10/20/2004 - 4:56 a.m. | i'm so happy you saw my hair wet

I have waited long enough. Now it is simply a matter of recording what few details I do remember from the week, and maybe some of you will be pleased with the results.

I kept meaning - seriously intending - to not drink each night. But then Sunday there was bingo and then Monday I got invited to a party, but I am using the term very loosely there, but hold on to that thought. What happened at bingo? Kyle kept making crude vaginas and penises out of Play-Doh and offering them to Tony. I managed to win (or haggle for) a bottle of imposter Michael Jordan cologne (because everyone has been craving that smell, right?) called "Regal" and a plastic velociraptor. Bad idea giving something flammable and something burnable to a drunk guy with a lighter. Smacko kept spraying people with the Regal and it was like hell. I made it to Full Body Shambo with Number 77 (It is very important for me to note that it was I who originally called her that, and you should keep that in mind at all times), who had won two weeks in a row. I was not about to let her lose three and ignored Kyle and Shelly's intensely confusing signals to me. We raced for the bus. Jen from the candy store invited me to a party at her place. She already had warned me that there wouldn't be many people there, but I thought maybe Anna from the candy store somehow would, and how can I not be at least a little bit of a tease hahaha what. Anyway, besides me and Jen, there were 2 people there. And a lot more alcohol than is required for 4 people. I was tricked by green apple shots into thinking they were candy, and Jen was tipsss as fuck, so I got out of there before she got any notions. While chatting with Missy, I walked to the gas station and bought a can of bean dip, which I ate in its entirety before passing out on the couch until Shelly came out at 5 or 6. "Hello, I am an unpleasant blob. Good night!"

I had an advertising history test I should have been plenty worried about. I did take the time to buy the books and all... even gave reading them a shot, but it was too, too much, and I am too easily distracted. "Want to go to Old Navy?" Not particularly. "Off we go then!" So, I went into the thing feeling far less prepared than I would have liked. Luckily, and I am very lucky at times, and I should acknowledge this more often, the test was of short answer questions, which I actually prefer in a lot of cases. I lined up my 2's and 3's and fucked him some. Somewhere in the process I downloaded "Are You Jimmy Ray?" Sadder still was how I had to listen to some songs (Mason Jennings' "The Mountain" and Annie's "Heartbeat") on their respective official homepages because I am not clever enough to find legitimate mp3s anymore. And then I got hosed on the purchase of a really sweet Avril poster, which I suppose many of you would consider a positive thing, not having to spend eight to ten dollars on a German magazine foldout that I do not need in any way, but you've never been in love, have you? I have a little list in my Favorites folder of things I want to buy, but it never seems to grow smaller, and my paychecks are disturbingly infrequent. However, the lime green jersey sheets are too important to my existence to not be considered. BUY THEM FOR ME The list in itself I find sort of interesting: Skinny ties, weirdass cigar poster reprint, mudflap girl silver necklace, skull ring (cute one, though - not scary), hilarious secret message Avril shirt. My materialism is so bizarre.

One night I really wanted hashed browns, so I convinced Kyle to go with me to Perkins. There, I kept adding onto what became one of the stranger meals in my life: Apricot teriyaki salmon, hashed browns, mac and cheese, and a huge jug of orange juice. I do not even understand my motivation for the fish - I do not really like fish, and this was weird mass produced chain restaurant fish. Too much teriyaki, and they should really do something about eliminating that brown spine part that makes everything taste so, so fishy. All in all, the meal cost me like $12 or something, which could have gotten me a decent entree somewhere else or 2 - 3 cheap fast mood meals that would fill me with uncontrolled happiness in themselves. It was nice to hang out with just Kyle, though. This is no offense to Shelly, of course - I would hang out with my significant other if she was anywhere within 500 miles, but sometimes I miss the late night Kyle and Nate adventures.

