01/04/2006 - 5:43 a.m. | let me shoot you

Maybe I should tell you about the early three days in the week, but they were pretty uninteresting, even to me (yes, the one who lived them). It was kind of a rotation of watching bad TV and movies, reading stupid Anne Rice books, trying to keep myself exercised and fed. I cleaned a bathroom. I concocted some pretty iffy pizza bagels. I reacquainted myself with the Dave Matthews Band. I was totally screwed by some shysters at the Peru Mall eye center (meaning I now hate two branches of fake medicine, although nothing could really challenge the dentists in terms of hatred). Nearly 400 bucks for two contacts and an eye appointment I already knew all the answers to. �Come back to have your contacts fitted.� Oh my God, you are just making up the craziest shit now, aren�t you? I got both of the dart guns I had seen at Christmas and did not lose all the darts. I went out to a bar with my dad and dinner with my mom. At the former, I was the most out of place person in the world. I spilled some of my beer and the snarly waitress yelled at me. Yes, your precious floor. As if Chuck and Buck haven�t tossed their cookies pretty much over every inch of the place. At the latter, I told my mom I�d been off my meds for over a month. She was surprised� and not, saying I�d been a pleasure to be around instead of� well, a right cunt was the unspoken designator. I had the fish. Years of eating it out of irony may have finally backfired and given me a taste for it. Also, root beer. They went to bed before 9 pretty much every night. We talked some. I guess I feel different, too, though. This time when I left, I didn�t want to. Or at least some of me wanted to stay.

It was lousy with rain and sleet, but it never seems to stop me from getting on someone�s ass if I perceive them as being an asshole (e.g. driving under 80 mph). I was listening to some songs I downloaded before I left, and one of them reminded me of Missy. Not in a good way or a bad one � just did. If every person were a song, she would be this (I don�t know what I would be). It�s by the All Girl Summer Fun Band, and the fact that they sound like the Powerpuff Girls if they formed a band might have something to do with it. It�s called �It�s There.� I know you don�t care, but it�s so cute and hopelessly na�ve and one-sided and if you wanted some perspective, it might give you some.

I got home and tanned and immediately learned I had overdrawn my account, despite having specifically requested the thing that wasn�t to allow me to do that. I still haven�t been paid for my last big shift at work apparently, so I�ve been drawing from Christmas money to keep myself fed and watered. None of Missy�s presents arrived, one of them doesn�t exist anymore somehow, and I don�t know how I�ll fill in the gaps and make it to the big KS and back with any funds intact. Not to mention the 1,300 dollar electric bill we just received. Admittedly, it was two months� worth and Spritz already paid that part, but that leaves 600 dollars more than any of us really have. Maybe the time is ripe for a t-shirt business after all. Numbers are being crunched in my head.

Well, fuck, I�m poor anyway, huh? I�ve got� I wouldn�t call it short-term thinking I don�t think � a profound sense of fatalism maybe. For instance, this Missy scheme. Somehow I thought making it through this weekend would make everything right, but here I am at the end of it, and no problem has been solved. I expected to get caught, maybe, expected to have a fight and maybe ended things, expected to be free. But I still have a girlfriend I can�t see (don�t want to see?) and weird things with other girls and the problem is still entirely in my hands.

Or like the thing how I mysteriously expect to be dead at 22. I don�t know why that number jumps out. I know 23 is the year for young adult angst (possibly because it rhymes with so many things). Maybe it�s because no one expects to actually live that long (genetically, I mean) and the fact that they�ve been frittering their life away until then suddenly runs up to catch them. What am I gonna do when I hit 23 and I haven�t been hit by a bus or beaten to death or something? I�ll be fucked.

I apologize for the odd mood� I�m not depressed exactly� There�s this fog � well, I�ll get to that later.

Like I said, though, fucked anyway, right? So after I watched everybody bust out some �Katamari Damacy� on the PS2, an activity I correctly predicted would fulfill the brunt of our attention these next few days (I can only briefly describe the insanity that is that game, but imagine rolling up everyday objects � cows, people, islands, weather patterns, umbrellas, anything � into a giant ball to be made into a star), we grabbed Smacko and headed out to eat. Our logic was� severely flawed here. There were about 10 places a majority of our group would have been happy at, but only one place we all agreed on: Ruby Tuesday�s - in part because of the very diary you are reading. I wish you could live my stupid, boring world sometimes � constantly appraising everyone, pretending that people are attracted to you based on a single backwards glance, acting on nothing, doing shit you sort of strongly dislike. I don�t know what my point is, but I can barely type, so I believe we can chalk it up to sleep madness.

