San Francisco, California
Palace of Fine Arts
February 16th 2011 11:45pm - I Scream when I Drive
My senior year in high school, I was awarded "Most Likely to Fall Asleep in Class." A few characters in my graduating class of four hundred provided a great deal of competition. However, I obtained the final honor by procrastination and persistence in my sleeper reputation. That, and I drank.
I almost earned the distinction of "Worst Driver." I made the final three, but ultimately my dear friend Pills conquered my efforts. The morning that our graduating class voted, she had made a left-hand turn on a red light. An oncoming car honked, she accelerated through the turn, the other car swerved, and she drove headlong into a line of idling vehicles. I couldn't compete with that.
Over the years, I've attempted to redress my missed glory. I've been cited for illegal turns, running through stop signs, cutting off officers of the law, failing to indicate a turn, having outdated registration, driving without a seatbelt, and being in possession of an open alcohol container in my car. I once had a warrant issued for my arrest because I didn't send in the processing fee after I fixed my side mirror. However, more than any other violation, I persistently get pulled over for speeding.
It's not that I forget meetings or appointments. I just assume it will take me less time to get places. I pride myself on my ability to leave later and arrive earlier than Google maps tells me to.
My Real Estate office is near the bottom of a hill in Santa Rosa called Fountaingrove. I was scheduled to show three houses located up the hill. Google maps estimated eleven minutes. I mentally allotted myself eight minutes. I got caught on the phone and sprinted to my car five minutes before the viewing.
I planned on tearing out of the parking lot and flying up Fountaingrove. Unfortunately, I was driving a 2000 Toyota 4Runner. The car had four cylinders and a lot of weight. I floored it and leaped up the hill at a steady rate of 15mph. A gorilla could have outrun my car.
Seven minutes later I was late and the hill leveled out enough to gain some speed. A bicyclist prevented me. The guy was swerving all over the road. My five-year-old cousin can ride in a straight line. He wobbled to the left and then would suddenly jolt to the right. Every time I tried to pass him, he lurched directly in front of my car. I slammed on the brakes three times to avoid hitting the nutter. The fourth time he wavered to the right, I smashed the accelerator to the floor and inched past him. The sun glinted off his red helmet and into my eyes.
"Get the f*** off the road," I screamed at him out my open window.
There was a sidewalk. I failed to comprehend why he couldn't use it.
Three minutes later, I opened the door to the house and turned on all of the lights. I was sweating and breathing like a rapist. I was wildly thankful that my client wasn't there yet. I looked out of the window to see a bicyclist ride up and dismount in front of the house. He wore a red helmet.
Feb 11th 2011 12:36pm - February 2011 Quote of the Month
Pakistan: "I should hang out with more stoner chicks. They have much lower expectations."
February 8th 2011 9:30am - A Gate and a Pair of Heels
Heels make legs look skinnier and more toned. Heels accentuate calves and provide a booty lift. Walking around in heels all day can shed an additional six hundred calories. I can't wear heels. I limp, I grimace. I look like a hunchback.
However, as a Realtor, I have to look professional. I sometimes wear those goddamn torturous heels.
Earlier in the week, I had taken a client's house key to get a copy made.
"Please bring it back, it's my only key," the seller begged.
I assured her that of course I'd bring it back.
I drove the twenty minutes from her house back into the center of Healdsburg, but then a crises erupted with another deal and I drove in a mad frenzy to my Santa Rosa office. It wasn't until five hours later that I realized I still had her only key.
Four days after that, I returned to the seller's house with the key. She lived eight miles out of Healdsburg. Those eight miles comprised a windy and narrow road lined by cliffs and massive trees. It took twenty minutes to get from her house to a normal street and civilization.
I called the client to let her know that I was coming. When I arrived, the gate was padlocked. The gate wasn't electric. It had to be unlocked and opened manually. I parked outside the gate and could see the house in the distance. I jumped up and down, I waved my arms wildly in the air, I honked the horn like a crazy person. I flashed the headlights. Nobody came down from the house to let me in. Fifteen minutes later, it was getting dark and my vision was rapidly diminishing. With my 20/400 vision, I can barely see in daylight.