One of these nights, Shelly had a bunch of people from her club over for a barbeque. It was rainy and gross, and there were quite a few strangers in the house. Strangers who I felt I should be entertaining, because no one else seemed to be leaping towards the job. Not an easy task, as they were all as awkward as fuck, as awkward as fuck to the point where I seemed like the Grand Entertainer by comparison. Is it bad that I still think like a single person? I mean, even as a single person, I never acted on any of these thoughts pretty much ever - I was always much happier when I stumbled ass-backwards into things - but what of the thoughts? I dunno, it would seem I am a very committed person, either to being in a serious relationship or in avoiding them at all costs. Of course, I am happier now, much, but I feel like I could have gone on pretty much forever as an alone person. Alone in the cosmic snese. Meanwhile, Missy was in Colorado riding mechanical bulls and stealing Rhett Miller's setlist - I am so envious!! Meanwhile meanwhile, Spritz, who I thought might be finally free, does not actually want to be free, I think, and now I see none of him all over again. His motivations make sense, I suppose, but it doesn't make the loss any better. Kyle and Shelly and I played shitty SNES "Jeopardy" for a while, which made me really happy. The system sucked so, so much, but I won and danced to the endless looping theme song because I feel so mentally superior to everyone. I was supposed to go to a meeting, actually went to the meeting really, but Fat Bitch decided to e-mail us an hour before hand, after everyone had finally FINALLY agreed upon a time to go, "Uh, I'm busy let's reschedule." I know, making fun of her for being fat is way obvious, and I should be far beyond that, but I am a sucker for the classics. There is no timeline to any of this because I do not remember it. I learned Photoshop while talking on the phone. To be completely honest, I really only like my creative advertising course, because that is sort of what I am interested in (after farming in Belize with the Peace Corps, of course!) and it's also the thing I feel most naturally suited for, and I sort of wish I could get on with being a grownup already, but I know I would regret it as soon as it happened, so I take it back.

On Friday, I was all set to leave to go to Kansas after I had crossed the guard but got sort of impatient with that arrangement and had Shelly sub for me instead. God bless you, Michelle, for helping me to screw the system. The drive was actually fairly nice - I got to see the sun along the way for the first time in about a week. I only got a little lost maybe once or twice, but I blame road signs for not preparing me adequately. They tell you three or four times when an exit is coming, but they don't let on which way is north or south until right when you're there. Oops. Well, I'm an idiot. When I was driving through St. Louis in the crazy rush hour traffic, this fucking big plastic sheet flew across the road and onto my windshield. Pretty much that led to a half hour straight of me yelling. I couldn't see, so I rolled down the window and tried to tug the sheet down a little at least. That done, I tried to tug the fucker off the front of the car, but it wasn't budging, and I wasn't going to pull over just because of some uppity bit of plastic, so I just kept tugging on the thing, holding on for dear life as the wind whipped both it and my arm all around, my poor hand locked in a death claw, the flapping sound drowned out only by my alternating swears and singing. It must have been a strange sight for the other cars. I finally reeled the thing in, and it has been living under my seat ever since. Fucker thought it was gonna kill me? You're miiiiine now, bitcht! You live with me! I'm going to draw eyes on you!

I got to Missy's at 8:30, but when I knocked on her door, no one was home. Remembering that she was out to dinner with her friends for one of their birthdays, I was suddenly struck by a big old unusual chunk of social anxiety and could absolutely not come to terms with calling her up and crashing even more of their plans. This was all done with their best interests in mind, but when they found me dozing under a pile of coats in my car, they might have thought it a little odd. I came up, and they started giving Ashley her birthday gifts. Luckily, I knew ahead of time about this little thing and, not to be outdone, I bought her a pretty sweet bandana from a gas station with a skull and lightning on it. Missy's roommate and her boyfriend bought a lizard recently and feed it live crickets, which chirp constantly and annoy the hell out of everyone. I like the lizard, though. She feels like gummi worms and rolls around like a torpedo sometimes. We watched The Girl Next Door, and I am glad because I had felt truly left out having not seen it. AH I CANT SLEEP AND IT SMELLS LIKE URINE

