what a pithy, brutal assault on sun-belt religious mores actually looks like, then you’re way behind on drinks, to say the least. While I’m at it, to hell with sun-belt religious mores. Wow, that was cathartic.

Frowny Townie continued. She had this story about how it was so hawt that she made out with her gay friend! On New Year’s Eve! She repeated it every time someone came into the bar with birthday wishes. By the fiftieth time I’d heard it I called bullshit.

The Hour Badly Spent:  Nipple tweak or it didn’t happen.
Frowny Townie:            No, he didn’t touch my boobs. He’s gay.
The Hour Badly Spent:  What difference does that make?

Well, whether it happened or not, it illustrates the central problem with these kids. Out of sync with their own spirituality, no sense of responsibility, no effort to even reach out to anyone in any meaningful way, and absolutely no sense of humor. By contrast, I spent New Year’s Eve doing the same things I do every day: yoga, then the art museum, then a motivational speech to inner-city children, then the library, then volunteering at the Retarded Dolphin Conservatory. So long, and thanks for all the fish.

 

Friday night at Rusty’s Last Chance, Arianna celebrated the hell out of her 21st birthday. Carolyn, Cate, Cherry, Jordan, Marco, Brandon, and Johnny all showed up to toast the occasion.

Johnny was wearing all black, with a black fedora, black leather jacket, and sunglasses. At midnight. Only complete assholes wear their shades indoors. True to form, he kept trying to grope all the single girls.

"I’m sitting over here," said Carolyn. "Don’t let him find me."
"You can’t really hide from him," I warned. He’s got special nightstalkerey powers. That’s why he’s dressed like a vampire. Who will be the next to fall for his hypnotic charm?"

At some point, after Jordan whipped out a camera, Cherry and Arianna started making out. A few seconds later, Cherry remembered the camera was still going and started getting really into it.

I’m pretty sure those two assumed this would be the highlight of everyone’s night. I, for one, still had the fabulosity of the English department - Chris Kennedy, Anne Longmuir, Erica Hateley, Tony Doerr, et al, on my mind; liquor-laced hilarity sans spectacle. Next to that, watching these annoyingly young snerts ham it up for the camera all over each others’ faces was as much fun as seeing your spaniel lick its own crotch. You take one glance and you’re like, "Muffy you are so stupid," then you go back to something more interesting, like the newspaper. Woman beats off burglar with gnome, page 8.

Yesterday Anthony Doerr visited K-State and read a short story from his latest book, The Shell Collector. That reading was the best K-State’s had this year. Afterward, the English department got together at Rock-A Belly’s. I was midway through my second G&T when the Saucy Aussie made some idle comment that ended with "vagina." I remember precisely what she sad: "Crikey! Kangaroo Kylie Minogue sheila dingo boomerang bushwhacked VAGINA!" The table went silent for a second, and Saucy Aussie seemed embarrassed, probably because she thought she had crossed some comfort line.

Well, that’s not why we were quiet. The word "vagina" is actually a great source of comfort. Hearing it is like having a cool breeze roll across you on a summer day. No; we went silent because each of us had hoped to be the first to say "vagina" that evening, and when she beat us to the (kitty) punch, no one was ready with another clever vaginal follow-up. Personally, her awesomeness made me feel like a slow-witted prude.

I lamely tried to break the silence. "Thanks! I’ve been waiting for someone to say ‘vagina’ all day," I ejaculated. But ‘vagina’ doesn’t roll off my tongue as nicely as it does from hers. OR DOES IT?

After dinner, Rhymes With Visa drove a few of us - Imad, Tony Doerr, Saucy Aussie - to the top of the hill that overlooks the city. We had to get out and hike a little ways to reach the summit, from which we had a beautiful view of Best Buy. Then Rhymes With Visa drove us back to town. Not til much later did I realize how pathetically funny the whole scene actually was: we were basically all guided up to the top of Makeout friggin’ Mountain, and yet it never occurred to anybody to cop a feel. Lame.

Vagina! There; our reputations are safe.

 

Yesterday I woke up to shitty weather, a sore throat, and a big ass screenwriting assignment due. A Thursday hat trick! Bonus: since I’m sick, I can’t smoke. Without cigarettes, I’m not nearly as smart or funny as I think I am, which makes it hard to write a sitcom script (or an entertaining blog, for that matter), but eventually the script got done and I felt fifty shades of relief. I celebrated by…oh right, no smoking. I took a nap.

I woke up at around 7:35. Five minutes late for the Take Back the Night rally - just in time to miss the strident speech expressing solidarity with women everywhere. I’m sure it was grand. I arrived just before the march started. Those girls I hardly ever see anymore were there too. The ladies marched to City Park. I ducked into the library then met up with them in an auditorium at the park.

There were tables set up. And explanatory pamphlets. And a band. And T-shirts. It wasn’t quite what I expected. The atmosphere was…. kind of, I don’t know, fun? Except that there weren’t really that many students here. Or professors. Or townies. Or local law enforcement. And the weather outside was frightful. The girls I hardly ever see any more left shortly before nine. I decided to stay, in order to spite them (I’m kind of petty) and express solidarity with the cause (I’m kind of noble. Chalk it up to the dual nature of man). Curiously, once they left, the party picked up. Or maybe I just payed closer attention to it.

