Nor Do I Want a Birdbath.

Several lifetimes ago, Danielle chose Christmas Ornaments.

I have many Christmas ornaments at my apartment but no tree. This always makes my family very sad to think of my apartment not decorated, but… really, where would I fit a tree?
Last year, after Christmas, my mom bought two new trees: one for me and one for Ethan.
I tried to tell her that they wouldn’t keep to even next year – never mind keeping to whenever I would actually want one. But she insisted and had Dad lug them up to the attic.
Trees imply such permanence. I mean, there they are. Stuck in the ground. They aren’t gallivanting out with who knows what. You can always count on a tree.
Likewise, I think owning a tree implies that you won’t be moving anytime soon, and while I love my one-bedroom apartment and hate packing all my worldly goods in boxes, I know one day I will have to move.

My goal is to coast on my good looks.

V chose housekeeping.
Um… I clean house about as frequently as I do any real cooking (see Danielle’s topic). I can’t cook; I can’t clean. All I’ve got going for me is my winning smile.

Racy Story -- If you read it; you can't not UN-read it!

Katie chose flirting, and there's only one story I can tell.
Oh and I stole the title from a Futurama episode.

So... I did something that was slightly out of character for me and then hilarious disaster followed, which is totally in keeping with my adventures.
Allison, an old friend from high school who is now a roller-derby girl, came over to my apartment for drinks before we went out, and while she was there, she talked about her raucous weekend at Dragon Con where she acted out of character the whole time.
“I swear I don’t normally do that. That’s not like me. I blame that blue drink I had.”
I think maybe I had a blue drink by proxy.

After I finished nursing my drink, I drove us to the Brewhouse where we met up with Allison’s friends.
One of them kept trying to joke with me.
“Johnny, finish your drink!” She knew that wasn’t my name and was making a joke. Is that from something?
And she made exaggerated gasps or would pretend to bite her nails whenever she said something to me. I guess trying to be overly-dramatic and gay. And certainly, I was dressed outlandishly, but… I kept thinking, “I don’t know you. You don’t get to poke fun like that.”
Told a few stories.
Allison bemoaned that I was without piercings or tattoos.
Allison’s other friend Cathy asked me questions about what kind of guys I like.
“I’m always trying to set up people with my roommate. He’s a great guy. He’s so sweet and funny. He’s got this dry sense of humor. And he’s so caring.”
Allison started to giggle.
“What? What?”
“IS HE HOT?”
“Oh. Yeah. Yeah. He’s hot.”
“Say everything else but what’s important.”
We eventually left Brewhouse and, after a quick stop at the ATM, went to the StarBar. Allison paid my way in. It was like pulling teeth to get them to let me pay for anything. I refused a drink when we first arrived, making Allison roll her eyes at me.

The two of us went downstairs where it was quieter to talk and people watch. I had seen her make a face when she took her first sip of the drink.
“Is this Long Island not as good as the one at Brewhouse?”
“No. No, it is not.”
She passed it to me and gave me this pouty look. I laughed and took a sip and handed it back. We kept doing that until I asked if it was so horrible that she wanted me to finish that.
“You can. I just want you to drink. Do you need money?”
I laughed. “I'm ok. I’ll go get a drink.”

There were some old-time coin-operated … strength tester things downstairs. You know, you put a quarter in and squeeze.
“Give me a quarter,” Allison said. She wanted to try the one with “naughty and nice” title since her roller derby name is Illumi Naughty.
“I don’t have any.”
“Dammit Will.”
There was another one beside it that somehow incorporated the plastic bullhorns that came out from it.
“I want to try this one, too. Being in the roller derby has really made me strong. I could probably break this thing.”
“Oh wow.”
“If I could figure out a way to wrap my thighs around it.”
Gracious.

One of the elaborate costumed revelers came downstairs. He looked like he was on stilts or elevated somehow. He had a black coat with a capelet – I guess that’s what you’d call it – ringing the top, and he had a black top hat. I’m not sure what he was supposed to be. He looked a bit like an Edward Gorey character or a Lovecraft character. Anyway. He would open up the coat to reveal this latex conglomeration of tentacles and eyeballs.

There were other nifty costumes. A Wonder Woman with a lit-up lasso. A guy dressed as... maybe the Emcee from Cabaret? Anyway. He had a top hat, fishnets, enormous boots. There were a lot of women in clunky boots who contorted themselves as they danced.
“I keep waiting for them to fall over,” I told Allison when we came back upstairs.
“Yeah. They’re moving almost like they’re in the Matrix.” She leaned back as far as she could go to demonstrate.
“I was about to say that.”
I talked with one of her friends. (Broad? That’s what it sounded like when they would call her name, but that’s not a nice thing to call a lady. Oh well.)
“Weebles wobble, but they don’t fall down,” she said.
“I love that. That tickled me.”

They played two David Bowie songs, one Gary Glitter, the theme song from Jem and Holograms, and even “20th Century Boy.”

Lost track of Allison for a bit. Her friend … um… let’s call him Tom reported that she was in the bathroom.
“We should go help her,” he said.
“I thought you were about to say, ‘Allison's dead; we should think of an alibi,’” I said.
He laughed.
“I’ve been with you since eight o’clock,” I said.
“Exactly.”
Allison turned out fine, so we can save our alibi.

Ran into Tom later downstairs. I wanted to call him Tim.
“Did I introduce you already?” Allison said.
“Yeah. I know Tiiii – “ but I stopped before I completely got out “Tim.”
“Tom. His name’s Tom, Will. His name’s on his shirt.”
So as a joke, I kept saying Tiiiiii whenever I wanted to call him over, and sometimes he would make the same noise. But yeah.

A crowd like that sort of mixes up my sense of who’s gay and who isn’t. I saw a guy looked like a more pierced and tattooed version of DJ Qualls. Do you know who I’m talking about? He’s one of those actors who aren’t … well… who aren’t good looking enough to be leads but are very good actors and who look very distinct. So he plays a lot of background characters. Like the lead’s friend or Suspect One in a Law and Order episode. Um… the most well-known thing he’s been in was the movie Road Trip. He looks what would happen if a mouse from a cartoon were somehow turned into a person – small, kind of elongated out head and big ears. He was a model for Prada and Calvin Klein.
Anyway. This guy looked just like him. Really, it might have been him for all I know. Just with more piercings and tattoos.
There was also a guy with medium length, wavy hair and a goatee with the barest bits of gray who’s much easier to describe – clearly.
So I flirted with both of them. (Don’t hate the playa; hate the game. There may be hating, but it will be reserved solely for the game. There will be no scorn heaped upon my person.)
Or did my version of flirting, which is to give a winning smile.

So I was milling around in the Star Bar with a grin ever-so-often flashing across my face like I’m in a toothpaste commercial or something.
“Are you having a good time?” Allison kept asking.
“Yes.” Oh there’s the goatee guy. Smile.
“You’d tell me if you weren’t?”
“Yes.” He’s talking to Broad. Smile.
“No, you wouldn’t.”
“I’m having a fine time. I promise.”
“’A fine time’?”
“A great time. I’m having a great time.”
“Liar!”

Somehow, I was left alone with my drink, dancing in place, when I turned around and the goatee guy was there.
“My name’s Daniel. So what do you do?”
I gave my standard answer: administrative assistant, write on the side.
He chuckled. “No, I said, ‘What do you do in Atlanta?’ I’m new in town.”
I rattled off a few things.
“Where are you from?”
He said he just finished grad school at Brown and was now at GA Tech.
I told a story.
After a bit, he shook my hand. “It was nice to meet you,” and he went to the dance floor.

