I joked the other night with my girlfriend about solving her recent troubles getting to sleep by singing her a lullaby over the phone. I was totally kidding. I can't sing a lick. I can't imagine a scenario in which I would volunteer to sing anything in public, although I do have "Perform 'Hotel California' At A Karaoke Bar" on my lists of things to do before I die. But there were some occasions where I decided to open my yap and try to belt out a tune or two as a kid.
A couple of them involved tryouts for musicals. In 8th grade at Ogden Elementary in downtown Chicago, there was an audition for "Annie Get Your Gun," a play about Annie Oakley. Now, a couple of factors affected my, ahem, performance during this tryout. First, the rules for the tryouts were that a trio of people would perform a part out of the play to assess our acting skills, then one by one each member of the trio would sing a short piece of their own choosing. So I'm nervously watching trio after trio go through their auditions in the auditorium, letting the tension build, fretting about my acting more than my singing because I didn't care about the singing part. I knew I was a bad singer, so I thought I would just sing whatever song came into my head and get it over with. The acting, that part I really wanted to get right because I like acting. Now, while this was going on, my eye was never far from my junior high crush, whose real name I will use because she may read this and want to contact me, and I would love to see how she turned out as an adult. Her name is Tamara Todd; her friends called her Tammi. She had me lovestruck from the moment I saw her, and for those two years at Ogden I couldn't take my eyes off her whenever we were in the same room. She was tall, black, light-skinned, straight light brown hair, juicy lips, huge brown eyes that seemed to light up when she smiled, and a soft honey voice. I was told that she had a speech impediment, but the only thing that sounded strange when she spoke was that her enunciation was a little forced, making her sound British. Hell, that made her even sexier to me. (I'll have to recap those two years at a later date, because they were crazy.) Anyway, she was very shy, even more than me, so when it was her time to audition, I watched raptly. Her acting was nonexistent; she was way too quiet to make an impact there. But then she opened her mouth and sang a soft version of "The Greatest Love Of All" by Whitney Houston that left my hands shaking. She wasn't a powerhouse singer, don't get me wrong, but rather a delicate, dainty little crooner whose voice just made you want to run up to her and cover her with a blanket and carry her offstage to shelter. Okay, made me want to do that. What this did was ramp up the anticipation for my audition, because everyone knew how I felt about Tammi, and when she was done, my friends all looked at me as if to say, "Okay big boy, top that!" So my group finally gets around to hitting the stage, and my acting was okay, and then I decided to be the last of my trio to sing because I was legitimately scared. I didn't know what I was going to sing, I didn't know how I was going to sound, and I couldn't help but spot Tammi still sitting in the auditorium even though we waited until we were one of the last groups. And Mrs. Oberhardt, the hot blonde French teacher running the auditions, signals me to go, and I open my mouth and try to crank out The Star-Spangled Banner, but I started that first note way too high, and the subsequent higher notes in those first two stanzas were hit by me not with force and confidence, but with a quivering, wobbly voice that went up and down in the middle of a note. I could hear the giggling and see the smirks, but I was no longer in my own body, and I just kept going. Oberhardt saw the train wreck coming as I approached "And the rocket's red glare," and she said "Thank you Andre!" very loudly and clapped. The whole auditorium erupted in shouting and applause, and I knew without a doubt that it was because I had just embarrassed myself in front of the whole 7th and 8th-grade classes, and they were giving me the standing "O" for providing hilarious entertainment. Even shy little Tammi was laughing. Folks, it was so bad, if you YouTube Carl Lewis's rendition, that was Marvin Gaye compared to my version. (Not learning my lesson, I attempted to tackle The Star-Spangled Banner again during my tryout for "Les Miserables" in high school. About the same lack of success, but a lot less people in the audience, and Tammi was nowhere to be found.)
My duet at a summer camp called Project '91 should have been much more successful. I took a music class as one of my activities at this camp, and the class was infamous for putting on a concert of sorts at the end of the camp. Of course, with the large amount of students in this class, I didn't have any designs on being out in front during this concert--I joined to be in the background because it looked like fun. Well, I struck up a friendship with a sweet girl named Amanda during this class, and she was the opposite of me, white, slim, attractive, so the teacher got the idea for us to perform Paula Abdul's smash hit "Opposites Attract" as part of the show. The reason this should have been successful is because the role of the male singer in this song (a cartoon cat, if I remember the video correctly) is not difficult at all, not that ANY song featuring Paula Abdul is going to have difficult vocals. It was more of a rap than singing. I learned the lyrics easily and practiced with Amanda every day, and it seemed like we were going to be a hit. (The teacher even changed a lyric to make it kid-friendly; in the song Paula says "I don't like cigarettes," and the cat says, "I like to smoke," and the teacher brilliantly changed it to Amanda singing, "I like my Pepsi," and me responding, "For me, Classic Coke!") Well, a couple of things screwed up that night for me. First, the performance had me make one tiny error, where I started to sing one of Amanda's lines by mistake, and it didn't fuck up the song or anything, it's just that I hate making errors of any kind. I mean, what's the point of practicing if I'm just going to flub it anyway? Then the big screw-up was when I decided not to tell my folks that I need black shorts for the performance because the "uniform" was going to be black shorts and white t-shirt. I don't know why I waited forever to mention this; must have just slipped my mind. So the night before, we bought some black shorts, and they were WAY too small for me, but it's all we could find. It was bad enough for me, being grossly overweight, to wear shorts and a t-shirt for any reason, but during this performance, at one point we all were supposed to do this twirl move during someone else's song and drop to the floor on our knees with our backs to the stage and hold it for a while. I had to be in the front row of the backup singers because I had a feature song myself, and those who were singing solos or duets were placed in the front row. Small shorts and t-shirt + front row on stage + dropping to the floor with our backs turned in a bent position = you guessed it, the whole place got to see the crack of my fat ass. I could tell not just because my poor, embarrassed family told me so later, but because I could instantly hear the giggles the moment I dropped down, and I'm not dumb; I could feel the breeze where my Fruit-Of-The-Looms should have been. A bunch of white families have this lovely event videotaped for prosperity because they were capturing their kids' shining moment. Those families also wound up with my shining hiney on their tapes as well, and thankfully, I've never seen any of the tapes, nor will I ever.
Of course, my lack of singing skills is all someone else's fault. The teacher in charge of the winter assembly at Skinner Classical School had given me the spot to sing "Silver & Gold" in 1st grade, but one day I was running around chasing my friends right before practice, and when it came time for me to sing, my voice was all shaky and nervous-sounding. The teacher on the spot decided to give my part to someone else! I tried to explain that I was out of breath from running and that's why my voice sounded like that, but she was having none of it. If she would have kept me in my rightful place, perhaps I would have had the confidence to get better and better at singing, and it could have been me sweating on stage in front of 40 million TV viewers instead of Ruben Studdard. I guess it just wasn't meant to be.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Would You Put $500 On A Coin Flip?
Well then, you may have a gambling problem, as I do. I've always acknowledged a very unhealthy obsession with winning, and gambling became a part of that obsession when I was around 21 and started betting sports over the internet and playing the ponies with "Ronnie." Since then I have racked up thousands of dollars in credit card debt due to my bad bets. But I've always had a plan--I'd get better at sports betting, thanks to websites that allow me to predict games for free and therefore keep up with when I'm having a hot streak or when I'm doing very well predicting a particular team's fortunes. I would then jump on a gambling site when I felt the time was right and knock out a few big wins in a row until my streak stopped, then I'd wait for my next hot streak before I played for money again. I even started a blog called The Road To Redemption, and I planned to keep track of my winnings as I slowly brought my credit card balances back to zero. Predictably, the first game I bet after starting this blog last year was the Pistons to beat the Bulls, and they didn't; I promptly deleted the blog and went back to the drawing board.
But make no mistake, my thought process has always been that one day I will make back the money I lost in my 20s, and I will make it back the way I lost it--internet gambling. After all, how else am I going to pay down my credit cards? Not with cash, not with my shitty salary. Well, I was trying to explain all this to my girlfriend on the phone last night, and she wasn't hearing it. She's never been a fan of my gambling, mostly because of the large sums of money I bet, but also because I usually don't win. As she put it, it would be different if I came to her with the occasional tale of victory, but every time I have told her that I bet a game and watch for the results and wish me luck, I have come up a loser. I can't tell you how frustrating that is because I call myself being careful and waiting for just the right game that I feel "can't lose." I mean, I used to play four and five-team parlays (where each team has to win for me to win any money) every night just because I felt like I could hit one of those and make a boatload of cash in one night, and every now and then I did hit it, but usually I failed miserably. Now I bet on average three or four times a year, and only single games. Anyhow, I was trying to explain to my girlfriend how much better this strategy is, because instead of four games having to win, I just need one game, and since one of two teams is going to win every game, I'm just looking for a coin flip, a 50% shot, and I'm convinced that this strategy will work for me once I get on that hot streak. It then dawned on me right in the middle of the argument that I've been plopping down hundreds of dollars on a coin flip for over ten years. I almost had to lay down from my head spinning.
It's come to the point now where my girlfriend is telling me that before she moves her life to Chicago and becomes my wife, she needs to know that I'm not going to take our hard-earned money and put fistfuls of cash on the line in what essentially amounts to a series of coin flips that last three hours, three gut-wrenching back-and-forth hours, in some misguided attempt to "redeem" myself. She says that I have to stop tying my self-esteem to how good of a gambler I am because it's a game that I can't win, and that I have to mentally and emotionally let go of the notion that I will one day gamble my way back to the break-even point because of how much I might lose trying to get there. And it makes me think of something that I figured out a while back when I was rebuilding my self-respect after all the drama that I went through a few years ago. I realized that as much as I like to jump on all of my ex-girlfriends for whatever vices they had, from "Karen's" drinking to "Torrie's" smoking to "Sarah's" need to be dominated, we ALL have some vice. Because mine isn't one of those things, I held myself in higher position than them. But mine are food and gambling, and those aren't any better than drinking or smoking. Karen even expressed concern about my gambling one day, and she never showed any emotion. To deal with the everyday pressures of just living, everyone has something that they fall back on, that makes them feel good, that takes their minds off their troubles. Just because I don't gamble every day doesn't mean that my vice isn't still gambling. Every single day I wake up wondering if I should bet that White Sox game today, or the football game, or the basketball game, whatever season it happens to be. And it was always with an eye toward making back the thousands of dollars I've gambled away so far. It's obvious that I need to do away with my vice, for myself and for my future marriage. I always figured that I'd one day have to choose between my girlfriend and gambling, and I was very scared because I really didn't want to give up gambling. But coming to the realization that I'm putting $500 on a coin flip is going to be what makes me give it up. Because the more I think about it, the more I realize that putting $500 on a coin flip is very, very, very retarded.
But make no mistake, my thought process has always been that one day I will make back the money I lost in my 20s, and I will make it back the way I lost it--internet gambling. After all, how else am I going to pay down my credit cards? Not with cash, not with my shitty salary. Well, I was trying to explain all this to my girlfriend on the phone last night, and she wasn't hearing it. She's never been a fan of my gambling, mostly because of the large sums of money I bet, but also because I usually don't win. As she put it, it would be different if I came to her with the occasional tale of victory, but every time I have told her that I bet a game and watch for the results and wish me luck, I have come up a loser. I can't tell you how frustrating that is because I call myself being careful and waiting for just the right game that I feel "can't lose." I mean, I used to play four and five-team parlays (where each team has to win for me to win any money) every night just because I felt like I could hit one of those and make a boatload of cash in one night, and every now and then I did hit it, but usually I failed miserably. Now I bet on average three or four times a year, and only single games. Anyhow, I was trying to explain to my girlfriend how much better this strategy is, because instead of four games having to win, I just need one game, and since one of two teams is going to win every game, I'm just looking for a coin flip, a 50% shot, and I'm convinced that this strategy will work for me once I get on that hot streak. It then dawned on me right in the middle of the argument that I've been plopping down hundreds of dollars on a coin flip for over ten years. I almost had to lay down from my head spinning.
It's come to the point now where my girlfriend is telling me that before she moves her life to Chicago and becomes my wife, she needs to know that I'm not going to take our hard-earned money and put fistfuls of cash on the line in what essentially amounts to a series of coin flips that last three hours, three gut-wrenching back-and-forth hours, in some misguided attempt to "redeem" myself. She says that I have to stop tying my self-esteem to how good of a gambler I am because it's a game that I can't win, and that I have to mentally and emotionally let go of the notion that I will one day gamble my way back to the break-even point because of how much I might lose trying to get there. And it makes me think of something that I figured out a while back when I was rebuilding my self-respect after all the drama that I went through a few years ago. I realized that as much as I like to jump on all of my ex-girlfriends for whatever vices they had, from "Karen's" drinking to "Torrie's" smoking to "Sarah's" need to be dominated, we ALL have some vice. Because mine isn't one of those things, I held myself in higher position than them. But mine are food and gambling, and those aren't any better than drinking or smoking. Karen even expressed concern about my gambling one day, and she never showed any emotion. To deal with the everyday pressures of just living, everyone has something that they fall back on, that makes them feel good, that takes their minds off their troubles. Just because I don't gamble every day doesn't mean that my vice isn't still gambling. Every single day I wake up wondering if I should bet that White Sox game today, or the football game, or the basketball game, whatever season it happens to be. And it was always with an eye toward making back the thousands of dollars I've gambled away so far. It's obvious that I need to do away with my vice, for myself and for my future marriage. I always figured that I'd one day have to choose between my girlfriend and gambling, and I was very scared because I really didn't want to give up gambling. But coming to the realization that I'm putting $500 on a coin flip is going to be what makes me give it up. Because the more I think about it, the more I realize that putting $500 on a coin flip is very, very, very retarded.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Party On, Garth! Party On, Wayne!
