Thursday, January 01, 2004

blue shirt These past couple of months I have been going out wearing the same stupid shirts over and over again.  Yesterday, I decided  I  had to go get myself a new shirt for New Year's eve.  I figured if I got myself a nice, new, spiffy shirt I was sure to find a girl to come home and have sex with me. So during work I went over to West Shore mall to find my new shirt.  I went to the EXPRESS FOR MEN, which is where I figured I could get a hip looking shirt that would make me look good to the hip ladies.  There were sale signs everywhere so I figured I was sure to get some sort of good deal. I zeroed right in on this deep blue long sleeve button down.  It looked really sharp.  I looked up at the sale sign.  It said it was on sale for $29.  That's not bad at all, I thought. I took the blue shirt up to the register.  When the guy rang it up he told me the total was just under fifty dollars. "I thought it was $29?"  I said. "The second one is twenty nine dollars," the guy said.  "Do you want to get another one?" "No," I said.  Then the clerk folded up my shirt in a really half-assed crumply way.  I thought about giving him shit about it, but instead I just took my new blue shirt and left. Around ten I put on my new blue shirt and went downtown to drink and try to get laid.  I drank with John and Alisha Vitale and BASK at the Emerald for a while.  But there were no girls there to speak of, so I moved on down to Cafe Almas. Then it seemed like I found just the girl.  She's this cute spanish girl that I had hung out with a couple weeks ago.  I had kissed her and taken her phone number, but I never called her.  But the spanish girl didn't seem to mind that much that I didn't call her since we started kissing again at Cafe Almas.  After that I kept putting my arm around her and caressing her back, basicallly thinking:  This is it.  This is my warm body to take home and have sex with.  Mine.  Stay away.  I bought the spanish girl a bunch of drinks and I eventually took her back to my place where I had a little after hours gathering.  Back at my home I kept kissing and caressing the spanish girl, thinking, Pretty soon I wil get these other people to leave and it will just be you and me and we can have sex. But then the Spanish girl abruptly told me that she was getting a ride back to her place with someone.  I looked at her with disbelief.  I thought we had some sort of understanding.  We we're supposed to have sex.  But the spanish girl left. I made a last minute attempt to woo this other girl, who sort of looks like the psychiatrist from the Sopranos.  I took her back in my office to show her my blog.  Since there is only one chair I had her sit on my lap. "You want to write something on the blog?" I asked her. "Not really," she said. Then I tried to kiss the sopranos psychiatrist girl.  But she wouldn't really kiss me back. "I've got boyfriend," she said. "You do?" I said.  I'd never seen her with another guy. "He lives in Baltimore," she said. "Baltimore?" I said.  "How's that supposed to work?" But that was basically the end of it.  I went back out to my living room and sat on my couch and drank a beer.  I looked down at my new blue shirt.   There was a cigarette burn on it.  I could stick my finger right through the hole.  I really had no idea what to do now. "You want to try one of my Ritalin pills," my friend asked. "Sure, why not," I said. 11:36:37 PM    comment []

first encounter It was a beautiful first morning of the year, even though I felt like hell.  The sky was blue, the sun was shinning, birds were chirping, etc. When I looked across the street from my house I saw this nice looking older gentleman walking up the sidewalk.  This is the first person I'm encountering of the new year, I thought to myself. I thought it might be good to set a new precdent of friendliness for the days to come.  I considered for an instant calling out to this man in the yellow sweater and saying, "happy new year!" But instead, I just averted my eyes and darted back in my house. 10:58:54 PM    comment []

etch-a-sketch One time I took a bunch of mushrooms with my girl friend and went to a Fred Fleming's Real Pit Bar-b-Que.  When we got to our table I saw they had etch-a-sketches you could play with while you waited for your food. "Awesome!" I said. My girlfriend and I started drawing funny pictures on the etch-a-sketch and we were laughing hysterically.  Uday and Qusay had just been shot to bits over in Iraq and I did portrait of them on the etch-a-sketch.  I thought  my picture of Uday and Qusay turned out so great that I showed it to everyone working at Fred Fleming's.  I even showed it to the manager. The Fred Fleming people thought the picture was pretty good I guess, but they didn't find it as hyterically funny as I did. Then my girlfriend drew a picutre of this funny little man.  I was really struck by my girlfriend's picture of the funny little man.  It gave me a sense of deja vu.  I swore I had seen that exact funny little man somewhere before. I was so taken by my girlfriends picture that I asked the waitress how much it would cost for me to buy the etch-a-sketch. The waitress seemed kind of puzzled.  "I don't think the etch-a-sketches are for sale," she said, "but you can ask my manger." "You seem to like it so much, you can just have it, " the manager said.  "You can give Cindy a nice tip if you want." I gave our waitress twenty bucks and then I took the etch-a-sketch home with my girlfriend's picture of the funny litte man and hung it on my wall.  I figured my girlfriend would really appreciate me putting her picture up on the wall like a work of fine art. But a few days later the picture of the funny little man got erased.  A few weeks after that my girlfriend and I broke up.    9:44:25 PM    comment []