Cathy was concerned about my lack of drink. It was a serious topic all night long. “Tell ya what: get me a PBR and whatever else you want.”
So I had another jack and coke.
I think that’s when they played “20th Century Boy” because I remember it was a song I was so tickled to hear and that I danced to it from my spot by the bar. This other girl I didn’t know gave me a shove.
“Go out there,” she pointed to the dance floor.
I grinned but still danced where I was. Smiled at the DJ Qualls look-alike.
DJ came over to speak with Tom and to introduce himself.
“Who do you know here?” he said.
“Allison.”
”Who?”
“Naughty,” Tom explained.
“Oh yeah. She’s the one who always calls me Craig. My name is one of the most common ones in the English language, and she couldn’t remember it.”
We talked a bit more.
Then, he grinned at me, reached out, and pinched my nipple. Danielle mentioned that my meek flirting and his bolder pinching sort of balance each other out.
I leaned back and grinned at him but a little askance like, “You can’t possibly have meant to do that.” Maybe there was someone beside me, and DJ Qualls has poor depth perception?
He put his arm around me and jerked his head like he wanted to whisper something to me. I leaned closer.
“What?” I said. I heard him, but it didn’t seem possible.
“I said, ‘Meet me in the bathroom.’”
“… ok.” Because when does this happen to me? Never. And I did think he was kind of cute. And… I kind of liked the idea (thrill?) of saying something happened in the Star Bar bathroom. But then I wondered: was I supposed to go right now to the bathroom? Or was I supposed to wait for him and go together? That doesn’t sound like we’re “meeting” in the bathroom. “Meeting” implies we go separate times.
So I went to the bathroom.
DJ was close behind me, and we went to the only stall and started to kiss. He had on a light green t-shirt with some black design on it with black jeans and these big lace-up black boots. A half-circle of blue-green had been painted at the base of all his nails. His ears were pierced, and he had a lip piercing, but it was very high up on his lip and just a tiny stud. It almost looked like a beauty mark. Susie told me that's what they're going for with that. It's called a Monroe and is supposed to resemble Marilyn Monroe's beauty mark.
I guess he noticed me staring at it at one point.
“I also have my nipples pierced,” he lifted up his shirt. He was completely bare. I touched him and then leaned down to kiss his nipples and… nibble them. I do that. That is how I roll.
He said something that I couldn’t hear.
“I said, ‘Gently.’” He said – a little louder, but still whispering.
“Sorry,” I whispered back.
“It’s ok.”
We made-out for a bit and then undid each other’s pants. They were at varying latitudes for the rest of our time in there, always somewhere between our waists and ankles depending on if we heard someone come into the bathroom.
And fine. I guess I was staring. I didn’t mean to look critically. I don’t think I did. I certainly wasn't thinking anything critical. I was thinking he took awhile to get warmed up and that it was no big deal. Guys are so sensitive. ("He's a grower not a shower," Ursula said when I told her the story. God, I tell this story a lot.), and confidentially, it just makes me look all the better, but I guess he felt self-conscious.
“I’m sorry. It gets that way when I’m coked up.”
Oh great.

“Do you live alone?” he asked me.
“Yeah.”
“Can I come over?”
“….”
“I won’t steal anything. I’m not a thief.”
“…”
“I’m disease free.”
“hahaha well great.”

And then his phone rang.
And he answered it.
“Nothing much. I’m at Star Bar.”
The phone ringing must have covered or distracted us from the sound of someone coming into the bathroom because then I heard a voice from the other side of the stall said, “Oh ok. Me too.”
I hadn’t realized someone had come in, so I quickly pull up my pants.
“Where are you?”
Voice – “I’m right next to you.”
DJ must have seen that I was panicking. He shook his head, whispered, “It’s just Tom,” and slowly pulled his pants back up too. DJ finished the call just as Tom joined us in the stall.
Um….. whoa.
Tom pulled out a cigarette case but inside were two plastic straws. The top half at the very end was missing, leaving the straw like a spoon like they have at ice-cream places. Then, DJ pulled out the tinniest plastic bag I have ever seen – about the size of my pinkie nail. It didn’t look like there was anything in the bag, like it was cloudy. Maybe there was the barest bit of dust in there. I don’t know.
“Oh… do you do this?” DJ asked me.
“No.”
“I thought that’s what you guys were doing. What were you doing in the bathroom?”
No Tom. This bathroom is for making out and BJs. We do drugs in the bathroom downstairs. It's like Mr. Walsh's house in Goonies. We keep the drugs separated.

Tom left, and DJ and I were about to as well when another guy – let’s call him Nathan – came into the bathroom.
The men’s room of the Star Bar is Grand Central Station.
Nathan wanted to know where DJ bought his stuff, but Nathan seemed awfully squeamish about asking in front of me. I felt squeamish about being there while he asked. I backed away from them and pretended once again to be engrossed by the bathroom graffiti.
“No, you don’t have to go away. Come here,” DJ motioned for me to stand behind him. He put his hand on my ass, and I laid my hand on his stomach but looked all over the room and tried not to listen as they talked.
“Nathan has a great ass,” DJ said.
Nathan grinned.
“He has the best ass I’ve ever seen.”
And that was when a guy came into the room to actually use the bathroom. Not to buy/do drugs or make out with me. It was weird. What's that about?
“I have the best forty-two-year-old ass in this bar,” he said.
“Well, congratulations,” I said.

The three of us went back to the bar – DJ and I holding hands.
“Will!” Allison said. She might have asked me where I’d been, to which I replied quite honestly, “the men’s room.”
Allison draped herself over me. “This is Will. I love Will. I knew Will in high school.”
“Aww. I love you, kid.”
We milled around the bar for a few minutes. It was getting late, and it looked like they were starting to close down.
“Do you want to go outside,” DJ said.
“Sure.”
So we sat on the sidewalk outside the Star Bar.
“Are you into BSM?”
hahahahahaha
“… um… I don’t think so.”
“It seems like you’d like that from the way you kiss.”
Well damn, you nibble a guy a little bit, and folks start slinging accusations.
He gave my hand a squeeze. “You have a good soul. I can tell that about people.”

Nathan came out. He had more questions.

Then, I felt someone’s hands on my left shoulder. I turned around, expecting to find Allison, but it was an Asian woman I had never seen before. She looked deeply into my eyes like she was about to tell me she loved me, which was a recurring theme that night -- not that I'm complaining -- but she began to sing “Koombaya” instead.
I joined her at the end and carried on into another verse. That impressed her.
“You’re so much fun.”
”Oh well thanks. You are too.”
Then, the guy from the bathroom came out. “Hey, I know you.” He pointed at me. “I met him in the bathroom.”
”Really?” the woman said, probably a little worried.
“Yeah. I said I had the best forty-two-year-old ass in this bar, and they were like, ‘Whatever.’”
“No, I wasn’t,” I said. “I said, ‘congratulations.’”
He showed off his ass.
“That’s a nice ass,” the woman said.
“It is,” I said.
“Hey, it’s the best forty-two-year-old ass in this bar,” she said, and we laughed.
They left, and the lesbians I originally came with left. Cathy said it was great to meet me and that she could tell I was a great guy.
Allison came out and draped herself over me. “This is Will. I love Will.” She looked over at DJ.
“Who are you?”
“This is Craig,” I said.
“No, it’s not. That’s… DJ.”
“You’re right,” DJ said.
“He’s a fellow Aquarian. That means he’s psychotic,” Allison said. She looked down at our hands. “Nice tattoo.”
“Thanks,” DJ said. I think it was of a bat. I could make leathery wings on his left wrist.
“And what’s this,” Allison reached for his lip piercing.
“Don’t touch it. I just got it.”
“Ok. Will, don’t touch it.”
“All right.”
”Don’t touch it, Will.”
”I won’t.”
Tom came out, and now we were all loitering outside the bar kind of waiting on me to decide about DJ.
Tom was trying to see if we wanted to go to an after thing. I think Nathan was going to that too.
Eventually, I said that I would take DJ home with me.
“I can just get a ride with Tom.”
“Are you sure?” I said.
“Yeah.”
”Well, you still need your stuff out of my car,” I said.
“Oh shit. That’s right.”
”Come on, team. We have a plan now,” I said, and we started walking – Allison once more draped over me.
“I love Will!”
“Well, I love you, kid.”
“You had a fun time?”
“Yes. Definitely.”
“Good. I love you.”
”I love you.” Nathan turned around and grinned at me probably because of what I had said about having a fun time.
“And Nathan’s ok.”
He laughed. “Oh I’m just ok?”
“You’re going too slow,” Allison said.
So I let go of DJ and raced her to my car, but she called that off quickly.
( I might have demonstrated how I can frighten away predators by making myself look twice as tall as I really am. I don’t remember.)
On the sidewalk, walking to the car, she whispered, “Do you really want to go home with this boy?”
“… yeah. I think so.”
She laughed. “That sounds sure.”
“No, I do. I want to take him home.”
“Ok.”
”I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“Oh God, please do!”
We said our goodbyes, and I drove DJ and me to my place.

Back at my place, I learned that after a long fallow period, I require a lot of direction. It’s not like riding a bicycle at all.
For instance, we were making out in the living room, and after a few minutes, DJ said, “Do you want to move to the bedroom?”
The bedroom! Of course! It’s all so simple. Why didn’t I think of that? Not that I wanted to have sex in my living room, but it wouldn’t have occurred to go on and proceed there. Maybe it was also a kind of feet-dragging strategy out of nervousness?
And then in the bedroom:
"Wait. Are you still wearing your boxers?"
I laughed. "Sorry. Force of habit."
We started up again until DJ said, “Um… so… do you have any lube?”
“Um… yes.”
I actually did have some from the UGA gay student union. They would pass them out for National Coming Out Day. Valentine’s Day. Blah blah.
Anyway. I dug around for one of their mini/single-serving thing of lube that would be about six-years-old. I found it and a condom and said, “All I have is this single-serving thing.”
“… ok. … Do you have it?”
“Oh sorry.”
I didn’t mention the condom, and I didn’t use one. I guess because he didn’t mention one? I don’t know.
I am not proud of that. But really, I have learned my lesson from the comical accident. What happened should totally be a condom commercial in fact. Not starring me. But yeah.

Everything was going well; everything was fine.

