Gallery Piece

To recap and fill in some more details, while we were having our little meet ups, I had warned her to delete the texts in her phone and the msn logs. She dismissed the idea of her boyfriend checking those out, and while I like being right as much as the next guy...

So. After two or three weeks of silence, she texts me, saying she's bored and on vacation with her boyfriend and the guy's friends. We exchanged a few like this, I tried cutting it short, and thought that was that, when the next day she messages me that the holiday was all cool until the Man snooped her phone.

Great.

Next thing I know, my phone's ringing and there's this pissed off tone on the other end saying 'Oi mate, could ya spare ten minutes fer me? We could go on a ride or somethin'!'.

A ride. JOY.

Either way, I'm not the one to chicken out, so I told him that maybe in the evening (I had a date in the afternoon), tried calming him down, but he was furious (even though I knew that there was nothing incriminating in those messages) and we arranged the place and time.

To sum up my afternoon, I had a date with a girl who talked a lot about random things of no interest to me, and her anecdotes of various spending sprees made my inner Marx weep, so I sailed off into the cold, cold night to meet a guy who has every right to beat me to a pulp, knows nothing in particular, of unknown size, and driving a blue, beat-down car with a pink front hood because that was the only thing he could afford after an accident.

Scared shitless, I wasn't.

As a safety measure though, I did try calling my roommate first as a reinforcement, but as he didn't answer, my best mate accompanied me and hung around the area in case things get nasty. It was funny, he was pumping himself up, but from his point of view, the whole incident was a disappointment.

From mine, it's still a tough call between sad and hilarious.

You see, I was sitting at some stairs, waiting for Mr. Pissed Off to show up, when my phone rang.

"Yo, where are you?"
"Here, where I said I'd be."
"Cool. We're going for a ride."
"We're not going for a ride."
"Yes we are."
"No, we're not. Come here and let's talk."
"...okay."

And then he comes. I see him approaching, baseball cap, cigarette in his left, looking around, his other hand clenched in a fist. His hair is like mine, long enough that he needs to do something every once in a while or be rendered blind. He stands before me, legs still moving, all pumped up and furious. He blows smoke in my face.

"You are >NAMEWrong answer?->Smack' or 'Stick me in the trunk and flatten me in another part of the city'. Then he's asking a bunch of questions, going into silly details about where, when, who was there, yadda yadda.

I am a good liar and can craft amazingly believable cover stories. But when he's asking about things that I don't even know the truth about because I can't remember them? Aw, fuck.

Anyway, for the first time in my life I lied to someone who I agreed with (on being angry) and was disgusted by his girlfriends behaviour (the hypocrisy is staggering, thank you), but went on and denied everything. My reasons for this?

Because they might be dumb, but damn, they love each other. And with the chick's cop-out, I thought it's better if they get through this bump. That, and I was pitying the guy, and was doing my best to restrain the urge of telling him that 'I licked your girl's nipples'. Mainly because we would have had to beat him up after that.

So, to sum up the next forty minutes, I gave him an explanation of how his girlfriend is hot, most guys think so, and so did I, but we did nothing and I gave up after seeing that this isn't going anywhere. Tried my best to fill out the dumb details he was thirsting for.

'Alright' he said after a long while, sitting and smoking calmly by this time 'today's your lucky day, I'm feeling extra-merciful. But I'm still gonna call her here.'
'Why?'
'To see if your stories match.'

Oh. Okay.

Following a phone call and some commanding words, he says that they're coming.

'They?'
'Yeah. Said she's with someone. Bet it's that dumbfuck Jameson.'
'You don't like her friends either do you?'
'That's an understatement.'

Ah, a glance of spiritual kinship!

I joke that maybe he is going to get to beat up someone today and we can all rejoice. I stopped taking that shit seriously after the point he told me that his problem is that he has God-syndrome.

The girl and 'Jameson' arrived, and he started throwing some questions (more dumb details) towards his girlfriend. Jameson, as predicted, couldn't shut the fuck up, but after his first try at a snarky remark, we both dissed him.

'You shut the fuck up doughnut boy!' said the boyfriend.
'Right, my balls are at stake here!' I exclaimed.

So Jameson fucked off, and a great silence fell upon us.

'So... can I go now? I'm kind of thirsty.'
'Wait. Still need to match the stories.'
'Oh, cool! Should I start?'
'Go ahead.'

