July 30th 11:48am - Penises and Cows

Email to a friend:
"So my body has finally stopped loathing me like the Jews loathe Hitler. Now I'm enjoying everything, and it's fabulous.
My ankle has stopped bleeding, I've ceased liquid excrement eruptions, the one hundred and twenty-one mosquito bites I received in one night (literally - I counted) have stopped itching... I've adjusted to the rampant urine smells, constant dirt and dust, abject poverty, and cows everywhere.
They are literally everywhere. Wandering through the freeway and causing traffic jams, blocking hallways and entrances, in the middle of intersections... and aside from cows everywhere in India, there are also penises everywhere. Men generally just don't care. Seeing penises in India is like seeing women with their shoulders uncovered in the US - happens all the time. Yesterday I saw a forty-something man standing on the front porch of a hotel peeing into the street as if he were the god of nudity and it was embraced like religion.
Conversely, today I was at the beach in a normal bathing suit, and I obviously have no boobs - they're smaller than when I was an overweight 7-year-old - so nothing too exciting there, but every single woman on the beach was covered from their necks to their ankles in clothing. I just don't know how they do it. It's hot, we were on a beach. With sand. And water. One would assume they'd show a little skin. I swear women were walking by me with their children pointing me out and telling their offspring, "See that Western woman? She's a slut. Never look like her! It's completely inappropriate. She's showing her shoulders and her stomach! We stay covered in extreme heat on the beach."
I could almost detect male erections because of my scantily clad body... but then I realized that, 1: I have horrible eyesight, and 2: I don't think Indian men are necessarily very well equipped in that region, so I could have imagined it.
Speaking of men, it's quite interesting here. There are absolutely no male/female displays of affection, but male/male public affection is everywhere. Men hold hands while walking down the street. They put their arms around each others shoulders while sitting on a bus. They lightly rub
each other's legs in cars or on trains. It's like a male loving/cow festival every day. It's fabulous!

Friend's response:
"I feel like you just described an alternate reality of San Francisco."

July 28th 7:12pm - Donatella Trump

Sauntering the streets of Varanasi spanned narrow uneven stone streets saturated with cows and cow pies, piles of people, small shops and street stands, all veiled in sheaths of heat. Allured by air conditioning, I stepped into a convenient store the size of my grandmother's closet and was so pleased by the heat reprieve that I felt like I might as well be a male Muslim martyr in heaven surrounded by seventy-two virgins.
My friend Pakistan followed me into the shop while I just stood, acquiescing to the air conditioning like my stomach constantly concedes to pastries.

"Are you here for hair conditioner?" my friend asked, attentive to the fact that I had accidentally packed five traveling shampoo containers and only one conditioner.
"Oh, yes. Hair conditioner," I mumbled as if in a church, apparently under the impression that whispering would prolong the arctic air supplicating my skin like a cool wrap.

When I finally approached the counter, a female employee streamed towards me, products in hands like religious offerings.
"Hello! I have face cream for you," she alleged with an arm extension.
"Oh, no thank you, I actually have never used face cream in my life. I just need some hair conditioner."
"No face cream? It will make your skin so soft! You need face cream," she confided.
I'm sure my face resembled Hulk Hogan's after a wrestling match, as it was shiny with sweat and dirty with Indian streets, but I wasn't aware that it didn't look soft. I thought all women naturally had soft skin.
"No thanks, I just need conditioner."
"You need under-eye cream. Here," the female Donald Trump informed me.
"Do I have bags under my eyes or something? I think they're okay! I have bad eyesight but under my eyes has always been fine...just conditioner," I repeated.
"Oh, you must have skin moisturizer!" she continued.
"Really, I'm pretty sure my skin is fine. Just conditioner please."
She presented me with nail cuticle oil, acne treatments, face masks, and foot scrub. I resisted body wash, scented soap, and fingernail growth formula like I abstain from too much water consumption before alcohol absorption. I left with mosquito repellent, toothpaste, and hair conditioner.
If I were to kidnap and spirit her to America I would bestow her upon the nearest car lot and get her into car sales. I wonder if I could claim a finder's fee.

July 27th 10:12am - Varanasi Bipolarity

After canoeing on Phewa Lake in Nepal and exploring the sun-drenched surrounding mountainous dominion on bicycles, Pokhara's emerald environment rendered with monsoon rain. My monsoon disappointment paralleled the time three friends visited San Francisco for two days. I drove them to Twin Peaks to present the city from one of the highest points. The city was bathed in fog and we might as well have been staring into the fishbowl a friend of mine left on his back porch for two years, fish and water intact. The next day I drove them across the Golden Gate Bridge. As it too was flooded with fog, this was about as successful as George W. Bush attempting to administer an impromptu speech.