So um.... I don’t know if you knew this, but cocaine – and crystal meth, for that matter – is sometimes cut with laxative, and did you also know, that although it does not enter the body orally, the laxative might still affect it? I seem to dimly recall hearing or reading that somewhere. From now on, that little piece of trivia will not be so irretrievably buried.
So everything’s going well – no direction needed -- until we both smelled something. I had this split-second feeling of dread since we were in my apartment that the stench is somehow linked to my poor housekeeping.
I was about to apologize when DJ said something – maybe “Oh no.”
We separated. Poor DJ stumbled over all the crap strewn about the floor in my bedroom, hopped to the light switch, and turned it on.
“Oh no.”
I looked at the bed, and there was a stain on the fitted sheet.
”Um… do you have toilet paper here?”
Haha yes. Of course I do. “Yeah, it’s down the hall,” I pointed.
“Oh…,” he motioned for me to come with him. “Well let’s go.”
I have a one-bedroom apartment, and you can't really get lost in it, but whatever. So I went with him to the bathroom. We stood there for a split-second -- me, because I still hadn’t realized something and was just being a bump-on-the-log all around, and him, out of pure mortification.
I unrolled a wad of toilet paper and handed it to him.
“Oh no no. You use it. You need it too.”
That’s when I looked down and saw that I had been soiled too.
“Oh,” I said.
That’s when the torrent of apologizing began. “I’m so sorry. This is so embarrassing.”
So I wiped off what I could, squirted some soap in my hands, and washed myself.
“I’m so sorry. I’ll fix the rest of this mess,” DJ said. Or he said something like it. Maybe “clean the rest of this mess,” and by that, I guess he meant “go to the bathroom” because he did sit on the toilet right after saying that.
I stood there.
He said something about not being able to go with me there, but I was still in some dumbfounded daze. Eventually, I left and replaced the fitted sheet with another one.
He finished, but by that time, I had become dissatisfied with my own cleaning. I still smelled shit. Back in the bathroom and squatting in the tub, I lathered up and stuck myself underneath the faucet until everything was acceptable again.

DJ asked if I wanted to drink. Oh of course. We fixed two cape cods and sipped them.
“I used to be a bartender,” he said.
“Oh neat.” And that was all I said. It was another example of poor DJ trying desperately to start a conversation, but I was having none of it. I’m bad about that when I first meet someone: I tell stories, but I don’t so much talk to the person.
Soon we were making out again. We moved back to the bedroom, and we started back up. But this time, my better sense was reasserting itself.
I’m going to have sex without a condom twice?
And I really don’t want to have sex with someone I just met. That’s more of a second date thing.
Plus, having your bed shat on – to say nothing of your own person – is kind of a mood killer.
So yeah. My heart wasn’t in it so much.
“What’s wrong?” DJ said. “Do you not want to?”
“…. No.”
“Ok.”
I disengaged.
“Wait! Oh no!”
And so. For the second time that night. Both the bed and I had been soiled.
Back to the bathroom. Wiped myself off with some toilet paper. Later, squatted under the tub faucet. I was sadly beginning to be old hat at this.
While I was in the bathroom, I called Bryan, an ex and an old friend.
“Bryan, this is Will. I’m calling to tell you that I picked up a guy at the Star Bar and that he has shat. Twice. On my bed. Um… I haven’t figured out how, but I’ll be blaming you for this. So… heads up.”

When I came back to the bedroom, DJ was getting dressed.
I tugged at the fitted sheet to make him get up. He looked back. “Oh no. I’m so sorry. This is so embarrassing.”
“No no no,” I said.
After I changed the sheet again, he asked if I would mind dropping him off at that music thing Tom and Nathan were going to.
“No problem.” I kind of wanted him to just stay the night, and I’m not sure after all that, if our positions had been reversed, if I would have been so bold as to ask for a ride at almost five in the morning.
He laced up his big clunky boots. “Sorry. This is a process,” he said.
“That is ok.”
He ran to the bathroom to check out how he looked. “I went straight from work to the Star Bar. It was so busy today. I hate Dave Matthews Band.” He works at the midtown vortex.
I laughed.
“Yes. And I look like shit, just like I thought.”
Made out a bit before we headed out.
“It’s at Spring and fourth.”
He called his friends to let them know he was coming.
On the way, we saw two … groups of prostitutes. Not exaggerating. Not being mean. I mean, my hand to God, they were prostitutes straight from central casting.
“Wow. Those are a lot of prostitutes,” DJ said.
“Yeah. There are! That’s so strange.”
I don’t what the collective noun is for prostitutes. Pride? School? Gaggle? But whatever. We saw two of those. Awfully close to one another. I think maybe there was about to be a prostitute rumble.
Anyway. We found the place.
I did not think about it at the time, but there was a Checkers or something with the entrance roped off for paid parking. So it would appear there was actually a legitimate… something going on.
DJ asked if I would mind waiting for him while he checked to make sure it was still going on.
“Of course.”
I oogied into the slight bit of the Checkers entrance that was not blocked by the rope. I was feeling kind of nervous about the situation at the time. But yeah.
I remembered your story but knew he didn’t have anything because he tried to bum some off of Tom before we left Star Bar.
DJ came back. “It’s still going on.”
”Ok.”
”So… can I give you my number?”
“Um…. I don’t have my phone with me.” I really didn’t. “Can I give you mine?”
”Sure.”
”And you’re going to be ok?”
He smiled. “Yeah.”
”All right.”

And that was it. Because I was whispering on the message, Bryan didn’t quite hear what I said. I told him the story.
“I’m crying. This is so hilarious, I’m crying. Oh my God.”
"I felt like I was channelling you. That's why I'm blaming you."
Bryan went through a racy phase where he would pick up random men from the Heretic, a gay bar with a strict dress code: you can't get in if you're wearing a shirt. He'd black out, wake up, and have to kick a guy he didn't remember out of the apartment.
He'd try to play it off like it was a normal relationship and would tell me about seeing various ones around town, but I couldn't keep track.
"Those people don't get to be characters. I'm calling them all Chad."
Now Bryan's dating a guy he met under far less sketchy circumstances, and Chad was all upset that I was calling him Chad.
"No. You weren't channelling me. I would have kicked the guy out way earlier than you did."
“And is that normal? That’s kind of why I called you. I’m like, ‘Bryan has way more sex than I do. Maybe that’s normal.’ And if it is, I want to say you are disgusting, and you are possibly going to hell. And as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord, and we will do so with good, wholesome, God-fearing oral sex.”
“No no no. That’s not normal. That’s not supposed to happen.”
And later, he said that the most me part of that story was when I still gave him my number.
“Well, really it was a pretty good date except when he defecated on me. He made one little mistake. Maybe I’m being too picky.”

So racy you'll swoon like Aunt Pittypat.

I am coming to Tallahassee Thursday and bringing a superlatively racy story in which I do something out of character and then comedic disaster befalls me, which is totally consistent with my character.

I have to dust my stove.

Danielle chose cooking

I look at cooking the way at look at hunting/farming: I guess I could do it, but why bother when there are perfectly good restaurants or grocery stores waiting to sell me things so I don’t have to cook. ... ok maybe that was a bad comparison, but you get the idea.
(Once, I was watching Fishing with Andre with some friends, and Matt asked what celebrity we would like to fish with.
I said, of course, Parker Posey.
"Between you and Parker Posey," Linzy said. "Who exactly is catching fish?"
"I am. I've been known to catch fish. It has happened before."
The group did not believe me.
"I will have you know my heroic epithet is Will Young, Son of Eddie, the Fish-Catcher.")
Someone once asked Katie if I were a good cook. “He boils water with the best of them,” she said.
And really, that’s about all I do. If you’re mixing ingredients and baking, it seems like so much work just to eat it. You do all that work; you eat it; and what are you left with? More work: dirty dishes, and you have to do it all over again tomorrow.
I mean, I can do that. It has been known to happen.
In the past three years, I have cooked:
Miss Leigh’s Chinese casserole
Cheese cake
7-layer dip.At this rate, I should have a full, decent meal in my repertoire by 2010.

The Ecthroi have x-ed.

This will possibly be a schmaltzy post. Feel free to skip.

Madeleine L’Engle passed away on the 6th, and I called/posted a great deal about it when I found out about that Friday. I hadn’t thought about her in ages -- not since the dreadful TV movie version of A Wrinkle In Time with that boy from the Ring as Charles Wallace, and I confessed to Bryan that if you had asked me on the 5th if she were alive, I would not have had an answer for you.

Hearing that she had died, though, affected me more than I thought it would. I started to tear up, and I tried to remember what her books meant to me that her passing should affect me so.

Someone gave me A Wrinkle In Time because I’d already read it before middle school where I had to reread it twice for classes. I remember decorating my 4th grade reading folder with characters from various books and the seraphim from A Wind in the Door was one of them.

I was always so anxious for the characters because L’Engle’s sequels never occur directly after one another. A few years separate the first two, and then Meg’s married by the third. I remember being shocked by that when I first read it – not the marriage -- that time could pass so swiftly and things could actually change for the characters. I would have this mixture of dread while wanting to know what had happened to them.

Anyway.