It's such a rare occurrence that I spend some time socializing that I am writing a blog post about it, even though nothing exciting or scandalous happened.
Last Friday, "Drew," his ex, his ex's new guy, and a bunch of other people spent an evening at a dirty play and a heavy metal bar, and I was able to join them. My job asked everyone who would have worked last Friday night's 2nd shift to switch their days off because Friday night was going to be spent updating the system. So I worked last Wednesday, freeing up my Friday night to hang out. I caught the bus and train to the north side and we all caught the latest rendition of the Chicago hit play "Co-Ed Prison Sluts." Drew, a female friend of his, and I saw this play about ten years ago, and it was a hoot. I honestly didn't remember the details or the plot because it was so long ago, but I knew that it was funny. Then, once the show started, I found myself singing along to some of the songs as the memories came rushing back. I won't spoil the show by going into detail, but trust me, it's raunchy, hilarious, and just a good ol' time. We then headed to Kuma's Corner, a very loud bar. The metal music was turned up, and it was relentless. But the food was great. The burgers were served on pretzel rolls, and I can't remember having one of those ever before, but it added a sweetness to the burger that worked very well. There's a long list of selections as far as toppings for the burger, from the tame (mushrooms and onions, which I had) to the savage (one burger has siracha sauce and chili paste, and I'm told that's a vicious combo of heat). But I would get stung a little anyway. I took a couple of dips into the ketchup with my fries before I noticed a kick, and our waitress would tell us later that there's giardiniera in the ketchup. They were so good that I finished the fries and ketchup despite the kick. I would recommend the play and the restaurant, separately or together, unless you don't like dirty jokes or ear-splitting metal music, in which case I'm sure there's some prissy little art exhibit somewhere downtown that you might enjoy.
Much, much thanx once again to Drew for the lift home afterwards, because navigating the city on public transportation at 1A can be lethal.
Last Friday, "Drew," his ex, his ex's new guy, and a bunch of other people spent an evening at a dirty play and a heavy metal bar, and I was able to join them. My job asked everyone who would have worked last Friday night's 2nd shift to switch their days off because Friday night was going to be spent updating the system. So I worked last Wednesday, freeing up my Friday night to hang out. I caught the bus and train to the north side and we all caught the latest rendition of the Chicago hit play "Co-Ed Prison Sluts." Drew, a female friend of his, and I saw this play about ten years ago, and it was a hoot. I honestly didn't remember the details or the plot because it was so long ago, but I knew that it was funny. Then, once the show started, I found myself singing along to some of the songs as the memories came rushing back. I won't spoil the show by going into detail, but trust me, it's raunchy, hilarious, and just a good ol' time. We then headed to Kuma's Corner, a very loud bar. The metal music was turned up, and it was relentless. But the food was great. The burgers were served on pretzel rolls, and I can't remember having one of those ever before, but it added a sweetness to the burger that worked very well. There's a long list of selections as far as toppings for the burger, from the tame (mushrooms and onions, which I had) to the savage (one burger has siracha sauce and chili paste, and I'm told that's a vicious combo of heat). But I would get stung a little anyway. I took a couple of dips into the ketchup with my fries before I noticed a kick, and our waitress would tell us later that there's giardiniera in the ketchup. They were so good that I finished the fries and ketchup despite the kick. I would recommend the play and the restaurant, separately or together, unless you don't like dirty jokes or ear-splitting metal music, in which case I'm sure there's some prissy little art exhibit somewhere downtown that you might enjoy.
Much, much thanx once again to Drew for the lift home afterwards, because navigating the city on public transportation at 1A can be lethal.
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
My History (8th In A Series)
I have no news to report at the moment. My life is very stable and calm, thank goodness, so as promised, I'll step back into my crazy past and post the story of how I wound up in a hotel room with my best friend, the daughter of the woman I was dating, and her best friend.
Displayed in the post "My History (2nd In A Series)" are the details of the torrid relationship between me and "Sarah," the woman I screwed on the side while dating "Karen." I mention some of the drama I went through with Sarah's 22-year-old daughter, "Elaine." If Sarah and I would have never become a serious couple, which we did only after I came begging to her for a shoulder to cry on after Karen fucked me over, I'm 100% positive that Elaine and I would have eventually hooked up. Not only did we have a lot of sexual energy between us, but the first time I ever saw her was when she came to her mom's house while Sarah was talking to me on her webcam, and very soon after, there they both were flashing me and pulling their pants down and bending over for me. (My best friend at the time, "Ronnie," happened to be at my place when this happened, and he was even more crazy for white pussy than I was, so as you will read later, seeing this display had an effect on him too.) For a long time I really thought that Elaine and I would fuck, and I wouldn't have been surprised, as kinky as Sarah was, if we one day had a threesome. It didn't hurt that Elaine was very fat and egg-shaped and, despite being engaged, didn't seem to have a high opinion of her desirability, which has always been a common mindset of the women who had relations with me. Elaine and her hot friend, "Talia," came up from Springfield, IL, with a male friend one weekend in 2004 just to hang out in the big city, and we did a lot of flirting in between everyone trying to convince me that Sarah would hurt me someday and she wasn't a great human being, which I didn't want to believe but would turn out to be true. Elaine and Talia even flashed me and their friend while we hung out on the beach. She pecked me goodbye on the lips as she dropped me back off at my apartment, and I got the feeling that if she were not with two other people hoping to go back home, she may have stayed with me a little longer that evening.
A little about Talia: I believe at the time she was 25, she was married, and she had four children, and I've since heard that she had a 5th child. I don't know how she got to the mental state that she did, but she basically did whatever floated into her pretty little head, whether that was fucking other guys, fucking other girls, or whatever. She and Elaine were lovers. And she was just about the nicest woman I ever met, too. She just seemed very dissatisfied with her life. She claimed that her marriage was an "open relationship," but I've always believed that no one really goes into marriage intending to ignore the vows right off the bat. If it turns out, however, that neither you or your partner can't survive without lovers on the side, then it becomes convenient to say that, well, "It's just an open relationship and we don't have boundaries." What the hell do you call marriage? That's a large boundary I believe, but as it's well documented, half of the couples that try it discover that they're not cut out for it with each other. Anyway, Talia was of mixed racial heritage, so she had exotic facial features, long wavy black hair, and large round tits with damn near the biggest areolas I've ever seen, so big that Sarah and Elaine showed me a picture of her topless the first time I visited Springfield just to marvel at them. She wasn't obese, but she had Cesarean sections for all of her child deliveries, so she had no abdominal muscle definition at all, just a spare tire of flab. She was still gorgeous as far as I was concerned, but I never thought I'd get a shot at her because her social calendar was so full, and because she seemed way out of my league.
Until that wild, insane summer night.
It's Saturday, July 24, 2004. Sarah's not coming up to Chicago that weekend. Two weeks prior, I fucked The Co-Worker Who Shall Remain Nameless for the first time, proving that I have no morals, I wasn't above cheating on Sarah, and that I was up for anything. But The Co-Worker and I weren't social buddies, so we weren't going to hang out that weekend. I had no plans. In between my loads of laundry, Elaine called that morning and informed me that she and Talia were going to drive up to Chicago that day and wanted to hang out like we did a couple of months prior when they came up with their male friend. But this time, she said, the male friend wouldn't be there. My mind raced with unscrupulous thoughts of what kind of stuff we three could get into. I said that I was looking forward to seeing them and hung up. Not very long after, Ronnie called and asked if I would have any interest in attending the bachelor party of a guy who was in a fantasy football league that Ronnie and I participated in. He said that the guy was hiring women from the same agency that sent us two girls for the football draft in 2003, and for $10 those girls allowed anyone to spray whipped cream on their tits or pussy and lick it off. I ate a LOT of whipped cream that night. So there was no doubt that I would be up for this event, but I asked Ronnie a question: Did he think the guy would mind if I brought two women to the party who both loved slutty women as much as the men did? When I told Ronnie that Elaine and her friend were coming to Chicago that night and they would probably love attending a party where whipped cream were being licked off of women's body parts, he had the same thoughts that I did--holy shit, what a hot, sexy night it would be if we popped in to an anything-goes bachelor party with two bisexual chicks. I called Elaine back and asked if they would be interested, and she was even hotter for the idea than me and Ronnie. It was fucking awn.
My camera was hanging from my neck when Elaine and Talia arrived at my apartment that evening. They were actually filling up the tank at the gas station a block away when they called, and I was so pumped for this night that I came to the station on foot before they could come pick me up. Ronnie had given me generic directions to the golf course where he was working until sundown, and we were to meet him there and then go to the party. But I wound up having to call Ronnie a couple of times to figure out where the hell we were going. On the way, while sitting in Elaine's back seat, I expressed in interest in seeing the tits that the ladies had flashed me the last time they were in Chicago, and somehow, my hands wound up inside both women's bras rubbing a nipple each as Elaine tried to drive somewhere she wasn't familiar. Hey, I actually asked (like a nerd) if they had a problem with me groping them, and they both said they liked it. When we finally made it, we had to walk through a gangway to get to the clubhouse area where he was, and then we spotted him. He had on his usual geekwear, tan shorts and an ugly shirt, but that didn't stop Elaine from being very friendly with him, and of course he was thrilled to meet a girl whose naughty bits he had seen on webcam already. Not wanting to show up to this shindig too early, we hung out on the patio of the clubhouse for about an hour shooting the shit as the sky turned black, then decided to have dinner. Ronnie convinced the girls to leave their car at the course and get in his back seat, and after dinner we'd come back to get their car and head to the bachelor party. It was such a sexually charged atmosphere that during the drive to the restaurant, the girls mentioned taking off their tops, Ronnie and I dared them, and in the blink of an eye, I turned from my passenger's seat to see both of them sitting there with their shirts and bras completely off, with these blank looks as if they didn't think there was anything strange at all about it. Ronnie could barely drive. I was just shocked. They sat like that for a good two or three minutes until Ronnie saw flashing lights and begged them to cover up or risk getting in trouble with the cops. (The lights were cops, but they were after someone else.)
After dinner, Elaine and I got into Ronnie's back seat while Talia sat up front. We didn't make out, but I did say "Now, where was I?" as I put my hand down her shirt again and she rubbed my boner through my jeans. We got back to Elaine's car, and I rode with the girls, giving them tit massages again as Elaine followed behind Ronnie to the bachelor party. It was past 10P when we arrived, and the strippers were not there yet. The guys inside were a little restless to say the least, and definitely a little mean: When Elaine offered herself and Talia as a warm-up act, the guy in charge of the party looked them up and down, sniffed and actually said out loud, "I don't think so." Elaine and Talia stepped outside right after that. Ronnie and I didn't know what to do, so we sat there for a little while muttering under our breath at the asshole who said such a cruel thing, then I stepped out to check on the girls. Elaine was smoking and cussing the guy out under her breath too, which was a normal reaction. But Talia was actually in tears. It turned out that she was very sensitive about her looks since the babies and the weight gain. I tried to console Talia, but she wasn't in a mood to be consoled. Elaine suggested that we get out of here since she really didn't want to be in the same building as that guy anymore, and that sounded like a great idea. But where to go at midnight on a Saturday? I went back in to talk to Ronnie about what our next move should be, and it dawned on me that with two vulnerable, horny, wild women, it shouldn't be too hard to convince them to get a room just to "hang out," and whatever happened from there happened. I was literally right in the midst of trying to tell Ronnie that they probably would be up for it when Elaine came back in the building and said they were going home unless we had other ideas. And then it got weird. When Ronnie brought up getting a room, Elaine said that sounded like a plan, and the woman I had flirted with and smooched and groped for several months playfully grabbed my best friend's junk as she walked out the door to tell Talia what the deal was. He looked at me stunned with his eyes bugged out as his manhood got hard right in front of me, and I'm thinking, GOOD GRAVY that was not something I ever needed to see. "Told you they'd be down for it!" I said, trying my damnedest to purge that image from my mind.