I decided to hop the fence. Except that the fifty thousand dollar fence was too narrow to get my foot in and the spikes across the top prevented me from muscling my way up. A tree grew nearby the fence. How I visualized getting over the fence required gymnastics and flexibility. My limbs have the pliability of a sixty-year-old man, and I was wearing heels. I propped my back against the tree and leveraged myself to the top of the fence. I stepped down on the narrow horizontal strip of wood and hung onto the tree so I wouldn't die. The only thing I could do was jump. I jumped. My right foot caught the spiked top of the plank and I plunged five feet to the ground. I fell directly on my knee into a mush of leaves, dirt, and roots.
As I started hobbling up the quarter-mile long driveway, the seller got into her car and drove down.
"I'm so sorry," she said. "I meant to open the gate for you."
"Oh, that's okay," I replied. "I just tried to hop the fence."
She looked at the grass and dirt stains covering my arms and legs. I had bark stuck to the back of my shirt. Some twigs and leaves were in my hair.
"You hopped the fence," she said. It wasn't a question.
I waited for her to say that I could get in her car and she'd drive me up to the house. She didn't ask me to get in the car. She nodded and continued driving towards the gate. I assumed that she was opening the gate so that I could walk through it on my way out. I sighed and staggered like a cripple up the long-ass driveway. I struggled towards the house and handed her the key when she had parked and gotten out of the car.
I wobbled back down to the gate, my body scratched and bruised, and my feet in agony.
When I got to the bottom, the gate was still padlocked, and my car was still outside the gate.
February 6th 2011 9:02pm - Trimmer
I had severe reservations about moving into the house that my high school friend Pakistan owned. My new room had stains on the carpet that looked like a cat massacre had occurred. A penny was glued to the wall. What appeared to be a blood stain adorned the baseboard.
In the other spare room, the previous occupant had left a television, dresser, bed, small refrigerator, some clothes, a desk, computer, and a drum set. I honestly don't know what he took with him when he moved out.
Pakistan and I posted an ad on Craigslist. It read:
New roommate needed. Cheap rent. Downtown-ish location. Fully furnished if wanted.
Ideal roommate:
* Buys me beer
* Cleans the house
* Buys me beer
* Plays darts with me
* Buys me beer
Realistic Roommate:
* Pays rent on time
* Doesn't mind ants in the dishwasher
We received a lot of responses. We got emails from women in their fifties with grown children. Old men with dogs responded. A DJ, a drug dealer, and a beautician interviewed for the room. A handwritten note on pink paper appeared in the mailbox explaining that the prospective roommate didn't have internet access but was interested in the room. We hadn't specified the address in the ad. I wasn't really down with a stalker for a roommate, and Pakistan and I agreed that he would call her and tell her that the room had already been filled.
When I asked him the next day if he had called Pink Note Chick, he said that they had talked for awhile.
"She's awesome! She's coming by tonight!"
"Seriously?" I asked.
Pakistan smiled.
"Seriously?"
Pink Note Chick came by, and she was fantastic. She was twenty-six, and self-proclaimed down to earth, nice, and clean. She said that she worked part-time trimming.
"Trimming?" I asked.
"Trimming," she confirmed.
I assumed that she meant trimming bushes. As in women's bushes. As in specializing in hair removal of the lady goods. Pakistan thought she meant trimming plants. I'm still unclear as to what sort of trimming she did.
After interviewing Trimmer, a cage fighter came by to see the place, and then we went to Third Street Aleworks for the kind of night that simultaneously causes me despair and wonder, destruction and brilliance: $2 Tuesdays.
A few hours later, I was tired and wanted to go home, but after Third Street Aleworks we went to Russian River Brewery to meet up with some friends. At Russian River our friends asked how the roommate search was going. We told them that Pink Note Chick was currently known as Trimmer, and that she was excellent.
"She's sweet. She's down to earth, nice, clean... said she parties a bit but not that often. She's actually really cool."
"So compared to the women in their mid-sixties, the ex-military man with crazy rabid dog eyes, and the guy with a tattoo on his forehead, this girl rocks?" one of our friends asked.
"Precisely. She may be a stalker, but she's clearly superior to our other options," I confirmed.
Pakistan looked at me afterwards with raised eyebrows and asked, "Trimmer?"
"Trimmer," I agreed with a nod. She was number one on the list of potential roommates.