Then I told the girl everything I told her boyfriend.

'Right' she said convincingly 'that's what happened! See, nothing to worry about!'

And then he let me go.

And then we laughed. And I got drunk.

May they bare profoundly dumb children together.

(Gallery Piece is by Of Montreal, a great indie pop band, just to contrast all the punk and to illustrate the silliness of the shit I need to go through.)

Orchestra of Wolves

Seeing as the cockroach-situation still lies unresolved, and I've got nothing better to do, here's a couple of stories that occurred after the great heartbreak.

Because getting out and trying to heal with your libido is a great idea until you get caught up on the harsh concrete wall of reality.

There was a girl whom I had great chemistry with, and we did make out a couple of times. We partied together a lot, because once I figured that this isn't going anywhere, she still had a dozen girlfriends around, and despite her weirdness, she made a good wingman.

She had an odd habit though: even though it was her shooting down my efforts, she continued to text me at late nights with random things, about where she's partying, sometimes about how she misses me, etc. That's women for you.

So one night, at around three AM, I'm rolling around pondering that something is off... and then my phone beeped. New text message!

'hey, can I sleep over at ur place?'

FUCK. YES.

'sure'

Fast forward twenty minutes, followed by some explaining on the phone as to where she needs to get off the bus, finding her in the wrong bus stop, taking her back home, she's lying next to me with not much clothing.

'You know, I've decided that things are only going to happen if we get together.'

Wagering the pros and cons and the general context (hot, naked chick, in your bed, almost naked), thus began my relationship. And it was an awesome start.

Four days later she said she can't make up her mind and dumped me.

Sounds better than a one night stand, doesn't it?



There was another girl over the winter who got up on my stupidest words uttered ever list with one gem:

'Not just anybody can have me you know!'

Fair enough. Or it would have been anyway, had she not said it in the context of me being ELBOW DEEP in there already.

She was fairly uninteresting though, with one more thing worth to add: that she talked a lot. And never shut up. And believe me, I went out of my way to find situations in which she would, but I swear, she has multiple sets of vocal chords and is capable of blabbering nonsense in any of her orifices. Blargh.




The third entry of today is from a younger girl, still smoking hot and quite smart (or rather, dumb in an irregular way) with one catch: she had a boyfriend.

Then again, the second time we met up, that only seemed to bother me, and not her. I took that as a green signal, so we arranged a third date, this time at my place, when suddenly, stupidity strikes:

'I'm not going to cheat on my boyfriend!'

Clear. Keen. Respectable.

Not when you're f#$!cking lying on me half naked after an hour-long dryhumping session!

Kind of laid down contact with her after that, looking for other options, thinking that was the end of it, and it seemed like that... until her boyfriend read the texts in her phone.

But that's a story for tomorrow.

(Orchestra of Wolves is a song by British hardcore band Gallows. Watch a video with Clockwork Orange references here. You'll need the lyrics too. My name is Casanova...)

Crimewave

My life turned upside down around this time last year.

I ended up in a collage studying things that I wasn't interested in at all. Things I sucked at. My motivation was already low enough, and with my classes being more than hour of a travel away from my house, after a couple of weeks I stopped attending lectures.

Voluntarily dropping out wasn't my dumbest decision though: that would be breaking up with my then girlfriend.

You see, we lived in the different ends of the country, and I travelled three hours every week to stay three and a half days at her place. Once the thought that I'll have to keep up with this for five years or more dawned upon me, I panicked. Instead of seeking a compromise, or being open about it, or trying to find a solution, I chickened out. I dumped her.

As that was happening, I already felt that this is a bad, bad idea. Not going into endless paragraphs trying to grasp the feeling of love, suffice to say that she was the most important person in my life, and my grave mistake was thinking that things like this can get replaced. That the heart works like a machine, and all it needs is oiling and fixing to work.

It doesn't.

By winter, I was miserable to no end. Drinking out of spite and rage, seeking thrills to make me feel alive and to drive away thoughts of suicide, it was a very, very weird time. Sort of like one, overly long dream, where you're never sure in the morning if things did actually happen, or are just fragments of your imagination.

I can still recall the winds, the smells, the temperatures. The girls, the cigarettes, the gestures, the places. Those long days of doing nothing besides crawling around the busy city, trying to make a sense of it all. Trying to forget.

Trying to cope with depression. The nights without sleep, those lonely smokes, talking to yourself, the early morning sun and the wasted walks. The music.

