01/19/2006 - 7:02 p.m. | please say you'll take me to the moon or something

Let�s try and record Kansas trip right real fast. I probably have homework to do or somethin�!

Now, see, I was wavering for a while, I�ll admit it. I�m off the meds now, and it makes me a weaker person. I found myself missing Missy as I left on Monday, wanting to stick around for another few days. I can honestly say I had a fairly enjoyable time. The thing is, I don�t know how good that is, considering how rarely I actually saw Missy. She would teach all day and then come home exhausted, usually passing out far, far earlier than me. All in all, I probably saw her for like six hours on a given day, the rest spent alone watching �Fresh Prince� episodes. Then again, that�s what I would be like in a real relationship � shorter windows together. I feel like I could handle that.

Lord, but the role reversal. Girl wants sex all the damn time. I could give a shit a fair amount of the time and actually caught myself going through the motions, so to speak. Kiss here, bite there, rub that, hump hump. Wait for her to have her orgasm(s). OK, back to cartoons. It�s not that the sex is bad or anything� It�s just sort of the same thing every time. She gets home, wants sex at the same time, we do it, position A, position B, I get sort of close, but we have to stop because she�s already done and exhausted. I feel like a sitcom episode.

We ate Mexican like 4 of 5 days. I don�t know what�s wrong with us.

The first day Missy�s roommate Emily invited me along to run errands. It was so nice of her to offer that I felt pretty obligated and went along. I don�t know if I�ve discussed this before, but she is part of like the worst couple ever. And I�m not even talking about like Urbana person / Champaign person bad. She�s an Urbana person, all right, with the music and the artfag glasses and her taste in film and books and food and her liberal nature. But in my little equation, I�d totally left someone out. There are Urbana people, Champaign people, and the batshit rednecks that I don�t even consider part of society. Guess which type John is? Never have I seen a more mismatched couple. He�s so conservative and hates trying new things and likes country and wears his shirt tucked in all the time. Even in casual situations. Anyone who likes the aesthetic of a tucked in t-shirt is a lunatic and needs to be institutionalized post haste. Plus, he�s apparently a violent drunk and mean and stupid and a redhead to boot. Clearly, they should not be together, and since I don�t know her well enough to respect my boundaries, I�m all planting the seed of doubt during our little tour of Manhattan. �Boy, you guys sure are a strange couple! How does that even work out!� To which she had little to say. Seed of doubt planted, someone else step the fuck in! And, luck of luck, who do we see walking by but John, who is on his cell phone and won�t get stop to say hello, let alone get in for a ride back to the apartment. He only waves, a wave Emily construes as sarcastic. This stupid little thing starts a fight, which is of course a sign that things are going swell, and I kind of sit there and smile behind a copy of �InStyle Magazine� while everything is exploding in front of me. I love happy couples.

Missy and I finally exchanged gifts. She got me some weird little Japanese toys, some new sheets (ha), like four pounds of Tart �N� Tinys, both seasons of �Arrested Development,� and some new socks to smell up. I sort of felt my gifts paled in comparison*, but I�m poor, damn it, and we had fun playing her little Ms. Pacman game together. We are both pretty terrible at everything.

*Her parents alone must have spent like a hundred bucks on me, what with Lucky jeans and a pretty nice shirt from the Gap. Woe, how depressing it is to be poor.

That night, as Missy was getting ready to go to bed, Emily and John came home and said they were going out to the bars. They very kindly invited me along, and though it would have given me something to do, the look from Missy told me I had best politely decline. Three or four hours later, the two of them both stumbled in, drunk as poets, rocking the walls of the house until Missy was more or less forced to get up. Emily tumbled into her bathroom to puke, locking the door behind her. This angered John, who wanted in to comfort her, so he began screaming at her, drunkenly trying to pick the lock, and finally kicking the door in in a rage. Mmm, comforting. That done, he stumbled into Missy�s bathroom and apparently shat everywhere, leaving a stink behind that fogged the house up for hours. I mostly looked on in amusement, but poor frazzled Missy tried to keep everything under control, a Sisyphean ordeal.

I can remember nothing of note about Friday at all.

Saturday we took Missy�s car in to get the oil changed and then wandered around the shops for a while. There�s something a little� insincere in my mind about being so very liberal and at the same time so very affluent. Missy is all about the poor and charity and welfare and shit, but then she�s all looking at super expensive furniture and dinnerware and the like. I know, it�s not her fault; she learned from her family, but it seems to me that if they were really as liberal as they all touted, they wouldn�t be buying hybrid cars and designer jeans. They�d toss all their money to the government or charity or something and live a blessed simple life. Me, I�m scum, but I�m well aware of my scumminess. I never pretended to care about anything, so it�ll be no surprise that I waste all my money on myself. I was pleased that Missy had to shop for clothes in the cheap section for like the first time in her life.