After Third Street I was still tired and still wanted to go home, but we went to the 440 Club. Typically, when the word "Club" is in a name, there is some dancing involved within the establishment. The 440 Club in Santa Rosa is a dive. It was established in the 1950's and the interior decor hasn't changed, aside from the vomit-infested carpets being upgraded a few years ago. As a liquor store in front and a bar in back, the 440 always offers the potential for violence and the marginal appeal of ordering a drink at a window outside the bar.
My friends and I stood in a circle in the 440 talking, when an incoherent mess of a girl fell into us and onto our drinks. She threw her arms up in the air and screamed a slurred speech. The only sentences I was able to comprehend were, "This is MY bar. It's mine. MY bar."
She swung her arms around, knocked two drinks onto the ground, stumbled into the corner of the bar, and vomited.
The chick was Trimmer.
February 1st, 2011 9:03pm - I am Awesome, Everyone's Going Down
By February 1st, I hadn't worked out in two months. I had traipsed through Australia, Vegas, and Tahoe accompanied by booze slushies and cocktails. The extent of exercise that I had accomplished in those months was swimming as fast as possible in the opposite direction of a shark while diving the Great Barrier Reef. I was later told that what I thought had been a shark was in fact a very large turtle.
Starting February 1st, I joined a gym.
I ate a roast cricket a few years ago in Thailand and immediately gagged. Typically, I would rather eat a cricket than go to the gym. However, Sonoma County was flooding and my abdomen was expanding so much that I was starting to look pregnant. Someone in the grocery store last week actually rubbed my belly. I desperately needed to work out.
Unfortunately, I am consistently under the delusion that I have superior muscles. I played sports constantly until I graduated college, and I like to think of myself as an athlete. The fact that I haven't lifted anything heavier than a beer in the past three years failed to factor in.
I walked into a FIT Extreme class at Parkpoint Health Club, and I scoffed. Aside from one twenty-something overweight chick in the corner, everyone else was over the age of fifty-five. I noticed one of the men in my office smiling and waving at me. He's sixty-two.
I glared around the room, swung my arms across my chest a few times, cracked my neck, and thought to myself, I am awesome. Everyone's going down.
Within a minute and a half, I was sweating. Within five minutes, every breath was a gasp. My arms punched less enthusiastically and my legs shook. On my fourth girl push-up, I looked up at the old bag in front of me. She was doing man push-ups, elevating and lowering her body faster than I was. When we shuffled across the room like crabs, sweat pored into my eyes and I couldn't see. I missed the change direction and crashed into a man called Old Balls. He put his dry arm around my soaked shoulders and asked if I was okay.
"Water," I whispered, but Old Balls had continued shuffling and all I could discern was a blur of movement every way I turned. "Water," I murmured, stumbling like a homeless drunkard through the elderly. The last detail I saw before the sweat stung my eyes was Mayonnaise over in the corner looking at me and shaking her head.
After shoving my entire head into the drinking fountain and consuming a liter of water issuing forth from the tiny water stream, I was ready to go back inside.
I am awesome. Everyone's going down, I repeated to myself.
That was a hallucination. At the end of the class, all of the senior citizens walked out laughing and talking. I was incapable of speech and crawled out of the room.
January 26th 2011 8:30am - January 2011 Quote of the Month
Sinner: "My dick isn't sensitive. It's rugged."
January 25th 2011 8:30am - A Mechanical Bull, a Tranny, & a Fall
When we drove to Vegas in a motorhome, my friends and I made a list. Because we were downing enough rum and Coors Light to fell a mammoth, it was a drunk list. Whoever accomplished something on the list got a point. Whoever had the most points at the end of the trip, won.
A few items from The List:
* Get laid (couples don't count)
* Ride a mechanical bull
* Take a picture with a tranny
* Puke and rally
We kicked off our last night in Vegas by pledging to accomplish things on The List. We started at the Cosmopolitan. It had opened two weeks earlier, and we went because of the three-storey crystal chandelier. The guys wanted to hit on the girls that were inevitably drawn to the gazillion crystals hanging from the ceiling. Shiny things attract girls. They're like birds.
When we walked in, Caitlin Moe, an electric violinist, was playing to the house music that DJ Mia Moretti was busting out. I was in awe.
These women were hot and I was convinced had as much musical genius as Beethoven. If I were a lesbian, I would have proposed lesbian marriage. To both of them. I was so enthralled with the tunes they were spinning that I failed to notice my friend Sinner getting molested.