POSSIBLE BECAUSE OF THE CUP OF URINE ON THE TABLE HERE

Ted Leo tries to soothe me. "But Nate!" he says. "I am the most perfect! You should sit still and listen to me sing." Deal. Lover. Did I like that movie I said we watched? Uh, well, it made me want to try ecstacy, does that count? Timothy Olyphant should have been played by Johnny Knoxville, but I sort of think everyone should be played by Johnny Knoxville. For her birthday, Ashley got a huge bag of just vanilla Tootsie Rolls and a really fat fish and this horrible, horrible papier mache clown balloon thing that would make nearly anyone cry. But not us! No! We merely glared. Piss! This is not the well-organized movie review I had planned upon.

Um, obviously, I shall leave out any lovey dovey stuff between Melissa and myself, because I doubt you have any desire to know of such. "And then his calloused hand snaked down to the heaving mass that was her ample bosom." Oh Christ. However, just ask around if you were to really care. You would learn soon enough of my inability to please a woman. Hahahaha. I've been thinking about tricking McKinley into giving me Viagra. Would that work? I explained my plan to Spritz. He was like, "What the hell would we do with Viagra?" "Go dancing..... In sweatpants." Suddenly, he understood. That's all I have to say about that.

I wish I could say we did lots of crazy, exciting things, but God, we were in Kansas, for Christ's sake. Missy and I were unmotivated, and Tracy (also in attendance) has been in sort of a funk and was not about to suggest anything herself. So we just watched pretty much the entire first season of "Arrested Development," which to me was totally worth the time. Best show since "Scrubs," I'd say. I'm downloading it now, so that's why Kyle and Spritz have something to bitch about. I feel like I'm giving the people what they want. Eventually the rest of the large crowd of girls I was suddenly immersed in returned, and we went out grocery shopping, for drinking and pasta supplies. My eyes are tired, but I will keep writing (blind) until this son-of-a-bitch is done, for when I make a promise, I am going to stick to the motherfucker. OK, maybe not. Everyone else was interested in the Nintendo (and perhaps I might be, if "Back to the Future" wasn't so fucking impossible - damn you, pink shirt Biff! Was that even Biff?), and Missy doesn't know how to cook, so I was mostly in charge of the pasta. Needless to say, it was fucking awesome. Tomato cream sauce - needed vodka, but all that we had was being scrounged out for the two mystery flavored Jello shots we were making for the evening. Your choices are green or reddish! Enjoy!