Out of space, out of time. That you can be useless. That you are useless.

And you will be replaceable unless you find a purpose that you can cling onto.

(Crimewave is a song originally by noise-rock band Health, but the Crystal Castles cover is more widely known. They've also been featured on Skins, and for me, their sound is attached to the autumn and winter of '08. Next post will feature less emo-dribble.)

I Live in Hell

The door lock gave a fight before opening, but after a few minutes of struggling, I could finally enter. All the odours and smells inside hit me, but it was relieving: the apartment felt much safer than the street. All the weirdos and rejects were coming back for the fall, the district was full of them. Gangs and pimps with their whores, even if they don't shit in the same place where they live, it's still kind of unnerving. Especially with most of the other neighbours being a freakshow of lives fucked up.

I close the door, thinking of them, cracking a smile: as bad as it may be, the apartment was mine.

Fuck yeah.

I turn on some lights and start unpacking the stuff I brought with me. Bleach and other cleaning products, because the place is a mess. Large chunks are missing from the surface of the walls. Fixing that is out of my price range for now though.

I turn my attention to the refrigerator: when my renters moved out, I literally started jumping around the place in joy. Didn't remember that the renters before them, a Chinese family (who moved back, because it apparently sucks less than living here...) left theirs at my place. Sure, it's old, beaten and worn, but damn, at least we don't have to choke out the price of a new one. That's a major relief.

And then, my smile is banished by disgust as I open the fridge door.

Cockroaches. Why did it have to be cockroaches?

I close it immediately and hurry to the far end of the place to open some windows to vent out the stink. The roach colony, with the size of the red army alters my plans for the evening: I'm not cleaning that until they're exterminated.

Checking out the kitchen, I'm in for a similar freak-out. The motherfuckers are everywhere.

With nothing better to do, I sit in the main room, which is relatively roach safe. I call my friend and my girlfriend, they're going to drop by, but there's still some time until they arrive, so I read a random book. There's a huge bookshelf, mostly filled with crap, after mom died we sold most of the valuable ones, now it's just purple-prose filled romantic shit and pulp self-help books.

My friend arrives, I show him around the house. I advise him not to check out the kitchen or the fridge. He's wise, he trusts me. Meanwhile it turns out that my to-be flatmates found better stuff to do, they're not coming. We get a bottle of wine from a nearby shop, laying low, there's still a bunch of people on the streets who look like 42 years of solitary confinement each. We pick up the 'miss and we head back.

I tell her the same thing as I told my friend, but she's restless. She DEMANDS to look around everywhere. She opens the fridge, the stench steams out, she shuts the door and we're forced to stomp on some roaches that fell out. Fun.

Not learning from that, she goes into the kitchen. We stay back with my friend, I know what's coming next. She opens the cupboard door, her face twitches in disgust, slams it back in immediately, and skittles out of the kitchen fast. We laugh. I told you so!

We start drinking the wine: it's white, dry and cheap, fitting the atmosphere perfectly. We start chatting about random shit, when from the corner of my eye, I spot a black dot.

It's in the other room, crawling up the wall of one of the closets. It's a fucking roach. And it suspects nothing.

I grab a book from the shelf and sneak to the door. Two meters of a distance, I throw the book, flattening the motherfucker right where it stood. SCORE! I yell.

This scenario repeats three or four times before some pages start falling out of the book. We're mostly finished with the wine, one of my roommates arrive, he's stoned out of his mind.

I rip some more pages out of other books and we start reading lines, taking turns. It's a sort of remixing, we've got a whole motherload of crap romantic books with cheap lines and awkward scenes, what's the worst that could happen?

It's ten PM when we decide to call it quits. By then another couple of roaches have been fragged by the Flying Tome of Purple Prose, and we've crafted new stories from the old one. We had implied rape, incest, necrophilia, they involved nurses, a fishing rod and someone with tuberculosis. Other scenarios had policemen and people getting boners by hearing news from the eastern front.

If only we had more wine...

And thus the countdown begins: within a month, I will be living there, in the middle of the ghetto, with an alcoholic punk and a guy that's got issues with weed.

Hopefully without the roach stowaways.

As to why the fuck would we do that? I'll tell you tomorrow.

('I Live in Hell' is a song by the band Dear Landlord. Their debut is easily the best punk album this year, go check them out!)