06/12/2005 - 1:29 a.m. | day the third

My self-esteem is rock bottom today; I look in the mirror and everything seems just wrong. My hair seems gross, the glasses frame my face wrong, I look pale and undead, the hickey is just large beyond belief, I�m too fat (Now you really know something�s up). I need to get some color in my skin and maybe a haircut. And several thousand dollars so maybe I can feign a life of opulence.

It is also very surreal that Amy is blasting Christmas carols on, um, let�s see, June 11th.

The plan was for me to get up sometime this morning and make lunch for me and Missy, so I could bring it to her at work. She did not phone me with when this was, however, instead opting to call her mom who pounded on my door at 11:20 and told me to be there by 12. Maybe that�s why I feel so nasty; I did not have enough wasted time in the shower to feel beautiful about myself. I hurriedly rush around making sandwiches. Missy�s mom calls from the living, �Are you sure that bread is still good?� Yes, it is fine. No, it was not fine, in fact, but only on my sandwich, and the mold was easily picked off.

I was also all depressed when I wandered about this little suburban consumer paradise after Missy had gone back to work. I ain�t ever gonna have no damn bills, I tell you what, and I will forever ever ever be in debt, that�s just the sad truth.

I drove around for a while trying to avoid being alone in the Barmann household with, you know, the Barmanns. It�s weird being back in a world with parents and assumed responsibilities. Like, every single time Missy goes out, she has to tell them where and when and why, and it seems sort of strange to me. True, if I were the one at home, I�d be doing the same things, but it�s strange to be indoctrinated to that world once again. Anyway, her dad was waiting on me to arrive, I guess, before he could leave, and I felt sort of guilty about that. So I took a nap.

Later, I went with Mrs. Barmann and Amy to visit Missy at work and� you know, I�m really not feeling this. Perhaps because Amy is actually in the room here with me while Missy sleeps, and she won�t stop talking. She has a strange fascination with dates, birthdays especially, so she spends her time writing them down for the people she knows and then asking me what they would want for their presents. Over and over so that now even I know that Mr. and Mrs. Barmann�s anniversary is May 27th and that baby Gracie was born on July 8. On the drive to the mall, Missy�s mother again brought up my lack of daytime employment, mentioning that perhaps I should try and get back into retail. Call it intuition, but I am beginning to think that she thinks I am freeloading off of Missy. Be that as it may, I will never enter another mall as an employee, this I swear.

Anyway, once we had seen reaped the benefit of some of Missy�s employee discount (I got a magic wallet!), we came home to get all dolled up for the Ted Leo concert. I don�t know what inspired us, but we looked like a total preppie couple. Or, to be more specific, something of the page of a J. Crew catalogue. She wore a strapless dress, and I had a buttoned-up linen shirt like thousands of other college guys out there. We would not be blending in with the indie crowd tonight!

On the way out of town, I bought a quart of chocolate milk at the gas station for $1.59. $1.59 for 880 calories? Oh hell yes! Cheapest meal I ever saw, motherfucker! Tracy�s aunt and uncle were out of town for the weekend, and as their dog caretaker during that period, Tracy saw it was in her best interest to invite her friends over that night to get trashed. We weaved through their suburban hell for a while, as we were early, and I made Missy stop at some trendy juice place to get me a glass of carrot juice. I�d never had carrot juice before, and it�s sort of doubtful I will again, as I don�t think I like things being liquid but tasting like a solid.

Man, what a poorly-written entry today. It would probably be best if I just waited for another day and do the whole thing right, but might as well keep plugging along.

It is always fun to explore somewhere you do not belong in at all. Tracy�s relatives are that rare combination of vast wealth and little taste that leads to the absolute best kind of hilarity. They have this absolutely huge house, but every room in it was a tragedy, each worse than the previous. So much teal (Who fucking really likes teal, honestly?) and tacky furniture and big murals of flowers and even the daughter was a spaz with her Orlando Bloom posters. The dog was there and clearly retarded, as he somehow managed to get himself stuck in a corner of the loveseat for a good five minutes. Missy and I warded off his idiotic affections, just like I�d probably do with any of you cretins.

We went out for Mexican in Lawrence with Frank and Tracy � Roadside Tacos, it was called. Charming name (reminiscent of Roadkill Tacos), and the food was drenched in what I can only assume were Kraft Singles (�They make a Mexican shredded cheese blend? This is the solution to all our problems!�), but the main draw was that they would serve pretty much anyone anything. Here you go, Melissa Barmann. Clearly you are 12 years old � here are your two beers. Margaritas were 2 for 1, so Tracy and I partook. She got quite tipsy for a while and had to be actively prevented from rocking out on the table to the Spin Doctors. Of all people.

