April 27, 2004

 

Drama?  Little ol' me?  Never happen.  God, there have just been so many weird and bad things happening lately.  First, Mom came home, the kitchen wasn't finished, and she hated everything about it.  That wasn't exactly a surprise, but now Dad is doing it all over again.  Then Saturday, to get away from all of the rather vocal hostilities in my household, I decided to make a day of movies.  I was going to see three of them, but only could stand two before I thought I would become albino from being in the dark so long.  I saw Man on Fire and From 13 to 30.  They were both very good, but obviously the Denzel Washington choice was a little better.  Maybe I was a little partial, though, because the whole movie was shot right where I was living in Mexico, or at least very near by.  So anyway, after getting out of there, I really wanted to go out.  Melissa was chaperoning a teen dance, Melanie didn't want to go, and I even got up the courage to ask a girl from the pizza place to go, but she didn't want to and her boyfriend didn't either.  Yeah, so anyway... I decided to crash the teen dance and liberate Melissa from her duties as an underrated babysitter.  They even had the gaul to kick us out because we were too old.  Of course they didn't say anything about me being there until after a friend of ours mentioned how old I was.  So we went to boring, nasty, smoky, same old Kingdom's Playground.  Melissa was kind of getting on my nerves because she kept begging me for my sweatshirt.  She had worn a skimpy top that showed a lot of skin, but I had worn a tight t-shirt that didn't really fit me, so I didn't want to give it up.  Finally she wouldn't stop begging and I just sort of threw it at her.  I was really mad, but she went to buy a drink or something.  While she was gone I decided to ask this pretty, petite blonde in the corner to dance.  You could tell by her face that she was one of those nice, quiet girls who was always in the shadows.  But she was also the kind of girl that would never say no to a dance, no matter how fat and in a wheelchair a guy was.  Ha ha, so we danced a couple of songs, and we seemed to be hitting it off alright.  We finished dancing and I was going to go over and buy her a drink and try to get a number when my brother got talking to her friend.  She was quick to point out that the girl I was dancing with was already engaged.  How wonderful.  I can honestly say that I wasn't surprised.  The only girls that aren't married or engaged around here have several reasons for that.  I suppose if she hadn't been, there would have been some giant, unforseeable flaw.  Which brings me to the next part of the evening.  I ran into my friend, Jen, who was out with her husband and a couple of friends.  There was a girl with her who was really cute.  She was 5'8" and heavy set, but as I've said many times, fat does not equal ugly.  She really was pretty.  So I asked Jen to introduce us.  It was really loud, and she didn't seem to like dancing so much, but she was nice and we just went back to her table after a couple of songs because apparently she had had a lot to drink and couldn't stand that well.  She didn't seem that drunk, but she kept insisting that she was.  And I'm guessing she was.  After a few minutes of bantering and mild flirting, I actually thought I had found the one normal and single girl left in the whole friggin' state.  Then she let it slip out that a few months earlier she had gotten extremely drunk and pleasured herself (i.e. masturbated) in front of approximately ten men.  She really regretted it, and I think she didn't even remember later that she had told me about it.  So we hung out for a little while longer and we had already exchanged numbers, so we said our goodbyes and she made me promise to call her.  The following day Jen called.  I asked her if there were some things that I should know about this girl and she recounted that this girl was on parole and couldn't go to Canada because she had broken the nose of some other girl who was "saying stuff to her".  And that's a three point shot.  So because I had promised future contact, I went to the gas station/deli shop where she makes fried sandwiches and whatnot.  I kept it fairly short as she told about how she had carved the small tattoo on her arm with a broken pen and a razor blade and how she knows she should stop smoking so much, but she doesn't really have any reason to.  Then she started asking me if I knew any of her friends, and that just about ended it for me.  She must have named every low-life, drug doing, fourteen year old mom I could ever remember from high school, and I said I didn't know any of them, and I was out of there.  Oh, and that's not even mentioning that my little brother, Tyrone, just minutes before leaving to see her at work, had backed Curt's pickup into the door and front fender of my new car.  It was a shit-ass day, let me tell ya.  So yesterday, after only five hours sleep, and sitting all day at the garage (mostly alone) waiting for a phone that would never ring, I was at the limit.  I needed to vent or do something before I went off the deep end.  I decided driving very fast on the interstate was probably the safest of choices.  I blasted my music and never went over seventy-five, but in a Metro that feels a lot faster than it really is.  I crossed the border and went to Le Coq Roti, which is Quebec's answer to Kentucky Fried Chicken.  I attempted French at first, since I can speak it pretty well, but I was so stressed that I ended up just asking the girl if she spoke English, which she did.  I ordered a club sandwich at her suggestion, ate almost none of it, and tried not to think about anything.  Then I stopped at the Tax and Duty Free shop at the border on the way back, bought some cologne three bars of Swiss chocolate.  Now there should be a warning label on their Irish Coffee bars.  It should first say that this is so delicious, you will probably eat it very fast.  It should secondly say that if you do, you will quickly become drunk because it has real, actual whiskey inside of it!  I thought it was just going to be flavored like coffee and maybe some other alcohol flavored things.  It is about nine miles from the border to my house, I was think I was completely drunk by the time I got home.  I stopped at Melissa's house on the way home and can only remember parts of what we said.  I can't believe I drove drunk!  I would never intentionally do that!  I think people should be locked up for driving drunk!  But the alcohol hit me so fast and it was so weird.  I remember going down the interstate thinking, Damn, I think I'm drunk!  But I can't be.  They would have to put a label or something on it saying it had actual alcohol in it, right?  Well, I later looked at the ingredients.  Just about the fifth thing on the list was whiskey.  Unbelieveable.  So anyway, now I'm being completely neurotic about relationships and the possibility of ever having one.  I can't believe that I put myself out there like that, actually hit it off with a girl somewhat, and all of this crap would come out so fast.  But it makes me terrified that if I could choose so poorly so quickly, how can I ever find somebody down the road?  Somebody without issues and complexes and addictions and mortifying sexual histories.  I don't want to put myself at risk for being stuck with somebody with all of those problems, and maybe that makes me shallow and a hypocrite, but I don't care.  I'm terrified of expectations.  And now when I even mention a girl to any friend or family member, it's all "If you get married..." and "Does she want to have kids, because you don't..." and all I want to know is if she wants to go to a movie some time.  I know I'm twenty-two, but I'm not in a big rush to be married and settle down.  There are so many things I still want to do.  I wrote to a recruiter and asked about joining the Peace Corps and if I could do it if I were in a wheelchair.  She wrote back and said that she didn't think I would be excluded, but it would ultimately be determined by the doctor in Washington, D.C., but that there were locations where she thinks they could adapt to what I need.  And it also said on their website that volunteering almost never affects Social Security benefits, so I could keep my health insurance, but I would have to double check with them to be sure.  I would really love to do that, but I do wonder if my mom could take me being overseas for two and a half years.  I mean, I would be able to call once or twice a week and you get vacation time to go home, and even personal leave in case of an emergency.  You get loan extensions and payoffs, free room and board, personal support, and full health and dental benefits where you live.  They also give you an allowance relative to the average person where you live.  I know it wouldn't be easy, but it would be the experience of a lifetime.  I've wanted to do it for as long as I can remember, but a few years back a couple of recruiters told me that they didn't think I could do it unless I could walk long distances, but some of their locations are in cities, teaching English and helping with local business.  You get to learn new languages and really help people.  It would be such a dream come true for me.  Well, for today I have to keep learning wretched Vermont culture by way of cleaning my sister's room and making beef stew.  Ahh, how exciting my life is!