I didn't know how to feel at this point. Yes, Ronnie and I were in his car driving to the south suburbs to find a hotel with vacancy, and yes, two women seemingly willing to fuck one or both of us were following behind. I should have been thrilled, but I had conflicting feelings. I wasn't entirely comfortable with Elaine indicating that she would be willing to screw Ronnie mere hours after meeting him. I kinda felt like I had dibs on her with all the flirting we had done. I don't know if I wanted him to have Talia and I would take Elaine, or if I just wanted Elaine first and he could have my sloppy seconds, or if I thought I should be the one to fuck them both since I was the one they came to Chicago to have fun with originally. And yes, cheating on Sarah was in my mind as well. I felt guilty about that, but I was so spiritually empty at that time in my life that I wanted to fill my life with as much flesh as possible, thinking that was the way to feeling better about myself. Ronnie was so immature that what he had on his mind was calling his mother to tell her he'd be having a late night, and then it got weirder--he informed me that he had to go back to the city go get his mom the Sunday Sun-Times newspaper that is sold on Saturday nights, then he had to take it home to her before we found a room. I sat in Elaine's car outside Ronnie's house laughing at this turn of events, but there was no mutual tit-rubbing this time because Talia was still upset over the happenings at the bachelor party. I continued to try to console her and tell her that she was still hot, but she really didn't seem like she would be much fun the rest of the night. I think Elaine asked her at one point if she wanted to go home, but she said no. She probably didn't want to seem like a buzzkill. Eventually Ronnie came out of his house, I got back into his ride, we drove about twenty minutes south to a bunching of hotels, and after striking out on the first four or five attempts, we hit pay dirt. I got out and checked the availabilities of the rooms while Ronnie and the girls parked, and I made a decision that made the events that unfolded a little easier to digest than they may have been: I got two rooms instead of one. I also grabbed my camera. Dammit, I came out that night to get some wild action caught on film, and that's just what I was gonna do.
We all made our way up to one of the rooms with no plans as to what was going to happen. It was around 1:30A. Elaine, Talia, and I sat on the king-sized bed. Ronnie sat in a chair nearby. We nervously chatted for a few minutes. I pulled the nerdiest move of all time by turning on the TV because I didn't know what else to do. I think Ronnie and I actually started checking baseball scores. Finally, FINALLY, Elaine said out loud, "Well, you guys didn't pay for these rooms to sit here and talk," and with that, she shoved Talia on her back, took off her top and bra, and sucked her breasts, then she jumped off the bed, pulled her jeans and panties off, and started eating her out. Talia responded the last way I would have predicted--she grabbed a pillow and covered her head as if she were experiencing something awful. I responded by taking three pictures, two of Talia's awesome tits (although her covering her head with a pillow takes away from the beauty of those pics) and one of Elaine on her knees eating Talia's pussy. In the background of that last pic one can see Ronnie starting to put his hands on Elaine, since she happened to be kneeling next to the chair he was sitting in. Things moved fast from there--Elaine responded to Ronnie putting his hands on her by taking him to the upper part of the bed, pulling off his pants, and giving him the sloppiest-sounding blow job I've heard this side of Gianna Michaels. I took off the camera and quickly got over any feelings of envy having to hear Elaine sucking off my friend by taking over where she left off eating out Talia. It dawned on me that, hey, Talia didn't completely freak out when I tasted her, and after a few minutes, I took the pillow off her face, said, "Do you wanna go to the other room?," and pulled her up by the hand. She took forever gathering her clothes to make the walk across the hall to the other room, but eventually she got dressed. Then, while I was getting more and more geeked at the thought of having sex with Talia, who really is a very attractive, sweet woman, she stopped Elaine in mid-suck to ask her to join us, to which Elaine responded, "I'll be there in a few minutes." So I'm thinking, wow, I'm about to nail Talia, and then Elaine is coming later to show me those oral skills she's currently displaying on Ronnie? What a night!
We had not been in that other hotel room for more than five seconds before Talia turned to me with this sorrowful look on her face and said to me, "I'm sorry Dre, I'm not in the mood." I had never been more in the mood than at that moment, so I spent the next 45 minutes or so trying to cajole Talia out of the clothes that she just put back on. Somewhere along the way I got her top off, and I remember kissing her and sucking her tits, and my shirt was off as well, but I wasn't going to take my pants off until I got her legs back open again. But that never happened. No matter how hard I tried, no matter how much I begged, Talia was not interested in fucking me. She called Elaine a couple of times, but Elaine was a little preoccupied and assured her that she would be over once she was done. Then at one point she got this sorrowful look on her face again and said, "You're going to fuck me, aren't you?" This indicated to me that she expected me to take what I wanted instead of begging all night, and if I intended to rape her she wanted it to be over with. I instantly lost my boner and stopped trying to fuck Talia. I felt like such a turd. From there, we actually talked for about three hours. She told me about her emotional problems, that she was on anti-depressant medication, and that she didn't have high self-esteem, and I wound up spending most of that conversation trying to tell her how attractive she was and how she seemed to be a good person (despite her "open marriage"). I gave her so many compliments that at one point she smiled, touched my cheek, and said, "Wow, you're really good for my ego!" I choose to hold on to that as the highlight of my night. I don't know if I had any lasting effect on Talia, but I got the feeling that not a lot of people had spent all night making her feel good emotionally. Physically, sure, but not emotionally.
Elaine never came over to my hotel room. She would explain in an e-mail that she felt guilty about potentially fucking her mother's boyfriend, making her by far the most mature and adult person in that entire situation. Talia called her at about 5A and expressed the need to leave right now in order to be back home ASAP. I think she started to become worried about her husband, who didn't know she was pulling an all-nighter. When I walked into Ronnie and Elaine's room after the girls had left to go to the car, Ronnie was still there, and all he could say was, "Man. The room still smells like sex." And he was right. There was a sickening mix of cum scent in the air that I know wouldn't have affected me at all if I had been able to screw Talia and create my own funky-smelling suite. But I'm willing to bet that not a lot of you know what it feels like to stand in a room where people have been having wild monkey sex and it smells like it, and you thought you would get some of that wild monkey sex all night long, and you got bupkus. It don't feel good. Ronnie kept asking me what was wrong because he could sense that I was not in a good mood, but I couldn't tell him at that point. I just gave him the $80 for my room, which I owed him because he put the rooms on his credit card, and I slinked into the passenger's seat of his car. I then had to watch him and Elaine kiss goodbye outside, and I mean a long kiss goodbye, complete with blow-off wave at me before she got into her car and drove away. I never saw either Elaine or Talia again. Ronnie was good enough to drive me home, which was an hour north. As the sun came up, I did tell him during the drive that Talia and I didn't have sex, and he basically said nothing the rest of the trip. I think he was completely speechless, and so was I.
I'm reminded of this story occasionally when I spend time with "Jacob" and a friend of his. This friend was there at Jacob's house years ago during a New Year's Eve when Jacob and I were playing football on his PlayStation. One game came to an end when I got a touchdown with no time on the clock to pull within one point. An extra point would have forced overtime, but this friend and others implored me to go for a two-point conversion and the win, so I did, and Jacob made a spectacular play to stop me at the one-inch line. The friend immediately screamed, "Why did you do that, you idiot?" I said, "You told me to!," and he said, "I'm drunk! What are you listening to me for??" It's a funny story, and the friend branded me with the nickname Go-For-2 afterwards. Well, I told the long story of this wild night with Ronnie and Elaine and Talia to this friend a couple of years ago, and after I finally got to the conclusion, he deadpans, "So I guess now we can call you 0-for-2." That's one of the greatest one-liners I've ever heard. It was accurate, and it was delivered so straight that I never saw it coming. It helped me get a chuckle out of the sad fact that I had my hands on not one but two horny women who were probably willing to have sex with me at some point during that evening, and I wasn't good enough to pull either one. In all my adventures, there are no occasions more pathetic than this one.
Displayed in the post "My History (2nd In A Series)" are the details of the torrid relationship between me and "Sarah," the woman I screwed on the side while dating "Karen." I mention some of the drama I went through with Sarah's 22-year-old daughter, "Elaine." If Sarah and I would have never become a serious couple, which we did only after I came begging to her for a shoulder to cry on after Karen fucked me over, I'm 100% positive that Elaine and I would have eventually hooked up. Not only did we have a lot of sexual energy between us, but the first time I ever saw her was when she came to her mom's house while Sarah was talking to me on her webcam, and very soon after, there they both were flashing me and pulling their pants down and bending over for me. (My best friend at the time, "Ronnie," happened to be at my place when this happened, and he was even more crazy for white pussy than I was, so as you will read later, seeing this display had an effect on him too.) For a long time I really thought that Elaine and I would fuck, and I wouldn't have been surprised, as kinky as Sarah was, if we one day had a threesome. It didn't hurt that Elaine was very fat and egg-shaped and, despite being engaged, didn't seem to have a high opinion of her desirability, which has always been a common mindset of the women who had relations with me. Elaine and her hot friend, "Talia," came up from Springfield, IL, with a male friend one weekend in 2004 just to hang out in the big city, and we did a lot of flirting in between everyone trying to convince me that Sarah would hurt me someday and she wasn't a great human being, which I didn't want to believe but would turn out to be true. Elaine and Talia even flashed me and their friend while we hung out on the beach. She pecked me goodbye on the lips as she dropped me back off at my apartment, and I got the feeling that if she were not with two other people hoping to go back home, she may have stayed with me a little longer that evening.
A little about Talia: I believe at the time she was 25, she was married, and she had four children, and I've since heard that she had a 5th child. I don't know how she got to the mental state that she did, but she basically did whatever floated into her pretty little head, whether that was fucking other guys, fucking other girls, or whatever. She and Elaine were lovers. And she was just about the nicest woman I ever met, too. She just seemed very dissatisfied with her life. She claimed that her marriage was an "open relationship," but I've always believed that no one really goes into marriage intending to ignore the vows right off the bat. If it turns out, however, that neither you or your partner can't survive without lovers on the side, then it becomes convenient to say that, well, "It's just an open relationship and we don't have boundaries." What the hell do you call marriage? That's a large boundary I believe, but as it's well documented, half of the couples that try it discover that they're not cut out for it with each other. Anyway, Talia was of mixed racial heritage, so she had exotic facial features, long wavy black hair, and large round tits with damn near the biggest areolas I've ever seen, so big that Sarah and Elaine showed me a picture of her topless the first time I visited Springfield just to marvel at them. She wasn't obese, but she had Cesarean sections for all of her child deliveries, so she had no abdominal muscle definition at all, just a spare tire of flab. She was still gorgeous as far as I was concerned, but I never thought I'd get a shot at her because her social calendar was so full, and because she seemed way out of my league.
Until that wild, insane summer night.
It's Saturday, July 24, 2004. Sarah's not coming up to Chicago that weekend. Two weeks prior, I fucked The Co-Worker Who Shall Remain Nameless for the first time, proving that I have no morals, I wasn't above cheating on Sarah, and that I was up for anything. But The Co-Worker and I weren't social buddies, so we weren't going to hang out that weekend. I had no plans. In between my loads of laundry, Elaine called that morning and informed me that she and Talia were going to drive up to Chicago that day and wanted to hang out like we did a couple of months prior when they came up with their male friend. But this time, she said, the male friend wouldn't be there. My mind raced with unscrupulous thoughts of what kind of stuff we three could get into. I said that I was looking forward to seeing them and hung up. Not very long after, Ronnie called and asked if I would have any interest in attending the bachelor party of a guy who was in a fantasy football league that Ronnie and I participated in. He said that the guy was hiring women from the same agency that sent us two girls for the football draft in 2003, and for $10 those girls allowed anyone to spray whipped cream on their tits or pussy and lick it off. I ate a LOT of whipped cream that night. So there was no doubt that I would be up for this event, but I asked Ronnie a question: Did he think the guy would mind if I brought two women to the party who both loved slutty women as much as the men did? When I told Ronnie that Elaine and her friend were coming to Chicago that night and they would probably love attending a party where whipped cream were being licked off of women's body parts, he had the same thoughts that I did--holy shit, what a hot, sexy night it would be if we popped in to an anything-goes bachelor party with two bisexual chicks. I called Elaine back and asked if they would be interested, and she was even hotter for the idea than me and Ronnie. It was fucking awn.
My camera was hanging from my neck when Elaine and Talia arrived at my apartment that evening. They were actually filling up the tank at the gas station a block away when they called, and I was so pumped for this night that I came to the station on foot before they could come pick me up. Ronnie had given me generic directions to the golf course where he was working until sundown, and we were to meet him there and then go to the party. But I wound up having to call Ronnie a couple of times to figure out where the hell we were going. On the way, while sitting in Elaine's back seat, I expressed in interest in seeing the tits that the ladies had flashed me the last time they were in Chicago, and somehow, my hands wound up inside both women's bras rubbing a nipple each as Elaine tried to drive somewhere she wasn't familiar. Hey, I actually asked (like a nerd) if they had a problem with me groping them, and they both said they liked it. When we finally made it, we had to walk through a gangway to get to the clubhouse area where he was, and then we spotted him. He had on his usual geekwear, tan shorts and an ugly shirt, but that didn't stop Elaine from being very friendly with him, and of course he was thrilled to meet a girl whose naughty bits he had seen on webcam already. Not wanting to show up to this shindig too early, we hung out on the patio of the clubhouse for about an hour shooting the shit as the sky turned black, then decided to have dinner. Ronnie convinced the girls to leave their car at the course and get in his back seat, and after dinner we'd come back to get their car and head to the bachelor party. It was such a sexually charged atmosphere that during the drive to the restaurant, the girls mentioned taking off their tops, Ronnie and I dared them, and in the blink of an eye, I turned from my passenger's seat to see both of them sitting there with their shirts and bras completely off, with these blank looks as if they didn't think there was anything strange at all about it. Ronnie could barely drive. I was just shocked. They sat like that for a good two or three minutes until Ronnie saw flashing lights and begged them to cover up or risk getting in trouble with the cops. (The lights were cops, but they were after someone else.)