Sinner's girl kissed him and bit his face. While dancing, she fondled his willy through his jeans. She straddled Sinner on a chair in the Cosmo and moved her underwear to one side. A random girl approached Sinner and told them that they were being inappropriate. Sinner's molester mumbled that it was late, and then she stumbled off him and out of the casino. Her name was Candy, and it was eleven-thirty at night.
T-Rex noticed a semi-attractive female and hit on her. He asked her what her favorite color was. He asked her what her favorite drink was. He asked her to go home with him. She declined. When he pointed her out to Sinner, Sinner said that she was the cockblock who had sent Candy home. T-Rex repeatedly hit on Cockblock the rest of the night, incessantly yelling to Sinner, "I don't care what she did, she's hot!"
I eventually extracted myself from the mesmerizing music being produced, and recalled that I wanted to ride a mechanical bull. Natty Light, Parrot, Baby Bear, Delight, a few others, and I found my brother and cousin looking for food in the Cosmo's empty conference rooms.
According to Cousin, Brother had been demanding food for an hour. While we attempted to find our way to one of Cosmo's exits, Brother petitioned for food. I appealed for a mechanical bull ride, explaining that he could get food at Treasure Island, directly across the way. Brother detoured to look for food up stairwells and down escalators. He inspected under chairs and behind Blackjack tables. We discovered Pakistan dominating the Blackjack tables, but no food.
When Pakistan wins, he is overly generous. Money falls from his hands and his pockets. I wanted to stay with Pakistan for moral support and free drinks, but I wanted the mechanical bull vibrations more. Plus, Brother kept complaining. He wanted pizza, or food, or pizza, or any kind of food, and he continued to announce it.
We went to Gilley's at Treasure Island. Gilley's had swings suspended from the ceiling, a mechanical bull, and a full restaurant with an authentic country BBQ menu. The place was fantastic, and Brother was ecstatic. After thoroughly studying the menu, he ordered one side of baked beans.
Everyone who signed up to ride the bull had to sign a page-long, eight-point font disclaimer. The paper essentially said that if you were injured on the bull, or if you died, Gilley's wasn't responsible.
Cousin was riding the bull when Natty Light walked up to us and said that there was puke in the toilet he used, and the guy in the stall next to him was puking. When he walked out of the bathroom, Security Guard accosted him, saying, "You were puking in the bathroom. I'm going to have to ask you to leave."
"But I'm sober, I wasn't puking, and my friends account for ninety percent of the people in this bar."
Security Guard insisted, "My guy told me it was you."
"I'm completely sober. Do I seem like I've been puking? Your guy's wrong."
Natty Light's sober eyes and coherent speaking confused Security Guard, and he let him stay.
"I can't believe I almost got kicked out of a bar for being sober," Natty Light exclaimed.
We rode the mechanical bull until the place closed, and when we left, Brother limped out of the bar. He had pulled his groin while riding the bull.
We returned to the Cosmopolitan to find the rest of our friends. My girl Delight and I were watching Pakistan at the Blackjack tables when we noticed a tranny. Pakistan was rolling in money, but the tranny was wearing booty shorts and garters. He won.
After the tranny called us "darling" eighteen times each, we were walking back to our friends when we noticed a tall man flanked by two girls that looked like models. All I saw were boobs and booties and long, thin legs. Hot Girl #1 said, "You're funny!" and stroked the guy's arm. Hot Girl #2 followed with, "You are sooo funny!" and ran her fingertips along his back. Clearly the guy must look like Brad Pitt. A random man walked by, noticed us watching, nodded towards them, and said, "Those two girls are totally hustling that guy." It wasn't until eighteen steps later that the guy turned around. It was T-Rex.
T-Rex continued to energetically chase down every female that walked past him. His standards lowered every ten minutes. At one point he pursued a girl who closely resembled a manatee. However, her vagina was hanging out, so she was an easy target.
My crew and I gathered and walked through Cosmo when one of our high school friends strolled up holding the hand of an Asian chick who may or may not be a stripper. She wore eight-inch heels, fake eyelashes, bright red lipstick, and a short turquoise sequin dress that extended out in a two-foot radius. We said hi with a few hugs before the group descended into utter silence. To add some conversation, Sinner screamed, "Wow, never thought seeing your friends in public would be so awkward."
