Nov. 03, 2009
Posted: Nov. 04, 2009
Continued from Chapter 2: The Dinosaur Goats, the Amphibious Goats, the Single-Celled Goats
This is not the conversation I expected to be having outside a bowling alley when I woke up this morning... If you had conducted a poll on a waking-up Rose, the responses would have been:
-
Where are you probably going to be tonight?
- Discovering a new species of primate while trekking through sub-Saharan Africa
- Melting in Latvia
- Staying at home, dinking around online
- At a bowling alley, pretending to be an alien with a stranger
-
What will you be wearing on your head tonight?
- Umm, nothing? Hair?
- Five Canadian geese
- A makeshift space helmet
- Please stop polling me and let me get back to sleep, Future Rose. Geez.
- ...
Sen says, "So..."
I say, "Uhh, yeah. Good."
Sen says, "Right. Hey, so I have to get inside. I'm doing a bowling meetup. But," her eyes brighten into headlights on super-ultra-high-beam, "You should totally come to our, uhh, classic scifi movie meetup!"
I say, "I," I do one of those polite "I have no idea what you're talking about you weirdo" chuckles, "I'm sorry, what?"
She says, "Listen, sorry, yeah. I'm talking about meetup.com. A few relative strangers are going to be meeting at this guy's house to watch a couple of old scifi movies, with all the crummy effects and ridiculous costumes, and everything."
Do not agree to do this, Rose. You need to learn how to say, "no."
She says, "It's a lot of fun. It's tomorrow. And then next Tuesday and the following Tuesday and so on."
Rose. Excuse time. You need to talk, or you'll get roped into going. YOU KNOW THIS.
She says, "It's basically a laugh and a half. Most of the folks there are MST3K fans and just heckle the thing to death."
Ten years down the road, and these are my only friends. Dmitri thinks he's hiding the fact that he's balding by wearing elf ears. Alex is allergic to air. I get addicted to Red Vines, a real downward spiral thing, lose my job and have to get locked into a tiny room in Dmitri's 2-bedroom apartment that's usually devoted to his beagle, and the room is just filled with stuffed animals, which I tear apart thinking that maybe Dmitri's hiding his stash from me, and wouldn't the perfect hiding place be up Dora the Explorer's butt?
She says, "Anyway, I don't want to pressure you." She giggles. "Just, let me give you..." she starts fishing around in her bag. "Aha! These guys are so cool. They had a card printed for newbies. Here. It's got the address, everything."
When Dmitri comes in to the torn asunder room, there's just this look of absolute pity on his face. Not even anger, just pity.
Sen thrusts the card toward me. I take it. I say, "Oh, thanks."
She says, "Anyway, yeah, keep fighting the good intergalactic fight. And come. We have a great time."
And, she walks away.
The fact that I'm shaking is less disconcerting than the fact that I have no idea when I started shaking. Most disconcerting of all, of course, is that I'm still wearing my fucking helmet!, which, of course, scratches all over my cheek when I take it off. I throw it into a trashcan/ashtray mashup at the entrance of the bowling alley, forcibly crushing it into the relatively small opening that an ashtray-capable ceiling forced over the body's orifice.
Since I clearly cannot yet go back inside (for clearly obvious reasons), I start walking in very small circles in front of the bowling alley door. On every third circle, I glance inside. The door's got that glass-paint all over it of a bunch (a bundle? a band?) of pins, in a gravitationally impossible assortment, along the door, so it's basically impossible to see anything but the occasional beigish blob bustling by. I get a few bustles of greying hair on the far left of my window into life, something Barbara-ish in its quick gait to the lane and a glint so horrifyingly powerful that it could come from nothing else on earth than Delores's butterfly broach, but no sign of the other two.
I stop going in circles to get a better look. Are they even playing? I just see Barbara and Butterfly going up again and again. Maybe Nancy's knee gave out? But, then, what about... uhh... V-name? No, they've gotta be doing something together.
Which, let's be fair, probably means either murder-plotting or sex.
(I mean, they're old ladies, right? What have they got to lose?)
OR BOTH!