After dinner, Elaine and I got into Ronnie's back seat while Talia sat up front. We didn't make out, but I did say "Now, where was I?" as I put my hand down her shirt again and she rubbed my boner through my jeans. We got back to Elaine's car, and I rode with the girls, giving them tit massages again as Elaine followed behind Ronnie to the bachelor party. It was past 10P when we arrived, and the strippers were not there yet. The guys inside were a little restless to say the least, and definitely a little mean: When Elaine offered herself and Talia as a warm-up act, the guy in charge of the party looked them up and down, sniffed and actually said out loud, "I don't think so." Elaine and Talia stepped outside right after that. Ronnie and I didn't know what to do, so we sat there for a little while muttering under our breath at the asshole who said such a cruel thing, then I stepped out to check on the girls. Elaine was smoking and cussing the guy out under her breath too, which was a normal reaction. But Talia was actually in tears. It turned out that she was very sensitive about her looks since the babies and the weight gain. I tried to console Talia, but she wasn't in a mood to be consoled. Elaine suggested that we get out of here since she really didn't want to be in the same building as that guy anymore, and that sounded like a great idea. But where to go at midnight on a Saturday? I went back in to talk to Ronnie about what our next move should be, and it dawned on me that with two vulnerable, horny, wild women, it shouldn't be too hard to convince them to get a room just to "hang out," and whatever happened from there happened. I was literally right in the midst of trying to tell Ronnie that they probably would be up for it when Elaine came back in the building and said they were going home unless we had other ideas. And then it got weird. When Ronnie brought up getting a room, Elaine said that sounded like a plan, and the woman I had flirted with and smooched and groped for several months playfully grabbed my best friend's junk as she walked out the door to tell Talia what the deal was. He looked at me stunned with his eyes bugged out as his manhood got hard right in front of me, and I'm thinking, GOOD GRAVY that was not something I ever needed to see. "Told you they'd be down for it!" I said, trying my damnedest to purge that image from my mind.
I didn't know how to feel at this point. Yes, Ronnie and I were in his car driving to the south suburbs to find a hotel with vacancy, and yes, two women seemingly willing to fuck one or both of us were following behind. I should have been thrilled, but I had conflicting feelings. I wasn't entirely comfortable with Elaine indicating that she would be willing to screw Ronnie mere hours after meeting him. I kinda felt like I had dibs on her with all the flirting we had done. I don't know if I wanted him to have Talia and I would take Elaine, or if I just wanted Elaine first and he could have my sloppy seconds, or if I thought I should be the one to fuck them both since I was the one they came to Chicago to have fun with originally. And yes, cheating on Sarah was in my mind as well. I felt guilty about that, but I was so spiritually empty at that time in my life that I wanted to fill my life with as much flesh as possible, thinking that was the way to feeling better about myself. Ronnie was so immature that what he had on his mind was calling his mother to tell her he'd be having a late night, and then it got weirder--he informed me that he had to go back to the city go get his mom the Sunday Sun-Times newspaper that is sold on Saturday nights, then he had to take it home to her before we found a room. I sat in Elaine's car outside Ronnie's house laughing at this turn of events, but there was no mutual tit-rubbing this time because Talia was still upset over the happenings at the bachelor party. I continued to try to console her and tell her that she was still hot, but she really didn't seem like she would be much fun the rest of the night. I think Elaine asked her at one point if she wanted to go home, but she said no. She probably didn't want to seem like a buzzkill. Eventually Ronnie came out of his house, I got back into his ride, we drove about twenty minutes south to a bunching of hotels, and after striking out on the first four or five attempts, we hit pay dirt. I got out and checked the availabilities of the rooms while Ronnie and the girls parked, and I made a decision that made the events that unfolded a little easier to digest than they may have been: I got two rooms instead of one. I also grabbed my camera. Dammit, I came out that night to get some wild action caught on film, and that's just what I was gonna do.
We all made our way up to one of the rooms with no plans as to what was going to happen. It was around 1:30A. Elaine, Talia, and I sat on the king-sized bed. Ronnie sat in a chair nearby. We nervously chatted for a few minutes. I pulled the nerdiest move of all time by turning on the TV because I didn't know what else to do. I think Ronnie and I actually started checking baseball scores. Finally, FINALLY, Elaine said out loud, "Well, you guys didn't pay for these rooms to sit here and talk," and with that, she shoved Talia on her back, took off her top and bra, and sucked her breasts, then she jumped off the bed, pulled her jeans and panties off, and started eating her out. Talia responded the last way I would have predicted--she grabbed a pillow and covered her head as if she were experiencing something awful. I responded by taking three pictures, two of Talia's awesome tits (although her covering her head with a pillow takes away from the beauty of those pics) and one of Elaine on her knees eating Talia's pussy. In the background of that last pic one can see Ronnie starting to put his hands on Elaine, since she happened to be kneeling next to the chair he was sitting in. Things moved fast from there--Elaine responded to Ronnie putting his hands on her by taking him to the upper part of the bed, pulling off his pants, and giving him the sloppiest-sounding blow job I've heard this side of Gianna Michaels. I took off the camera and quickly got over any feelings of envy having to hear Elaine sucking off my friend by taking over where she left off eating out Talia. It dawned on me that, hey, Talia didn't completely freak out when I tasted her, and after a few minutes, I took the pillow off her face, said, "Do you wanna go to the other room?," and pulled her up by the hand. She took forever gathering her clothes to make the walk across the hall to the other room, but eventually she got dressed. Then, while I was getting more and more geeked at the thought of having sex with Talia, who really is a very attractive, sweet woman, she stopped Elaine in mid-suck to ask her to join us, to which Elaine responded, "I'll be there in a few minutes." So I'm thinking, wow, I'm about to nail Talia, and then Elaine is coming later to show me those oral skills she's currently displaying on Ronnie? What a night!
We had not been in that other hotel room for more than five seconds before Talia turned to me with this sorrowful look on her face and said to me, "I'm sorry Dre, I'm not in the mood." I had never been more in the mood than at that moment, so I spent the next 45 minutes or so trying to cajole Talia out of the clothes that she just put back on. Somewhere along the way I got her top off, and I remember kissing her and sucking her tits, and my shirt was off as well, but I wasn't going to take my pants off until I got her legs back open again. But that never happened. No matter how hard I tried, no matter how much I begged, Talia was not interested in fucking me. She called Elaine a couple of times, but Elaine was a little preoccupied and assured her that she would be over once she was done. Then at one point she got this sorrowful look on her face again and said, "You're going to fuck me, aren't you?" This indicated to me that she expected me to take what I wanted instead of begging all night, and if I intended to rape her she wanted it to be over with. I instantly lost my boner and stopped trying to fuck Talia. I felt like such a turd. From there, we actually talked for about three hours. She told me about her emotional problems, that she was on anti-depressant medication, and that she didn't have high self-esteem, and I wound up spending most of that conversation trying to tell her how attractive she was and how she seemed to be a good person (despite her "open marriage"). I gave her so many compliments that at one point she smiled, touched my cheek, and said, "Wow, you're really good for my ego!" I choose to hold on to that as the highlight of my night. I don't know if I had any lasting effect on Talia, but I got the feeling that not a lot of people had spent all night making her feel good emotionally. Physically, sure, but not emotionally.
Elaine never came over to my hotel room. She would explain in an e-mail that she felt guilty about potentially fucking her mother's boyfriend, making her by far the most mature and adult person in that entire situation. Talia called her at about 5A and expressed the need to leave right now in order to be back home ASAP. I think she started to become worried about her husband, who didn't know she was pulling an all-nighter. When I walked into Ronnie and Elaine's room after the girls had left to go to the car, Ronnie was still there, and all he could say was, "Man. The room still smells like sex." And he was right. There was a sickening mix of cum scent in the air that I know wouldn't have affected me at all if I had been able to screw Talia and create my own funky-smelling suite. But I'm willing to bet that not a lot of you know what it feels like to stand in a room where people have been having wild monkey sex and it smells like it, and you thought you would get some of that wild monkey sex all night long, and you got bupkus. It don't feel good. Ronnie kept asking me what was wrong because he could sense that I was not in a good mood, but I couldn't tell him at that point. I just gave him the $80 for my room, which I owed him because he put the rooms on his credit card, and I slinked into the passenger's seat of his car. I then had to watch him and Elaine kiss goodbye outside, and I mean a long kiss goodbye, complete with blow-off wave at me before she got into her car and drove away. I never saw either Elaine or Talia again. Ronnie was good enough to drive me home, which was an hour north. As the sun came up, I did tell him during the drive that Talia and I didn't have sex, and he basically said nothing the rest of the trip. I think he was completely speechless, and so was I.
I'm reminded of this story occasionally when I spend time with "Jacob" and a friend of his. This friend was there at Jacob's house years ago during a New Year's Eve when Jacob and I were playing football on his PlayStation. One game came to an end when I got a touchdown with no time on the clock to pull within one point. An extra point would have forced overtime, but this friend and others implored me to go for a two-point conversion and the win, so I did, and Jacob made a spectacular play to stop me at the one-inch line. The friend immediately screamed, "Why did you do that, you idiot?" I said, "You told me to!," and he said, "I'm drunk! What are you listening to me for??" It's a funny story, and the friend branded me with the nickname Go-For-2 afterwards. Well, I told the long story of this wild night with Ronnie and Elaine and Talia to this friend a couple of years ago, and after I finally got to the conclusion, he deadpans, "So I guess now we can call you 0-for-2." That's one of the greatest one-liners I've ever heard. It was accurate, and it was delivered so straight that I never saw it coming. It helped me get a chuckle out of the sad fact that I had my hands on not one but two horny women who were probably willing to have sex with me at some point during that evening, and I wasn't good enough to pull either one. In all my adventures, there are no occasions more pathetic than this one.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Ready For The Next Step?
There was one very funny moment during the past week here with my girlfriend. Not more than a few hours after she gave me oral sex and made a valiant attempt at swallowing, she requested some Gatorade, and I presented her with the jug that I had sipped out of earlier. She actually refused to drink behind me! I had to get her her own glass because she was skeezed out by the backwash possibilities. This after she had my penis squirting semen into her mouth. I can say that I've never seen anything like that in all my past experiences. That was very humorous.
We had a lot of fun the rest of the week, mostly chilling at home during the day and going out to dinner at night. One night she proclaimed this Mexican take-out place called Taco Burrito King "the messiest thing I've ever eaten," then went back yesterday before she flew home. We saw the movie The Happening (I didn't like it) last Friday, and we participated in the Sick-A-Cell Walk-A-Thon last Saturday. I was proud to walk part of the course with her by my side. Maybe we can go a little farther next year. And she rented a car and let me drive it around town for practice, although I think I strained a knee ligament trying to work the gas and brake in that little thing. I said that there wouldn't be any excuses to go for the next level if things went well between us this week, and I haven't changed my thinking. We had a couple of spirited discussions, a couple of small disagreements, but mostly we enjoyed each other's company. It felt so good. I was so crushed when she left. The house feels very empty, and so does the bed. I really do love her, and I really do want her here permanently. I'm going to have to figure out how to make it work financially and logistically, but I'm sure we can do it. A man finds a way to get things done when he wants to make a special woman his wife.
We had a lot of fun the rest of the week, mostly chilling at home during the day and going out to dinner at night. One night she proclaimed this Mexican take-out place called Taco Burrito King "the messiest thing I've ever eaten," then went back yesterday before she flew home. We saw the movie The Happening (I didn't like it) last Friday, and we participated in the Sick-A-Cell Walk-A-Thon last Saturday. I was proud to walk part of the course with her by my side. Maybe we can go a little farther next year. And she rented a car and let me drive it around town for practice, although I think I strained a knee ligament trying to work the gas and brake in that little thing. I said that there wouldn't be any excuses to go for the next level if things went well between us this week, and I haven't changed my thinking. We had a couple of spirited discussions, a couple of small disagreements, but mostly we enjoyed each other's company. It felt so good. I was so crushed when she left. The house feels very empty, and so does the bed. I really do love her, and I really do want her here permanently. I'm going to have to figure out how to make it work financially and logistically, but I'm sure we can do it. A man finds a way to get things done when he wants to make a special woman his wife.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
A Week Of Marriage Previews
Starting today, my girlfriend is staying with me for a whole week. She leaves next Wednesday. This will be the longest we've spent together, so it's going to be a very interesting look into how promising our future together looks. There's a lot one can put up with from the other during a weekend here and there, but an entire week will be a true test of our compatibility as a long-term couple. "Jacob" will be staying with his sister in Wisconsin during this time. I'm kinda nervous about this week. It sets up as a series of little episodes here and there that serve as a preview of marriage, in my mind. From deciding where to go for dinner to what movie to watch to when to step out of the house and explore the city, we're going to find out just how flexible the other person is, and whether any differences of opinion can be smoothed over neatly or potentially grow to be a problem, especially when we're in the house with each other for the next seven days no matter what. I'm probably fretting over nothing as usual, though. I don't think she's going to let this week away from her crappy job be anything less than fun and exciting, and I don't think she wants to waste time arguing or holding a grudge over something small when she knows that we're not going to see each other for a long time after this. I bet this turns out to be a great week. It'll probably be over before we know it.