To retreat from the rain, Pakistan and I returned to India by bus, this time to Varanasi, India's cultural and religious center where Hindus pilgrimage to bathe on the ghats in the Ganges River. Thirty sewers discharge into the bathing bounty of the river and fecal bacteria and matter race as rampant as STD's at UCSB.
We cast ourselves into the Shanti Guesthouse. Loaded with my luggage and sweat seasoning my body, I felt like a five thousand pound walrus in the middle of the Sahara Desert. The bottom floor was empty, the reception desk deserted like my cleanliness. One man reposed at a table, languidly planting food on his fork and then into his mouth, chewing twenty-two times, swallowing, and repeating. After lingering for four minutes, Pakistan approached Lackadaisical Larry to inquire as to the concierge's location. Lackadaisical Larry was the concierge.
Seven minutes later he shuffled to us, stroking his bulging belly like he was with child. He slowly swabbed food remnants from his lower face into his mouth with his fingertips, as concerned with us as he was with the cow who had recently discharged it's droppings beside the hotel's entryway.
"Namaste! We're looking for a double room for the night," I verbally accosted our loafing host as he sprung his tongue around his mouth, hoping that my cheerleader-like enthusiasm would motivate him to address us.
"We only have a single room available," he replied with the hospitality of Hitler.
"Ok... do you have any dorm-style rooms with two beds available?" Pakistan asked.
"Yes. But they're not safe. No locks on anything. Your bags could be stolen."
"Okay... but your hotel has something like sixty rooms? And you have nowhere to lock up our bags during the day?" Our Holy Host gazed at me. I felt like I was interrogating a mute.
"No, nowhere to keep bags."
"Okay. If we were to stay here and our train didn't leave until 6pm and check-out is at noon, you don't have anywhere to put our bags?"
"No."
"You don't have a closet?" we persisted with Job's patience.
"I only keep bags two hours. No longer."
"Okay, fine, whatever. May we see the single room?"
"It's small. It won't fit two people."
"Okay, but could you possibly put another mattress in there so it could sleep two people?"
"Maybe. But the room's small."
"Okay. Can we just see it though? We can decide." The loving Lonely Planet description of a roof patio restaurant complete with pool table and free river rides every morning and evening were persuasive enough to contend in conversation with a man who was as inviting as the cow dung by the front door.
Pakistan returned and reported that the room was tiny. As our conversation had annihilated my visions of playing pool and a free river ride like Al-Qaeda annihilated New York's twin towers, we announced we were going to attempt another hotel.
"Oh, I completely understand. I'm sorry we don't have more availability. There's a great place around the corner that hopefully has room. Good luck," the host I now considered to be as bipolar as my first collegiate soccer coach said with a wave.
Pakistan and I tried two other hotels but eventually returned to the Shanti Guesthouse determined to delay there for the night in the single room. We again viewed the room suitable in size for a five-year-old and confirmed the mattress would have to reside halfway under the bed. By this time I would have been content with a mattress in the hallway.
We paid Our Holy Host for one night. He then informed us that he didn't have any more locks and we should buy our own. Upon our entreaties for him to procure one, or at least give us money to buy one for the hotel, he shook his head like a parent signaling a disruptive child and pointed to the street. Pakistan and I were as likely to pay for a lock as we were to go swimming in the excrement-ridden river.
The following morning I returned to our unlocked room to discover Our Holy Host standing in our doorway.
"I'm sorry? Do you need something?" I asked.
"Why don't you have a lock? Something could get stolen! And I thought this room was empty because there was no lock! I almost let someone stay here right now."
"We don't have a lock because you didn't give us a lock yesterday and wouldn't even give us money to buy one!" I reminded him, feeling like a Special Ed teacher.
We later learned that there was a closet the size of Princess Diana's wardrobe specifically for luggage storage.

July 25th 3:27pm - A Busride and a Booger

Pakistan and I arrived in Kathmandu, Nepal twenty-two hours after our initial embarkation. I felt as celebrated as a cesspool. My frazzled hair hung in frizzes, homogeneous to if I'd been electrocuted. After relieving myself, I could walk and talk like an unafflicted human being, but could feel the feces festering and extending and knew it was just time before another liquid explosion propelled from my ass like Hiroshima.
Upon arrival we were promptly placed in a local van voyaging to Pokhara, our lake town destination, and triggered through the thundering Annapurna mountain ranges. When five and six people were ushered into each non-air-conditioned four-seat row, Pakistan climbed onto the van's roof for repose. When I attempted the roof amenity, the van dictators - those who hang out the door collecting people and money into the van - forbade me follow because I'm a woman. I contemplated telling them that I was a man in disguise, but that seemed as logical as Britney Spears' fifty-five-hour Vegas marriage to Jason Alexander. I mollified myself by hovering my head and left arm out the window as I imagine I would were I inhabiting a jail cell.
In my full four-person row, Hitler and Stalin directed two twenty-something Nepalese males next to me. They thrust into the seat like my body was part of the mosh pit at a Beastie Boys concert. They introduced themselves, the one closest to me halfway hunkering on my lap. We jaunted through the quotidian question gauntlet of whether I was married, how old I was, if I had any children, and what my job was. Upon matriculating that I was not married, Ding and Dong grinned at each other as if I had announced that they won Who Wants to be a Millionaire. I hastily shifted my sentence to say that my boyfriend was on the roof of the van.
"But you're not married," Ding declared, prodding his pointer finger up his nose as if searching for the meaning of life in his left nostril. His brown eyes bore into mine as he swapped to his right nostril. Tears traced the corners of his eyes as he bowed back his head. As he sneezed, his arms bombarded from his body, one beaching on my chest, the other on Dong's chest.
Ding sneezed on me, his exhale and spit as savage as a tsunami. A booger rocketed onto my uncovered knee. I was just impressed. He had been drilling into his nose like an oil well for three minutes before erupting spit and a booger on my skin.
"Sorry," he said while plunging his pointer finger across my leg.
I assured him it was okay, requested he cease rubbing my leg with his booger-finger, and informed him it was more proper to sneeze on himself, or someone he knew, i.e. his friend Dong.
Dong imp-smiled at me. I rotated back to the window.
Fifteen minutes later we halted on the side of the street. Small children selling water and snacks volleyed the van like Santa Claus was inside and whoever sold something first got to return with Santa to the North Pole. Ding bought a pickle the size of a small football. He reached over me to the window to exchange a few rupees for the pickle. As he pulled the pickle towards him, pickle juice exuded onto both of my legs.
"Sorry," Ding said again, again brushing my leg with only his booger-finger.

