07/10/2005 - 9:39 p.m. | i just keep wipin' and wipin'

I will write you a story! A rather boring story, about my weekend. But then, it is never boring because Kyle Wild is there! I said, "It sucks playing second banana to a first banana who isn't all that exciting..." He told me to fuck right off because everything he does is exciting, from his video games to his eating to... well, that's about it. We call it a new spin on life, folks, and we guarantee you'll love it!

I will eventually write to you about my job, how it was acquired, and what I actually do there. All you need to know, though, is that it sucks out my soul every moment I am there. They <3 paperwork more than pedophiles <3 tiny babies. And the thing is, I am getting exposed to their insane system, so now the madness is starting to make sense to me. It's like if Alice hung out in Wonderland long enough, eventually she'd be all, "This is not all that curious!" "Pretty standard things about here!" So now it is to the point where I am like, "Yes, it makes perfect sense I file everything in triplicate, and the piles without order suddenly have both a rhyme and reason," and I already think the place is make me uglier. Physically uglier - we are not being obtuse here. I was like, "Man, I am the most attractive person by far here" when I started, but it is already starting to twist and bend my form until I am just another one of them, and I will start sucking the new new guy's soul in. In short, my complexion is not fantastic, fellows. Uhhh... what was I saying?

THE WEEKEND! AH YES! I was looking forward to it all week... working for it, as the song might suggest, and then it finally came and is nearly gone again. Being a quasi-grownup can suck my nuts. I could still take the summer off and volunteer for clinical trials... Is it weird that that is the hope that keeps me going? On Friday night, Shelly was at work and Spritz was with A or B, so it was just me and Kyle Home Alone. "Want to get drunk and play Star Wars on the N64?" "Yes." Which is what we did, perhaps frightening Shanks, Becky, and Andy away with our antics, I don't know. We invented a new drink, though! We hit up Schnucks, originally for something good, then for something cheap, and boy did we ever score a winner! You start with Evan Williams Kentucky Bourbon (Here is a picture of the Evan Williams line, all posed together like an alcoholic family), which is the most blatant ripoff of Jack Daniels I have ever seen, from the shape of the bottle to the design of the label to the name of the product itself. Anyway, we took that and a 99 cent 3-liter bottle of Vess Cola and mixed them up in equal proportions to create the ultimate asshole drink: Vanessa Williams. Kyle downed it just fine, if a little pained, but I seem to have some issues with "brown liquor" (I put it in quotes because I feel like white trash if I use the phrase unironically) as it tastes like shoes or beef jerky or something. Also, no matter how little I have, it seems to give me a stabbing hangover the next day regardless. Anyway, we sat around and drank, and Kyle would not shut up about me keeping up with him, but that felt pretty much physicially impossible as I would shudder and bristle with even a medium-sized sip and he would just down more and more. More unnerving still was that aim in Goldeneye never waivered. I started off weaving all over the place, mashing the trigger and praying for a hit (I am a lost childe of the D-pad generation), and I thought he would eventually sink down to my skill level. His words were like foam in his mouth, but they remained words like, "You got hosed, biatch!"

That was an awkward phrase; let's start a new paragraph and move on with our painful existence.

Shelly eventually came home, exhausted, but before she could get the first sip of beer in her and make her excuses (e.g. "I'm too drunk to drive!"), Kyle and I forced her to drive us from Wendy's to Wendy's until we found the one that was still serving baked potatoes. You forgot my sour cream, though, bitch! Kyle was dialing pretty much everyone in his phone at random (including a nice mid-coital interruption of his other chubby ex-girlfriend), but he wasn't gone enough to not notice the two chicken nuggets Shelly sneaked from her. There is no worse thing you can do than try to steal Kyle Wild's food. He would not shut up about it for the rest of the night - even though Shelly would owe him five whole chicken nuggets in the future, he was upset that he could not have those other two nuggets right now. I did not even try to mediate. They eventually went to sleep, and I sat alone playing the darkened hell that is "Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire." That isn't quite as dark and dramatic as I had hoped for, is it?

The next day, I emerged, aforementioned hangover in tow, and played some more of that damn game. I was getting to that point where I was all depressed that I am the worst at games, but moments earlier I just watched Shelly attempt the second level of "Goldeneye," and all I can say is, O Lord, thank You for not making me a girl. She remains in that stage where she is amazed that she is controlling a Video Person and - as such - she does not want anything to happen to her virtual friend. Therefore, she crawls through the levels at a painful stutter, tiptoeing around in baby steps and carefully lining up her shots for the kill. But God forbid someone ever get the fall on her. She ran into this room a little too fast, and there was a guy, so she screamed - actually SCREAMED - and carried on doing so for an extended period of time as more bad guys proceeded to file in. She started weaving about crazily, firing at random and hitting no one, spinning around and screaming, always screaming. I will keep it in mind that she is not the type of person to have around in any high stress situation. Actually, I'm making a note on my zombie book synopsis right now.