The band was two MILFs with quirky, subdued humor and a good rapport, one on keyboard and one on guitar, and their songs were actually pretty catchy. The few people who remained even started dancing. It got to feel like I was watching a bunch of friends hanging out. Good times for all, except those who had to trudge back home in the rain. Suckers, I said, before I noticed that my socks were soggy and my umbrella was fucked up. I don’t know what else to add, because I’m still sick and I really have no idea how to frame a coherent narrative without nicotine.

Let us be clear on a few things I like. A lot:

1. enormous swank apartments.
2. travelling abroad.
3. kitschy Asian products.
4. food.

Let us therefore be clear on things I loathe and secretly envy:

1. kids with enormous swank apartments.
2. kids who have travelled abroad.
3. kids with kitschy Asian products.
4. musicians.

Such was my dilemma, at a Saturday evening birthday party, in a massive swank apartment occupied by Daniel, Andrew - a guitarist with a huge wound on his elbow; the Spy; the Man Who Travels With the Spy; assorted acquaintances dressed up like flags, and of course, various Asian tchatchkes: a sushi kit, lacquered chopsticks, and scary Japanese desserts.

"It’s so vaginal," said Andrew, introducing everyone to his elbow slit.

In Russia, vagina wound YOU!

I didn’t really say that. Actually I don’t even know what a vagina looks like.

The food was still being prepared and the kitchen looked like the set of Iron Chef. I feel weird in other peoples’ kitchens; I want to help with the slicing and cooking, etc, but I don’t know where anything is and would probably just look inept (actually I really am inept!), so instead I stay out of the way and just knock back the beer someone offers, which in this case was Tsingtao, by the grace of Daniel. Then Greta finished making her sushi rolls. (How do you make sushi in Kansas? Canned tuna. Mmmm, but yech). The eggrolls the Spy had been frying were ready. Mmmm, no yech. Katie’s curried veggies were ready. Mmm, no yech. The Spy also fried some orange chicken. Mmmm, more mmmm. So I guess there are advantages to obnoxiously young people who have travelled to China and come back with trendy sinophilia. They cook for ya! And if you’re good they’ll even give you a tour of the swank apartment, which is what Slender Starrypants did.

"This shower is ridiculous. It can fit fifteen people. Seriously, we’ve tried squeezing everyone in here just to see if it would work."

"Shower scene?" I didn’t really say that. Err, actually I did.

After the shower scene I floated around for a few minutes, eventually landing on the enormous white couch, and partook of these obnoxiously young kids’ 5000-inch flatscreen TV. The game was on. I’m pretty sure it was basketball. I was getting really really into it when the Spy disrupted my reverie by offering second helpings of friendship (see what I did there?):

"What are you doing over there? Come mingle with the rest of us."

 

English Department Head Elizabeth Dodd hosted a soiree after memoirist Allison Wallace’s Friday reading. "You’re all invited!" she told the entire population of Stuni’s Little Hall that afternoon.

This was it! My entire time here I’d been sweating for a chance to hobnob with grown-up English nerds, perhaps even put names to the faces I keep running into at the English majorey events just like this one. At last, the Bard answered my prayers.

Dodd lives in a tasteful house a westward hike away from campus. The get-together was everything I’d hoped for! There were little sandwiches! There was chocolate cake! There was Tanya Gonzalez! There was Jen Roberts! There was Anne Longmuir! There was Imad Rahman! There was Donna Potts (I haven’t finished the reading for her class! Don’t tell her)! There was Chris Kennedy (I was especially pleased about this because he was the only other person wearing a T-shirt)! There were avuncular gentlemen in red bow ties! There was booze! It was Elizabeth Dodd’s booze! I drank Elizabeth Dodd’s booze!

The professors were lively and full of good humor and wit. Why doesn’t it rub off on the undergrads? With that puzzle in mind, I stepped outside for a cigarette with Erica Hateley, who had an important question for me.

Do you find this entire town really, really racist?

Yeah.

I was afraid I was the only one who saw Kansas that way.

Nah. It’s weird how they all think they’re not, too. I come from a big city and even when you find someone who’s full of prejudice, it just doesn’t have the kind of legitimacy it carries in a small town. I spent most of last semester really pissed about it, but I eventually met some other minorities here. Someone took me aside and reminded me that I’m in fucking Kansas.

On a search for a wine glass — umm, and a bottle — I found myself shoulder-to-shoulder with guest of honor herself, Memoriste Allison Wallace, who offered servicey advice for interacting with my undergraduate peers:

You can talk to a sophomore, but you can’t say much.

I’m gonna run home and write that down.

Don’t quote me! I didn’t say that.

Oh, actually I was going to take credit for it anyway.

I see! You’ve got a great writing career ahead of you.

Yeah, speaking of that: James Frey? JT Leroy? Margaret Seltzer? Is this really a new thing, or is it possible that people have been fudging memoirs for as long as we’ve been writing them?

Nowadays we talk about people writing a memoir. It used to be that people wrote their memoirs. A hundred years ago it meant that, near the end of your life, you’d sit down and do it, and there was a sort of gallantry about it. Today you can look for one on, say, Britney Spears or someone like that. It’s not about your life; it’s just a slice of your life. This is a new thing. The conventions for it are only recently being written. And so the people running out and sensationalizing these fake stories are breaking this brand new etiquette that they created.

There you have it. Lesson: Mrs. Dodd’s nose gets really really red in the presence of other authors. Also: spend time with convivial, intelligent grown-ups and you’ll actually learn something new. Parties are the new required reading!