July 24th 11:14am - Strikes and a Twenty-Two-Hour Bus Ride

Articulating the town and city names in India and Nepal materializes as manageable to my mind as comprehending quantum entanglement.
After seventeen sources said strikes would prevent us from traveling anywhere, my friend Pakistan and I paused overnight in the Nepalese border town Kakarbhitta. The following day the strikes severed and we obtained a sixteen-hour bus to travel to Kathmandu, Nepal's capital.
At this time I had been in India/Nepal for four days. My bowels were behaving as well as a thirteen-year-old wrapped in tattoos, chain-smoking crack cocaine and clasping a bottle of booze.

My necessary use of the toilet was not conducive to a sixteen-hour bus ride where a bathroom was as notably absent as air conditioning. South American buses were frequently equipped with televisions transmitting movies in English, AC, bathrooms, legroom, reclining seats, and occasionally food/drink and blankets. One overnight bus provided pillows. Indian/Nepalese buses have seats. And windows. Many resemble circus buses outside with midget-seating inside. Our bus was no exception.
At 9pm, after seven hours with one gas-station stop, our bus linked with a long line of similar buses and vehicles that had ceased driving. The air had finally oscillated from sweltering to tepid and a clear night sky illuminated over our heads, the sublime stars scintillating like effervescent dew drops on a grass plane. The shawl of stars charactered calm. I thought we stopped for the view.
When I asked a Nepalese man what was happening, he replied, "Strikes. We stop maybe one hour, maybe one day."
"What?" I answered, as agitated as the time I scuttled to the bathroom, tripped over my suitcase and peed my pants.
"Strikes. More money. We start again later."
Pakistan pointed out star constellations to some Nepalese with a laser pointer acquired in China while I hung my head out the bus window, the balmy breeze lifting my coated hair from my filthy face and running sweat into my eyes. I felt like a gremlin who had fallen into a sewage plant.
Hours later the strike took a hiatus and we proceeded towards our destination.
Rain slanting in the window onto my feet awoke me at 5:15am. I slid the window shut only to realize that the plastic-glass didn't completely cover the window hole. Either my feet or back would get wet. My bleak bowels resurrected. I motioned to the nearest bus employee and pleaded, "Toilet?"
He replied, "Breakfast soon. Toilet there."
I exhaled like I was in labor and attempted sleep. Sleep never came. Gallons of liquid gathered in my rectum, raging to rupture. I read a book. I contemplating awakening Pakistan to converse, but he appeared a contented cherub and it was 6am. I feigned sleep, trying to trick my body. A rhinoceros of excrement nudged my anus. After an hour, I again appealed for a toilet. And received the same response, "Breakfast soon. Toilet there."
I questioned if I knew Lamaze breathing. I read. I inspected the hills from the window. I contemplated snake sex. I relocated to the rear of the bus and, as if I was on speed, investigated my backpack for something to relieve myself in. The best I discovered was a small Ziploc bag. I uncovered a blanket. I strategically situated the blanket around me in hopes to conceal my excrement-in-a-bus inevitability. Then someone sat to my left and I realized that people would know. This coupled with the knowledge that a small Ziploc bag would not contain five gallons of liquid feces accumulating in my body manifested into me waiting. Sweat sprinkled down my face. I concluded that hanging my ass out the window would be better than deluge and discharge on the bus's floor. Agony sporadically spasmed through my anus to my stomach and I realized that after this bus ride, childbirth would be elementary.
Over three hours after the initial poop pangs, we broke for breakfast. As the bus slowed I propelled people from my path like a bull in Pamplona's bullring. Some might have been elderly. I think one carried a child. I catapulted the door open and sped to the bathroom. The bathroom materialized as a hole in the ground with two areas for your feet. Literally. A dirt floor, a hole, and two footsteps. I stoned the door shut, pulled down my pants, and, before fully squatting, buckets of liquid had released from my anus, exploding in and overflowing the provided hole onto the concrete slab serving as floor.
I breathed like Jesus had just personally blessed me and complacently confirmed that birthing the four children that I eventually desire will probably parallel my pain the first two hours of bus/anus agony.