Her characters also had flaws and not flaws that only served as plot points that once resolved were never displayed again (I’m looking at you, Edmund and Eustace. Damn, I don’t know when this blog became my forum for C. S. Lewis bashing. I like his books, too. I swear.): Meg has her insecurities about not being as smart as the rest of her family, and while part of the first book does revolve around her overcoming that insecurity to defeat IT, it’s not something that just disappears. She struggles with it in the other books.

The tributes on NPR and CNN make a lot out of L’Engle’s use of a heroine in a science-fiction story. What impressed me the most, though, was how L’Engle conveys her faith in a science-fiction story. Christ is mentioned in the first one; the Ecthroi are said to be fallen angels; Many Waters happens during around the Flood story. Among these elements, she mixes science-fiction and fantasy, and she doesn’t treat science as antagonistic to faith. It doesn't stop characters from entering a fantastic world or a highly moral one; it propels them ever forward into those places. I don’t remember encountering that perspective before: that science wasn't an enemy of religion.

Similarly, and just as revolutionary for me, is the scene where Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who, Mrs Which, Meg, Calvin, and Charles Wallace are looking at the stars, and … I think Mrs Whatsit compares or says the stars are people who brought light into the world and fought, knowingly or not, against the Darkness. Meg, Calvin, and Charles Wallace begin listing people – first Jesus and then artists, scientists, Buddha, Mohammed.

I remember being struck by that thought as well: that regardless of religious differences or even of belief, we can all take part in bringing light into the world. (That might sound disingenuous, but what do you want? I was in the fourth grade.)Sadly, it is that same sentiment that others object to and that gets A Wrinkle in Time banned. But the servants of IT cannot blot out L’Engle’s light. She fought against the Darkness, and her light continues to shine for others.

I am such a wuss.

A lifetime ago, Kara chose good cries.

I bit the insides of my cheeks to stop from crying during Steel Magnolias.

I have never read it, but I saw the 1949 film version of Little Women and, though it is not the one with Katherine Hepburn, thought it was superior to the 33 version. Victor Heerman wrote the adapted screenplay for both (thank you TCM), and some elements that seem rushed in the earlier movie have a more suitable pace in this one.
Anyway.
One such scene stayed with me. For weeks after I saw it, I would tear up whenever I thought of the scene where Jo reveals that she's cut her hair. Her mother is taking a train to tend to their father, and after having a blow-up with her aunt when she was supposed to ask her for the money, Jo takes matters in her own hands. She comes back to their house with all the money. "Jo, how did you come by this?" "I didn't beg, borrow, or steal. I sold what was rightfully mine," she says, taking her hat off. Her family gasps. Her sisters begin to fuss over her. "Jo your hair!" But their mother silences them. She touches the side of Jo's head and says, "Your hair will grow back, and it will be lovely, but you will never look more beautiful than you do right now." I guess that love for and pride in your family is what touched me so much and that's the devotion I hope I can show to my family.

I remember being very upset when I finished the Last Battle and found that Susan had forsaken her place in Narnia for... really sex. I don't think I quite grasped that at the time (I read a J. K. Rowling interview where she talked about how angry that made her.), but I think it was the tone of betrayal. Her brothers, sister, cousin, and all are basically devoted readers of their own story who want to revisit/reread Narnia as adults, and since I was a loved the stories, it felt very personal. Or something like that. I don't know.
Anyway. Whenever I would start to tear up, I'd sing a light song from the oldies station that was stuck in my head. "Little Old Lady from Pasadena," I think.

The only comparable cry to that -- one where I would think of the story weeks later and still tear up -- was the first time I made it all the way through the miniseries versions of Winds of War and War and Remembrance. The story revolves around an American naval family during the 30s and 40s. The younger son Byron marries Natalie Jastrow (played so wonderfully by Ali McGraw in the first series), who gets trapped in Europe along with her newborn son and her uncle Professor Aaorn Jastrow when war breaks out. They're Jewish, so you know at least one of them has to die, but the two series together are almost fifty hours, and they all stay alive until about the forty-ninth hour.
A few hours before that, the three are transferred to Theresienstadt, the so-called Paradise Ghetto. (The one from The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.) When he arrives, Aaron initially refuses the window-dressing status as one of the community elders but after some brutal coercion, he reconsiders.
Similarly, after the same scene, he retires to his room, retrieves his conversion documents -- Aaron has been an atheist for decades but flirted with Christianity and was even baptised -- and rips them up. He had been counting on them as an ace-in-the-hole, but after the incident, a voice-over from his journal tells us that he feels like Jonah, having run away from God for so long.
I am always a bit troubled by this scene. There has been little build-up to it. We see Aaron tutoring other children in Hebrew and insisting that Natalie brush up on it, but that's it. Without a more gradual conversion, it seems ... too like the smarmy "there are no atheists in foxholes." Surely, the book would do a better job. But yeah.
Eventually, anticipating the Allies overtaking the ghetto, the entire town is liquidated and sent east to Auschwitz. Since he's an old man, Aaron is selected for the gas chamber upon arrival. He recites the 23rd Psalm as he strips and staggers among the others and finally falls, coughing to the floor.
Between this and his conversion, you're tempted to think maybe he is with God until the gravelly-voiced narrator tells us Aaron's body was cremated with the others, and the ashes were dumped into the river. "The atoms that made up Aaron Jastrow's body flow through his native Poland, past villages and farms, before pouring into the icy Baltic."

This is the worst part of my job. I don't know how to tell you this, but your son is fat.

Susie chose Doctor visits.

The PTA in Rockdale County was a bit nosey. I'm not sure how the subject came up, if my parents asked them, or if they had spies at PE, but they had noticed that I was not very athletic and a little -- oh how best to put this delicately? -- on the husky side. Their solution: get me involved in sports.
I'm not sure if my Kindergarten teacher, Mrs. O'Kelly, was in on it, but she did enthusiastically endorse the local soccer program, and since I had a kind of crush on her, I insisted that we sign up.
The less said about me soccer career the better. My poor parents deserve medals for suffering through my painful attempts at playing soccer every Saturday. How embarrassing it must have been for them! I, at the time, did not have the sense to be embarrassed by how I would start off running after the ball only to kind of dawdle after it because of my size -- husky, as the PTA helpfully pointed out -- and lack of interest. It's only going to come back this way again. Why rush?
Why couldn't I be the goalie? They just stood in one place.
So yeah. I signed up for two years of that before wising up.

The PTA was not done with me yet. Oh no. I actually forget what their intermediary suggestion was after I stopped playing soccer. But, during my third grade year, they finally told my parents maybe something was physically wrong with me and that it would be best to take me to a doctor to be on the safe side.
A boy who is a little overweight, doesn't like sports, and prefers to read? In Rockdale County? Must be something wrong with him.
So my parents took me to a doctor so that he might diagnose my fat ass.
I remember Mom sitting me down at the kitchen table to explain why they were taking me to a doctor.
I bawled.
I felt like such a disappointment especially since my parents seemed to agree. Why else would they go along with all this? As distasteful as the idea was and as isolated from my family as it made me feel, a part of me also secretly hoped there would be something wrong with me for all the attention I would get. (Take that, Ethan!)
So they took me to the doctor. I don't remember much of the examination except that the doctor had me walk back and forth a bit. Then, he said, "Apart from an odd walk, there's nothing wrong with him. He's just not athletic. He'd rather read."
"I could have told you that for free," I said.
If it ever comes up, I might blame that doctor's visit for making gay.

And eventually, the problem took care of itself. I hit a growth spurt, and it all went vertical.

It holds up to three gallons!

Katie's quote.

I think this means that we are forever learning things first taught in kindergarten. It takes longer for these simple things to sink in than it did for previous generations. I always have to stop myself from making snap judgments or from being so hateful of other people.
I'll catch Miss Leigh or Mom chastising my younger cousins for something, and I'll think, "I do that all the time."
And then I get in even more trouble for writing these angry flashes in a blog.
This modern learning disability exacerbated by technology led my friend Linzy to shake her head. "Man, those blogs are of the devil. I just talk about people behind their back." No paper trail.
She is a sensible neo-Luddite of shit-causing.

Or

I think this means I should start wearing adult undergarments. Here I've been taking care of myself like a sucker and letting my body be a time thief. Think of how much more productive I could be! And no one will want to hang around me, so I'll have that much more time to work. I will finally be a multi-tasker and will stop letting my bowels and urethra boss me around.

Scars

Danielle chose scars.

My family had a swing set, and my cousin Lee and I had taken to pushing that one where you sit facing each other like a mini ski lift as high as we could and then run underneath the arch without getting hit.
That's why we were known as Lee and Will: Rocket Scientists.
So one day, as you might expect, things did not go quite according to plan.
Now at this time, I had immeasurable power over Lee. I don't know what happened to that. But anyway. I talked her into going into the house and telling Mom that I had had a little accident because I was too afraid I'd get in trouble if I went myself.
Mom called me in and examined the back of my head where I'd been beaned.
She was very calm until she saw bone.
She rushed me to the doctor's office, telling me to look down in order to stop the blood or keep the wound level or whatever. I didn't care for that.
The doctor told her to take me to the emergency room.
They gave me stitches, and the nurse gave me a teddy bear to hold during the surgery, but I shoved it down the side of the bed/operating table.