Monday, June 09, 2008
The Gold Standard Of Bad Hygiene
Oh, the endless stories "Jacob" and I remember while shooting the shit every day. From grade school to high school to adulthood, we've come across some strange characters and had some crazy misadventures. Nothing too wild or weird. Not like ending up in a hotel room with "Ronnie," "Sarah's" daughter, her friend, and my 35-mm camera. (I'll tell that story another time.) A very short one that still made my tummy hurt from laughing was remembering this guy in high school named William Bell. Poor fella must have been living in poverty because he didn't just wear the same clothes to school every day, they were his Whitney Young gym clothes, which he had to buy freshman year because they were mandatory. Then he decided for reasons known only to him to write in black marker on the back of his shirt, "William 'Cool Papa' Bell...Can't Touch This Don't." Yes, he tried to use the M.C. Hammer line "U Can't Touch This" from 1990, but that Chicago Public School education tripped him up. He stank so bad that for Christmas one year, teachers and counselors pooled their funds and gave him a gift basket full of soaps and deodorants. Using the smell test, I gathered that he didn't use the products. Then there was the very popular rumor that during sophomore year he was caught jacking off under the lab table in chemistry class. With all of that, no wonder he wasn't very social. Wherever he is today, I hope and pray that he discovered the joys of clothing stores and Zest.
Saturday, June 07, 2008
The Weather's Finally Getting Nice
And what better way to get out and enjoy that weather than with a relaxing day along the lake? Yes, it's time for the Sick-A-Cell Walk, Jog, and Bike-A-Thon, next Saturday, June 14. A good time will be had by all, except anyone following me on the walk trail and slipping on my sweat puddles. If you're near Chicago, come on out and have a good time (and bring a cold towel). And follow the link below if you would like to contribute to the cause or participate in the event. All efforts, physical or fiscal, I'm sure are appreciated by the fine folks at the Sickle Cell Disease Association of Illinois.
http://www.scdai.com/
http://www.scdai.com/
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Smelling The Fresh Air...Of My Apartment
The school semester has been over for a couple of weeks now, and I have been enjoying my free time. "Jacob" and I will play video games on a typical morning until it's time for me to go to work, then when I come home we might go get something very unhealthy to eat and settle in with some late baseball thanks to the DirecTV MLB Extra Innings package. When I'm not working, like today (I still have Tuesdays and Wednesdays off, which I hate), I'll make myself useful by cleaning up or doing the dishes or laundry, and in the evening I'll cook the only thing I know how to cook, pre-prepared chicken breasts, and veggies and pasta or Rice-A-Roni. I'm not worried at all about my grades because I definitely got at least a B in physical science, and maybe even an A, and I'm fairly sure I got an A in psychology and media. The psychology class came to a very curious end. From the beginning, we knew we would have a ten-page paper due at the end of the semester, and the syllabus says, verbatim: "The topic is to write a paper describing exactly how you will apply learnings from this class to your own life objectives." There's nothing in there about it being specifically a research paper, but during the last class before the paper was due, I decided to ask the teacher if I was on the right track doing a paper on major depressive episode (basically a recounting of what "Karen" did to me). She expressed to me an expectation that the paper would be more of a research paper, with medical explanations of what depression was, citings from the book of diagnoses, etc. So I had to turn around and put together a ten-page research paper in two days. However, I didn't do much research. I only used two sources, and all those were good for were listing symptoms of depression and major depressive episode. The rest of the paper was a little of my childhood as background, then what happened with Karen. I hope it was good enough to keep the A that I had earned through the tests. The psych teacher pulled a typical psych job for the final exam, too. After telling us that the test would be 100 questions, no essay, she told us the morning of the final that something went wrong with making the copies of the test, so she made up an "impromptu" final consisting of seven essay questions that she scribbled on the board. I was not ready for an essay test that day, especially since I had been up until 1 the previous night rewriting her damn research essay. I think I did okay, though. Besides my girlfriend coming up for the Sick-A-Cell Walk-A-Thon weekend in June, the other interesting event coming for me is some sort of catered dinner with the new boss at my job. Everyone who works there will eventually be invited, from what I understand, but we have to do it in clusters because otherwise it would be impossible. My cluster goes on June 12. I'm debating what I should bring up with him. Do I complain about the methods by which I am determined to be working at less than 100% productivity, even though I am consistently near the top of actual documents processed per month? Would that sound like I'm whining? What else do I talk about? I'm not very good at brownnosing. It's not my personality. I'm either reserved and introverted or confrontational and irritated, but I'm no good at submissive and eager-to-please. Unless I'm trying to get laid. I have a couple of weeks to figure out a strategy to get in the boss's ear, and if that doesn't work, I may not have long after that to find a new gig.
(GRADES UPDATE, 5/22/08, 10:50A--It's an A for media and physical science, and only a B for psychology. Guess Mme. Daramus didn't like my paper.)
(GRADES UPDATE, 5/22/08, 10:50A--It's an A for media and physical science, and only a B for psychology. Guess Mme. Daramus didn't like my paper.)
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
Finals Week! Run Screaming!!
Ah, the excitement and pandemonium of Finals Week. The syllabus for my psychology class wasn't very clear about the 10-page paper due at the end of the semester, so I thought that my final project would be a detailed analysis of my bouts of depression over the years. The teacher informed me that, no no, she expects this to be a research paper, with sources and shit. So I have to spin that gold out of yarn today, as well as prepare for the 100-question final exam. Then Thursday is the finals for media class and physical science class. Because I got an A on my last physical science test and I've done all the homework, there's a chance I can sneak an A out of that class if I perform on the final. The other two classes are virtual guaranteed As. Wow, it's all coming together. With only one more class left until I get my A.A., I can actually see a finish line. But in typical self-deprecating fashion, my gut reaction is to dismiss it all and claim that I haven't done anything yet, lest I start to feel satisfied. I still insist that I'm not walking across the stage for my A.A. I feel that's like taking public bows for finishing my sophomore year of high school. I won't do it. But I am proud of what I've done thus far. Psych class didn't quite teach me why I feel the need to shit all over things that I do, but hey, that's part of my "charm." Well, off to work. Wish me luck.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
That's It, I'm Moving To Brazil
What if I were to tell you that all three of the remaining presidential candidates would speak on a pro wrestling show? And not to denounce pro wrestling, but to actually speak to wrestling fans, as if they've suddenly become an important constituency? If you don't believe that they would do something like that, then click on this Youtube posting of all three speeches this past Monday on WWE Raw. Then, join me in dry-heaving and mourning the death of decency in this country. I mean, seriously. Remember the uproar when Slick Willie Clinton blew his, um, own horn on Arsenio? Isn't this a billion times worse? There are so many things wrong with courting the wrestling industry, as if they're the bastion of goodness, and then all three go and do it, not just one. An abbreviated list of things that each candidate should question about WWE is here in this excellent blog post by former WWE writer Seth Mates. And believe me, that's just the beginning. But that's where America has collapsed to, where the candidates will fish for votes anywhere they can find them. There has never been a candidate before that spoke to wrestling fans, and there's a reason for that. I really find it in its own way disgusting and filthy. It reminds me of a saying that describes what I felt like after discovering that "Karen" was a dirty whore and I was screwing her: Don't roll in the mud with pigs, you both get dirty, and the pig likes it. Vince McMahon and the WWE are the pigs, and they were creaming their pants at the sight of the next President of the United States rolling in the mud with them. What's next, the Adult Video Awards convention?
Man, am I glad I'm not registered to vote.
Man, am I glad I'm not registered to vote.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Some Random Thoughts On Music
I noticed that music was coming up in a lot of things I was doing lately, so I decided to make this post all about a few of my thoughts on the thing that all of us have in our lives in some form but tend to take for granted, music.
As those who know me well are already aware of, I don't go anywhere without my headphones and either old-school cassette-playing personal radio or my iPod, or sometimes both. And if I feel like really zoning out on a given day, then those sitting on the same train or bus as me will have to be serenaded by whatever I'm in the mood to listen to. I'm a very considerate person in most other situations, but for some reason I'm not willing to listen to anyone who tries to tell me to turn down my headphones. My deal is, honestly, what could the decibel level possibly be for those sitting near me as I listen to headphones? It's not that much of a disturbance. Do I get annoyed when I have my headphones off and someone else is listening to a song so loudly that I can hear it? Only if I don't like the song. And I would never ask someone to turn their personal headphones down just because I don't like the song. I think that's unbelievably rude. And if I like the song, I'd never think of asking the person to turn it down. So I think it's all about my choice of music and the people who don't like my choice of music. In my life, I can remember 3 definite (and maybe a few more) times where I've been asked to turn down my headphones. The music was always hip-hop. The people were always older white people. And the next time, I have a good mind to respond to that request with a middle finger.
A running theme between me and my roommate "Jacob" is how many horrible songs he can guess is on my iPod, because it's basically filled with songs that hardly anyone else liked or heard of when they were out. I'm up to 217 songs on my iPod now, and I swear all except maybe 30 are from before 1990. I didn't mean to yell out one of the songs for him, but I was feeling good Saturday night walking home from the train, and before I got to my front door I let out a yell while rocking out to "Welcome To The Jungle" that would have made Axl Rose proud...I mean barf. Would've made Axl Rose barf. Anywho, Jacob was sitting in the living room as he usually is, and my yell came right outside the window, so when I got in he let me know that he could hear me. Honestly, I didn't know I was quite that loud. So now he knows that I have Guns & Roses on my iPod. That's not nearly as embarrassing as some of the other shit on there, but it's still pretty bad.
Talking about Guns & Roses reminds me of a story from grade school. (REAL NAME ALERT #1) In 7th grade, at Ogden Elementary in downtown Chicago, where a lot of rich, white kids went to school, I was having a lot of trouble fitting in, as usual. There was a fat white chick named Kathy Vajda who was assigned to sit next to me, and she and her friends were so into Guns & Roses that it was almost scary, but we found a way over several days to have conversations about other things and kinda entertain each other. Then I made the fatal mistake of thinking that we may actually be friends, and I casually asked her one day, "So, what are you doing for lunch?" The look on her face was absolutely priceless. She turned completely pale, her eyes bugged out, and she turned away from me without answering the question. It's funny now how freaked out she was over the concept of going to lunch with me, but at the time it really hurt, not because I wanted her or anything, but because I thought we were friendly enough that she wouldn't be ashamed to step out in public with me and grab a burger. Boy, was I dead wrong. I never spoke to her again.
Hey, I like dropping real names. Maybe Kathy will Google herself and my blog will come up, and she can read about what a cunt she used to be. So I'll do it again. (REAL NAME ALERT #2) So another song on my iPod is "Let The Music Play" by Shannon, a radio and club hit from the early 80s, and I have an early and intimate history with that song. In 2nd grade at Skinner Classical School, the strongest crush I had in my life up to that point was on a black, fair-skinned, Jheri-curled 6th-grader named Margaret Stallworth, but of course, I'm just a short, annoying 2nd-grader, so she wanted nothing to do with me. It's not like I was really trying any moves at that age, but I just wanted to be near her. Somehow, I was able to find out that she really loved the song "Let The Music Play," so I went home and camped out on the radio station most likely to play the song, then I used my portable $20 mini-boombox to tape the song (or at least part of it) for her. I had to Scotch-tape the back of my cassette player closed in order to hold the batteries in, because I had lost the piece that holds down the batteries, and I had to be careful not to tilt it forward because I had lost the front piece that holds the cassette in. But I managed to get the poor tattered thing on the school bus and play the song for Margaret, and she was so touched by the effort that she kissed me on the cheek. Proudest. Day. Of. My. Life. At least at that point in my life. And still to this day, every time I hear that song, I think of Margaret and how sweet I was on her and whether she turned out as hot as I imagine she did. So, if you've read this blog from its infancy and you know about all the silly shit I've done trying to please women who don't deserve me, there's the moment that the desire to make a woman happy was instilled inside me.
It really is amazing how a song can take you back to something that you normally wouldn't think of. I haven't been to the strip club with "Drew" and his brother and friends in years, but I recently downloaded a couple of songs that reminded me of those trips: "The Thong Song" by Sisqo and "It Feels So Good" by Sonique. Both were prominently featured during certain sets at the Admiral Theatre back in the day, and both songs conjure up the dimly lit club with its personality-deprived, soulless dancers charging $10 for air dances where you can't make contact with them. And yet, those were fun times. Just hanging out with the guys all night was fun, and just sitting in a place with dozens of naked women walking around was, of course, a blast. Some of those dancers found a way to distinguish themselves and work hard to give the paying customer a great experience, so it's not fair for me to call them all soulless and personality-deprived. I'm sure those few dancers and those songs are the only reasons that I miss the strip club, because I don't miss spending money that I didn't have and still not having any pussy at the end of the night.