 

I met up with Cate, Carolyn, Jordan, Cherry, and Johnny (an old guy dressed up like a vampire) at Rusty’s for Cate’s 21st birthday. Over the course of three Captain Cokes I figured out exactly what it is about this whole clusterfuck of Thursday-night undergrad social interaction that makes me so suicidal.

Seeing all these kids so effortlessly happy and in-tune with each other, I can’t help but self-indulgently compare it to my own inner turmoil. Their enforced shallowness, the terse, hollow exchanges, their hypercasual "hey good times, see ya around," sending me into stifled palpitations of last-call blues as I attempt various ploys at securing a future reunion, and I come off looking half-insane. The whole shin-dig starts to feel sort of like going to church; you came here wanting to belong, to be accepted for your flaws and whatnot, but they keep making you sing these damn hymms you don’t even know and you just fumble trying to keep up, choking your ability to be honest with yourself or anyone else around you in this chapel of mirth, and you’re no better off than when you first walked in the door.

Also, you probably still had steam to blow off from that nerve-wracking Thursday screenwriting that makes you feel stabby.

[update: an anonymous tipster informs me that "grad students are worse then undergrads because they’re all neurotically self-absorbed." Great, now there really is nothing to look forward to. Except, of course, church. Party on].

I’d been picturing this moment in my mind the second I came here and saw the band: their dark suits, their swing-dancing wingtips, the trumpet and the sax, and every time it runs through my head it goes like this:

"Hey, let’s dance."
"Whatever. I’m leaving.

But the band’s been at it for an hour, ta-tum tum ta-tum tum, and they are kicking ass, and I’m tapping my feet and swaying my head, and for some reason I got all dressed up tonight; new hairdo, favorite shoes, favorite tie, favorite shirt, and I just can not help myself. It’s now or never. I turn to Madeline and ask her.

"Oh, I have no rhythm." That’s not the point! This is Auntie Mae’s, not Soul Train.

But is this one of those times when I’m supposed to be a man and just go for it? I can never tell. So I make for her hand and she moves them both under her bottom. "No means no." Umm, it’s a dance, not a rape, but point taken.

It is never "one of those times."

She gets up to use the bathroom and while she’s gone a couple of girls walk by, going into a holding pattern right at the empty bench.

"Uh, sorry. Someone’s sitting here."
"That’s okay. I don’t want to sit there anyway." The way she says it makes the word there point at me and stick its tongue out. Saucy! As she walks away, I notice a tramp stamp: a ship’s helm (I guess it’s so the seamen know where to go).

Madeline comes back and the band is still going. The helmsgirl flutters back this way, onto the dance floor, with Jimbo (That guy knows everybody). They are dancing and the song winds down and the band announces their next one:

"This is a song by Duke Ellington. He still has it doesn’t he!" That makes one of us. I turn to Madeline again.

"Should have come here with a different girl." Duly noted.

And fifteen minutes later they start up another number, with that tempo again just right, ta-tum tum, called "Let’s drink wine." I know now if I can’t find someone to dance with me on this one I’ll be a miserable failure, sitting here with a stupid twisty hairdo and a stupid black shirt and stupid jolly-roger vans and stupid polka dot tie. I turn to the curly-haired blonde on the barstool next to me.

"Hi there. My name’s Swingie McJazzhands."
"Hi! I’m Anna."
"Nice to meet you Anna. How are you? This band is great, aren’t they?"
"Yeah, I love it."
"Would you like to dance?"
Oh, I can’t. My friend and I were waiting for someone and now we’ve gotta head out."

True to her word, they skedaddle up the stairs and out the door, presumably to a better, albeit torturously jazzless, party.

Jimbo’s on the floor with that girl again. There is exactly one other person here who I already know, and she is sitting front and center, so what the hell, might as well take another crazy chance and ask her. So I do. A moment later I take her by the hand and we start swinging and grinding like we were born for this night.

Ha ha, just kidding. She shot me down too.

What is it about Thursdays that, by early evening, right as screenwriting class ends, makes me feel hollow, torpid, and dissatisfied?

First thing: one more hour of Spanish this week. It’s actually not so bad - Ms. Diaz is much more simpatica than she seems; but last semester’s god-awful class left a bad taste in my mouth and I’m probably just still just still dry-heaving it.

Second thing: the few people I do know here tend to become scarce all weekend, and there are no new episodes of anything on the tubez, leaving me with nothing to do except write.

Except I can’t, because (third thing) by now I just feel cold and dead inside; no imagination, no oomph, so I end up basically napping from Friday night to Sunday afternoon. Then Sunday night I scramble to finish the homework I put off.

This list is on my mind, halfway through a gin & tonic - extra lime - when the Communist Spy sends me a text.

If you’re not doing anything right now you should join us at Kathouse.

Cigarette in hand, I pound down the drink, dash out the door, and am at the Kathouse in five. I’ve never been here before. The Communist Spy and her cadre of five other girls - Darcy, Leshia, Maureen, Katie, someone else, and a Gentleman who Travels With Katie - are here to see a band. Of the six girls in the group, 9,340 of them have hooked up with someone in the band. The Spy motions for me to take the corner seat, next to her.

"Took you a while."

"I was at Auntie Mae’s."

"You smell like Auntie Mae’s." (In Kansas you can still smoke indoors and Mae’s has a basement, which, aside from the absurdly cheap drinks, is why I like it there).

While I’m waiting for a drink the guitars fire up. It’s funny; all week long, you think to yourself how badly you just need company; the violent jolt of social contact might inspire "emotions," "longing," "happiness," or something. How going day after day with this feeling of isolation makes you feel like a dismal failure; that you should just get out more and be around people.