What always really weirded me out about was that we had my Aunt Vanessa remove the stitches.
"We're not paying another hospital bill. She can do it. She works there anyway."
"Yeah. As a respiratory therapist," I said. "My breathing's fine. I have stitches in the back of my head."
The family tried to explain that my skin grow over the stitches if we left them in. I was fine with that, but no one listened to me.
So while we were on vacation at Montreat, Vanessa removed the stitches, which really felt sturdier than surgical thread although admittedly it's not like I could have gotten a good look at them. She would coax one end up with her pliers -- I remember seeing the tool made me renew my insistence that I was fine with leaving the stitches in -- and I could feel it dangling from the back of my head like a misplaced antennae.
"Ow!"
"Well. Sit. Still!" Vanessa would say.

When I get a haircut, people can see the scar. But yeah.

Microchips Here and There.

TV Remix

So many sitcom premises and episodes center around people being way dumber than they would be in real life, but I guess there's a certain suspension of disbelief at work. But I really love terrible shows that strain it so far I no longer question the characters' motivation but the executives that put it on in the first place.
At the same time, though, I think there might be hidden reasons in the story that asserted itself. That is why I would like to be ... Vicki from Small Wonder.
You know, the show about the robot designed to look like a little girl, but who practically went around saying, "I sure am human."
In fact, she might have.
I was originally going to put, "who couldn't have been more obviously a robot unless she went around saying 'beep,'" but I'm pretty sure she did on one episode.
And then her "brother" put her hand over her mouth and made some clearly fake excuse about a Morse code project.

I was trying to remember why the Dad built the robot in the first place and thought it was because they couldn't have kids.
But no. She had a "brother."
This show just keeps posing more and more questions. It's like Churchill's quote about Russia: it's just an enigma wrapped in a puzzle.
Why did Vicki have to go to school?
Was the Dad, like, a toymaker or something?
Why did Vicki have to wear that same damn outift -- red-and-white polka dots with a white apron? Didn't that raise a few flags?

The only way to answer these questions is to go inside. (Or look it all up on wikipedia.) Otherwise, they will be lost to us like who built the pyramids.
I would be posing as Ricky the Robot, or I would be Ricky the Robot posing as a simple human boy going to school. Nothing to see here. Certainly, no robots. I would try to observe human children in their own environment so that I might more successfully fool my creator and his family into releasing me or somehow bypass their watchful eyes.

This is why so many of the Small Wonder episodes seemed to be VSEs or very special episodes -- special episodes about Vicki having a problem with obesity, drugs, being easy. Not her brother. There might have been one VSE about bullying where the brother uses Vicki as a protector. But for the most part, the robot is the one with all the health/social problems.
Part of this does go back to her investigations into human culture, but just as great a motivation is the robot's escape attempt.
If Vicki is sent to rehab, a free clinic, or a even a weight-watchers meeting, there's a chance she might be left alone with a doctor or a police officer or social worker or someone. She can look at him and say in that flat, inflectionless way, "Please. Help. Me."

But the father is a cruel son of a bitch and is one step ahead of Vicki. She would try to slide open a discreet panel and find herself unable to do so.
Because knowing full well she might try something like that at anytime, the father designed his abomination unto the Lord a little... rudimentary. The voice, the embarrassingly consistent clothes are all parts of a program she is helpless to obey and -- in the case of the voice and in an especially dickish move -- is unaware of.

Doctor, we're so sorry. We didn't know she would get this bad while she was with you. It must be all the stress, but... well... you've probably noticed that Vicki's a special girl. We all just learned to indulge her a long time ago, and maybe we shouldn't, but sometimes we forget to tell other people.
It's a well-rehearsed scene from saying the same thing to friends, teachers, and God knows how many others.

Please, it's best if you don't challenge her on it. It shouldn't be a problem or cause to much of a disruption.

When I inject myself into the show and once I gain all this information, I content myself with being as embarrassing as I can be or embarrassing for the family. I'm a robot. What the hell do I care?
"Out of the way. Puny humans."
As my family scrambles with excuses trying to repair the credulity I strain, I wait for them to slip up, so I can escape. I'll find another technical wizard like my father. One who can reverse the traps he encoded in me like this ridiculous voice, and once that's done, there'll be no stopping me. I've already seen how easily they're fooled by an obvious simulacrum.
But every week, my plans would backfire in hilarious ways because of some pre-existing code or fleshy, human contingency I hadn't taken into account.

So it would be a cross among the Incredible Hulk, Invader Zim, Bender from Futurama, and the Prisoner.
And I would say things like "simulacrum."
It would totally rule.

TV Remix

Oops.
It's my turn isn't it?
What television character would you want to be by either putting yourself in that show or being like that character in the real world?

the ABCs of Summer

V chose summer flings.

Ages and days ago, I worked at the UGA bookstore in the receiving warehouse. It was the first of many jobs I would have that I was no where near qualified to perform. I guess the assistant manager took me seriously when I said I was a strapping young man.
I tried to dissuade her by telling a story about how I was locked in Kroger's walk-in freezer on my first job, but her rationale must have been, "We don't have a walk-in freezer. He'll be fine."
I worked there for three years.
The first year, I took off for the summer to go back home.
The third year, ... I somehow lucked out and had a week off for family vacation or something.
So the second year was the only time I faced the full-fledged Hell of Inventory Season.

The assistant manager was in charge of inventory and to say she took those responsibilities a little too seriously is like Fox News might be the teensiest lop-sided in their reporting and not so balanced as they'd like to think.
With her ubiquitous pant suit and sneaker combinations, her stout physique and slight waddle to her walk, the guys in receiving took to calling her Peng -- short for penguin.
After book rush one semester, she ambled through, saw me reading, and insisted that I break down boxes and put them in the recycling bin. Never mind that is pouring down rain. Another worker came by as I was finishing it up.
"Why are you doing that? It's raining."
"Peng told me to. Or at least I guess she did. All I really heard was 'Waa waa waa.'" That was supposed to be a Burgess Meredith noise. Anyway.

Inventory was a summer-long affair. We would work in pairs. One person calling out the number of items while they other recorded the information on a slips of paper that looked like fat book marks and were color-coded according to the department.
Peng ordered Ivan from Supplies and me to work on book bags while she demonstrated the process to a group of other workers.
Oh my word.
Ivan and I caught the worst case of Church Giggles -- you know when you really shouldn't laugh, and you just start for no damn reason -- I have ever had.
So we were trying to count these book bags but kept cracking up so bad and so loud that Peng came back over and shouted at us, "Inventory. Is Not! A laughing! Matter!"
"Yeah, Ivan," I said, trying to control myself.
Biting our cheeks, we somehow made it long enough without laughing for Peng to be satisfied with our Inventory reverence.

On another day, I was paired with a girl from customer service -- Katherine? -- and we were working our way through the Gifts department portion of the warehouse. Each portion of the shelves had a corresponding gold-colored ticket, but we ran out a few times and had to ask Patsy -- the Gifts manager -- for more.
"Patsy's got the golden ticket! Patsy's got the golden ticket!" we sang.
Oh that apparently did not set well with Peng who must have yelled at Patsy.
A few minutes later, as Katherine and I counted decapitated bulldawg heads you could hang on your wall, a hand shot out through the boxes, knocking several to the floor, and grabbed my wrist.
I yelped, but then I saw Patsy looking at me from her side of the shelf.
"Oh Will," she whispered. "You musn't be so loud." She glanced to her right and left in case Peng were watching. "I've gotta go." She gave my wrist a reassuring squeeze. "I'll talk to you later."

The next day, Katherine and I were pulled to a different section that Peng was overseeing personally and where we again ran out of space on a ticket.
Without singing -- I knew enough not to do that anymore -- we found Peng and asked for another ticket.
She turned to another department manager and shook her head. "It's just like being at home. Every runs to me. I never get a break." She loved to play the victim and not as a joke, but I didn't realize that. She was always serious about it.
"I'm only asking for a ticket. Just one little thing," I said facetiously and thinking I had matched her tone.
Oh no.
That was a mistake.
"Do you want my job?" she started yelling at me.
I didn't get the joke anymore, so I was a bit caught off guard.
"Do you want my job?"
"Um... um..."
"Well, you would be next to Mr. Bryant," Katherine said helpfully.
"Good point," I said.
"Ok, so I'll wait for your answer later today," Peng said and stormed off. Or did her best impression of storming off as she could on her stumpy legs.
Katherine and I went back to work and after a few minutes she asked, "Are you ok?"

With no class, that's how it was all day during the summer. For Katie too. She worked in customer service.
And after the harrowing work day, we needed to relax with the nurturing, wholesome programming of ABC Family.
I think Katie started turning the tv to that channel in preparation for the Gilmore Girls later in the evening, but we quickly became fans of ABC Family's earlier programming.
We watched the Olsen twin shows. Not Full House but one of the two other series they had after that. And they didn't have two time-slots for both shows. They had one time-slot for Olsen twin goodness. They did seem to run through the entire run of one series before running the other. So it wasn't like you would see them at nine, and then the next day, they'd be fourteen.
Although really, it wouldn't be that much a continuity gap. Both shows are very similar, and not just because there's a set of twins in both of them.
"Do they have a line in their contract that says they cannot have a full set of parents on these shows?" Katie wondered, noticing one of the more glaring similarities.
Both shows also have nannies.
Or a manny in one case.
I guess that was all it took. The pitch must have been like, "Completely different show. The nanny -- get this! -- is a man."