My media class has been having spirited debates about music, specifically hip-hop and the messages sent by the music. One guy, who never shuts up and can't be older than 19 or 20, had the nerve to blame his bad behavior on hip-hop, saying that when he calls a woman out of her name it's because that's the only way he knows how to relate to them. I've heard some ignorant statements before, but that one's near the top. I had to gently argue with my teacher one day when he insisted that the old white men who run all the companies that distribute media (TV, movies, music, etc.) would not publish music that disrupts the status quo, such as if hip-hop decided to put out messages empowering black people to get out of the ghetto and educate themselves instead of the usual "pimps up, hoes down, shoot everybody" mentality. I don't think those old white people give a damn what message is put out there, so long as it moves units out of the warehouses. All two people that read this blog, you can debate this if my memory is serving me wrong, but this is the point I made: In 1990, the #1 rap albums were by M.C. Hammer and Vanilla Ice, and there's absolutely nothing hardcore and gangsta about that. The gangsta rap theme as a pop culture phenomenon, in my opinion, began in 1991, when, without ANY advertising or commercial endorsement (because of the language and violent imagery), the #1 album of that summer was N.W.A.'s "Efil4zaggin." They had to print "Niggaz4life" in reverse so as to try to avoid getting banned from all the record stores, and yet still it was flying off the shelves. "Nuttin' But A G Thang" came from Snoop and Dre about a year later, and the rest is history. But it's not that white people wanted to publish gangsta rap in order to dumb down the black race. It's that gangsta rap started selling like hotcakes (and, famously, not just to black folks, but white suburbia as well), and all the record companies had to follow the trend or else risk being left with their dicks in the dust, so to speak. Then we had to debate whether to ban rap lyrics or not in class, and that was easy--you can't take certain words and pronounce them evil and ban them. Words don't mean shit unless you want to make them mean something. And words don't make people shoot other people, bad parenting and/or mental illness make people shoot other people.
Finally, I was excited to read that Mariah Carey has another #1 hit on her hands, with a song called "Touch My Body." Anyone who knows me is aware how I feel about Mariah Carey. Not only is she smoking hot, especially with that 40 pounds she's put on since her debut in 1990, but I love her voice, even with all the verbal acrobatics that don't necessarily add to her songs. The thing is, I've never heard her new song. I don't listen to music on the radio anymore. That's how bad it's gotten. It started with my general avoidance of the radio after the "Karen" episode four years ago, because of all the songs out back then that reminded me of her, and my desire to listen to today's music continued to erode from there. The breaking point was when I had the chance to listen to American Top 40 on a lazy Sunday morning two summers ago and was hit with the fact that one of the top 10 songs in this country was being "sung" by Hulk Hogan's daughter, and another by Paris Hilton. In that moment, mentally I turned around and walked out of the pop music room, shaking my head and wondering if I would ever come back. So far, the answer is a resounding no.
Finally, I was excited to read that Mariah Carey has another #1 hit on her hands, with a song called "Touch My Body." Anyone who knows me is aware how I feel about Mariah Carey. Not only is she smoking hot, especially with that 40 pounds she's put on since her debut in 1990, but I love her voice, even with all the verbal acrobatics that don't necessarily add to her songs. The thing is, I've never heard her new song. I don't listen to music on the radio anymore. That's how bad it's gotten. It started with my general avoidance of the radio after the "Karen" episode four years ago, because of all the songs out back then that reminded me of her, and my desire to listen to today's music continued to erode from there. The breaking point was when I had the chance to listen to American Top 40 on a lazy Sunday morning two summers ago and was hit with the fact that one of the top 10 songs in this country was being "sung" by Hulk Hogan's daughter, and another by Paris Hilton. In that moment, mentally I turned around and walked out of the pop music room, shaking my head and wondering if I would ever come back. So far, the answer is a resounding no.
Sunday, April 06, 2008
To Memphis And Back, Eventually
Whew! What a whirlwind last few weeks it's been for me, so much that I'm exhausted despite having a week off work. Of course, I wasn't planning a full week off, but thanks to the airlines, that's what I wound up having. Here's what I've been up to:
I did take the time to relax during spring break, not doing much besides hanging with "Jacob" and doing several online baseball fantasy drafts. I had to write a paper for media class, though, and have it ready when class started back. I was taking it easy so much that I had to scramble and write the paper at the last second. My superior writing skills saved the day, however. Not only did I get a perfect score, but the teacher copied the paper, cut my name off, and handed it out to the entire class as an example of the way a paper should be written. As if my head needed to be made bigger.
With my grades in order, I flew to Memphis to see my girlfriend last weekend, and also to watch the 2nd annual Civil Rights Game, which happened to include my White Sox this year in an exhibition baseball game against the Mets. (The Sox lost.) This is about when my feet started giving me problems. My right foot felt a little strained before I left, then my left toe felt strained while I was in Memphis. Feet were not the body part in the spotlight during this visit. No, that would be the clitoris. See, I'm of the impression that I'm not that good at giving head to women because I've never made anyone scream and juice all over my face like on the pornos, so I had not tried to eat out my girlfriend yet even though she has given me several blow jobs since Thanksgiving. Also, the humidity makes my nose run, causing me to stop usually after about two minutes. This visit was only three days; I arrived Friday, and was supposed to leave Sunday. We had fun between the sheets Friday night, then after the rainy game and dinner, we were knocked out Saturday night. So while cuddling Sunday morning, hours before I was to leave, I asked her if she was satisfied with the amount of physical intimacy we had, and without hesitation, she softly asked, "What do I have to do to get you to go down on me?" This was something in my head the entire time I was there--I knew she was going to want this soon because we had discussed doing it before and I kept saying I was tired, or otherwise avoiding it. She reached in my pants and initiated more hanky-panky, and I returned the favor, eventually pushing the coffee table out of the way and getting on my knees and orally pleasing her for a few minutes before the angle started affecting my neck. She said she was happy with the little bit of clit teasing, but I think she was just happy to get any head from me at all. She suggested that she was starting to feel used, and I don't blame her. She's probably sucked me off more than five times now with no reciprocation. I have to up my game if I'm going to keep claiming that I have a happy relationship.
The travel adventures began after we fooled around on her couch. I checked the United Airlines website for my flight status since the weather in Memphis had been dreadful and Chicago wasn't much better, and for the first time since I started flying around a few years ago, I had a flight canceled. It was a stroke of luck that I even checked the website and found this out, because I had never done that before. Normally, my girlfriend would have driven me out to the airport, which is a half-hour from her home, and we would have wasted that gas and had to turn around. We were able to hang out Sunday night and watch baseball on TV, which I know is just her most favoritist thing on Earth, then I had a 2:15 flight the next day. Now, this screwed me up already because I had a psych test Monday morning that I was going to miss, and I had to call in to work and use an unscheduled day off. But it would get more screwy. United.com would inform me that the flight was pushed back to 5P, then later it displayed a 7P expected departure. This is a 2:15 flight we're talking here, and that's after my flight the day before was canceled. My girlfriend was going to come home from work on her lunch break and take me to the airport for that 2:15 flight, but I had to e-mail her and tell her don't bother. She wound up coming home from work early and taking me to the airport in plenty of time for this now 7P flight. So they shove us onto the plane at about 6:30, as if we're moments from departure, then the attendant grabs the mike and actually says the following: "Okay, I have an invisible shield, so anything that gets thrown at me will not hit me." You can't imagine the heart-sinking feeling that rises from hearing that. She then announced that they had been informed by the TSA that we weren't going up in the air until 9P. I had to take out my iPod and listen to nothing but smooth jazz music the entire time that we sat there just to keep myself calm, or as my girlfriend described it later, "You had to go to your happy place." People were calling airline agencies scrambling to rearrange connecting flights, although someone seemed more concerned with whether her family taped Deal Or No Deal for her. Finally, we took off at about 9, and landed at about 10:30. Jacob was kind enough to run me out to the airport when I left, and he picked me up as well, so things could have been much worse. If I had to navigate public transportation that late, I wouldn't have made it home until after midnight.
The foot problems this past week have been killer since I came back home. Between my toe joints being swollen and my ankles being twisted and tendons being inflamed, both my feet have been giving me lots of trouble. The worst was after Thursday. Knowing that I had a very long day with two classes in the morning, plus making up my psych test, plus meeting Jacob and participating in the live baseball fantasy draft for our money league that night, I wound up ingesting quite an impressive amount of caffeine on the day. I had like 3 Pepsis during lunch, then after we got to the building for the draft, I had two cups of coffee and about 4 more cans of Diet Pepsi. Caffeine is one of the no-nos for people who have gout, but I haven't had a flare-up since the Great Steroid Shot of 2004. However, I hadn't had this much caffeine at one time either, plus we did a LOT of walking around before the draft. Friday morning, I woke up with severe swelling in the joint of my right big toe, so severe that it felt like the gout pains that I had a few years ago. All I could do was avoid caffeine and red meat all day and hope that the swelling would decrease. Well, it did yesterday, but now my ankle hurts from overcompensating all day Friday. I just took an Aleve Gelcap as I prepare to go to work, so hopefully that will help me get through the day.
I'm counting down the five weeks of school that I have left now, and I feel really good about the grades that I will earn. The most interesting thing on the horizon for me is a Sick-A-Cell bowling benefit in two weeks. I attended this last year but couldn't bowl because my knee was killing me. Now, I have endless foot problems. I'm hoping that I will be okay when it comes time to bowl, because I really want to this time. I hated standing around last year feeling useless. My girlfriend is still scheduled to visit during the Sick-A-Cell walk-a thon weekend in June. As I kissed her goodbye at the airport, I assumed that she would be giving Megabus.com a try when she came to Chicago. "No, I'm gonna fly," she said. After all the crap I went through, I would have thought she would avoid the airport from now on with the much cheaper bus option now available. But I think we both have heard so many horror stories about long bus rides that we're wary of going that route. But if we're going to spend more time together, then one of us is going to have to test it out and see if it's any good. I have a feeling that I shall be the guinea pig for that project.
Oh, and Kansas has to beat Memphis in the college basketball final Monday night, or else the girlfriend wins our bracket challenge again. And I won't reveal what the bet was, but let's just say, the stakes are very very high.
I did take the time to relax during spring break, not doing much besides hanging with "Jacob" and doing several online baseball fantasy drafts. I had to write a paper for media class, though, and have it ready when class started back. I was taking it easy so much that I had to scramble and write the paper at the last second. My superior writing skills saved the day, however. Not only did I get a perfect score, but the teacher copied the paper, cut my name off, and handed it out to the entire class as an example of the way a paper should be written. As if my head needed to be made bigger.
With my grades in order, I flew to Memphis to see my girlfriend last weekend, and also to watch the 2nd annual Civil Rights Game, which happened to include my White Sox this year in an exhibition baseball game against the Mets. (The Sox lost.) This is about when my feet started giving me problems. My right foot felt a little strained before I left, then my left toe felt strained while I was in Memphis. Feet were not the body part in the spotlight during this visit. No, that would be the clitoris. See, I'm of the impression that I'm not that good at giving head to women because I've never made anyone scream and juice all over my face like on the pornos, so I had not tried to eat out my girlfriend yet even though she has given me several blow jobs since Thanksgiving. Also, the humidity makes my nose run, causing me to stop usually after about two minutes. This visit was only three days; I arrived Friday, and was supposed to leave Sunday. We had fun between the sheets Friday night, then after the rainy game and dinner, we were knocked out Saturday night. So while cuddling Sunday morning, hours before I was to leave, I asked her if she was satisfied with the amount of physical intimacy we had, and without hesitation, she softly asked, "What do I have to do to get you to go down on me?" This was something in my head the entire time I was there--I knew she was going to want this soon because we had discussed doing it before and I kept saying I was tired, or otherwise avoiding it. She reached in my pants and initiated more hanky-panky, and I returned the favor, eventually pushing the coffee table out of the way and getting on my knees and orally pleasing her for a few minutes before the angle started affecting my neck. She said she was happy with the little bit of clit teasing, but I think she was just happy to get any head from me at all. She suggested that she was starting to feel used, and I don't blame her. She's probably sucked me off more than five times now with no reciprocation. I have to up my game if I'm going to keep claiming that I have a happy relationship.
The travel adventures began after we fooled around on her couch. I checked the United Airlines website for my flight status since the weather in Memphis had been dreadful and Chicago wasn't much better, and for the first time since I started flying around a few years ago, I had a flight canceled. It was a stroke of luck that I even checked the website and found this out, because I had never done that before. Normally, my girlfriend would have driven me out to the airport, which is a half-hour from her home, and we would have wasted that gas and had to turn around. We were able to hang out Sunday night and watch baseball on TV, which I know is just her most favoritist thing on Earth, then I had a 2:15 flight the next day. Now, this screwed me up already because I had a psych test Monday morning that I was going to miss, and I had to call in to work and use an unscheduled day off. But it would get more screwy. United.com would inform me that the flight was pushed back to 5P, then later it displayed a 7P expected departure. This is a 2:15 flight we're talking here, and that's after my flight the day before was canceled. My girlfriend was going to come home from work on her lunch break and take me to the airport for that 2:15 flight, but I had to e-mail her and tell her don't bother. She wound up coming home from work early and taking me to the airport in plenty of time for this now 7P flight. So they shove us onto the plane at about 6:30, as if we're moments from departure, then the attendant grabs the mike and actually says the following: "Okay, I have an invisible shield, so anything that gets thrown at me will not hit me." You can't imagine the heart-sinking feeling that rises from hearing that. She then announced that they had been informed by the TSA that we weren't going up in the air until 9P. I had to take out my iPod and listen to nothing but smooth jazz music the entire time that we sat there just to keep myself calm, or as my girlfriend described it later, "You had to go to your happy place." People were calling airline agencies scrambling to rearrange connecting flights, although someone seemed more concerned with whether her family taped Deal Or No Deal for her. Finally, we took off at about 9, and landed at about 10:30. Jacob was kind enough to run me out to the airport when I left, and he picked me up as well, so things could have been much worse. If I had to navigate public transportation that late, I wouldn't have made it home until after midnight.