Shelly started picking up the house a little bit while I sat there and told her what a futile effort it was, that no one cared and that it was going to be bad in a matter of hours and so on... but then she tried to take 28 of my cents that I had left on the floor in an area clearly designated as my own, but she kept insisting it could be anyone's and put it in her change jars, and I was forced to repeatedly threaten her with broken legs before she gave it back. I then grabbed anything else she might claim as her own and ran upstairs. I grabbed this dollar sitting on Kyle's desk too, moaning, "This could be anyone's. In fact, I do believe it fell through a hole in my floor down here, and it just happened to land on Kyle's desk, so by divine right, it is mine, and so is your desk." She was not amused.

We went out for lamps or something at Wal-mart. It was a good weekend for seeing odd service people outside of their typical sectors. Saturday, Shelly and I saw Brenda the Gas Station Troll at Wal-mart (with a man?!?!?!?) and today Kyle and I kept running into hot single mom cashier from Wendy's. It should be noted that Shelly loves Wal-mart too much for her good. I'm actually going to mark that down on the zombie sheet as well. I have to agree that the crazy octopus power strip she bought was probably worth the ten bucks.

As we were driving home (and as I was enjoying the particularly choice DJ on the Planet that afternoon), I spotted this ogre I was about to make fun of on Lincoln. Oh no, wait. That is my best friend and roommate, Kyle Wild. You need to shave, motherfucker. I don't care how much you think you look like Riker. Shelly ran off to work, and Kyle and I soon followed her there to reap the benefits of having a man on the inside... of Ned Kelly's Steakhouse. I ordered lemon wedge on top of lemon wedge until my "water" was the greatest glass of lemonade of all time. As predicted, I ordered the Saturday night All-U-Can-Eat catfish. I'd been told that no one had ever actually ordered a second plate, which sounds like a challenge to me, no? The fish was... not great... but it was tolerable, and I kept commanding more, more, long after I had been full. Where did this mystery fish go, you ask? Through a complex smuggling operation in the bathroom, I shoved a whole piece of catfish into my pants (wrapped in some napkins) and carried it out the door with. Now, true, I could have just asked for a to-go box, but I was still ordering fish at this time, and it was far more exciting to try and sneak the stupid thing out. It is sitting on our dining room table now, all listless. I convinced Kyle to order some foofy drink solely on the merit that customers were specifically told they could only order two per evening. That sounds like a challenge, too, doesn't it? He did not live up to it, I'm afraid, but that's fine because Vanessa Williams was waiting for him at home. We tipped just enough that the bus boys would be paid and then offered Shelly tax-free drinks later on in the evening.

Later that night, D&D Frat guy came over for our initial getting to know you session. Lord Almighty he plays his game well. Two girlfriends in multiple cities (Sounds familiar, no?), business major, drinks every night, works at Abercrombie, does all that frat shit, uses "sick" and "for sure" frequently in his speech... but he has a hidden underbelly, my friends! A hidden underbelly that wants to be a necromancer! (I think it might be worth some money someday to secretly tape our gaming sessions - x10 goes anywhere! - and blackmail him with them). I think we'll get along OK, actually. He brought along a Gatorade bottle of Jack and did shots while discussing stuff with us. He's fairly intelligent, I'd say (He used the word "dichotomy" in a sentence - correctly!), and enthusiastic... opinionated and somewhat outspoken. But it must be hard living that double life. He was telling us how he and his friend used to steal D&D books and Magic cards all the time, but I wonder... was it for the thrill, or did he really want no written record of his nerdly pursuits, even the simplest receipts? One can only wonder. Anyway, he got fairly trashed, and he has this habit of not quite getting the social signals that it is time to leave, but I can accept that for a few hours a week. Now all I have to do is write adventures with goblins and shit. Oh dear, the self-esteem will droop mighty low. I downed gin and Real Lemon until I felt a little better about myself.

Andy gave us a ride to Geo's (after playing his song featuring Denzel, WA - our "band." Kyle sounds like a black guy), and it was crowded as hell. Allison was there, and she was fairly wasted, but like all good drunks, the tune of the evening was deny, deny, deny. Still, no one willingly touches me that often not under the influence, so I think we all got the signals. She was all about the hugs and the dragging of hands across parts, and when doesn't that stuff make me uncomfortable, in a relationship or not? It was actually sort of a lousy karaoke, really; we barely got a table, and even then, it was so late that Kyle and I only got to sing one song each. Shelly popped her karaoke cherry with a pretty decent version of "Cecilia." She was nervous as all hell, however, and decided to take the karaoke company's namesake literally and get her some liquid courage. As such, she was pretty smiley and all lovey dovey with Kyle, which you know I hate. More importantly, though, she was far more inclined to dance, and in the shorts she was wearing (the same shorts that brought her to tears a year earlier when some bitch kept mocking her for how short they were), it was pretty much the most explicit thing any of us has seen. Dry humping as far as the eye could see. BAM! BAM! BAM! And she had no idea whatsoever. "I just want to dance, guys!" That's fine, girl, but maybe a little more side-to-side, a couple fewer crotch thrusts here and there.