But then on Thursday night you find yourself in a big dark room, resenting the three-dollar cover charge, the band working the crowd with skill and confidence sharply reminding you that you’re about 3,000 years old, the dizzying pockets of sparse lamp light, the watered-down drinks, the throng of blondes fenced around the barkeep like tube-topped Vikings laying siege to the coast. And the barmaids who ignore you. All of it just grates inexplicably on your nerves. You can fake it for a while; ten, maybe fifteen minutes, before you have no choice but to slink away, find the exit, and disappear into Friday morning.

Over spring break, I drank at John’s house every night until Thursday. On Thursday Woody suggested we drink at the bars in downtown Long Beach, and I offered no protest.

Hours later, while Woody sat passed out, face down at a table in Dubliner’s Irish Pub, John and I scrutinized a nearby hipster.

“You don’t understand, John. That’s exactly my type. The dark-framed glasses; the no-nonsense bangs; the cherry-red lipstick; the heels; the arm tattoos; the leg tattoos; the skirt. Oh god, that skirt. On a related note, holy fuck, am I drunk, or is that is a nice pair of legs?”

“Yes to both of those, man.”

“Like, if she and I were to ever have sex, upon climax, the semen would stream out of me for hours and hours until finally there was nothing left of me.”

“I get the idea. Thanks for the visual. But what do you make of the unceasing swarm of dudes around her?”

“It does kind of take me back to a dark, lonely, miserable place. Remind me, what was that called?”

“Prom.”

“Right. I don’t think I like her so much any more.”

Underminer: a friend who, during ordinary conversations, casually backhands you with condescension.

I.
Cherry and I were walking together, talking about Fake Patty’s Day, in which the bars open early and have specials to accomodate students who won’t be in town on St. Patty’s day, because that falls during spring break.

“I don’t know if I can make it at 9 in the morning.”

“Oh come on.“

What I meant by “come on” is “ start early and make the most of the day.” But she thought I was asking her to come with me.

“Are you begging?”

“…”
“…”
“…”
“…”

Well, what I said was, “Actually, I assumed you had your own crowd to run with, so no, I was not asking for your company.”

What I meant was yeah, because what I’d really like to do for a pubcrawl is kill my buzz babysitting a snotty emobot.

II.
At night, after the Spring Swing Dance, before Jimbo’s party. Cate, Arianna, and I are hanging out at Cherry’s house; I was making mindless banter, like I always do, which inspired her to wistfully reminisce over my best qualities.

“I LOVE the way you say something stupid and then laugh at your own dumb joke.”

“Actually Cherry, I was laughing because I knew you were going to point out how dumb it was, because hello, all my jokes are dumb.”

Okay, I get it: you’re just not that into me. I laughed harder.

III.
Jimbo’s party: She introduced me to the girl with the fantastically WASPy voice from Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds. I did not recognize her at first.

“You’ve seen her before. This is Mackenzie, you jerk!”

But later, behind her back, doing her best impression: “Oh hi, I’m Mackenzie! Look how amazing I am! Ha ha ha!” As it happens, after talking with Mackenzie, I found out she really did skew towards amazing, and this uncharacteristic cattiness confirmed it.

IV.
And of course, there was this Underminerey stroke of genius.

Since I haven’t blogged in a few days, that chart shall serve as a benchmark while I recap the week:

Monday: really don’t remember much, except for a couple of bloody marys. That is not a euphemism.

Wednesday: I made a new friend! A supercute 28-year old redheaded geek girl. No, not that supercute 28-year-old redheaded geek girl. Come to think of it, "romp" makes the whole thing sound way more sordid than it really was, which entailed going to Auntie May’s for happy hour, where we bought each other beers and made small talk. Then we walked around for a little bit. The great big city’s a wonderous toy, just made for a girl and boy. We turned Manhattan into an isle of joy! Okay, she walked me to the Digital Shelf, where we drooled over the anime section. One day she will appreciate Ranma 1/2 as much as I do. One day.

Later, I called the Poetess to tell her I made a new friend. She was feeling blue, and wanted company, so I obliged. I drank her box wine and had a long talk with her about the true meaning of friendship. As it turns out, hippies can love after all! Before I left, she let me have one of her uppers.

Friday: I asked Arianna to go a semi-formal dance put on by the Association of Residence Halls. It was held in the Union Ballroom, which is a pretty big place. Because of that, I was expecting to wall-to-wall hotties gyrating in slinky, knee-length dresses. So OF COURSE we arrive and it’s like 15 kids, awkwardly twisting around to the Spice Girls. No, we are not leaving, I told Arianna. She wore these incredibly pointy black shoes that mangled her feet and made movement difficult, but looked terrific. I was deeply moved by her suffering. She and I sat in the back of the room, not-so-silently judging everyone, and talked about the ungodly horror of high school dances, while waiting for the D.J. to play something slow and romantic because that’s why you go to dances in the first place. It didn’t happen, so after an hour, we left to hit up a better party. And OF COURSE as we were gathering our coats and our purses and our, ahem, man-purses, the Old Man Controlling Everything We Hear finally put on a slow number. I might have been able to talk Arianna into staying for three more minutes, but it was a country song, and by then my heart just wasn’t in it.