The foot problems this past week have been killer since I came back home. Between my toe joints being swollen and my ankles being twisted and tendons being inflamed, both my feet have been giving me lots of trouble. The worst was after Thursday. Knowing that I had a very long day with two classes in the morning, plus making up my psych test, plus meeting Jacob and participating in the live baseball fantasy draft for our money league that night, I wound up ingesting quite an impressive amount of caffeine on the day. I had like 3 Pepsis during lunch, then after we got to the building for the draft, I had two cups of coffee and about 4 more cans of Diet Pepsi. Caffeine is one of the no-nos for people who have gout, but I haven't had a flare-up since the Great Steroid Shot of 2004. However, I hadn't had this much caffeine at one time either, plus we did a LOT of walking around before the draft. Friday morning, I woke up with severe swelling in the joint of my right big toe, so severe that it felt like the gout pains that I had a few years ago. All I could do was avoid caffeine and red meat all day and hope that the swelling would decrease. Well, it did yesterday, but now my ankle hurts from overcompensating all day Friday. I just took an Aleve Gelcap as I prepare to go to work, so hopefully that will help me get through the day.
I'm counting down the five weeks of school that I have left now, and I feel really good about the grades that I will earn. The most interesting thing on the horizon for me is a Sick-A-Cell bowling benefit in two weeks. I attended this last year but couldn't bowl because my knee was killing me. Now, I have endless foot problems. I'm hoping that I will be okay when it comes time to bowl, because I really want to this time. I hated standing around last year feeling useless. My girlfriend is still scheduled to visit during the Sick-A-Cell walk-a thon weekend in June. As I kissed her goodbye at the airport, I assumed that she would be giving Megabus.com a try when she came to Chicago. "No, I'm gonna fly," she said. After all the crap I went through, I would have thought she would avoid the airport from now on with the much cheaper bus option now available. But I think we both have heard so many horror stories about long bus rides that we're wary of going that route. But if we're going to spend more time together, then one of us is going to have to test it out and see if it's any good. I have a feeling that I shall be the guinea pig for that project.
Oh, and Kansas has to beat Memphis in the college basketball final Monday night, or else the girlfriend wins our bracket challenge again. And I won't reveal what the bet was, but let's just say, the stakes are very very high.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Friday, March 14, 2008
Rubbed The Wrong Way
Thursday was one of those days where I'm amazed that I don't turn to coffee or endless amounts of caffeine to get by. I had two midterm exams, the first one starting at 9:30A, so my day started when I woke up about 7:30A. I had a two-hour class that my supervisor enrolled me in once I got to work (and what do you think that was about--yup, increasing speed of production), and I got off at 10:30P like I do every night. I then came home and played a video game before crashing into my bed about 2A. Now, that's not to say that I went caffeine-free the whole day. Several people, including my girlfriend, have had to convince me that harmless, heavily-sugared iced tea actually contains some caffeine too, and I had a 44-oz. cup of that at 1P with my chicken-strip lunch. I don't know if it really affects me, though. At least I don't think I'm more wired than usual. I just like the taste of heavily-sugared raspberry iced tea. I think I did well on both midterms, though. Now we have spring break, and after that's over, there's seven weeks left in this semester. I don't believe that I will be able to go to Columbia College this fall, however, because I've been too lax in starting the application process, as well as searching for scholarships, and I think I would be too late if I started now. That's okay. I still have one more class to take in order to graduate from Harold Washington College, and I'd have to shove that in this summer if I were to go to Columbia in the fall. It's probably for the best if I chill and try Columbia next spring.
I wanted to talk about the New York governor, Eliot Spitzer, who had to resign this week after his predilection to pay upwards of $4,500 for call girls was revealed. I don't think I've ever had reason to reveal my stance on prostitution in America, but I'm about to get on my soapbox now. Why the fuck is hooking illegal? If I want to pay my money for a grown human being to do something that's in no way illegal if money didn't transfer, I should be able to. I will never understand why I can pay for someone to massage my feet, my legs, my shoulders, my temples, my glutes, my hands, and my biceps, but not my cock. What's the difference? And don't say it's because you can orgasm from a dick massage, because I can introduce you to some ex-girlfriends who could cum very easily from a good neck rub. And, truthfully, everyone has a set of erogenous zones on their bodies, so there's some people getting off from shoulder rubs and leg rubs every damn day. I'm too lazy to research the countries where prostitution is legal, but I'm sure that their STD and HIV rates are lower because their workers, being legally governed, have to be medically cleared to work. But I've always had a problem with anyone telling me what I can and cannot hire someone to do to my body. And the funniest part is how the governor had to be forced out of his job for this. How many politicians have women on the side, paid for or not? But Spitzer is evil and must go? Please. Someone didn't get paid enough or had a vendetta against him, that's all. And at this moment, the other call girls are raising their fees because they have leverage, and their clientele knows that if they don't keep the ladies happy, the whistle can be blown. I tell you, there's just no accounting for what we accept and don't accept in America. I'm off my soapbox now.
I wanted to talk about the New York governor, Eliot Spitzer, who had to resign this week after his predilection to pay upwards of $4,500 for call girls was revealed. I don't think I've ever had reason to reveal my stance on prostitution in America, but I'm about to get on my soapbox now. Why the fuck is hooking illegal? If I want to pay my money for a grown human being to do something that's in no way illegal if money didn't transfer, I should be able to. I will never understand why I can pay for someone to massage my feet, my legs, my shoulders, my temples, my glutes, my hands, and my biceps, but not my cock. What's the difference? And don't say it's because you can orgasm from a dick massage, because I can introduce you to some ex-girlfriends who could cum very easily from a good neck rub. And, truthfully, everyone has a set of erogenous zones on their bodies, so there's some people getting off from shoulder rubs and leg rubs every damn day. I'm too lazy to research the countries where prostitution is legal, but I'm sure that their STD and HIV rates are lower because their workers, being legally governed, have to be medically cleared to work. But I've always had a problem with anyone telling me what I can and cannot hire someone to do to my body. And the funniest part is how the governor had to be forced out of his job for this. How many politicians have women on the side, paid for or not? But Spitzer is evil and must go? Please. Someone didn't get paid enough or had a vendetta against him, that's all. And at this moment, the other call girls are raising their fees because they have leverage, and their clientele knows that if they don't keep the ladies happy, the whistle can be blown. I tell you, there's just no accounting for what we accept and don't accept in America. I'm off my soapbox now.
Monday, March 10, 2008
So Close, Yet So Far
Well, "Jacob" is back in the house, sleeping on my couch, but he brought an offering of gratitude with him--a new(er) computer for me. And boy howdy, does this thing run better than my 8-year-old Dell. I'm amazed at how fast everything comes up when I request it. It's the same damn internet that I've had with the old computer, just much, much faster processing. I wish that I had more time to play around with it, but I hooked it up Sunday morning and promptly went to work, and I'm on here briefly right now before I go to class and then to work. Go, go, go.
The only thing interesting to happen in the last few weeks is that my girlfriend and I had very informal chats concerning marriage and living together. She is ready to leave the company she's worked for because of incompetence and corruption (her bosses, not hers). But to pick up her life and move here to Chicago with me, she's insisting that we first be married, lest we live in sin, or else she would move here and get her own place. At some point she posed the very direct question of whether I felt like it was the right time for us to get married. To my surprise, I hemmed and hawed before stammering out a very unconvincing "yes." Why the hesitation? I've been thinking a lot about that, and I think that I'm very scared of what I feel for her, what we have, and how I've felt in the past about other women I dated. Basically, I'm afraid that if I feel good enough about our relationship to marry her, at that moment I'll panic and feel like I have to find another lover to hedge my bet, or I'll panic worrying about whether I'm being stupid fully committing to a woman 1,000 miles away who could be doing anyone and anything she wants, even though she's given me zero reason to believe she's unfaithful. It's all about my past and my feelings whenever I've felt like I'm exposing myself or putting myself in a vulnerable position. Marriage is the ultimate vulnerable position, letting the world know before God that you are completely off the market and that you're going to hell if you can't resist the normal temptations that most humans encounter daily. And I guess I'm wondering, if I'm always, for the rest of my days, going to be a little afraid of temptation, then when do I get to the point where I'm still secure enough to get married? If we wait until I'm to the point where I don't want to look at other women, we'll be waiting forever, because I'm always going to have my head turned by a hottie. That doesn't mean I don't love my girlfriend and want her in my life permanently. But what the hell does it mean? Am I still at risk of one day cheating, despite having cheated on two girlfriends and not being able to sleep while doing so? Am I really that big of a turd? I'd like to answer that there's no way I'd hurt my girlfriend like that, but cheating isn't so much about hurting others as it is a measure of how secure you are in yourself, and I've never had a lot of self-respect in reserve. See, if you think you're all that, you can look at a hot woman and say, "I've got a good woman at home, and she would never stray from me because I'm all that, and I'm not going to stray from her because I don't have to take advantage of every single sexual opportunity." But I've been keyed in to trying to take advantage of every sexual opportunity since I was 13 because I didn't know how many I'd ever get, you know, being fat and ugly and weird. It's a lot more difficult to shut that off than I ever thought it would be. Am I more confident in myself in general than at any other point in my life? Yep--performing relatively well in my job, kicking ass in school, paying my bills and my rent on time, and being a generally good person. Am I so confident that a thin Filipina with full lips and a great rack (I work with one of these, and she's a flirt, too) could come on strong, theoretically slipping her hand down my pants in the break room, and I could flat shoot her down despite my carnal desires? I think I would, but I'm not 100% sure, and it scares the shit out of me. I suppose until I can answer that with no hesitation, I shouldn't be getting married, but that's my concern: Will I ever answer that with no hesitation, and if not, where's the threshold where I should be committing to someone in an act of marriage?
At least it's a lot cheaper to see my girlfriend now. Megabus.com has been running discount bus service between various Midwestern cities for a few years now, and after the end of March, they will start a Chicago to Memphis line. How discount, you say? If you pre-order a ticket early enough, you can get it for $1. It's a 10-hour ride, so neither of us will be popping in unexpectedly, but if we can get our schedules in sync, we should see each other a lot more than usual this year. That can only be a good thing, because for better or for worse, the more time we spend with each other, the closer we can get to deciding if we really want to commit to each other as man and wife.
The only thing interesting to happen in the last few weeks is that my girlfriend and I had very informal chats concerning marriage and living together. She is ready to leave the company she's worked for because of incompetence and corruption (her bosses, not hers). But to pick up her life and move here to Chicago with me, she's insisting that we first be married, lest we live in sin, or else she would move here and get her own place. At some point she posed the very direct question of whether I felt like it was the right time for us to get married. To my surprise, I hemmed and hawed before stammering out a very unconvincing "yes." Why the hesitation? I've been thinking a lot about that, and I think that I'm very scared of what I feel for her, what we have, and how I've felt in the past about other women I dated. Basically, I'm afraid that if I feel good enough about our relationship to marry her, at that moment I'll panic and feel like I have to find another lover to hedge my bet, or I'll panic worrying about whether I'm being stupid fully committing to a woman 1,000 miles away who could be doing anyone and anything she wants, even though she's given me zero reason to believe she's unfaithful. It's all about my past and my feelings whenever I've felt like I'm exposing myself or putting myself in a vulnerable position. Marriage is the ultimate vulnerable position, letting the world know before God that you are completely off the market and that you're going to hell if you can't resist the normal temptations that most humans encounter daily. And I guess I'm wondering, if I'm always, for the rest of my days, going to be a little afraid of temptation, then when do I get to the point where I'm still secure enough to get married? If we wait until I'm to the point where I don't want to look at other women, we'll be waiting forever, because I'm always going to have my head turned by a hottie. That doesn't mean I don't love my girlfriend and want her in my life permanently. But what the hell does it mean? Am I still at risk of one day cheating, despite having cheated on two girlfriends and not being able to sleep while doing so? Am I really that big of a turd? I'd like to answer that there's no way I'd hurt my girlfriend like that, but cheating isn't so much about hurting others as it is a measure of how secure you are in yourself, and I've never had a lot of self-respect in reserve. See, if you think you're all that, you can look at a hot woman and say, "I've got a good woman at home, and she would never stray from me because I'm all that, and I'm not going to stray from her because I don't have to take advantage of every single sexual opportunity." But I've been keyed in to trying to take advantage of every sexual opportunity since I was 13 because I didn't know how many I'd ever get, you know, being fat and ugly and weird. It's a lot more difficult to shut that off than I ever thought it would be. Am I more confident in myself in general than at any other point in my life? Yep--performing relatively well in my job, kicking ass in school, paying my bills and my rent on time, and being a generally good person. Am I so confident that a thin Filipina with full lips and a great rack (I work with one of these, and she's a flirt, too) could come on strong, theoretically slipping her hand down my pants in the break room, and I could flat shoot her down despite my carnal desires? I think I would, but I'm not 100% sure, and it scares the shit out of me. I suppose until I can answer that with no hesitation, I shouldn't be getting married, but that's my concern: Will I ever answer that with no hesitation, and if not, where's the threshold where I should be committing to someone in an act of marriage?