Chief among her admirers - an admirer of all women, actually - was the rather giant, wiry cowboy I felt particularly resembled Kid Rock, thus earning him his nickname for the rest of his life. Kyle, for whatever reason, less feared the obvious intent of molestation and instead weirdly focused on Mr. Rock's presumed cannibalism. "He's going to kill me and eat her with BBQ sauce," he said. "B. B. Q." specifically. His intentions were somewhat divided, however, as Allison Helm has a big rack, and cowboys like him lllloooovvvee a big ol' rack. So, they started dancing, but it was more like strategic warfare, in that he wanted to be all grindin' on her, and she wanted her to stay as far away as possible. This led to a zombie-like stance on her part... and perhaps to the related undead moans on through the rest of the evening (but we'll cover that in a moment). She kept indicating that I should save her, but I was not going to risk potentially being broken in half just to cut in on a dance. Maybe if he grabbed her jugs or something. I'm that noble, at least.

I was clearly going to need a few drinks to make it through the night (Turns out I could have used a few more still), so I started my first tab ever, which felt pretty manly. This was slightly undercut by the fact that it consisted entirely of cosmopolitans and fuzzy navels, but you just wait. Tom Collins is my friend for life now. "Garnish with a lime!" If I must, drink guide. If I must.

I'm crying, that is so funny to me.

With no more songs to sing and no more reason to drink, we were pretty well set to get out of town, but Allison was adamant that I stay. Stay for what, I kept wondering, because I am trying very hard here just to toe the line, never to cross it. Through our sober conversations, I know for a fact that Allison gets particularly lonely when she is drunk and that she has ruined many friendships by sleeping with her guy friends when she is in this state. So, I set down in my mind (I have mental parchment pads) that I was not going to do anything bad at all and - gotta watch for loopholes - that I would not let her do anything bad to me either. So, when she started this little nibble on my neck when I first got there (This was also the go-to move of that redhead at the party who tried to tongue me... Is this some sort of international standard, or is it just me?), I slid away with the well-renowned Nate Walsh grace and charm. Anyway, girl was bikeless, and her friends had left, and Geo's was filled with creeps, and she wasn't going to give me my tab anyway, so yes. I stayed. With the gravest of promises to Kyle and Shelly that I would not doing anything unscripted.

So I sat, and I waited. And I waited and waited and waited and waited and waited... See, Geo's closes at 2 like all the other Urbana bars, but the clientele isn't about to be pushed around by such scare tactics as last call or shutting the lights off. They stock up their liquor early and leave when they damn well please, stretching out their supply like camels. And gradually the crowd filtered down to me, her friend Scott from Chinese class (who I decided was awesome because he chose "The Humpty Dance," my white whale), her intoxicated friend Ruth (who kept kissing me on the cheeks, despite the fact she could not remember my name), THE INSOLENCE rocker Ian, a group of four horny old people from Rock Falls, and Laverne Roberts, who I liked very much because she was all smilin' and dancin' and excited during "The Humpty Dance" (like me) and also because she gave me a hug for doing such a good job for my own song. Anyway, Allison would occasionally make a drunken stab at cleaning tables, but mostly she would come over to me and stare. She does this when she's drunk, sardonic smirk on her face, and she knows it freaks me out, but she does it anyway. So we had some staring contests for a while, and she said I looked like a dead baby bird, which was sweet, and she got on my chair and sort of straddled me and very ham-fistedly suggested we play Gay Chicken, to which I made equally ham-fisted replies about how she was not a dude, and I was not a chick. It was getting hard fighting fire with fire, but luckily the bartender told her to stop flirting and clean tables, so I was given some breathing room and a little time to think ('cause, remember, I wasn't half-sober myself, brother!)

Although, I must point out that I was fairly proud. All of the drunkards at Geo's wanted some Allison Helm, and she was all over me. It sort of made me feel like the belle of the ball... in a weird, dirty way.