I had never been to the casa de supernerdy English Major Jimbo; so when I got to his basement, which had a bar and a bigscreen TV and and a bunch of geeks talking about Baldur’s friggin’ Gate and a wall full of action figures and computer circuitboards and a ceiling plastered with movie posters, I didn’t know whether to love Jimbo for having an awesome place, hate Jimbo for having an awesome place, or hate myself for loving Jimbo for having an awesome place, and the whole thing got even more confusing and beautiful after I pulled out the bottle of cheap whiskey I brought.

I met lots of new people, most notably a blonde girl from the theater department, who I thought was cute and intelligent. She was the lead actress in The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, wherein she did this amazing thing with her voice that made her sound like a domineering 1930s WASP. She got bonus points when I found out Cherry hates her. Nevertheless, I am definitely leaving that one alone. Actresses are terrifying.

Saturday was Fake Patty’s Day in Manhattan. The real St. Patrick’s day falls during K-State’s spring break, so Aggieville celebrates it a week early while students are still in town. I fully intended to start the pubcrawl at 9 in the morning, when the bars open, but I was too hung over. I ended up lounging around all day long, then, at midnight, crashing a get-together at Madeline’s in celebration of the coming-to-town of her childhood friend Megan, who has apparently developed into a cute, aloof hipster.

A moment after I arrived, Jenna, Maddie’s awesome roommate; Jenna’s boyfriend Graham, who is also awesome, and Megan, decided to hit the bars. Despite the fantasticity of Jenna and Graham, along with my typically asinine outbursts of wit, we were unable to stop Megan from sitting around, pouting, and looking bored. Thankfully she left and returned to Madeline’s place on her own, before she completely killed my buzz and ruined my life.

Someone really does read this thing! The Sexy Communist Spy recently pointed out the following: “enough weepy Romantic poetry. You didn’t even finish the story about the birthday bash.” Well, of course I bailed on the story when it was about to get boring and weepy. But, by popular demand, here’s the rest of it: I didn’t really revoke Sexy Communist Spy’s roommate’s pimp card. At her own birthday party. What I did do was ride with her to the hospital and sit in a dark lobby while Communist Spy and Hannah took turns trying to calm down the Birthday girl. In the waiting room there was also a football player and a woman with teeny tiny jeans shorts. When Megan was in the room I think I managed to grunt out a conversation, but when it was Hannah, she just kept text-messaging someone(s), leaving me no choice but to stare at that other girl’s legs.

At 4 I left. So that’s the complete story of last night’s party (from three nights ago). Of course, the complete story sort of gives a portrait of this blogger as a nuanced, compassionate drunk with some sort of caring streak. However, notice that if I leave the story half-finished, it makes me look impatient, shallow, and kind of snotty, which is how I really am. Watch:

Yes It’s Cherry: you can’t stop me. you can’t stop me.
Cheeky Hipster: i will CUT you
Yes It’s Cherry: :-) whatever
Yes It’s Cherry: happy monday, cheeky hipster
Cheeky Hipster: happy monday? no such thing.
Yes It’s Cherry: it is.
Yes It’s Cherry: just not today…
Cheeky Hipster: well, maybe next week then.
Yes It’s Cherry: hopefully
Say It With Wit: i’m gonna disappear into the night and reappear at Hale in 15 minutes
Cherry signed off at 10:55:58 PM
Cherry signed on at 10:56:15 PM
Yes It’s Cherry: be damnd
Cheeky Hipster: i forgot how moody you are
Yes It’s Cherry: :-)
Cheeky Hipster: moody/ whuttt
Cheeky Hipster: well, your internet connection. you yourself are a paragon of stoicism and apathy
Yes It’s Cherry: that’s correct
Cheeky Hipster: ….and on that note, time for me to duck out for the night
Yes It’s Cherry: eh
Cheeky Hipster: ttyl
Yes It’s Cherry: ya

Wheee! Leaving early! Wasn’t that fun? Did you notice her nonchalant “eh” at the end? Do you think she was wondering where a man of intrigue like me would be heading at such an hour? Or was she, as usual, just flashing that vast indifference popular pretty girls radiate so well all day long? Which one, eh? I’ll leave it for you to decide, because I’ve got better things to think about.

I was invited to the Sexy Communist Spy’s roommate’s birthday bash (in Russia, Party throw YOU!). This one had a theme: "thug party," which meant there were a bunch of dry-humping, ass-smacking, half-drunk, red-state 22-year-olds dressed like Missy Elliot. True to form, I showed up late wearing my Super Mario Strikers jersey (I fucking represent!), a pick in my hair, and I threw up lots of gang signs (I don’t actually know any gang signs). K-fed came by too.

An hour after I got there, the party died down. Umm, it wasn’t my fault. This time. Birthday girl was still juiced and wanted to hit the bars, so we did just that (in Russia, bars hit YOU!). I danced and barhopped and met a super-superhot townie and got to mackin’ to this bitch named Sadie (Sadie!) and generally made merry while Birthday Girl zigzagged from table to table, friend to friend, stranger to stranger, nizzle to nizzle, so proud to have people watch her turn 22, but she was also - I dunno - pretty stressed out?

It was obvs she missed her boyfriend pretty badly and no one in these bars could have possibly made up for that. I wanted to tell her to stop, be cool, roll down the street smoking endo sipping on gin and juice, laid back; just chillax and enjoy yourself. It’s YOUR birthday! Tha homies are supposed to come to YOU! But she never really got the chance, because not five minutes after I inhaled the sandwich she got me on her maxed-out Visa, as she dashed off to say hi to a familiar face 10 yards away, she tripped, fell, and busted her lip. While she sat there, crying, bleeding, and ashamed, I promptly revoked her pimp card.