We also stopped at some party outlet store. They were having a wedding open house, so we pretended to be the soon-to-be-WALSHES and got full up on nasty cake and punch. The cake was all stale and strawberry-flavored, and you could see the sherbet floating in the coma-inducing punch, but maybe that was just the taste of our sins.

The one shirt I ever bought Missy she managed to spill three separate things on on this day. Lesson learned, Vishnu.

I�d hate to generalize, but Kansas people are retards. While we were walking around or whatever, this giant school bus all painted up in jazzy purple (K-State�s color) cruised the town, dozens of people screaming out the windows and the back. It seemed to follow us wherever we went, leading right up to this giant pep rally like a block away from the restaurant we were at. Streakers, too. Ashamed that she lived there and had no idea what the fuss was about, Missy had me ask one of the bartenders. I, of course, invented an elaborate back story about how we were in a alt.bluegrass band touring the country and had stopped here on our way to Lawrence (Our name? I decided to pull a Keyser Soze and grab whatever words I saw floating around. �Winter Clearance!� �Dry Clean Only!�) Man, I would love to be in a band, man. Like a real touring one. Then all of my actions would have explanation. I was sitting there eating soup, but I wasn�t just some strange nerd. No, I was in a band, on tour! We gotta learn to play some fucking instruments. Anyway, turns out Kansas State beat the University of Kansas at basketball, something that hasn�t happened in like 35 years. I don�t really understand. Everyone sort of knows it was a fluke � KU�s team is in its prepubescent stages, all freshmen no one expects to be good for a couple of years � but the purple-clad are acting like they beat the fuck out of Goliath. A parallel: Let�s say I took the Mighty Ducks and replaced all of the players with severely retarded obese children (Not a far stretch, mind you). Then I kicked their asses. Do I really have the right to go, �I BEAT THE BEST HOCKEY TEAM IN THE WORLD!!!�? Well, you think about it.

I was sort of ill and passed out for a while, but eventually awoke and went with Missy to the local arcade. I know! Ski ball at last! I swear, it�s the first date-like thing we�ve done ever. After we�d earned enough tickets to get two horribly obnoxious screeching wooden whistle birds, we tried our hands at canoe paddling, plane landing, and driving. We were poor at each. Seeing how truly awful the DDR competition was (2 goth kids and a confused black man), I finally worked up the courage to get back on that horse. Could have warned me that the left pad�s left and right arrows didn�t work, huh? Huh, emo nerd? I moved on, though, and busted some funky fresh �Rhythm & Police.� I was a little rusty, but I still managed to earn the respect of this little posse of Indian kids. I would feel justified� if I weren�t such a giant oozing dork.

Since we�d already had our belated Christmas, we decided to tack on a belated New Year�s and ran out to get champagne. I got the most expensive I could afford (Fifteen dollars! It�s like gold is running through my veins!) and we rang it with the Fresh Price. Unfortunately, Missy passed out at like 12:30, and I was left to my own devices. Mainly getting unexpectedly hammered and watching infomercials. While I was vaguely aware that an entire bottle of wine would get me drunk, I didn�t realize how much Missy�s unfinished mug truly held as I downed it. Missy eventually lurched off to bed, and I wailed that Finger 11 song alone because I thought it would be sort of funny. You�ll be happy to know, by the way, that there are several new developments in the world of ridiculous ab exercising accoutrements. First off, you might recall me wondering what ever happened to those belts that zapped you with electricity, somehow electrocuting the fat cells like so many little tiny convicts. Well, apparently one of them has been approved by the FDA, and they are touting the shit out of that. �FDA Approved! Almost certainly won�t murder you now!� Damn it, that�s going to cause a price spike for sure. Even better was this sauna belt � essentially an electric blanket wrapped around your midsection, somehow causing the fat to just float away on a fog of sweat. This seems like the most ridiculous device yet (Isn�t it just the loss of the water we retain?), but for what they�re charging for it, I guess I�ll never get to try it on my own. Of course, one skipped trip to Kansas is a sauna belt right there if you think about it. I�ll be sure to mention it in my break-up speech.

Sunday was a lazy day, which, considering my description thus far, should warn you how boring this next paragraph or so is going to be. Here�s another hint: Laundromat. Another: �America�s Next Top Model� marathon. About the most exciting part of the day were the nasty garlic burps from the guacamole I made for our little Mexican feast that night. They were rough. Missy was out at 9 because she had school the next day. I stayed up �til 5 watching Interview with the Vampire (WHAT WHY) as part of my plan to survive the drive back. It worked, I guess.

Missy said her first creepy porn actress thing. Should a cake be prepared?

The Chinese food I ate on Monday was what gave me the green bean turds. Particularly those mysterious tan cubes. No, not tofu, not onion, potato, corn. I have no idea.