And then, suddenly, I am in this fucking huge SUV full of people from Kansas I do not know at all. Missy was not there; the closest person I knew was her roommate's boyfriend, who had insisted that I come along for the alcohol buying trip. Not really sure why (Sean D. would not be making an appearance, as the out of state chubby kid who barely looks like me seemed difficult to sneak under radar); I guess it was supposed to be a guy thing. They (John; the buyer; his girlfriend, the chub; Captain America in the back - what they called him; and the guy with a huge beard and not entirely working legs so he had those wrist cuff crutches) just kept talking about how much whiskey I would be drinking that evening. "I do not really enjoy whiskey." "This does not matter to us!" It was completely surreal for me, and I had at least occasional feelings that I would be shot and left in a riverbed somewhere. Luckily, they shifted their attention from the Wild Turkey to what is apparently my new favorite thing: carbombs. For the uneducated like myself, take half a bottle of Guiness or so in a big mug, drop in a shot of Bailey's, chug. Sounds sort of horrible, but I swear to God it tastes like chocolate milk. This could lead to trouble, I suppose, but I kept my senses about me and kept juicing lemons for everyone else. Their sneaky efforts to get me plastered through the consumption of an entire mug of gin were combated by the fact that I know what a mug of gin tastes like. Meanwhile, Missy, a pretty darn tiny girl herself, was fairly well smashed by the time I arrived home, to the point where she'd be standing and occasionally would just tumble over. In a cute way, I mean, though. Missy's friend Pat come over with a bunch of his friends (two of whom had never met before but were somehow wearing the same God awful purple Adidas track jacket - you'd think one of them would give in and take it off, but nope - too cool for that shit), setting up conflict for the rest of the evening, because Missy's roommate and friends did not like them drinking the alcohol, which they hid, and I think everyone was sort of pissed off, except for maybe me, because I did not care who got the bottle of tequilla, as long as it wasn't me. Eventually, a good portion of the people cleared out, leaving Pat, Missy, me, Tracy, Ashley, and a few of her sorority sisters, who I kept making fun of. "Tee hee!" That's right, enjoy it! We were playing a modified version of this fairly stupid drinking game Ashley had gotten for her birthday. Essentially, it was this book of either-or questions ("Would you rather be a porn star or guidance counselor?"); the person reading the question took a position, everyone voted, and those who had not agreed with the person reading had to drink. Mostly I liked revealing far too much infortmation about myself. Self-exploration and all that. Incidentally, Missy gave me this little tiny cow you put in water and is supposed to grow 600%. I think it's frozen to death in my car, though. Piss. And then there was me being the drunk pseudo-spiritualist you all know and love. "You know..." he slurs. "If I hadn't seen Clay Pigeons, we wouldn't be together." That's only one in a list of a million, but it seemed really important at the time.

Missy eventually gave up on being a good hostess and passed out, and then we just had another pretty lazy day together. Leftovers and 2 of 3 Back to the Future movies and I dunno - no pressure. And I guess that's what I like. Not really much to tell, but it certainly didn't seem boring to me. Oh - incidentally, this is us:

I remember lying in bed on Saturday thinking how nice it was to be well-rested and what a contrast it was going to be with Sunday night as I was driving back. How right he was. I left at around 9:30, seat supposedly stuck all the way leaned back. See, I had put it back when I was sleeping in the car on Friday, and since my car has weird electrical problems as it is, I sort of thought maybe there wasn't enough power to get it up. 20 minutes of trying different positions and shoving shit behind my back before I finally decided to test the switch in the other direction. Idiot. As I started to drive, it pretty quickly became clear that I would be following this God damn insane monsoon all the way home. Lightning striking like half a mile away from me, rain pouring down making it impossible to see when the road was curving, so on and such. You'd think that would provide enough adrenaline to keep me motivated, but nope. Nate's eyes grew droopy. Before I had left (while we were looking at her "art" from the class she had to take), Missy said that a friend had told her that sucking on suckers helps keeps you awake. Against the idea of drinking coffee and then trying to pee in a bottle in the middle of Typhoon Alley, I decided to give it a shot. Unfortunately, high quality suckers are not the forte of most major gas stations. I got this shitty bag of things, fake Blow Pops, called Sonic Booms or something, and quickly imagined (and acted out) the following conversation between two candy scientists. "What do you think?" "Hmmm... well, they do taste just like Blow Pops, but.... do you think you could add the taste of human asshole?" "Yes. Definitely." Somehow, despite this (or because of it - damn my fondness for the flavor of rectum!), I finished the bag and was fading fast. Nearly all of my darkest fears have been quelled or at least sort of controlled, but I fear car accidents with a hidden tenacity that few would expect. I don't talk much about it. Reluctantly, I pulled into the next rest stop I came upon and pulled over to take a little nap. I allotted myself two hours time but with the storm and the creepy yellow lights and the constant sound of cars coming and going, doors slamming, and whatever - not to mention the ever present threat of crazed, horny truck drivers punching through the glass and choking me, finally getting the half-hearted erection they so desperately longed for - I did not think I would be getting much sleep. I guess the Avril Lavigne poster tube I grabbed for protection afforded me a much greater sense of security than I would have thought, for I slept nearly three hours before finally lurching up and back on the road. Once again, St. Louis was the bane of my journey. Even at 6 in the morning, traffic was pretty heavy and insane, not much aided by the complete blinding rain and the spray of every single semi in the entire world (I have gradually started to foster an immense hatred of semi trucks, especially ones who think they can probably pass things. Semi trucks should have no rights, thinks I. And deisigns a bumper sticker to match). Anyway, the nice thing about the trip is that all I have to do is stay on 70 and I'll get home fine. Well, somehow in St. Louis, 70 just decides to mysteriously disappear. It's all good, I'm on it, fine and swell, and suddenly this fork comes in the road, and neither one of them is 70, it would seem. I get on the one, 170 it eventually turns out, and somehow get caught in this insane loop where I backtrack to all the way where I was before, ten minutes earlier, back on 70 again. Fine, I made a mistake. "This time, though!" I say confidently. 70, 70, 70, 70, 70, 170. Wait, what? What? Somehow, perhaps lost in the process where I am gradually figuring out that I have seen all these things before and have actually looped back to myself, I manage to do it again. Take random other highway, get the fuck out.