Saturday night the Sexy Communist Spy and her friend Hannah kidnapped me, took me to Hastings (like Borders, but with more cockroaches), and then to the movies, to see Charlie Bartlett. This was either a nobly misguided attempt to cheer me up (won’t work) or a cynically well-planned attempt to get on my blog (also won’t work. Wait). At any rate, I had spent the last nine hours chain smoking and listening to an endless loop of Tegan & Sara, so I figured some fresh air and moonlight would do me some good.

Since I’m a fairly big flirt, I feel strange hanging out with women who have boyfriends who are not present. Like, sex jokes are about 96% of any conversation I make; when that topic is suddenly off-limits, I feel like a painter gone blind (your move, Mary Cassat!). So in lieu of raunchy puns, I think we made what she told me was "con-ver-say-shun."

"I’m so not a feminist. I’m the opposite of a feminist. I just want to get married and have babies," she said.
"That’s not un-feminist. True feminism embraces all facets of womanhood, and totally supports your right to make whatever choice you…" then my voice trailed off because I started thinking of all the evangelical womens’ studies Inquisitors who have tried to shank me. Letting Megan think ill of them was really my only revenge possible. Then I made a sex joke or something. Then we went to the movies.

Charlie Bartlett’s projector was broken (heh). We movie-hopped and saw Jumper instead. After the movie, Megan’s beau, McDreamy, showed up and they got married and invited me back for a threesome.

I had to refuse. I mean, I know it’s McDreamy and all, but I still had last night’s god-fucking-awful party on my mind. Awful party = erectile dysfunction. Hey, it happens to everyone. Especially geezers.

McDreamy, however, simply would not take "no" for an answer. He knew some tricks. I don’t want to be graphic, so let’s just say it all worked out marvellously in the end. Let’s also say "bukkake."

 

Cherry had a birthday this week! Friday night she threw a party and everyone showed up. Obviously, no good could come of this, yet I went anyway. I brought her a 3-foot paper-mache rose, a card, and a bottle of Jack (the bottle was really for me. I need it a lot more than she does). Although a dozen people were already there, I somehow managed to sneak the big-ass rose by everyone and smuggle it into Cherry’s room.

Cherry’s parents were there - three weeks ago they threw a Superbowl party and Cherry took me along, and so that’s when I met them. They appointed me the Bartender and Keeper of Cover Charges. I carried this out dutifully, except for when I stepped out to chain-smoke with the Poetess, leaving Chelsea to watch the money.

I hadn’t seen the Poetess in weeks and she looked great. We went out to the porch, down the steps, to the driveway, out by someone’s Honda, and lit up.

"So earlier this week when I told you I was feeling great? I totally lied."
"Me too! Grand. So what’s got you down?"
She related detailed information of a sensitive personal nature. "So hon, your turn."
And we talked some more, then disappeared back into the party; which, for me, was a haze of cash/liquor exchanges, with an occasional pause for me to dose up on whiskey. The chaperones had left by now. Life was great, until I saw Cherry making out with someone on the coffee table.

If I could have just vanished, just poof! and a cloud of bats and I disappear into the night, I would have done exactly that. Instead I had to actually go gather my coat, and my scarf, and my man-purse, and collect my dignity (which - ironic on so many levels - was inside the man-purse), and this took long enough for Cate to see me.

"What’s going on?"

I led her through the crowd, to the porch, to the side of the house, and told her everything.

A couple of people must have heard us talking. All the right players, in fact. Arianna! Chelsea! A bunch of other people! Thankfully not the Poetess. I didn’t know what to say to them other than "Hi guys." So I leaned into Cate’s ear. "LookIhaftagothanks."

I think Arianna kind of knew.

"Where are ya going?"

"Home."

"You’re leaving?"

"Yeah, I’m leaving."

And I left.

When I got home, I remembered the cash cup. It wasn’t safe back behind that bar. I called Arianna and asked her to get the cup, grab the cash, put it in her purse, and deliver the money to Cherry tomorrow. She was fairly drunk so I stayed on the phone with her.

"Hyper-literate bastard, I’m sorry. I can’t find it."

Perfect.

The assistant manager in me decided to head back and find that fucking money my fucking self, and of course I didn’t find it, but now of course I’m back stuck at this thing, the most god-awful party I’ve been at since I was in grade school, and I can’t look anyone in the eye; the kid who was making out with Cherry is now making out with the rest of the theater department (kids these days!); Jimbo, another geeky English major, is grinding with Cherry, and no matter how many times I snap my fingers and whisper "beetlejuice" that fucking money still won’t show up. When I see Cherry alone for a second I let her know it’s missing and swear I’ll pay her back (yay! a reason to whore myself!). Then I finally grow a pair and dance with the birthday girl herself. She was wearing a slinky black strapless number and she was sporting that hemlock-laced smile I love and fear at the same time. So, yeah, we danced for a little while and then separated.

The next time I went looking for her she was nowhere to be found. Neither was Jimbo. The porch, around the side of the house, the garage, the kitchen, the living room, her room, nada. Then I remembered there was another door in the garage. I opened it and there they were (what did I expect?), standing together and talking. OhSorry! I said, slamming the door, maybe a little too fast. "Hyper-literate bastard, wait!" said Cherry. I opened it again and she was fumbling through her coat. "Wish I had my cigarettes," she was mumbing. "Iknowwheretheyare!!" I shut the door again, took a breath, dashed off to the living room, grabbed her swank, shiny, fully stocked cigarette case, returned to the yard, handed her one, and put the case in her pocket.