July 23rd 9:34am - Nepal Customs=Conundrum

My companion Pakistan and I infiltrated customs at one of Nepal's eastern border towns as prepared as former U.S. VP (under the first Bush) Dan Quayle was for spoken communication. Two of his many quotes are, "The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation's history. I mean in this century's history. But we all lived in this century. I didn't live in this century," and, "I love California. I practically grew up in Phoenix."
The Nepalese customs officials conveyed they only accepted US dollars for visa payment.
"$40US please."
I had $45 but Pakistan only had $20. I handed them $40 and Pakistan $5.
"Do you accept $40US equivalent in Indian rupees?" he asked.
"No, only US."
"Okay... do you accept Nepalese rupees?"
"No. No Indian or Nepalese rupees. Only US."
"Is there anywhere in this city I can exchange rupees for US dollars?"
"No."
"Okay. Is there an ATM in this city where I can take out dollars?"
"No."
"Okay. Here's $25. That's all I have," Pakistan pronounced and propelled the money towards them. He was clearly under the impression that he was Buddha and above such pedestrian procedures as full payment.
The two officials, Good and Generous, accepted this as if it were as commonplace as the many stray dogs sauntering the streets.
"Visa pictures?" they next requested.
"Visa pictures? Like passport picture? I don't have a passport picture!" I informed Pakistan.
He shrugged, said he obtained ten in China for this purpose, and passed them two photos.
"I'm sorry, but I don't have any pictures. Can I get them taken somewhere?" I asked.
"No. Nowhere to take pictures," Generous responded.
"Dude, this border town should not be a border town," I whispered to Pakistan as if I were in Afghanistan announcing I joined the US Navy standing three feet from a Taliban member.
Good and Generous apparently didn't care that we lacked money and pictures like the Taliban lacks a forceful female leader, as they issued us our fifteen-day visas with grins and well-wishes.
We later learned that a fifteen-day visa is $25US and a thirty-day visa is $40US.

July 21st 8:18pm - The City is Closed

After our thirty-four-hour train ride, Pakistan and I alighted in New Jalpaiguri at 5:30am, delighted to almost reach Darjeeling. We located the bus station and said, "Tickets to Darjeeling please!" our smiles shimmering through the dirt and sweat like a coin in a pile of elephant excrement.
"Darjeeling closed," came the reply with a shake of the head.
"Darjeeling closed? " we asked, cocking our heads to the side as if we had just been informed that Mother Teresa had been eleven feet tall.
"Darjeeling closed. No buses."
"Okay... you mean the road is closed? Road to Darjeeling closed?"
"Darjeeling closed. No buses."
"Okay... so buses aren't running there today? Could we take a car?"
"Darjeeling closed. No car. No bus. Closed."
"Okay... thanks," we said.
"Is today Sunday?" I asked Pakistan. "Maybe they just don't run today."
"I think today's Wednesday... or Thursday... it might be Saturday. I don't think it's Sunday though."
We continued to question the locals, all of whom repeated, "Darjeeling closed," as if they had been briefed that morning by the Dalai Lama.
Eventually a rickshaw driver with a twelve-year-old's command on the English language mentioned the word, "Strike."
Pakistan and I scanned Darjeeling strike online. Our research revealed the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha called the general strike concerning a transfer of a police officer. This made as much sense to me as outdoor urinals situated along the sidewalks in Old Delhi, but what materialized was a trip to Nepal.

July 20th 11:12am - Droll Delhi

Delhi, India is similar to Paris... if Paris had no trash cans, trash and debris dominating the streets like my food-fetish controls my cerebellum, one hundred seventy three thousand two hundred and ninety six trillion more people, and outdoor urinals. I delayed in Delhi for nineteen hours. Within those nineteen hours, I met up with a high school friend who had recently rambled through Pakistan and loved it almost as much as he loves China.
Pakistan and I traversed Delhi before our thirty-four-hour train ride to New Jalpaiguri, with the decisive destination being Darjeeling, a mesmerizing hill resort with tea plantations and hills that roll like my eight-year-old bulging belly once did.
Within one hour male urine had streamed over my sandaled feet, outlaw overflow from one of the many open-air urinals lining the streets. Within three hours Pakistan walked street-side of me so oncoming traffic wouldn't feel it necessary to diverge their advancement towards me. Three bicyclists and two cars came so close to colliding with me that even with my 20/400 eyesight I could examine their ear hair. I observe such things as often as Sarah Palin researches foreign affairs.
As Pakistan and I paddled through trash he divulged one of his many deviant viewpoints.
"If my future children are acting disruptive or misbehaving I will just beat them," he told me with an expression as serious as Mao.
"What?" I asked with George Bush's gift of elaborate speech as we twisted through the thronging masses of people.
"Well, I mean, if they never stop crying and we're in a grocery store or something. I'll just beat them. Only until they're like three years old though. You can't really beat a child after the age of three."
"Jesus Christ," I replied, and synonymously felt a firm little-hand clutch on my chest by a passerby. I angled around and projected, "What the hell?" to an Indian boy appearing about fifteen who slanted back at me, imp-smiling. My maternal instincts adequately arose with a sigh and I turned back around, continuing our course.
"I really hope that was an accident," I announced.
"Huh?" Pakistan replied.

July 17th 4:32pm - A She-Man & a Penis Tip

Walking from Market Street to Mission Street in downtown San Francisco is like walking through the Alice in Wonderland garden. As I had to go to the Indian consulate to obtain a visa, I traipsed through this territory.
On 6th Street I encountered a 350-lb person with shoulder-length hair, the bottom two-thirds of which appeared to have been dipped in burnt orange paint. This person donned a Giant's shirt that resembled Chris Farley in an xx-small t-shirt, too-tight faded jeans, a triple-chin, one earring, and breasts the size of Mount Everest. It pushed a baby stroller and a baby mirroring the Gerber baby sat, satisfied and sucking it's thumb. I couldn't tell if this was a man or woman, and thanked my Alcohol God that I had shrouded my eyes with sunglasses so I could study this being more. As I traipsed past, a man voiced my thoughts as he addressed the she-man, "You got a dick or vagina? And how do you have a baby?" he asked. Wordless, She-man swung back the hammer-fist and pummeled the man in his face. He collapsed on the sidewalk as I turned my head and smiled, unable to ignore the resemblance between She-man and King Kong. I still beamed as I turned left on Mission Street toward the consulate.
Half a block from my visa and passport pick-up, I glanced down at a homeless Flavor Flav. His bare feet in the street, his arms above his head, and his shirt halfway up his stomach, he looked like a cracked-out crucifix on a sidewalk. As I was about to raise my eyes, I noticed an inch of his penis tip protruding from his jeans waist.