I almost got through Kyle�s perceptions. OK, that�s a lie. I knew he would no more let me order something I might actually enjoy than I would actually want or like the damn thing anyway. Chicken tenders, please. Coated in the hottest buffalo wing sauce you have (It burned, it burned!) Side of brown rice. Which certainly wasn�t brown at all. The flavored, over-sweetened lemonades flowed freely, none of them particularly good (especially later when my to-go cup was mixed with a substantial amount of cheap vodka). And Smacko, O Smacko. A week of not swearing at home had built up inside him, turning him into the most profane motherfucker I have ever encountered in a public place. I mean, I might have �a nasty mouth� (thank you, Ryan Savage), but I keep it in check in big crowds, especially big crowds with children. Not Smacko. This little kid is sitting in the adjacent booth, playing peekaboo with Shelly mere inches from Smacko�s head, and he�s just blasting profanity after profanity. Somehow two parties came and ate in the time we got through our meal. I cannot possibly see a connection. Perhaps to appease the families, he also began rocking out an a capella version of Bon Jovi�s �Wanted.� And Smacko does not admittedly have the most harmonic of voices.

By the time we were done, Ducky was in town, 12 pack of Huber�s at his side (my dad and I had been discussing this particular beer mere days earlier, specifically how he used to get quarts of it for 33 cents and how truly awful large amounts of beer that cheap actually taste), giant lumberjack beard on his face. There was a journey out for celebratory booze. Also e-brake donuts in the Busey Bank parking lot while Smacko did a wacky dance at the ATM. Ducky bought what can only be described as a grossly-unnecessary amount of alcohol during his time here, but that�s more like a running joke, so I�ll only note that he added a 24 pack of Hamm�s to his stockade at this point. Upon completion of this task, he immediately said, �We should go out to some bars.� Yes, spend more money on liquor. Like a day later he opens his wallet and says to me, �I had 200 dollars when I left. What the hell happened to it?� Well, we chart these things for you, don�t we? I am like the Bob Costas of your liver destruction, am I not?

In time, others arrived. Yousaf (of Chicago), Will (of Hawaii), Joe (of� uh� some gas station / billboard painting?). Immediately the old dynamic returned, most of which consisted of everyone shitting on Ducky. Poor old Ducky. I always thought Joe was uncommonly nice to me, considering his behavior towards others. I have also thought that this was because he didn�t think I could take his shit as well as the others. Which may in fact be true. Curious, though. Shelly was possibly overwhelmed by the sheer number of dudes in one place and ran into the other room. I joined her at times to drink some strawberry zinfandel that makes me ashamed to be an Italian. Mostly it was noise and madness. And drinking. An awful lot of drinking.

Actually, it might not have been the dudes alone that got Shelly, come to think of it. This was actually the formation of a major series of conflicts that night. Fitz was quite drunk, it seems, and got into it with Shelly, pretty much shitting all over her and Kyle. Unfortunately for Fitz, he was especially wasted and he was not able to wield his trademark wit with the same dexterity. Shelly got the usual stuff � �not that pretty� (What does that mean actually? Someone explain), small boobs, random unexplained remarks about being a joke or something � but this was the first of the attacks on Kyle, with whom he had been on pretty decent terms with up until this point. Which is to say, everyone held their tongue. Fitz finally stopped, though, and finally started wagging his, although, like I said, it was all practically nonsensical. �Not that articulate.� Again, for �the best writer in all of Illinois,� I would have expected phrases a little less clunky*. Things because unhinged when Kyle pointed out Fitz�s speech impediment, which I imagine is a rather large sore spot in the back of his mind. Although some valid insults might have been in there somewhere (who knows what the truths were anyway?), they were so buried by remarks on Kyle�s penis that the whole thing just seemed sad. Not that they might hurt any less.

*I make no similar claims myself and therefore can be as long-winded and awkward as I like.

I�m told this is Fitz�s M.O.; when he gets with a girl (Brytne, in this case), he starts shitting all over her friends (us??), starting trouble to get the girl to willingly cut them all off and isolate herself in this little world with him � which of course never works out in the long run anyway. Can probably leave the girl pretty alienated by the time she surfaces again, too.

For the longest time we sat around drinking and watching Screaming Dead on demand*, pointing out whenever the nasty boobs came on screen. Frequently. It was eventually decided to get some nasty boobs of our own, and we made ready to hit the Urbana bars. In the meantime, I hid myself in the basement to call Missy and further feign my illness. Apparently I was not sober enough to sound as sick as I did, causing Missy to comment on my marked improvement in health. New medicine, man. TheraFlu or some shit. As I said, no long game.

*A drunk Shelly had apparently inherited Kyle's ridiculous habit of assuming everything in the movies is made of CG and would not shut up about it. Much love.