See, the thing about old women is that they've got the whole sex thing down, and the murder-plotting thing probably too. It's just old hat (old body? old scimitar?). They're probably in the bathroom right now. "Uuu, so..." shit, what is her name? "... Valium, who should we murder now!" "I, mmm, I don't know Nancy, I've been, rrrrr, I've been holding a grudge on Delores for a couple of decades." "Oh, she's toast. Let's do her like that guy, aaaaa, that guy from '77." "Exploding milk duds?" "Exp-- exploding milk duds," "ooo, that's ooo, that's great, 'cept she probably doesn't eat milk duds anymore." "That b... that b- b- b- bitch!" "How about, yeeeee, how about, yeeeee, how about exploding dentures?" "Like that, oh - here it comes - li- i- i-" *the bathroom door creaks open* "THIS BATHROOM IS OCCUPIED!" *the bathroom door creaks closed* "i- I- I-..." ... "... like your grandmother back when we were kids."
... Is the relatively small size of my set of former sexy pals made evident by the fact that I think that all sexually excited noises come out as the repetition of a single letter?"
Oh, wait, no, actually, there the two of them are now, Valium is helping Nancy walk... toward me.
My complete inability to react is remarkable.
V-name says, "Oh, hi, Rose. We missed you in there!"
Nancy says, "I could've used you to fill in for me." She winks.
I say, "Yeah..." (Remarkable.)
Nancy says, "Okay, well, this old crone's gotta get home and rest. Nice meeting you, dear."
V-name says, "You feel free to come join us whenever you like."
I say, "Thanks..."
And, they walk away. Or, rather, they limp away, Nancy leaning heavily into V-name. Unnecessarily heavily, maybe. V-name turns back and winks. Delores, I expect, is about to be hit by a smooth criminal.
***
Fucking fuck of a piece of fucking shit. Shit.
Piece of.
It's ten fucking o'clock, and apparently I had the good sense to leave my fucking lunchbox at work. So, I'm about to drive all the way back across town and drive all the way back to my apartment and maybe this time actually make it out of my fucking car and maybe even, what a shocker, into my fucking apartment by eleven.
***
Yeah, so since I had fucking dinner at midnight last night, there's no way I'm going to get all dressed up to go to a total stranger's place, probably get murdered, only to watch some God-awful movie. No. Fucking. Way.
So, instead, I spend the entire night trying to beat some online game, getting all fed up, closing the window, and then having to start over. Thanks, computer. Thanks for not realizing that sometimes I have hissy fits and need you to not do everything I tell you.
Jerk.
- Created by:
- Yoshio Ishii, with Nekogames
Anyway, yeah, I beat the thing at around ten and then futz around online until I go to sleep.
And, the next day are kind of the same shenanigans, bit of show watching, bit of online gaming, some guy keeps trying to friend me on Facebook, and I have no idea who he is, and some girl left a comment on my profile picture saying I look cute, so I changed it. (I bet she's totally not a girl, but some pervy guy [or, you know what?, maybe a pervy girl] who's out to, like, friend all these young ladies and get them alone on some park in some park bench and be all pervy and weird until they, like, have sex with him. Like, "You're a hotty, candy-apples. You've got a queen's jawline. Your reminds me of when I was on meth." "Oh, weird unshaven, smelly guy [or girl], you have wooed me! I am wooed! Please, let us go to your disheveled, unpleasant apartment and sex around!" Or, maybe he [or she], like, tricks ladies like me into meeting him [or her] by recommending a bookstore or something and then showing up as a completely different guy [or girl {or, you know, guy because he's a girl transgender, or whatever}]. Like, ""Hey, muffin teeth, you know what'll get your goat running? Old Sketchy K's Bookstore on 23rd, place is a hoot. I'd see you there, but I live in Antarctica. With the penguins. And, I'm being eaten by a polar bear. So, yeah, good bye. [But, show up around, like, 3:00pm on a Saturday wearing green.]" ... "Oh, hello random stranger in green. Isn't this a lovely Saturday afternoon? Say, I can't help but notice that this is your first time in Sketchy K's. Would you like to exchange sex baskets?" "Oh, yes, grimy man who is maybe a transgender woman in a muddy, torn fake army jacket. That sounds like pickles of fun. ... Or, you know, something like that.)
And then, the next day, there are some new Facebook statuses to read but not care about from people I don't really know anymore. And, on Friday, I have my weekly ritual of erasing all of the articles from RSS Feeds that I don't read but would feel horrible about myself if I deleted from Google Reader.
Plus, you know, weekend, so hurray! or whatever.
...
Is it just me, or is the Internet a lot smaller than it used to be?
...
ooo... is that an e-mail?!
Nov. 04, 2009 →