July 16th 8:16pm - Indian Visa

My flight to New Delhi, India departed SFO at 1:20am this morning. I was not on it. When booking the flight two weeks ago, I presumed the timing as close to perfection as Scarlett Johansson's breasts.
After exhausting the evening with friends, food, and beer, two friends drove me to SFO at midnight. Amid hugs we said goodbye for the next three months. One of my friend's eyes were red with emotion.
"I'll really miss you guys, I love you," I asserted with a sigh and a wave as they drove away.
I approached the ticket counter content to be on a flight. I envisioned sitting on the plane, the provided pillow behind my head and blanket up to my chin as I watched some newly released movie and then sunk into sleep-deprived oblivion for the following ten hours. I lay my passport on the counter with a full-toothed Julia Roberts smile.
The airline attendant flippantly flipped through my passport.
"Where's your visa?" she asked.
With that word I heard hindrance and my plane-visions parted like the Red Sea.
"Visa? I was told I didn't need a visa before departure but could get one upon arrival," I said, sounding like a fourteen-year-old boy going through puberty.
"Oh no, you can't go to India without a visa. You're going to have to go home, get a visa, and re-book your flight after you have one."
"I was told by four different people that I could get a visa on arrival."
"Who told you that? I promise you, you can't. We can't even check you in if you don't have a visa."
"Okay. What does that mean?"
"That means that you have to go to the Indian consulate to get a visa. Then you can fly to India."
"Right. Got that, but how long does that usually take? I've always just gotten them at borders. I pay money and then they stamp my passport."
"It could take anywhere from one day to two weeks. I don't know, I don't work at a consulate. I work at an airline. I just check for the visas," she informed me as if I had a brain the size of a chipmunk's.
"Damn. Okay," I said and turned away, defeated like LeBron James after Bill Walker dunked on him.
I called my friends who returned to pick me up. It was only after I got back in the car that I realized my friend's eyes weren't red because she was sad at my departure, but rather because she had taken a few hits of weed before we went to the airport.

July 15th 7:21pm - Friend's Mom on the Ganja

My friend's family is like a private showing of Saturday Night Live, with every conversation comprising a skit as humorous as the movie The Hangover. Today her mom ordered she and her sister into the garage. My friend followed, mind-meditating at what she could have done wrong. She wasn't storing a dead deer in the garage like her dad had years before, nor was she nurturing a marijuana plant to life in the kitchen as her sister had recently been apprehended for.
Her mom extracted a brownie dish from the outside refrigerator.
"Who made these?" she inquired.
My friend's face folded into ceaseless smile creases as she grasped that for one of the first times in her life she wasn't involved and couldn't be implicated.
Her sister said with a grimace, "Oh. I did, Mom. Sorry."
"After lunch I was out here, saw these, and ate some!" their mom announced.
"Ooooh. Oops."
Her sister had baked the brownies with such a potent amount of marijuana butter that seasoned consumers only absorb an amount smaller than a peewee chicken egg per session. Her mother had swallowed four times the suggested supply.
"I'm not even capable of working anymore," she told her daughters as they fractured into laughter. "It's not funny!" she continued.
An hour later she became paranoid. Her husband called poison control but refused her entreaties to call an ambulance. Two hours later she sat on the living room couch, head in hands, focusing on breathing like it was her firstborn child. Four hours later her husband and daughter put her to bed. The next morning and sixteen hours after initial consumption she woke up still high from her daughter's pot brownies.

July 14th 1:12pm - ACL/MCL vs Fat Ugly Girl

In a collegiate soccer game one of my friends mutilated her MCL, ACL, and Meniscus. It temporarily curbed her soccer career like child molestation accusations arrested Michael Jackson's career. During the game I screeched at her to get off the ground and continue playing as if she were Cinderella and I was her stepmother. I learned later that she wasn't just trying to draw the foul but had damaged her knee. I felt as horrible as the time a bee stung me inside my mouth.
A week before her surgery the majority of our soccer team patronized an Irish bar called Kells. MCL, myself, and eight of our teammates entered the bar with steep spirits, saturated with Captain Morgan. Early in the night a gremlin-girl shoulder-checked MCL. Inebriated MCL turned like an enraged boar.
"Hey, watch where you're going," she retorted.
"What'd you say bitch? You want to take this outside?" Gremlin retaliated.
"What? No! It's early. I'm having fun dancing! I will meet you outside at 2am," MCL replied.
"Fine, Bitch," Gremlin spit and turned to leave. MCL swung her leg back like a golf club and launched it towards the girl's ass. Division-1 soccer forward's foot connected with Gremlin's bottom. The foot's bowling-ball-blow propelled her forward and she staggered before rotating with a bear-growl.
"What the fuck?" she screamed as MCL mischievously dodged away.