As it gets brighter, it gets easier to stay up, but I'm still two hours away, with only an hour til I cross the guard. I pester everyone (sorry!) and finally manage to track down my boss so I give her the weakest excuse you could possibly imagine. Well, whatever. I make it home, absolutely wiped, and with this test I have seemingly agreed to take at 9:30. It is 9 o'clock. I stumble into the bathroom and look in the mirror. THE DEAD WALK You can always tell when I am really tired because my floater eye will start to go really far up. Between that and my insane, unwashed hair, gross ass facial hair, and the usual disgustingness that is my face, I looked about ready to just crawl into my grave then and there. No dice, however. One has to fake knowledge of advertising. The good news is that I made it to my 9:30 class on time. The bad news is that my 9:30 class is actually an 11 o'clock class, proof that maybe I should attend the thing once in a while. Rather than sleep, I, the stupid idiot, reads movie reviews for an hour or so, finally stumbling in to take a reasonable guess on 40 multiple choice questions. I don't worry, however, because there is a makeup for this test at the end of the semester, and hopefully I should be a little more fit to walk amongst humans at that point. Lurch back home, delay sleep some more, and then work for the rest of the night. Kind of a depressing evening, mostly because I got a voicemail from Hot Topic while I was there about how I was supposed to be working a shift at the same time. It seems that in my haste to get this weekend covered, I hadn't really given a close look to my schedule for the rest of the week. "They never have me work weekdays," he says ominously at the time. Fucking idiot. Well, prospects of holding onto that job aren't great. Fuck. I guess I couldn't really handle the two jobs as well as I had thought, because I was always shafting one of the other. Still, I felt pretty bad for letting people (need a list? pick one) down, and even the prospect of my long-lobbied-for gummi lobsters didn't cheer me up. Tastes like raspberry, smells like piss! Enjoy! With little else to do, I drove to KFC after work. "May I help you?" "I would like your largest order of mashed potatoes, please." That + Beast Light + Hootie and the Blowfish (not just their first CD - sophomore effort as well!) put me in a better mood, but I still dunno what to do. The candy store job was not the one I planned on keeping.

I slept off my sorrows and then drove around for a while today, shopping for something, I guess. (I am clean for the first time in three days!) New Ted Leo CD with additional searches for lime green jersey sheets, a good negative face watch, a cute vorpal ring for cheap. At least I found the main one. While at Best Buy, I ran into the guy from the Geek Squad who offered me a job. I doubt he remembers me, though. Still, the prospect cheered me up a bit. Date night was postponed hopefully for only a day, and I sat around doing... well, I'm not sure what, for most of this evening. Eating ice cream sandwiches and watching "Talk Sex." Reading useless things on the internet. Whatever else. There. We are nearly square again. Now come clean my room or give me a hug.