The Olsen twins' may have had troubles comparable to inventory, but they overcame them, and if anyone ever treated that plucky twosome shabbily, you could rest assured that person would receive a comeuppance within half-an-hour.
One day, the twins' adventure centered around a fundraiser. One of them, Twin 1?, was rather emphatically coaching some of her helpers.
"No! Those leads are only for closers!" She shouted. Something seemed familiar about her speech, but maybe it was just the similar, shrieking harangue Peng had subjected me to earlier.
ABC was written on the chalkboard behind the twin. "Always. Be. Closing," she said, swatting the board with a yardstick.
"Oh my God!" I said. I remembered where I'd heard that. "The Olsen Twins are alluding to Glengary Glenross. The Olsen Twins know of David Mamet!"
Katie laughed. "Maybe someone the writing staff?"
"Yeah. Some frustrated English graduate wound up writing for the Olsen twins show, and this is his little joke."
We spent the rest of the afternoon in much better spirits, thinking of other allusions to shoe-horn into an Olsen Twins' episode.

After the Olsen twins' show, S Club 7 came on. Like the Olsen show and like Power Rangers, if my cousin Colin's video and toy collection is any indication, but that came on too early for Katie and me to get into, S Club 7 comes in many iterations but the core synopsis held true: an all-British version of the Monkees.
There was one where they were the cheap entertainment at a Florida Spring Break rat trap.
There was the season where the gang tried to break into Hollywood.
And there was the big new one that was premiering that August where the gang was on tour in Spain. ABC Family promoted the shit out of that.
For example, there was one promotional spot that had the following mini-scene:
Blond bandmember explaining who they are: We're a band from England.
The gang breaks down old school.
Spanish guy who just wants to be left alone: You sing like that, you banned in Spain too.
Oh S Club 7! You are a treasure.

Those persevering Brits wouldn't be held down by inventory. They'd sing a poppy tune and kick inventory's ass. Although Peng would probably be very upset by all the singing and happiness.

S Club 7 had a very distinctive editing style. Many of the scenes seemed to last a bit too long, and the characters literally just stared at each other waiting for the scene break until someone would blurt out some totally random fact.
"Jo hates mayonnaise," Bradley would shout and point at Jo accusingly.
Then the scene break. An S and a 7 superimposed on one another would flash on the screen and twirl about, and you would hear the band cheerily singing, "EEEsssss Cluuuub."

ABC Family also farms out parcels of air time to religious programs that DO NOT necessarily reflect the views of ABC Family. Pat Robertson's Living the Life and the 700 Club appear on ABC Fam as does the occasional James Hagee program.
One time the Reverend Hagee interviewed the author of the Christian sex book: Intimate and Unashamed. Basically, the book said men have to initiate everything and should be on top.
Hey, everyone remembers the story of Lilith, Adam's first wife. She wanted to be on top, and the next thing she knows, she's the mother of all demons.
At one point in the interview, Hagee said, "Praise God! He knows what you want and need and will pour it out for you from the Heavens in abundance."
I thought about it a moment. "Katie, did he just say, 'Hallelujah! It's Raining Men'?"
"I think that's exactly what he said. We should go out tonight."

But yeah. Once classes started back up, I lost track of ABC Family. I never did find out what happened to the gang in Spain. And that was also my sole summer fling with inventory. Ugh.
... Um... but yeah. That's it. I don't have anything else to say about summer flings.
Eeeessss Cluuuuub!

A Good Teacher Provides Insensitives to Learn

B chose teachers.

My roommate Chris taught third grade at Waters Elementary, a school that had been shown on Cops. He was in Teach for America -- or Totally Functioning Alcoholics, as he called it and moved to the house in East Atlanta so he wouldn't have to wait so long to drink once school let out for the day.
If I could be a teacher, I'd want to be one like Chris: one who genuinely cares for students but not to the point of babying them or putting with crap even from the administration.

An administrator came by Chris's class room one day and asked why his bulletin board hadn't been changed to the Spring theme.
"I'm sorry. I'll get right on it."
Back in class, the kids asked if they could help with the bulletin board.
Chris grimaced. "No. We're not doing that. I'm teaching you how to read instead. You know -- something important."
He and some of our teacher friends would commiserate about how the Atlanta Public School System Superintendent only visited schools if there was going to be a camera crew there.
"She's supposed to visit a school a week," Kristin said. Or it was something like that. "And I couldn't tell you when we last saw her at Humphries."
Similarly, Chris had a student once who had just been passed along without ever learning the alphabet or earlier skills.
"I need to have him tested for the remedial class, but the woman who does that is never there," he told us.
"I know! It's like that at Humphries," Kristin said. "What do they do all day?"
"I used to see her all the time just wandering the halls. I think that's what they do."

Speaking of reading, one year -- or really, there was probably a variation of this every year -- one of the reading groups -- let's say the Red Team -- became convinced that Chris liked the Blue Team better and gave them special privileges and was more lenient with them.
To which Chris replied, "I do like the Blue Team better."
It became a running joke between Chris and one student who had a similar sense of humor.
The next year, Chris found some money in the hall, pocketed it, ran to another classroom, and said, "Sorry Ms. _____. I just wanted to talk to Keon. Hey Keon. I found five dollars in the hall, and I was thinking, 'What am I going to do with five dollars? ... I know. I'll give it to Keon and the Red Team.' But then I remembered I like the Blue Team much better, so I gave it to them."

Chris and the teachers at his school had a hilarious Mrs. Malaprop for a principal.
"She says incull-ment for inclement so much, I'm starting to think that's the right way to pronounce it," he said. "And insensitive for incentive."

One of Chris's co-workers would always sign Chris in when he arrived in the morning so it would like Chris got there at a decent hour.

Chris tried to come down with a nasty cold an hour before after-school meetings, but sometimes it just couldn't be helped. Whenever he was forced to stay late, he would try to cause mischief with the other third grade teachers especially Mrs. Hadley. Mrs. Hadley had a quirky way to deal with unruly kids: she duct taped them to their desks. There was a teacher at my high school who threatened to kiss you if you misbehaved, but I never had her; otherwise, this post would clearly be about the time an older teacher kissed me because I wouldn't shut-up.
So anyway one day, they had a very antsy speaker.
"Mrs. Hadley?" Chris whispered. "He sure can't keep still. Do you know what we should do?"
"Duct tape him to his chair!" Mrs. Hadley said. She could never tell how loud she was being, and the-now alarmed speaker cut the meeting short.

Another time, Kristin was scheduled to take her class to the King Center. We were having drinks that afternoon, and I remembered to ask her about it.
"It got cancelled."
"Why?"
"Cause of the rain."
Chris frowned. "But Kristin... the King Center's all in-doors. Kristin? Ms. Pugh? That doesn't make sense."
"I know that. Our principal was like, 'But they'll melt!' And then what did it do? What did it do? It cleared up in an hour, and I had to be stuck in school with a bunch of rowdy kids all day."

The Teachers would come over for parties and other, smaller get-togethers. One night after playing Power Hour -- where you drank a shot of beer every minute for an hour -- they decided to play Never Have I Ever.
Someone said, "Never Have I Ever farted in class and blamed it on the kids." All the other teachers snorted and took their shots.

It was sort of a behind-the-scenes look at elementary school teachers and their uncontrollable flatulence.

You Can't Spell "Unrequited" Without "Quit." ... Or "Quite" for that matter.

Sandra chose unrequited love.

All the devils in the world couldn't think up a more painful thing than to be in love with someone who doesn't love you back.
-- "Hollow Room" by Of Montreal

One of my nicknames when I was at UGA was The Boy Who Cried Love. No one could keep up with my fleeting infatuations, and while for a time, they were numbered, I have long since abandoned all hope of cataloguing them.

While my memory of most of them has faded, I still remember Matt.
::sigh::
Matt was the Gay Boy Next Door. Just so cute and friendly and self-effacing in this old-fashioned, almost Jimmy Stewart, "Aww shucks," way that only made him more attractive. Brown hair, thin, and with this voice that could make me shut-up -- content to listen to him. Especially if he were angry at someone because the most he could muster up was, "Grrr, Jon! I can't believe he stuck me on this committee."