At 2am I exited the bar with a more-befuddled teammate in tow. It was as uncommon for me to be less intoxicated than some friends as it was for Mischa Barton to make the Best Dressed list. Without perceiving the previous incident, outside I encountered four strangers in a row facing my friends. MCL snickered as she looped the street on foot circling behind Strangers. One of my friends, the biggest sweetheart of any, who I had never heard utter a mean word, announced with Malcolm X's vocal broadcast, "Kara, those girls, they're fat and they're ugly!"
The girls scowled as another friend sucker-punched Gremlin in the face.
"What the fuck?" they shrieked like possessed Paris Hiltons.
Minutes later our other teammates exited the bar as Gremlin catapulted forward with a roller coaster's momentum. MCL had kicked her in the ass again. She held her ass with on hand and her face with the other, a pose I've observed apes poised in before.
"Okay, what the hell is going on here?" I yelled as I stole a cab from a couple who had been poised to enter. I shoved MCL, Violent, Kindly, and Drunky into the cab and told the driver, "Richmond District!" before striking the door shut. The cab drove away with a voice echoing from the window, "They're fat and ugly though!"
The police arrived ten minutes later inquiring after a "female fight."
I later learned that MCL had ass-raped Gremlin with her foot six times that night, once inside the bar and five times outside. Violent had thrust her fist into Gremlin's face shortly after she had caught MCL's damaged leg. And somehow I was semi-sober throughout.

July 10th 2:35pm - I Like to Kick Things

I like to kick things. I determined this derived from playing soccer since I was an overweight seven-year-old with a gut resembling Homer Simpson's.
My aunt and uncle live on the water in Southern California. When I awoke in their Long Beach house this morning and surveyed the sand in front of their residence, I regarded a profusion of people on the beach and a sign that read, Karate for Children with Special Needs. This recalled affectionate memories of the speech Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger delivered at my brother's USC graduation and his referral to the Special Olympics and how "everyone thought the retards would drown in the pool." As it appeared a pretty popular Special Needs gathering, I adjudicated I would amble along the beach to observe the mentally handicapped Karate-cavort.
While I walked on the concrete sidewalk I watched a small child eat dirt like it was Twix. I smiled to myself. A few steps later, I detected a three-inch-long screw lying in front of me. As customary, I loped a few feet and kicked it. Instead of the front edge of my sandal propelling the twisted metal piece into the sand as expected, my sandal arced like a rainbow and the screw impaled itself into my foot. I felt like Jesus. I stifled my inclination to scream at the two inches of rusted beach-screw in the bottom of my foot. Instead I grumbled like a drowning cow and fell over into the sand.
A woman charged to my side like a mother bull.
"Honey, are you okay? Oh no baby, that looks painful! Let's get you some help," she said, reaching her arm around my twenty-three-year-old body in an attempt to elevate me to my feet.
Instead of educating her that I wasn't a Special Needs child and would be perfectly fine, I held her hand and limped to the First Aid tent ten feet away.
I settled on the table to a seventeen-year-old bawling like he had just lost his imaginary friend but who otherwise appeared healthy, an eighteen-year-old pointing to a bruised shin, and a fourteen-year-old who had stubbed her toe. As I tearlessly raised my foot with the screw protruding from it, I judged some of my decisions and routine accidents with my feet (I've had an inch and a half of glass in my toe for two months, two nails in the bottom of my feet, multiple broken toes/ lost toenails, and an impending feet surgery I was supposed to get eight years ago). I deliberated how one determines they're a special needs child.

July 8th 11:12am - Hawaiian Restaurant Shenanigans

For the 4th's dinner we dawdled to a Mexican restaurant with garden snail urgency. The restaurant was closed and we were disheartened like the male penguin Pepper must have been when his gay penguin lover strayed to a female (Only in SF - see article):

We ultimately infiltrated a Hawaiian restaurant. I was under the impression that I was relatively sober, like Lindsay Lohan. A friend ahead of me in line ordered, gorged his plastic glass with much-needed ice water, and stood near me.
"I really want to hit that glass out of your hand," I informed him, as serious as Stalin. This surprised me as much as the time my most polite friend drunkenly illuminated me in front of four girls, "Kara, they're fat and they're ugly!"

"Please don't," he replied.
"Okay. But I really want to hit it. I don't know why," I continued.
He shrugged.
"It's tempting me!" I said, my voice louder than necessary and resembling a Chinese-woman-screech.
I hit it out of his hand with Muhammad Ali force. The plastic glass thundered to the tile floor, the ice cubes cracking and the water pooling.
"Oh no! Why?" he questioned.
"I honestly don't know," I said. I was a bit more intoxicated than I thought.