anastasia xylene A lot of times I have ended up with a girlfriend just because she made it obvious that she wanted me.  The girl won't be especially pretty, and we won't particularly have anything in common.  But when I find out that she likes me, I sort of say, why not? and she becomes my girlfriend. This is how I got my very first girlfriend in sixth grade.  This kid came up to me and said, "That girl Jenny likes you.  She wants to know if you will 'go with her.'" I looked over at this girl Jenny.  She  had big square glasses and her hair sort of looked like yarn. "Okay," I said to the kid. Then the kid went over to Jenny and told her that I would "go with her."  After that I held hands with Jenny inbetween classes for a couple of weeks.  I didn't really know what to do with her besides hold hands, and after a while I got kind of tired of it.  It didn't seem to bother Jenny that much when I broke up with her.  She just kind of shrugged her shoulders and went away. But a few times in my life, I actually picked the girl that I wanted to be with.  One woman I actually picked was Anastasia Xylene.  I discovered her when I was about 26 or 27.  I thought she was absolutely the most beautiful and lovely woman in the world.  It was like God had searched my deepest dreams for my perfect woman and created her just for me.  She was an art girl, and after a couple of weeks of hanging around her gallery I finally mustered up the nerve to ask her out. I was overjoyed when she nodded her head. For some reason, she insisted on treating me on our first date.  We went to this place called The Garden where a lot of her artists' work was hanging. I was pretty nervous at dinner.  I listened to myself as I talked and felt like I was probably kind of phoney or boring.  But it went alright, and when I dropped her off she let me kiss her. My next date with her I just brought a video and a bottle of wine over to her house.  I brought that Crumb movie, which is a documentary about that famous underground cartoonist from the sixties.  We sat together on her day bed in the living room and watched the Crumb movie and drank some wine. Then Anastasia took me by the hand and led me back to her bedroom.  We started kissing and then we got undressed. I looked at Anastasia on the bed in front of me.  Her body was perfect and beautiful.   We started making love.  As I was making love to Anastasia Xylene I couldnt stop thinking about how beautiful and perfect she was.  I coudn't belive that such a wonderful thing was happening to me.  4:00:42 PM    comment []

taxi driver I used to really take pride in the deep and serious movies that I watched as a teenager.  One of my favorite deep and serious movies was Taxi Driver, starring Robert De Niro.  I didn't totally understand the movie, but even at sixteen years of age I could really relate to the plight of such a lonely and depressive man. When I got a girlfriend in the 10th grade I wanted her to see what a deep and serious person I was.  I told her she had to watch Taxi Driver with me. My girlfriend's  name was Tanya and her family owned a motel on the beach.  One night we rented Taxi Driver and watched it at her place on the beach. Tanya and I watched Taxi Driver in virtual silence.  Every now and then I looked over at Tanya to see if she was getting it.  It was kind of hard to tell. Then Tanya's mom came into the room and sat down with us for a moment.  Tanya's mom was just in time for the scene where Harvey Keitel is trying to sell Robert De Niro on his foutreen year old hooker (Jodie Foster). As I was sitting with Tanya and her mom, Harvey Keitel said something to the effect of: "You can fuck her in the mouth.  You can fuck her in the ass.  She'll make you're dick so hard you'll think its gonna fuckin' exlplode.  She's fourteen years old.  You never had any pussy like that before." Tanya's mom just sat there with us for another moment or two.  Then she got up and left.   3:22:33 PM    comment []

hello darkness When I was in the ninth grade my neigbors across the street asked if I would take care of their cat while they were gone.  "Sure," I said. Basically, my job was to go to my neighbors house before school everyday, open a can of cat food and put it in the cat food bowl.  My neigbors lived across the street on the water and they were a lot richer than us.  Since they were a lot richer than us they had a lot of nice things.  They had this really cool, futuristic looking stereo.  And they had a giant collection of videos. Since I was all alone in my rich neighbor's house I started fooling around with their stereo and their vcr.  One morning I put "The Graduate" in their vcr and started watching it.  I could tell right away that it was a pretty good movie, but I only had about fifteen minutes to watch it before I had to go to school. So I watched "The Graduate" fifteen minutes at a time over the duration of my cat sitting job.  When it showed the mom lady naked for a second, I rewinded the movie and watched it again a couple of times.  Finally, I got to the part where Dustin Hoffman gets on the school bus with the girl, and Simon and Garfunkel sing "hello darkness my old friend."  That was a really neat movie, I thought. Pretty soon, my neighbors came back from wherever they went and they gave me twenty bucks. A few years later, my rich neigbors across the street moved away.  A family from South America bought the place and moved in. Then, just about a year and a half ago I was out of work, and my Dad was paying me to paint his house as some sort of family workfare.  While I was painting my parent's house I watched as a girl from the South American family drove their mercede's benz right through their garage door. I ran over there to see if the south american girl was okay.  She was very upset, hysterical even, but she seemed to be okay.  I hung around a bit to see if there was anything I could do to help. But there was really nothing I could do to help.  And I wasn't really thinking that much about helping.  In the back of my mind I was thinking somehow the south american girl would end up having sex with me. But I didn't have sex with the south american girl. A few days later I finished painting my parent's house.  Then I was out of work again. 2:44:35 PM    comment []

viva la bam My friend Dave came over last night.  He wanted to give me a copy of his CD before he went back to New York.  I asked him if he wanted to come out with me for New Years. "My plane leaves at eight o' clock in the morning," he said.  "And I've still got to pack." Dave's not much for going out it seems.  So we sat there on my couch and tried to talk about stuff. "Any word on your brother?" I asked him.  (The last time I'd seen Dave he hadn't seen his brother for six years.  His brother had just disappeared.  No one in his family had any idea what had happened to him.) "You know, I saw him yesterday," he said. "Really?" I said.  "What's he been doing?" "Well," Dave said.  "He's been homeless.  He's been living on the streets all this time." "Jesus," I said.  "What does he look like?" "He's got really long hair.  And a big scruffy beard and he's pretty tan from being out doors. He's trying to get social security so he can get a regualr paycheck." When we couldn't think of anything to say, Dave and I watched the tv.  "Viva La Bam" was on.  That spinoff of from Jackass.  The dudes on tv were eating boogers and throwing up on each other. "Viva la Bam," I said.  "You know that city in Iran was called Bam." "Really?" Dave said. 3:38:30 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2004 Mark Michaels. Last update: 2/1/2004; 6:28:23 PM.