At least it's a lot cheaper to see my girlfriend now. Megabus.com has been running discount bus service between various Midwestern cities for a few years now, and after the end of March, they will start a Chicago to Memphis line. How discount, you say? If you pre-order a ticket early enough, you can get it for $1. It's a 10-hour ride, so neither of us will be popping in unexpectedly, but if we can get our schedules in sync, we should see each other a lot more than usual this year. That can only be a good thing, because for better or for worse, the more time we spend with each other, the closer we can get to deciding if we really want to commit to each other as man and wife.
Friday, February 22, 2008
Love On A Budget
This is something that will sound like complaining, but it's not. I'm genuinely amused and touched at the thoughtfulness of my girlfriend's Valentine's present, even if the postage had to have cost way more than the actual gift. The gift was a box with two cans of Piroulines, which are creme-filled wafers that she knows I love, and a card. My gift to her was a dozen roses, chocolates, and a stuffed teddy bear. Slightly more expensive. But like I said, I'm not complaining, I know she's struggling with her three jobs and many bills and car and house payments. Plus, she is taking me to a spring training game in Memphis between the White Sox and Mets at the end of March, and those tickets were $50 each, so that certainly evens things out. If you ask her, maybe that even balances on her side, since she paid for the tickets and has to sit through a whole baseball game as well. She may punish me after the game for putting her through such torture. But hey, sometimes I like being punished.
Things are calm right now on Planetdre. "Jacob" decided that he had more things to clean up at his Montana residence, so he's staying there an extra week at least. He's on schedule to be back rooming with me and looking for work next week. I've readjusted to having my own space, but I miss him too, so I'm actually looking forward to him coming back. Our paths had led us to making less and less time to chat since we left high school, so we've certainly talked more this year already than we had most other years. Living together for a few weeks would ruin a lot of friendships because they were built on drunken socializing and not real companionship. But we've known each other so long that the bond only strengthened. As for class, everything's moving along smoothly. I did very well on the first tests of all three of my classes. I'm especially enjoying the media class, because every theme and lecture is so familiar to me. The material is basically a primer on the messages we receive every day from the TV, radio, newspapers, internet, etc. And I've always railed against some of those messages and how ignorant they are. I'm more confident than ever that my next step after getting my associates degree is to go on to pursue a broadcasting degree, because media seems to be a natural fit for me. Endless yapping and rambling--that's the ticket! As for my job, people are getting canned around me at an alarming rate, making me think that I need to refresh my resume and find a way out before I'm escorted out the door. And as for my family, my aunt is recovering from a hysterectomy, so keep her in your thoughts and prayers, if you're so inclined.
Things are calm right now on Planetdre. "Jacob" decided that he had more things to clean up at his Montana residence, so he's staying there an extra week at least. He's on schedule to be back rooming with me and looking for work next week. I've readjusted to having my own space, but I miss him too, so I'm actually looking forward to him coming back. Our paths had led us to making less and less time to chat since we left high school, so we've certainly talked more this year already than we had most other years. Living together for a few weeks would ruin a lot of friendships because they were built on drunken socializing and not real companionship. But we've known each other so long that the bond only strengthened. As for class, everything's moving along smoothly. I did very well on the first tests of all three of my classes. I'm especially enjoying the media class, because every theme and lecture is so familiar to me. The material is basically a primer on the messages we receive every day from the TV, radio, newspapers, internet, etc. And I've always railed against some of those messages and how ignorant they are. I'm more confident than ever that my next step after getting my associates degree is to go on to pursue a broadcasting degree, because media seems to be a natural fit for me. Endless yapping and rambling--that's the ticket! As for my job, people are getting canned around me at an alarming rate, making me think that I need to refresh my resume and find a way out before I'm escorted out the door. And as for my family, my aunt is recovering from a hysterectomy, so keep her in your thoughts and prayers, if you're so inclined.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Deep Freeze
The weather here in Chicago and my friend "Jacob's" job prospects are both under a sheet of ice right now. He left in frustration this past weekend to go back home for a week, tend to his personal business there, and bring back some more clothes and other items, including a new computer for me as thanks for my generosity. But I can't help but wonder what he thought was going to happen when he decided that he was going to come down to Chicago, find a managerial job, and start over at the snap of a finger. The man has lots of experience, finding his way up the ladder to a manager's job at Best Buy straight out of high school, but he's got zero education. He's very bright, brighter than me by a mile; he was able to amass enough credits so that he needed one class to graduate high school his senior year. But he took college classes briefly after that, and he's always said that he quit because it was just too easy and boring. And here he is, never expecting to have to prove himself in life, thinking that he would always have things go his way, from helping his mother move to Wisconsin and open an internet cafe, to buying a house in Montana with his girlfriend and opening a restaurant. I would dare say that Jacob has never had to struggle like this ever. I'm not just talking about the job search, which has resulted in one interview in the last month, but the emotional toll of the whole sad mess concerning the skank he was living with. He hasn't opened up much to me about what he's going through, but I know when he first got here, that first week he stayed with me, he was hardly eating and he was sleeping maybe three or four hours each night. He caught up in both areas by the time he left (and boy, did we eat well every night, whether it was pizza, gyros, nachos, or humongoid burritos), but he was a bit of a mess, and his plan--ignore any interview requests he gets in the next week since he's not here in Chicago, come back, stay here until he gets a job and finds an apartment--seems a little strange. I'm not sure what he should do. I don't know what the hell I would do in his situation, besides crack up and commit to a psych ward and mumble about white trash for the rest of my pathetic existence. All I can do is offer any help I can, which right now means letting him crash on the couch and occasionally buying him groceries. I still remember something he said about me when we were in fourth grade. I had a personality book with favorite likes and dislikes that I filled out, and there was a page for my best friend to fill out about me. One question he had to answer about me was what he admired most about me, and he said that he thought I was gutsy and went after what I wanted (which at the time was a Puerto Rican girl). I've carried that with me throughout the years, and it's a small part of why I'm so outspoken today. And I think when Jacob comes back, I'm going to talk to him about that and how we can maybe figure out a way to both be gutsy and take the world by storm and give a big middle finger to all those who have screwed us over.
So my house is empty once again, and I'm kinda amused at the various things I had to adjust to having a roommate. I had to take the phone into my bedroom any time my girlfriend called, which I'm not used to doing. But I wouldn't have wanted Jacob to hear us cooing and getting all mushy. Hell, I never lived down kissing "Giselle" in front of him at the lunch table our junior year. I had to put on my robe after every shower instead of running out of the bathroom naked and getting dressed piece by piece. I had to pick up my clothes after taking them off for the shower instead of letting them lay on the floor. I had to keep my computer on after using it so that he could check his e-mail. And, his last night here, after he had pork nachos, I had to learn the next morning to keep a can of air freshener nearby at all times. I'm sure my girlfriend is happy that I'm getting some of these lessons of cohabitation out of the way before she moves here. But all of it was worth it for that one Friday night a couple of weeks ago. A woman Jacob went out with several nights prior texted him, warning him that he was going to receive a drunk dial in a half-hour. He looked at me perplexed and asked, "What is a drunk dial?" Amazingly, in all his years, Jacob had never been the victim of a drunk dial. Even I've been drunk dialed. Sure enough, a half-hour later, around midnight, the girl called him and spent the next hour detailing to him her frustrations about her job, her attempts to get home on public transportation after a night of boozing, and her fears that he shared too much information about her to his roommate ("What did you tell him? What did you tell him??"). She even wanted to speak to me at one point. Then, after he talked her into bed, she asked if he was going to come over and "take advantage of me." I don't think he realized that was an invitation, and he ended the call soon thereafter. Predictably, she called back. But she was so out of it, she was telling him about the "snow monsters" outside her window. They haven't spoken since her apology call the next day. But the inconvenience of having him stay here was worth it just to see him squirm through that drunk dial. He never experienced that before, and he was wondering why she chose him to receive it, repeating to me over and over, "We went on one date!" Obviously, I told him, he was the closest thing she had to a man right now. It was another scenario that pointed out to me how lucky I am to have my girlfriend, the sweet, sober angel that she is, and how much I do not miss dating.
So my house is empty once again, and I'm kinda amused at the various things I had to adjust to having a roommate. I had to take the phone into my bedroom any time my girlfriend called, which I'm not used to doing. But I wouldn't have wanted Jacob to hear us cooing and getting all mushy. Hell, I never lived down kissing "Giselle" in front of him at the lunch table our junior year. I had to put on my robe after every shower instead of running out of the bathroom naked and getting dressed piece by piece. I had to pick up my clothes after taking them off for the shower instead of letting them lay on the floor. I had to keep my computer on after using it so that he could check his e-mail. And, his last night here, after he had pork nachos, I had to learn the next morning to keep a can of air freshener nearby at all times. I'm sure my girlfriend is happy that I'm getting some of these lessons of cohabitation out of the way before she moves here. But all of it was worth it for that one Friday night a couple of weeks ago. A woman Jacob went out with several nights prior texted him, warning him that he was going to receive a drunk dial in a half-hour. He looked at me perplexed and asked, "What is a drunk dial?" Amazingly, in all his years, Jacob had never been the victim of a drunk dial. Even I've been drunk dialed. Sure enough, a half-hour later, around midnight, the girl called him and spent the next hour detailing to him her frustrations about her job, her attempts to get home on public transportation after a night of boozing, and her fears that he shared too much information about her to his roommate ("What did you tell him? What did you tell him??"). She even wanted to speak to me at one point. Then, after he talked her into bed, she asked if he was going to come over and "take advantage of me." I don't think he realized that was an invitation, and he ended the call soon thereafter. Predictably, she called back. But she was so out of it, she was telling him about the "snow monsters" outside her window. They haven't spoken since her apology call the next day. But the inconvenience of having him stay here was worth it just to see him squirm through that drunk dial. He never experienced that before, and he was wondering why she chose him to receive it, repeating to me over and over, "We went on one date!" Obviously, I told him, he was the closest thing she had to a man right now. It was another scenario that pointed out to me how lucky I am to have my girlfriend, the sweet, sober angel that she is, and how much I do not miss dating.
Sunday, February 03, 2008
Super Bowl XLII
New York Giants vs. New England (-12.5)
Well, the two weeks of endless hype is finally over, and I have to somehow justify this bullshit pick. Actually, I don't have to, since no one is reading this. But anyway, after bouncing back and forth about how I would pick this, here's my analysis: I can't go against the Patriots to win the game because they're clearly the better team. They set records, they didn't lose, they had a season for the ages. However, they seem to carry themselves as if they believe they have already won the Super Bowl. From the arrogance over the nature of QB Tom Brady's foot injury, to the smugness about the Spygate situation, to the fact that they didn't bother to have a walk-through last night, the Patriots seem to think that they have every right to win this game. The Giants didn't even expect to be here, so they carry themselves very loosely. All the pressure appears to be on New England. As a result, I will predict the Giants to take a first-half lead as the Pats play tightly and a little afraid to fail. But I see Giants QB Eli Manning letting the moment and his inexperience get to him, and a few second-half turnovers turning the game the Pats' way. On top of that, the Pats won their previous three Super Bowls by three points each, so that 12.5 points look a little large to me. I'll take the Pats to make history, and the Giants to cover the spread.
My Pick: New England 33-27
Well, the two weeks of endless hype is finally over, and I have to somehow justify this bullshit pick. Actually, I don't have to, since no one is reading this. But anyway, after bouncing back and forth about how I would pick this, here's my analysis: I can't go against the Patriots to win the game because they're clearly the better team. They set records, they didn't lose, they had a season for the ages. However, they seem to carry themselves as if they believe they have already won the Super Bowl. From the arrogance over the nature of QB Tom Brady's foot injury, to the smugness about the Spygate situation, to the fact that they didn't bother to have a walk-through last night, the Patriots seem to think that they have every right to win this game. The Giants didn't even expect to be here, so they carry themselves very loosely. All the pressure appears to be on New England. As a result, I will predict the Giants to take a first-half lead as the Pats play tightly and a little afraid to fail. But I see Giants QB Eli Manning letting the moment and his inexperience get to him, and a few second-half turnovers turning the game the Pats' way. On top of that, the Pats won their previous three Super Bowls by three points each, so that 12.5 points look a little large to me. I'll take the Pats to make history, and the Giants to cover the spread.
My Pick: New England 33-27
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Unfair Card Sharks
This is really old considering it was on the sports blog Deadspin in October, but those of us who play online poker should be even more wary of shenanigans than usual. I know I've gotten some bad beats before that made me scream in frustration, "Is this faggot seeing the cards that I can't see or what?!?"
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