Missy, concerned that I really do think she has no friends, invited all of her remaining social contacts to the concert, many of whom actually showed up. This included her friend Kristy from work (who is so supercute that I cannot even fathom it) and her former-redhead friend Janelle (who strangely has been turning up in all of my sexual fantasies lately� Why can I not get off without you?!?!?! That�s not one to write home about) and all their respective boy things and that. Frank recently went to New York and happened to buy a fake ID while he was there, so he took a risk and bought a beer as Jeff Gertak (or something) from Boulder, Colorado. Jesus, dude � at least pick a surname that doesn�t sound like a He-man villain. But he got served and later so did I. I thought we were on some kind of roll until the managers emptied the bar of everyone so that tickets and IDs could be checked. As the stoner bouncer started making the two thick X�s on each of Missy�s hands, he noted that if she were to erase them, both a puppy and a kitty would be destroyed. He did not say this to me, however, so I felt no guilt in licking them off seconds later. The marker poisoning should be enough.

Unfortunately, rock and roll does not run on a schedule, so even though we arrived at 8 when the show was supposed to start, 10 o�clock quickly rolled around with no sign of even a shitty opening band. Most of the friends grew tired of waiting and went off somewhere to drink margaritas, but we true loyalists stayed behind.

Eventually, our efforts were rewarded� with the aforementioned shitty opening band. They were called Aloha, and they played one eternity-length 45 minute set. Their little gimmick was a constant shift of both instruments and the musicians who played them. First the keyboard guy turns around to play one of the drums. Then the drummer and the keyboarder switch instruments. Then the drummer moves to the xylophone while the singer / guitarist moves to the keyboard and shifts another drum over. And on and on and on until the bassist had a tambourine and the drummer was hitting the xylophone with the guitar. All very impressive, I�m sure, but the fact remains that each of your songs sucked huge balls. Slow piano buildup to crashing and maybe the guy was trying to sing, I couldn�t really hear them. Whatever. We took it as an opportunity to cement our position at the front, as no one else was eager to hang around.

The next band (�The Oranges Band�) was light years better in terms of overall musical ability (and they dressed less like artfags too) and could rock out pretty well, but you were still well aware why they would never be a headlining band. They could not create a catchy single to save their lives. I mean, they had some OK �riffs� or whatever, and I loved the crazy ADD guitarist who jolted around the stage like the guitar was controlling him (He looked like he was being electrocuted, all twitching and seizurey all over the place and sometimes he would stop playing and grab on like the guitar was gonna buck him), but hit making was not in their job description. To be succinct (sort of), they needed a real frontman � a Rhett or an Arthur to get the shit done.

By the time the second band had ended, the tiny little place was crowded as all hell and as a result was very, very warm. Missy was sort of mad at me because I had let some apparently pretty girl in next to me. I had not even noticed that she was pretty; I was too busy contemplating any innuendo in her query as to whether there was �room to squeeze in.� Yes, folks, that�s right. I am a sucker, a big huge sucker, for female attention of any sort. Well, except that perfectly round beast who was also standing next to me for a time a time. Please don�t try to wear human clothes; you are not fooling anyone. I will cut some holes in a 39 gallon garbage bag, and you can slip that on.

Ted Leo and his Pharmacists finally got underway a little after midnight, which meant they could only play for about an hour. Stupid bar laws; I would gladly have axed (literally, though� murdered them with an ax) one of the openers to get an extra 45 minutes with Mr. Leo. But since the crowd was mostly filled with scenesters and artfags anyway, so they wouldn�t know any of the more obscure songs like WE TRUE FANS GOD DAMN IT PLAY DIRTY OLD TOWN It was a pretty high energy show, though � perhaps a little too high energy in some parts, as some retards apparently decided the crowd of frail nerds pretty much constituted a moshpit. People were getting knocked all over the place, and nobody could really do anything about it (as shoving them back was more or less what they wanted), so it was good when Ted Leo jumped in with an authoritative �YO� I would have expected no less. He went on to clarify that Lawrence, KS, is �the land of a thousand dances� (this must be a lie) and that while 992 of them were great, 8 were absolutely awful for everyone around. And then he compared the moshers to jocks, and nothing will upset an artfag like that, so it settled down quick.

And thank God he cringed when people started shouting for �Since U Been Gone.� You do not want something like that to become Your Thing.

It was a decent show � too much new stuff for me, I guess � but the experience overall was really fun. Between all the people and the nonstop jumping about, I don�t think I�ve ever been so sweaty in my life. Even Missy was so soaked that her cute little dress is still soaked the next day. This awful little nugget wanted a piece of me the whole show, and I would not even glance at her (perhaps thereby suggesting to her little hamster brain that I was halfway interested), instead ignoring as she smashed various parts of her body onto mine. Boobs slid up and down back and hand to ass are fairly standard (and nauseating), but the head to shoulder combo was going to get her knocked out, I thought. And damn it all if when she burped it didn�t smell worse than Missy�s farts even. When something can outrank B.O., you know you are dealing with a hardcore funk.