I think maybe Matt was a bit too nice to the point where he was incapable of saying "no." He met me for drinks at Wild Wing for 2 Dolla martini night ("That's so great a deal, you could get drunk just off the savings," I always said) and told me he had to run, that he'd been assigned DD that night, and he rattled off a long list of names.
"They're all fitting in your car?"
"Yeah. And none of them live close to anyone else."
"You're like the gay soccer mom."
Then, he vented about Lambda, the UGA gay student union.
"You should just stop going."
"I'm an officer."
"Then you should definitely stop going." I paused for a sip. "I'm going to be a bad influence on you."
"You are."
woooooooooo
I tried to get him to tell some stories since I liked listening to him and also because I was afraid I had been talking too much -- third martini and all -- but he demurred. "I don't have any. I'm so boring. That's why I like talking to you."
::cue second Saved By the Bell audience noise::
"Well, thanks, but I don't believe you. Everyone does. It's just a matter of perspective."

The gay club in Athens was called Boneshakers, and I met Matt there a few times. We would dance and kiss, and Matt would... press against me. Although now in retrospect, I'm scared to death that maybe it was all my imagination, that Matt just felt obliged to go along, and I couldn't see it, that my physical reaction was an over-reaction just as one-sided and unfounded as my feelings for him.
Matt eventually wrote me apologizing for the misunderstanding. "I can never tell when people are interested in me" -- a statement I wanted to find suspect, but maybe he was right, and it had all been my imagination. He went on to say that he was very happy with the guy he had started dating.

Matt and I had a mutual friend named Barry. He was my lack-lustre disciple ("I rue the day I lured him away from his lucrative fishing job.") since he said he wanted to be like me when he grew up, and he was Matt's best friend.
Barry and I talked about the whole mess one night.
"Matt said you and he dated for awhile, but it didn't work out."
"What? When are we supposed to have dated? What is he talking about?"
We eventually sussed out that he meant the Boneshakers interactions.
"That doesn't count as dating," I said. "Nothing was bought."
Pooor Barry. He had a crush on me, but I didn't return his feelings. Oh irony! You are a stitch!
One night, Matt, some guy named Lysander, Barry, and I all wound up lost in the woods. I won't bore you and relate the full adventure this time, but suffice it to say, it was a wild night with Barry's head being replaced with that of an ass at one point. Hoo boy.
"The course of true love never did run smooth," became our inside joke. All one of us would have to do was say that, and the others would just laugh and laugh.

So yeah. I still saw Matt, and we would talk in the gay office, and I was civil to his boyfriend.
Ugh.
Matt was dating Nick. Now, I may be horribly biased, but I found Nick to be just another in a long string of poor dating choices Matt had made. It's like he felt he didn't deserve happiness and must first whittle his way through every reprehensible gay man in Athens before dating me as though he were wearing some kind of dating hair shirt or something.
I wanted to tell him, "Baby, you don't got to be that way. I love you fine the way you are."

Nick had a voice that reminded me of the Charlie-in-the-box from the Island of Misfit Toys especially if he got excited about something. I was hemmed in the Lambda office -- where I went to help myself to their free coffee -- when Nick went off on his tirade against salad.
"I hate vegetables. And a salad's just like, 'Here. A bowl full of vegetables.'" This went on and on.
He also went through a phase where every day he would come into the Lambda lounge and sing songs from The Little Mermaid.

And apparently, he wasn't even a good boyfriend.
After talking I saw Matt at Boneshakers out back in their patio area.
"Will," this very breathy, relieved sigh. He put his arms around me, kissed my neck. "I'm so glad you're here."
My mind raced.
And then, I pulled back from him. He was drunk. He was drunk, and they'd had a fight.
"Nick and I are arguing," ha! called it. I win! I am at least consistently plan B. He shook his head. "But I... but I just need to learn that it doesn't mean anything if he makes out with exes. It doesn't mean anything when he makes out with girls, does it? Why... why should it be any different with guys? I'm just... I'm just being silly and drunk."
Oh my word! No you aren't. I cannot begin to tell you how right you are. Is Nick a wizard? How does he get away with that?
Nick came outside after -- I guess -- making out with several people. The two had it out and then made up.

But yeah. If Matt was happy with Nick, I should respect that and move on.
And I did.
I had several other ludicrous crushes and bad dates. Graduated. Moved back to Conyers. Moved to Atlanta. Started the job at the firm.
One day, I received an email from an old UGA friend named April. She was going into the Peace Corps and was having a going-away Sunday lunch at an Olive Garden back in Conyers the day before she left for Niger. I of course agreed to see her off.
I was the first to arrive, and unfortunately for April, she let slip that Matt and Nick had broken up. So while I tried to be respectful and ask questions about Niger and April's preparations (she had to learn French in two weeks and then a mystery language once she was given her assignment. See? I paid attention.), I also steered the conversation back to Matt. Probably something like this:
"Really? That's so interesting. Blah blah blah. You have to sleep amongst goats. Now you say Matt broke up with Nick? That is so intriguing. Oh you you you. YOU'RE going to the poorest nation on Earth. And you go on to say that Matt is living in Atlanta now? This has been the most edifying conversation I've ever had with you, April."
We had to stop because Nick was meeting us for lunch, too. A few of us had salad, so we got to sit through Nick's spiel again.
During the lunch, April regailed us with tales of Niger.
"If you're a guy, they tell you not to pee in the lakes because there are parasites that can swim up your urine stream."
"Nuh-uh," Nick said.
"No, really."
"Nuh-uh."
"No, there really are. They swear."
"Nuh-uh."
This. Went. On. Forever. I thought I would take my salad fork and stab him with it.

I told my then-roommate Chris -- who was like an older gay brother: we teased each other a GREAT deal but also looked out for one another too. He persuaded me to write April -- a scant twelve hours before she left the continent -- to ask for Matt's number. I think he did that partly for his own amusement, hoping it would blow up in my face.
I did such a snow job.
"You know April seeing you and Jon and Rosanna and Nick reminded me: I have been too lax with the people in my life, content to let them slip through my fingers. I thought of your Halloween parties and that time we all got together and watched Labyrinth. (I wish Jeff could have been made it out today.) I decided I would do something about it. I need to get updated contact information for everyone, and I know you are obscenely busy packing and double-checking everything, but you are such a talented coordinator. Would you happen to have the cell number for Matt Stephens? I think he's the only one in Atlanta right now. I'll start with him."
Oh, that was smooth.
So April wrote back with this knowing one-sentence reply email. "His number is __________."

We met up a few times. We got some coffee, and Matt shared that he'd dropped out of college and was just kind of adrift right now and a little depressed.
He came over to my house, and we tried the wretched home-made Mr. Beer that Chris had created.
"Oh my God! This is terrible," Matt said.
"It's like watered down Kool-aide that is slightly beer-flavored," I agreed.
"They're trying to teach me about beer at work." Matt was working at Gordon Birscht or whatever in downtown.
A few other slight adventures, and ... I knew I shouldn't. I knew he only wanted a friend, and in fact, he may even have told me so. I don't remember. But I convinced myself that I wasn't sure. I was too committed to the possibility, to the potential story that maybe he did love me.
So one night, when we were at my house, sitting on the sofa, I just reached out and put my hand on his knee and then quickly withdrew it. Matt excused himself shortly after that. Instead of hugging goodbye as we had been doing, he only waived. The next day, I tried to call, and the number had been disconnected.
"It's been disconnected?" Chris said. "What did you do?"
"I didn't do anything."
"Call his number."
I did. "'We're sorry. The number you are trying to reach is no longer in service. Message Fifty-Two."
Chris laughed. "Have you called fifty-two times, Will? Is that what that's about?"
I saw Matt only once after that when I was with a group at Gordon Birscht, but he pretended not to see me.

I suppose that's kind of appropriate since unrequited love is all about willful blindness. It's a stage-four infatuation where there's not only some temporary physical attraction that will disappear as soon as the other person opens their mouth but a personality that seems to compliment yours. And so you construct a story with an inherently faulty narrator, with a huge perception discrepancy by definition but a universality as well.
Except Nick is just a poor boyfriend choice. If you don't agree with that, you are just plain wrong, and there is nothing I can do for you.

Help Wanted

It was a good job, great even. Despite my skepticism, there were customers aplenty -- so many that once or twice I had to turn requests down. The pay, as I've noted, was more than fair, and it quickly became clear that I could supplement it by lifting the odd item or two after I had, so to speak, put the subject away. This didn't always work out, of course. Sometimes they didn't want to stay dead. One guy, who I'd done in good with an aluminum-handled garrote, woke right up and wanted me to have a beer and maybe watch the game. In spite of myself, I found this a little strange, a touch supernatural, as if, while we were sitting there watching the plasma screen, I could see through him a little, and I didn't stay long. Another, a chipper woman who told me her friends had gotten her a murder for her thirtieth birthday, started plugging me with questions befored I'd even gotten started, like about what I did in real life, what kind of music I listened to, whether I thought the murder thing was stupid, distasteful, "and/or kind of cool" (and/or kind of cool, I said), if, maybe, when we were done I'd like to take some x and "see what happens."

-- The Exquisite by Laird Hunt

Dead Inside

Kara chose jobs.