July 7th 9:12am - Inappropriate Urination

I had two ambitions/missions for July 4th.
One: Infiltrate a body of water.
Two: See fireworks.
Neither materialized.
After eating and ambling through Sacramento carrying an American flag and broadcasting Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA" via phone, complete with two friends in cowboy hats, we returned to the Sac house. And encountered karaoke and drinking games.
By early afternoon we were inebriated. By late afternoon we sat in lawn chairs in a circle in the backyard like an Indian pow-wow. We had the American apparel, music, and singing. It was too torrid for a fire. The house's inhabitant worked while we accomplished astronomical achievements. I regurgitated food and beer into a toilet, a friend regurgitated his in the yard. The dog breakfasted on the beer-bathed jalapenos and additional ingredients as if they were gourmet bacon bits infused with fat.
The house's resident returned late afternoon for an hour on his lunch break to discover us sitting in the circle. Minutes after Worker joined our lawn retard-circle, liquid issued from Tipsy's crotch like Niagra Falls while laughter splashed from his mouth. The urination saturated his board shorts and penetrated the chair, gliding into the grass, the stream prolonged like my neighbor's forehead.
"What the hell man?" Worker asked.
"You gotta do what you gotta do. I'm just living my life," was the reply.
I showered Tipsy with the hose. At my request, my friends thereafter repeatedly flooded me with hose water. It was the closest I came to getting in a body of water.

July 6th 10:23am - Blacked-Out with a Shotgun

On July 3rd a friend and I initiated the Independence Day/Weekend festivities with Vodka and Redbull at 5:30pm. This plan was contrived with as much thought as usually accompanies my alcohol agreements. Someone directs me to drink: I drink.
Our other friends fused into alcohol around 8pm, and by midnight my brain had bolted into blacked-out bliss.
A newly acquired camera settled on the coffee table in front of me. I determined I would go through my phone's text message outbox and then the camera for clues as to the previous night's episodes.
I awoke the next morning on a couch curious how many of my brain cells had been demolished during the night's alcohol activities and contemplating how much more money and cleverness I might have command of should I discontinue my considerable consumption.
When I attempted to calculate how many brain cells I damaged by the alleged 1,000,000 brain cells killed for every 1 oz of alcohol absorbed, the numbers materialized as uncertain. I was as confident as to the number of ounces consumed as I was for who had ultimately ended with the camera I accidentally left on Peruvian mountains.
In my outbox I had texted two female friends: "One of my friends is aiming his shotgun at another's bare ass... in the house!"
I had as much recollection of this as I did my great aunt's funeral that I wasn't able to attend. My blacked-out brain was apparently under the impression that I had to lie for the amusement of my friends. I shook my head, decided it was safest to keep my phone out of reach when inebriated, and reached for the camera. On the camera I discovered a picture of precisely my text message.

July 5th 11:47am - Day of Independence Quotebook

I squandered my 4th of July in Sacramento with a multitude of male friends. Our conversations were as comical as the time I ran into my aunt's sliding glass door, fell down, and peed my pants.

* Boozy (after Blacked Out rubbed Boozy's leg): "Stop, you're making me question my sexuality!"
Blacked Out: "Your mind tells you no but your body says yes?"

*Tikky: "He got lucky."
Blacked Out: "Oh, no. I work out."

* Tikky: "'All you can eat' are the best three words."
Drinky: "That's four words."

* Blacked Out to Boozy: "Hey, what would you do if a guy tried to rape you?"
Boozy: "I'd rape him right back."
Blacked Out: Wouldn't that make you gay?


*Drunkard: "Weren't we talking about him recently? Isn't he pregnant?"

* Me: "Do you know Corey? He went to college there."
Drinky: "No. But I know someone named Corey Ubalde. He died from blowing his nose."

* Tikky: "Balls always hit me in the head."

* Drinky: "My hair is finally growing to the right side of my chest!"

* Boozy: "I don't motorboat boobs. I motorboat vaginas."

* Drinky: "How sad is that? You go from being on top of the world with some hot chick to being a twenty-year-old with jiz in his pants who has to change his underwear."

* Boozy: "I had a record amount of wet dreams. I contemplated putting a sock on my cock."
(a minute later - still Boozy): "I used to jiz in my pants like three times a night. I kind of miss it."