I am particularly bad at remembering specific conversations, but as smoked on the porch and knocked shit over in the living room and trudged to the Embassy, I�m sure we all recapped our little sources of pride in the time since we�d seen each other last. Things we stole, broke, fucked, whatever. I remember this particularly of Smacko, who got quite drunk on Cisco brand blue raspberry bum wine (We have a larger selection of brands in town than I thought), barfing up a whole bong of it and then spilling more on the couch. Charmingly, his teeth were stained like a little child too full up on candy. He did not join us to the bars, but it was just as well, as we would have our hands full as it was.

At the Embassy, who should we meet as the shots were poured but Touchdown, our old autistic compadre from bingo? Long since banned, of course. In his fashion, he started to suck Shelly (�Elizabeth�) into his draining conversations, but Will and I heroically intervened. At least I knew what I was in for. Will bravely tried hitting on Touchdown to scare him off � a notion I thought was very funny even before I realized the man had once �accidentally� given another dude a handjob on command. But really, that just made it funnier still:

Will: I couldn�t held noticing your eyes. They�re just gorgeous.
TD: Oh, thanks! I noticed yours too!

I did ask him about his ban from Legends and he was appropriately (mental-wardily) vague. It seems he was just being his old creepy self, and I guess the waitress in question had not been indoctrinated to the man�s ways. Or else he said some really creepy shit, but I couldn�t get the exact phrase out of him. The secret stays between him and Captain Howdy.

Nobody else had even registered the man and still had drinks to finish (there was talk of cheese fries even), so the three of us who had got the fuck out. The others would come when they realized the 35 year old women they were after were already being surrounded by roughly two 40 year olds apiece. It did not take long. The Office was more youthful and less downright creepy, but despite any claims otherwise, no one was exactly flying across the room to chat up any chicks. Even Joe, who I figured had a lot more chance and experience than the rest of us, but then again he was getting right blitzed by that point, I would say. Of course, this would pale in comparison to later on, but for now we sat around and passed the Junior Jumble and aviator lenses. Didn�t stay long there, either.

Last stop for the evening was Crane Alley, and here things finally fell apart. We took a booth until the next pool table opened and ordered some shit from our poor hassled waitress. I took it upon me to be the apologetic spokesperson. While people downed their shots and scotch and vinegar fries, I picked at my Blue Moon and tried to think of better things to do. Hillary came to mind, and I called Allison to get her status for the evening. I know, it is a gross misuse of crush privileges, but I�ve got to keep waiting until my big break. She and her crew were at Murphy�s, and compared to the current alternative, it seemed quite reasonable to sprint across campus and make a good impression, but no, no. I am holding myself back, and I don�t know if it�s the returning paranoia or the aforementioned sense of fatalism. I�m getting to feel like I shouldn�t do anything and only take what falls directly into my lap. More on that later, too.

So we get our pool table, and maybe the mass rising did it, but suddenly half our group was just really, really fucked. Yousaf was mumbling gibberish, Will was exploring off-limits back rooms, and Joe was on another fucking planet. Perhaps a tap-dancing-based planet because the boy was lilting all over the goddamned floor. And of course, he and Yousaf were actually on a team, and we obviously couldn�t leave until we had finished our game, which meant like five minutes per person lining up shaking hands and vision to make awful, awful shots. Apologetic spokesperson went to get as much water as anyone could stomach. People started tumbling and throwing cues about, and it was not long before we were kindly asked to leave. That wasn�t exactly quick either, with Joe, Ducky, and Kyle gathered in the men�s room while the latter carved �nigger� on the wall. Classic.

Yousaf, Shelly, and I ran ahead of the rest of the pack, and as Yousaf got drunker, I tried to get him home faster by making him sprint with me. I am the drunk�s best friend. We got there, and though I was no great shakes myself, I opted to drive Yousaf to Jevon�s as he requested because, hey, one less drunk, right? As usual, the normally-silent one perked right the fuck up, and I swear to God he sang some crazy blues song as we weaved our way up Busey. By the time I got back home, Joe was passed out (having pissed himself on our couch, by the way), Ducky and Will were arguing for Gautum�s bed, and Spritz had returned from his Springfieldian booty call. I decided to ditch this scene and collapsed up here to do my shit, quickly learning how fast the booze was catching up with me myself. Fitz had posted a blog entry, every sentence of which proclaiming the smallness of Kyle�s dong, and I wondered which one of us he meant when he referred to Kyle�s gay roommate? Dodged a bullet there, I�m told.

At no point did we ever stop singing, "And I'm black, y'all / and I'm black y'all / and I'm blackity-black / and I'm black, y'all!" At no point. None!