I was called over to join Scott, who was decent, and Ian, who I did not trust very much, so that we could watch home shopping for rolls of buffalo nickels. It was good at the time. Now, maybe I did not like Ian because he had artfag glasses and a chin stud and a partial leopard tattoo and was dressed all in black and kept handing out burned CDs for his band THE INSOLENCE, but if I had to make a guess, it would have to be that he automatically assumed I was gay. Again. And such a tasteful way of finding out, too: "So, did you go to Pride this year?" Thanks, friend. And of course, that sparked interest from the crowd of four horny old people. "So wait, you suck cock? 'cause Bunny here is a mean cocksucker if ever I met one, and I bet she could give you a run for the money! Huh-hee-hee-hee-heh!" Quietly: "I don't suck cock." Why e'rybody always thinkin' I be suckin' that mad dick? Is it just because I'm skinny? Because if having gross lard skin wins me entrance into the coveted hetero club, I think I'll stay here with the attractive queers. I mean, OK, yes, I sing... but I would have thought that there of all places my singin' of ancient bluegrass would be accepted.

So I stewed in that for the rest of the evening, and of course things only got progressively worse as Allison started talking about her fake real boyfriend and her real fake boyfriend, and she kept referring to one of them as me, the implication being that I talked to her but did not make out with her whereas the other one wanted the body but not the mind. Perhaps that's why they thought I was gay. "Who could resist?" they wondered aloud, in their own traumatizing way. Allison and I have taken great pains in our recent time together to never mention our long-distance partners unless absolutely required. I know hers is named Mike Maim (or Mame, but I think it is cooler that he has a superhero name rather than that of an 80s arcade emulator) and that he is from Chicago and that he is the reason she gets sad and lonely when she drinks. I have no idea what she knows of Missy, but she knows something. But we dance joyfully about in our ignorance and never say a word about how weird this whole situation is... that is, until tonight. I never wanted a drink so bad in my life. But of course it's nearly 3 now, and there is the ultimate irony that I am surrounded by booze and cannot have a drop of it. And throughout it all, Allison keeps making this zombie noise that sort of sounds like Blanka in "Street Fighter II," and that of course only eggs on the horny couples as they all start making their orgasm noises. Except the one funny one who does not make a noise because her husband cannot please her, ha ha ha, oh let me escape this hell with my soul intact, please please please.

Finally, everyone is gone besides me, Scott, Ian, Allison, and bartender lady. Allison is apparently using some sort of system of cups and beans to calculate her tips and such for the evening, so I discuss how ludicriss old advances seems. Laserdiscs used to be the pinnacle of technology, my friends. "Imagine! All this data contained on a disc the mere size of this pizza pie!" Well, it made me laugh. Finally, we were clear to go... but oh wait! Ian wanted to play a THE INSOLENCE song before he left. Yes, you go do that. I shall go pee behind this little shed here where someone has recently puked. Oh, you poor little shed. No one deserves that kind of treatment. Finally, we are good to go! I am going to walk Allison home and then buy some nasty food at the gas station and collapse in a pile of my own filth.

But no. Let's go drunkenly visit the porn store! Allison was so loud by this point that I am positive it was throwing off the guys trying to beat it in the back rooms. "Ack! A real woman! My erection! Noooooo!" I was pleased that the big fat woman was working there, though. No, seriously. Here is a person with passion for her job. She knows about all her products, she actually cards people who come in, she made it a point to actively point out to us Chyna's huge clit on the back of the video box (I did not want to spoil the surprise for the others) completely out of nowhere, and perhaps most impressive of all, she had a Shane's World poster up - including a crude impersonator of our very own Party Bob. No one else was around to be as impressed by these things as me. In fact, everyone else might have been downright terrified, so we got out quick snap.

We all rode home in Scott's truck because by this point a drunken car wreck would have been too easy and painless, and at last, home. Like 5 am or some thing. That's not the least bit suspicious. It was a hell of an evening, and I don't mean it in a good way.

Today was pretty lethargic, in no small part thanks to the fact I woke up after 2:30. Another trip to Wal-mart on record in our sad lives, some Arby's, an encounter with a drunk driver, same old business. However, no matter that the drunkard (a Mexican?? in a gold Mercedes) hit that van or drove into the middle of oncoming traffic or weaved about dangerously, going the opposite way of his turn signal - I still can't believe Shelly called the cops on him. That is going to be one big buzzkill, ese. Well, I sort of hate people that care about their cars anyway. The van people got out and kept pointing and looking at the back of their car and looking at drunkard and then at the car again and then at him some more, and I bet he was like, "What is the deal with these two rabbits wearing human clothes? They seem fairly irate. Doo doo doo doo doo..." I mean, if it's a huge dent, fine, that's sort of stupid looking, and if it won't run after, yeah, be pissed... but it's a fucking car, man, and all things die someday. Thanks in part to you, Gold Mercedes Man! Then again, my own experiences in the automotive world might have skewed my vision a little. Forget what I'm saying.

My balls smell like a nasty old fishcunt today, fellas!

Forget that, I meant.