July 3rd 7:03pm - Naked in the Hallway

In college, Monday was our only day off each week. As Division-1 college soccer players, the NCAA and alcohol gods decreed the team got one day of rest. Oftentimes, our coaches required we lift weights on Mondays. But we didn't have to run. On Mondays, the most running I integrated into my day was from the weight room to the bathroom, so I could vomit my hangover in the middle of our lifting session. As each week neared Sunday, my teammates and I would walk the halls chanting, "Sun-Day-Night-Sun-Day-Night-Sun-Day-Night," in ever-increasing intonations. Sunday nights kept us college students. Those nights kept us sane.
One Sunday night sophomore year, my then-boyfriend visited. A few hours and twenty-eight Flip Cup games later, we pitched from my friend's apartment to my dorm room. Our drunken weight supported each other as if we were conjoined at the shoulders. We got to my dorm room, and I shed my clothes faster than a four-hundred-pound thirty-five-year-old virgin. And then I fell into deep drunken oblivion.
The next morning, Boyfriend and I awoke. I opened the door to find my eyes enraged and squinting against the light. My eyeballs were under the impression that they were Asian. My body bore resemblance to a decrepit blob fish. A bright yellow Caution: Wet Floor sign two doors down in the middle of the hallway attacked my slit eyes. A paper reading: "Someone peed here last night. Eeewww," was taped to the sign's side.
While the rest of the university's student population recovered on Sunday nights, the female soccer team plastered beer and rum on our faces and livers. I cocked my eyes to Boyfriend.
"Did you pee there last night?" I asked him.
"I don't know. I don't think so. The only inappropriate place I've pissed before is in your bed. And I didn't piss your bed last night. Did you pee there?"
"I don't think so."
We headed to the elevators.
I returned to my dorm room that night where my roommate, Hobag, was waiting for me. She was as giddy as if she had just orgasmed twelve times.
"So, did you have a good night last night?" she inquired with a loonybin smile.
"Ya, great night. Played a-lot of Flip Cup!"
"No hallway adventures?" she probed, her smile hijacking her face.
"No... Do you know something I don't know?"
"Have you seen the pee sign in the hallway?" she asked.
"Yes..."
According to Hobag, at three in the morning, I stumbled out of our room and donkey punched the door of the soccer boy's room next to ours. When the door didn't open, I popped a squat and peed. Some girl living down the hall was coming home and saw me peeing in the middle of the co-ed hallway. I was butt ass naked. She told the baseball boys she lived next to, who told Hobag, who told me.
"Oooh no. I must have had to pee and thought that the soccer boy's room was the bathroom," was my only response.
From my room, you had to walk a minute and a half down the hallway to arrive at the women's restroom. The male toilets were next door, on the left-hand side. Whenever I was shithoused drunk and couldn't be bothered to walk a minute and a half, I would piss in the male restroom. I only ran into our male RA once.
At that moment, a knock on our door reverberated through the room and my cerebral cortex. I ducked under my raised bed. Our friends never knocked, they just walked in. A knock was never good. Hobag opened the door to our RA.
"Emergency floor meeting in five minutes," he announced with Bin Laden's hospitality.
Hobag attended the forty-minute meeting. I ate popcorn in our room. The meeting concerned the repulsive urine in the hallway accompanied by an entreaty that if anyone knew who was responsible, to tell the RA.
I called Boyfriend.
"Oh ya, you definitely walked out of the room naked at one point in the night. I forgot about that. Didn't know you peed," he replied, as reassuring as cauliflower.
"You allowed me to walk out of the room naked? Why didn't you stop me?"
"I might have mentioned that you should put on clothes. But then you just walked out."

July 2nd 12:52pm - Chalk?

My mother may as well be Mother Teresa. All of the furniture, clothes, books, food, etc. moved from my childhood home to her new house but none of the alcohol. She left the alcohol for my brother, myself, and our friends. Unfortunately the collection did not comprise chasers, mixers, or any liquor that I normally consume. It did entail dozens of bottles of aged wine, Scotch, Tequila, Whiskey, Blue Curacao, and Creme de Cacao which I find as alluring as Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt.
For the record: consuming blue concoctions with multiple hard liquors equates feeling as good as the time, in 7th grade, my crush told his friend in front of me and much of the class that I had blood on my pants.
I had suspected for thirty minutes or so that I had started my period. This was evident by the fact that I was sitting in what I could clearly define as liquid. However, my class was taking a timed test and my fear at not finishing eclipsed logic. After I completed the final question, I stood up and turned to exit the class. I heard Crush, who sat behind me, say indiscreetly, "Oh my God. Look at that huge red stain on Kara's white pants. Is that blood?" followed by laughter from at least two sources. Maybe six.

Hours and drinks after the consumption commencement, my brother announced he was going to return to the new house. Two of our friends walked outside, one who was so inebriated she tripped on her own feet upon initially entering the house, and another who had consumed a few blue liquor brews but was as sober as Ghandi.
"I need Kara's brother to give me a ride home! I'm going to get in his car now so he doesn't leave without me," Drunkard whispered to Blue Brew.
When the car doors were found to be locked, Blue Brew suggested she climb on top of the car to see if the sunroof was open. Drunkard was under the opinion that this was more reasonable than walking back inside and requesting a ride. She climbed onto the car with the dignity of the Queen of England, likely denting the roof in the process, and crawled around on hands and knees in a dress.
"The sunroof isn't open!" she declared, disappointed, and jumped/fell to the driveway.
Drunkard and Blue Brew returned inside where we immediately noticed the dirt streaks and white blotches covering Drunkard's legs like chickenpox.
"What is that?" we asked her.
She looked down, dumbfounded.
"It must be chalk," she told us, as indeterminate as a transvestite's identifying sex.
"Really?" one of our friends asked, touching it.
"Where did you get that? Where'd you just come from?" my brother asked.
Blue Brew said they were outside and she climbed on the top of his car to see if the sunroof was open.
"Ya, that's bird shit all over your legs," my brother said. "I haven't washed the car in awhile. Definitely bird shit."

July 1st 2:12pm - Michael Jackson Inappropriateness

Within minutes of hearing that Michael Jackson died, I received a slew of inappropriate text messages from my friends. I love my friends like I love my grandma.
They were under the impression that because of his antics the past decade, one minute and thirteen seconds of mourning was enough time before Michael Jackson jokes were distributed.

* Michael Jackson died. Little boys can sleep easier tonight.

* It has been released that Michael Jackson's last wish was to be melted down and made into a slide so little kids can go down on him forever.

* Michael Jackson's last words: "Take me to the Children's Hospital."

* Since Michael Jackson is 99% plastic they're going to melt him down into Legos so kids can play with him for a change.

* Autopsy results are in for Michael Jackson: food poisoning. Apparently he was eating twelve-year-old nuts.

* Only in America can someone be born a black man and die a white woman.

* Out of respect, McDonalds has released the McJackson burger: 50-year-old meat between 10-year-old buns.

* Michael Jackson's ashes are going to be put into an Etch-a-Sketch so kids can still twiddle his knob.