I held the lighter in front of her.

She hates that. She likes to light them herself. She moved to grab it from me, but I have the reflexes of a meth-addled ninja tabbycat. Plus, she’s pretty drunk. I lit it for her.

"I kind of hate you right now," she said.
"Aw shucks, I know you don’t mean that."
Small talk ensues. A minute later:

"Gimme the lighter. I wanna re-light it.
"Don’t be such a baby."
Jimbo and I both laughed at Cherry. Then he went inside.

"So, are you having fun?"
"It’s your party. Are you having fun?"
"I guess." It’s complicated.
It’s pitch black except for the smokes. Nevertheless, I’m pretty sure we’re both looking at each other.
"You seemed like you didn’t wanna talk to us yesterday."
Pardon?
"Me, Cate, and Arianna thought you didn’t wanna talk to us at the play."
Umm, hello, I’ve been lonely, depressed, and ashamed for a few weeks. Errr, I mean:
"I got the opposite impression. That you didn’t wanna talk to me. I mean, I know you were busy with Mud-River-Stone, but you just never called me back or gave me a text."
I continued. "And I missed ya, a lot, but last night I really didn’t know what to say."

"Listen, I was hoping that, after the party dies down, maybe I could - stay? Spend the night? With you."
"Yeah, sure," she said. "A few other people are crashing here, so no problem."
I didn’t mean it in the sense of "crashing here," but whatever.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

We went in and danced some more. A few hours later, Liz, a drunken emo townie, went ape shit over I-don’t-know-what and refused to let anyone drive her home. The girls went outside to talk her down. Negotiations lasted about an hour and killed the party. Finally, Drunken Emo Townie came back inside; Cherry’s little sister agreed to walk with her to the car. It was 6am. I was out on the porch, chain-smoking, when they walked by me. Not wanting them to get dragged off and raped, I asked quickly:

"Want me to walk with you guys?"
"Yeah," mouthed Jasmine.

We made it up the street a little ways, to the Townie’s car. Although she’s still drunk, she patently refuses to give up the keys or the driver’s seat. In the end we relented and let her almost kill us swerving up Sunset Avenue (doesn’t this defeat the purpose of coming with her?). But we made it to wherever she wanted to go, and she headed inside and sent us on our merry way. Yay! Everyone’s still alive! Now I get to trudge back to campus in this 20-degree dawn. I am not dressed for a 20-degree dawn. Also: since I’m not from this town I have no idea where the fuck I am. Jasmine led the way, up the street, down the street, across the park, a left on Anderson, back to Sunset, up again, to the left, and presto, Cherry’s casa. The sun is fully up and Cherry is probably completely knocked out, so I bid Jasmine good day and go back home, completely cockblocked by that fucking Townie. C’est la vie.

I talked to Cherry again at noon. Hi how are you did you like the party thanks for the rose I might be too busy to see you the rest of the weekend but I hope you had a good time don’t worry we got the money.

"You got the money?"
"Yeah. Earlier, I grabbed the cash cup and I hid it."

Relief.

Determined to meet other, better English majors and silently judge them, Friday night I hiked to downtown Manhattan for a poetry reading at the Streckler-Nelson Art Gallery.

 

What’s more sad: that this kewgr leers down at me on my way up the stairs to the gallery, or the fact that I kind of wanted her? Just kidding! These are both cause to celebrate! I’d never been here before so I gave myself a quick tour. It seemed to be about the size of 10 dorm rooms, all full of paintings and pottery and plants. I would have taken better notes but I was too busy prowling for grad students to hit on. After a minute of this I remembered I don’t know anybody and made my way to the room full of chairs. I sat two seats down from a Pretentious Literary Douchebag who had his nose in Penguin Classics’ Medieval Literature. Jonathan Holden, a poetry professor with furious, leonine eyebrows sat in front of me with his wife. Apropos of nothing, I like to secretly sit behind my professors and snap photos of the back of their heads whenever I see them at some function.

See, I snapped this one of Donald Hedrick - perverted Shakespeare professor - last week at the violin concert:

 

Meanwhile, the grad students around me made small talk:

"Aren’t we having fun?"
"Fun fun fun!"
"By the way, I put arsenic in your club soda!"
"Great! That way I won’t have to see your douchebag face anymore!"
"Super!"
"Grand!"

Once we got started, the rule was that anybody with poetry of some sort should just walk on up to the podium and show off. Lisa, the first reader, was boring. The guy after her, Joe, wore a button-down shirt two sizes too small, and no matter what he did, he was showing off his triceps. He had taken a passage James Joyce had written about snot and copied it onto a roll of toilet paper. After him, a hipster cutie presented her "Studies in Prepositions," poems consisting of the same preposition repeated musically for entire stanzas. "It does neat stuff in your head," she explained, which I took to mean when she’s done I won’t know whether to hate her for thumbing her nose at conventions I continually fail to get the hang of, or to love her for her playful, impish mastery of the quirks of language. I put this dilemma to rest the instant I realized that this chick was probably kinky enough that if I could give her a really clever pickup line, she might tie me up and ride me so hard I couldn’t stand up straight for three days. In that context, her poems were pretty rad. Her last one was somewhat more traditional. "This is where we move past morphology into syntax," she said. Hot!