After the show, we all headed back to Tracy�s aunt and uncle�s place to get our drink on. Of course, it was nearly 3 by then, so this spelled great idea all over. Frank kept saying over and over how he was going to be up all night, up all night. He of course immediately passed out. In an effort to wake him back up, someone made a combination of coffee and rum that was pretty much the most horrid thing ever devised. Let me repeat that, in case you were ever so inspired: Coffee + Rum = Nightmare. I dug through Little Girl�s toys downstairs and came up with a suction cup bow and arrow set. I quickly found Missy an apple to plant on her head and took my best shots. Not an accurate system, that. I was drunk enough to not mind petting the stupid dog.

I presented a new, interesting side of myself to this crowd when I discovered Nick GaS on the relatives� digital cable. Since no one else seemed to be interested in anything besides more margaritas, I sat on the couch for the next hour, cussing at the TV. �Fuck you, you cunt! You�ll never win the Video Challenge that way, you stupid bitch! Just go blow Marc already, all right!� Finally someone came over and asked what I was doing, and I explained (fairly buzzed), �This is what you do when you watch old Nickelodeon game shows! You swear at the boys and lust after the girls, no matter how nasty they are! That is what you do!� They mostly left me alone after that. Besides, some other people drunk drove their way over and were systematically trying to destroy the house, diverting some attention away from me and my game show heckling-related antics. Missy and I slept in some ugly old guest room with a bed as hard as a rock. But at least it was together. SIN

The day after drinking I always try to convince Missy that she did something ludicrous the night before. �Yeah, girl, you put that atrocious lampshade from the room upstairs on your head and started dancing around on the table, calling yourself the Queen of Rock and Roll. I tried to pull you off, but you told me not to be a square and started tossing handfuls of generic Chex mix about the room, claiming it was not a party without confetti.� She did not believe me, and we did our best to recreate the precise arrangement of the blankets and such as they were the night before..

Back at the Barmanns�, the day was spent watching the first season of �America�s Next Top Model� in its entirety (Bless you, VH1) and feverently praying that I did not actually have to work that night, as I was not going to make it back by that point anyway. See, my genius boss had not e-mailed out any schedules past the 11th, so I e-mailed her a couple days earlier to make sure I was cool for this weekend. Unfortunately, she was out of town herself and did not e-mail back until today, only saying that she would sent out the schedule sometime today, which did not really answer my questions. You run a tight ship there, Linds! Did I already say that? Anyway, turns out I was cool, so I had plenty of time to be sucked into the car wreck that was �America�s Next Top Model.� Knowing the eventual winner did nothing to stave my interest, as I kept on with it for the next 9 hours or so. I like how �diva� has become codeword for �fag� and I also like how absolutely dumb religious people came off as in pretty much all situations. Honestly there Lord, you could picked some slightly better people to spread your Word, as right now you�ve got yourself some megacretins. There were like three of them on the show, and they all came off as hypocritical bitches, only using religion when it could be used in their favor and the rest of the time being as awful as anyone else I�ve ever seen. Not exactly Christlike, you know? Anyway, I got to see lots of partially-exposed boobies and hear Tyra Banks say stupid pseudoghetto things (Hint: I am blacker than Tyra Banks), so I�m happy as a boy can be.

I don�t know if everyone in the Barmann household is stir crazy or what, but there was some palpatable tension in the air tonight. Maybe it�s just that all of the at-home Barmanns are sort of ill pretty much all the time and sometimes it gets to them, I dunno. Whatever it was, it made for some awkward dinner conversation tonight. Missy was talking about going to see the Old 97�s in Chicago in mid-July and her dad, normally as sweet as anybody I know, did this whole girlcode sigh thing, obviously displeased with the whole situation. I dunno, pretty soon everybody seemed mad at everybody else, and I could not even understand why because no one would actually spell out. So instead of course I thought it was my fault, that they were mad at Missy because she was spending all her time and money on me, this freeloader person who would not leave (Missy indeed wanting me to hang about an extra day now). And everyone was mean to Amy, still talking about birthdays and her paychecks and what kind of dessert they like. Even Missy, who is more tolerant of this sort of thing than everyone. I mean, this is her field, right? She should be used to this Rainman stuff. And it�s not like I can say anything because I�m not an actual member of this family, I�m just some douche who eats up all their meatballs and steals their daughter�s money, so I�m just sitting there in this oppressive silence, wanting to run out the door or something. Yeah, definitely want another day here, ma�am! I at least have to stay long enough for a shower, having not washed myself since Saturday morning, even though last night I was sweating like Kyle Wild a fat person eating themselves into a frenzy. I look like a wonder, I can assure you.