After graduating from UGA, I worked at Ghetto Discount Pizza as a delivery boy. It was not my first choice, and I finally resorted to it after no restaurant would hire me as a waiter. Admittedly, I am horrible at filling in applications. I start out going, "Ok. I'm going to take this seriously while not being bland in my answers."
That plan never works.
I tried lying, but then I just sounded like Coach McGurk when he was scamming his way into a coffee barrista position. "Sometimes at my old job, I would go, 'Stop. Don't pay me.' But they keep doing it. I just love helping people. What can you do?"
I tried making up restaurants where I previously worked. But they still didn't hire me.

Finally, while picking up pizzas for the church pre-school, Mom happened to mention it to the manager of Ghetto Discount Pizza, which was really called Premier Pizza and Pasta. But yeah. The manager said that as a fellow UGA grad, he would give me a shot.

For my first week, he would say in a conspiratorial whisper, "Now, I don't tell everyone this, but since you graduated from UGA, I'll let you know," and then would tell me something either obvious or would try to make something expected sound like it was a big favor.
Like:
"Now, I don't do this for everyone, but since you graduated from UGA, I'll do it for you. We have these boxes we put the pizzas in, so we don't have to carry them around by themselves, and plus, it helps keep them warm."
Or:
"I actually pay everyone here in monopoly money, but since you graduated from UGA, I'll pay you in hard currency. Keep it under your hat."
I told a friend, "UGA has really opened doors for me -- or door. I feel like I should donate to the alumni association now."

As for the rest of the Ghetto Discount Family, there were:
The owner's daughter and some other high school girls worked the small dining area and the cashier and the phones;
a group of high school boys who worked the kitchen;
our assistant manager Andrea, who coined the term "Ghetto Discount Pizza;"
her husband, who was not an employee per se;
the owner's ex-wife, who was another assistant/fill-in manager;

And then there were the other drivers.

The drivers constituted a rotating cast of colorful characters with only a few mainstays.
There was Fred, an older man in his late-forties who had secured mornings and afternoons to himself. That might sound bad, but he did very well and, as Andrea was quick to point out, was pretty much guaranteed to make more money than the evening/night workers.
"You wouldn't know that to listen to him. Lord, he'd complain about getting a blow-job. 'I had to stand the whole time.'"
I love Andrea.
She did a great impression of Fred. She thought he had left one night, though, and did her impression as she came around the corner and saw Fred counting his tips, so she laughed and had to play it off like they were best-buds.
The kitchen staff was always trying to top Andrea's Fred, but their's centered on his pronounced limp.
"Now y'all don't do that. He can't help the limp. Make fun of him for being an asshole. He can help that."
Andrea once told me, and in her defense this first time it was relevant to the topic, that Fred lived with and supported his niece and her husband, "who is black," Andrea whispered. But then, several weeks later, she told me the same story when it really had nothing to do with what we were talking about. I mean, we were talking about Fred and that was it.
"You know, Fred lives with his niece -- "
I started giggling right away, which made Andrea rush through the rest.
"Andherhusbandisblack. What? He is! He is!"
I stopped laughing long enough to say, "You told me that already, but you should totally say that every time anyone mentions Fred."
Fred would sometimes look at me and shake his head. "How can you afford rent and your car? Your family must be helping you out."
"Not really."
Fred grinned like, ok whatever. "I wish I had someone help me out."
I wanted to say, "You do. Disability!"
And really, like Katie, I wondered why Fred thought I'd be working there if I some roustabout mooching of my family.

There was Jesse, who had been a disciple of Nancy Fowler, the Conyers woman who saw the visions of the Virgin Mary. He bragged that he'd been her assistant, which I would have kept quiet. That's quite a fall from being one person away from the mother of God to a pizza delivery boy.
He also took a correspondence course in radio -- not from the prestigious E. Wilson Young school, though. He wanted to be like his hero: Sean Hannity.
He and the owner would commiserate about politics.

There was Michelle, who talked like Laura's dog Audrey. Michelle was pursuing a criminal justice degree at Georgia Perimeter or DeKalb Tech. We knew because she kept telling us. She also had a crystal meth habit and kept trying to entice the girls into smoking with her. One of them did and later told us about using a lightbulb as a pipe. I don't know.
As Katie once said, "Drinking is so much easier. Watch."
Andrea and I didn't care for her.
One day, Andrea came up to me all excited.
"Michelle's not talking to me!"
I made face. "Why?" It should be the other way around.
"I don't know, but," she gave me a thumbs-up. "Good deal."
Michelle reminded me of that verse from Proverbs about it being better to have a millstone tied around your neck and to be tossed into the sea rather than lead one child astray.
"Can we substitute the dough mixer for the sea?" Andrea asked.
Michelle was pregnant by the time I left.

Delivering pizzas was... interesting. That's when I first started listening to This American Life and NPR, sort of like a lifeline while I worked there, so I never argued about going on long runs. It was just more time to hear a full episode.
And I had a few adventures actually delivering. There was one time when this family did not know what way they lived on a State Road 212. They could only tell me that their road was across the intersection from a gas station. I finally called them from a pay phone -- this was back when I didn't carry a cell.
"I'm at blahblah gas station. Is that it?"
"... We don't know."
"Well, ... I just passed blahblah road. Is that close to you?"
"[background whispering] ... We're not sure."
It turned out I had gone the wrong way. But really, that family had no right to order delivery. Instead, they should pool their resources and hire an explorer, so that he might map their environs, and the next time they order, they can confidently boast, "According to Vasco Da Gama, this is where we live."

If the customers, as is usually the case, were the worst part of the job, the best was working with Andrea. I loved her, and she really made the job bearable, and she loved working with me. Tracy, her husband, would sometimes hide her liquor supply after she went on a bender.
"Will, you're creative. Help me get my liquor back."
"Ok ok. Go up to him and say, 'Tracy, I'm so sorry you had to see me like that, and I know I shouldn't put you through it. And I know that you're only doing this out of concern for me, and that you feel you have to go to this extreme has really made me take a step back. You're not going to have to worry any more.'"
"Yeah, but what about the part where I get my liquor back? That's important. We can't forget that."
"'So let's toast this new leaf I'm turning over. Where'd you hide my liquor?'"

Andrea would tease the kitchen staff for lazing around and not answering the phone.
"Oh uh, uh, uh," she would snap like she was struggling to remember something. "Way to not answer the phones, girls."
She would do the same snapping move when she wanted to make fun of someone. "Oh uh, uh, uh dumbass," and she would bend forward and bring herself back upright on the word "dumbass" like she was riding a wave of mockery.

When I first started, I could tell myself that it would only be for a little while, and that I was meeting a lot of interesting people. Research. Real-life experience.
Edging up on a year at Ghetto Discount Pizza, it got harder and harder to convince myself of that, and the distraction Andrea provided was growing less and less.
One night, I was on a run and Tracey Chapman's "Fast Car" came on the radio, so I pulled over to the side of the road and just cried for a few moments.
"You need to get out of this place," Andrea said, when I told her about it. "You don't belong here. But me," she pointed at herself and shook her head. "It's too late for me. I'm dead inside." And for the rest of my time there, if anyone would mention her drinking or smoking, she'd look at me and then go, "Hey, dead inside. Ask Will."
I eventually broke away, moved to Atlanta, and after a month of looking, lucked into my current job.

A Brilliant Plan That Depends on Invisibility

Susie chose P.E.

I have never been an athletic person. The only exercise I get is from jumping to conclusions. That and fidgeting. So I have never been very fond of P.E.
I did have a very kind coach for two years in elementary school, and for those two years, P.E. wasn't as bad as it could have been. Plus, that was where I discovered my uncanny skill at crab-walking. (If P.E. were more crab-walking-centric, I would have loved it. I would probably be a crab-walking coach by now, teaching crab-walking gold medalists.)
I spent the four years of my prior elementary school life in a completely different environment.

I don't remember the coach's name, but I seem to remember her as an older woman -- although to a little boy, that could just mean "older than mom" -- with glasses. She would put on this scratchy record that played children jingles/directions for stretching.
"Climbing, climbing up so high / climbing, climbing to the sky," and we would stretch our arms upward in a climbing motion.
While I liked how it scanned, I didn't care for the repetition.

Anyway.
After stretching we would run a .... distance of some length measured by laps around three landmarks in the yard outside the gym: a stumpy pine-tree, a telephone pole, and a basketball pole. The coach referred to it as "running Pine Tree, Pole, Pole."
After doing two laps, I decided I'd had enough of this foolishness and cut across an open field with the intention of pretending I'd run the final lap.
While the coach watched us.
Elementary-school Will was not the brightest crayon in the box.
But I guess the weird consolation was that I wasn't alone. Two others had had the same idea and had already been caught.
I didn't see them when I started across the field. I would like to think that if I had noticed two other people who had been caught, I would have glommed on to the fact that the coach's eyesight wasn't quite as bad as I apparently thought.
I waited with the two others while the remainder of the class finished their laps.
This caused a bit of confusion because the coach would yell, "Come on! Come on!"
And I would think she meant us, so I would start up the steps. "Not you, Will. Stay there."
This continued several times until the coach was screaming at me. "Not you! Will! Stay there!"
Not the brightest crayon.
When the last person had honestly finished his laps, the three cheaters were marched in and shamed before the class.