Next: until now, all the poets had the common decency to read TWO or THREE of their favorites and then sit back down (Joe: "I’m gonna share a couple of these and then stop ruining your life"), but this particular reader, Nelson, had written a bunch of Really Deep poems about birds and the night and vegetables and breasts, earnestly challenging us to ponder things like The Night and Love and Curiosity and Truth and Beauty and Birds and the size of his thesaurus and, well, Breasts. He must have used the word "breast" every stanza and the thing is, well, the thing is I have NEVER IN MY LIFE WANTED ANYBODY TO STOP SAYING THE WORD BREAST LIKE I WANTED HIM TO STOP FUCKING SAYING THE WORD BREAST but he just went on and on (like this sentence), with these awful mosaics, so many of them, their roman numerals crashing against my BREAST like kamikaze pilots, a sickening montage of VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI…… until finally he was done.

It is my secret wish to become the school’s Pretentious Literary Douchebag. But the guy sitting two seats across from me, his nose in Penguin Classics’ Medieval Literature, had me completely outclassed. He was a slender man, with a strong chin, gold-rimmed glasses, hair like a field of sun-kissed Kansas wheat, eyes as blue as swimming pools and flowing with erudition; he wore an oxford and a blazer that had a gold star pinned to the collar, as though he had just stepped out of Dead Poets’ Society and materialized in this very room, Streckler-Nelson Gallery in Manhattan, at 7pm this Friday night in February. He got up and introduced himself.

"Those of you who know me know I’m rather fond of medieval literature," he smirked, leading me to reflect wistfully on James Joyce’s snot. While he read, I got up to get some wine.

The lady after him was excellent; she recited from memory a poem about having an orgasm (or was she really just having an orgasm right before our very eyes?). Climax notwithstanding, she used a lot of muted synechdoche and really managed to craft a good poem. Some other people recited some other stuff after her, but I wasn’t paying attention because an orgasm is kind of a tough act to follow. Then the thing was over! I probably should have stuck around to meet people, but true to form, I had a better party to go to, so I bounced. But not before snapping a pic of Lit MILF Elizabeth Dodd:

 

Hot pants, Liz! I mean, Ms. Dodd. Ahem.

I’ll never be one to get up and dance
but I like to watch.
And if you look closely, you might
see me sitting here
swaying to
the same tune as you.

And if you could
meet my lingering glance
halfway
with your own eyes

And if you
could follow
the tip of my smile, like a faded trail on a crinkled map

And if you could feel the tug of my heart, invisible, lovely
like the tides

And if you see my lips, locked up tightly, and if you could read between them

You might
discover me so
by these faint
indirections.

Cherry had literally been dancing all night. It must have been what, 2? Half past 2? She got up from her laptop, with iTunes wide open, dumbly dragged herself to the radio, to the light switch, fumbling with them both til they shut off. She shuffled to her room, baby steps, and disappeared. Chelsea and I looked at each other. She went to go check on Cherry. -Is she out? -Yeah, Chelsea said, gathering her coat and shoes, heading out the door. We exchanged "nice meeting you"-s, then she left and I doubled back to Cherry’s room to check on her myself, and she was on her bed, on her back, totally out of it, catatonic and listless, eyeballs slender white slits through nearly-closed lids, legs slanted off the bed; there she was, the only time I had ever seen her look anything other than absolutely glamorous - I’m thinking of that look she flashed me hours ago, that thing she does when she smiles, with her eyes and with her lips, like tossing sex at me over her shoulder; I will never forget that look as long as I live - anyhoo I picked up her legs and swung them on to the bed, holding her for a moment to make sure she was still breathing, just asleep and not in danger - not that she drank that much but still, I was relieved at the way her stomach pleasantly rose and fell under my hands; for a second I fixate on the hole in her pants (this is her favorite pair), she showed it to me yesterday: a nickel-sized triangle an inch below the knee, then I snap out of it and spread some blankets over her, three or four layers, and I put an extra blanket over her feet (every time she climbs into bed with me her feet are freezing, so I warmly rub mine against her soles while we snuggle and fondle each other), and I look back at her face - the face I couldn’t stop looking at all night long - and her hair, always exploding and falling around her like a burst of fireworks, I take her glasses off, put them on her nightstand, and I kiss her face and whisper "night" into her ear - she won’t remember any of this tomorrow - and I go back to the living room for her coat and her laptop, place it on her other bed, thinking for a moment how nice it would be to get nekkid and crawl into bed right behind her, thinking about the space I can never stop kissing, that space where her neck and shoulders meet, so smooth and sweet like a candy bar, but then what if she wakes up dazed, disoriented, and hung over? She will definitely have one hell of a hangover, all that Jose Cuervo. So I think better of it, don’t want to intrude on her personal space, but before I go, I fidget a pen out of my bag and write on the palm of her left hand: "Call me <3," then I turn the lights off and head out the door.

She’ll wake up in a few hours with a headache, and she’ll call me, or maybe she’ll go to the bathroom and see what’s on her hand after she flicks on the light, then she’ll call me. I’m lighting a cigarette and crunching through last week’s snow. It got cold fast! It was fifty degrees today, but it dropped as soon as night fell, now it’s really chilly, about twenty; I’m passing through a parking lot, and there are four guys standing next to a car under a lamp, one of them - kind of a poindexter - drunkenly trying to goad the others into a fight, but they’re not biting, I overhear. Yes, she’ll call me; the back door to Marlatt swings open, backlighting three girls, all drunk and wobbly, dressed to kill, a boy hugging the back of one of them; I wave Hi as they inch their way out, swaying like cats’ tails against that door. Tomorrow I’ll see her again! She’ll call me first thing in the morning.