After a few forced chuckles, everyone went mute again.
And then Asia yelled, "Hey, look, it's Carrot Top!"
Everyone turned around in confusion, didn't see Carrot Top, and turned back to Asia with question marks for faces.
"Look, it really is Carrot Top!" she repeated.
We still didn't see Carrot Top.
"Right there!" she exclaimed and pointed again.
She had been pointing at Baby Bear's brown hair.
Sinner explained that Carrot Top actually had red hair, and that she was mistaking our brown-haired friend for a firecrotch.
"I'm so sorry!" she screamed, and hugged Baby Bear as if he were a stuffed animal. Asia then placed her face three inches from Baby Bear's and talked about seeing Criss Angel. She repeated the same three sentences four times. Baby Bear smiled, laughed, and looked at us shaking his head, baffled. One second Asia was standing, echoing that she saw Criss Angel, and then she was on the floor. Her legs flew over her head. Turquoise sequins went everywhere. Everyone within a forty foot radius stared.
"Baby Bear, did you knock her down?" someone bellowed.
I grabbed the nearest thing to me, Sinner's arm, and we turned our heads away, shaking violently from laughter. Sinner enthusiastically high-fived a stranger. When we had recovered and looked back around, they had disappeared. Sinner immediately Facebook friend requested Asia. He wanted to make fun of her.
When we were ready to return to the Rio, the taxi wait line was longer than the entrance line to Tao.
Pakistan had won $1,500 and was ballin' it up. He paid for a limo back to our hotel.
As we walked towards the elevators, Pakistan looked at me, said, "One more," and laid $100 on a Blackjack table. He had a soft fifteen, and the dealer had a six. Pakistan doubled down and won $200 on the table. He exited the casino a Blackjack pimp.
Hours later, Cousin ended up at a restaurant in the Rio. He didn't know how he got there, but after twenty minutes of careful consideration, he ordered a two-egg platter. When the waitress asked if he wanted links or paddies, Cousin was confused. It was the hardest question he had heard. Ever. After more careful deliberation, he settled on paddies. Deciding what to order: twenty-three minutes. Receiving the food: eighteen minutes. Throwing up after finishing the food: immediate. Cousin puked and rallied.
January 19th 2011 7:05pm - Vegas 2011 - You Know You're Drunk When...
Vegas 2011 - You Know You're Drunk When...
* You sneak beer into the club in your pockets, open one, it explodes all over the club's carpet, and you act like it's normal.
* You start a Conga line down Las Vegas Boulevard.
* You get denied entrance to a casino multiple times by the same security guard.
* You pee in a casino's employee locker room next to four sheriffs.
* You funnel champagne into a cardboard horn blower.
* You straddle a guy in public, in a club, move your underwear to one side, and get told by a random girl that you're being inappropriate in public. You then say it's late and go home.
* You enthusiastically high-five a stranger when your friend's girlfriend falls and lies on the ground.
* You request Facebook friendship to the girl who just fell down solely to make fun of her.
* You hit on and literally chase every girl you see down the walkway. You run back to your friends every time.
* You spend an hour looking for food, finally get to a bar that serves food, and order baked beans.
* You don't notice that your vagina and ass are hanging out of your dress while posing for a picture in thirty degree Fahrenheit weather.
* You are more concerned with the previous name on the restaurant's waiting list (Gigi) than you are with getting yourselves seated.
* You puke and rally twice in a day.
* The hardest question you've heard all night is, "Links or paddies?" After twenty minutes of careful consideration, you order a two-egg platter, which you immediately throw up.
* You pull your right groin from riding a mechanical bull.
January 15th 2011 11:27am - Squeeze the Tip
Any girl can bag a guy in a bar. As long as she doesn't resemble Frankenstein. I've seen my good-looking male friends kissing girls who have the appeal of a banana slug. As long as a chick's face doesn't resemble a vagina, there's hope. Girls just stand in a bar and have options. Guys have to work to get laid. Relationships=consistent sex.
We were still sitting in the Rio. The guys were still trying to lower their standards by alcohol consumption, and I still wanted to ride a mechanical bull. We were talking about sex.
Sinner stood up, demanding our attention, "The thing is, when you're with your girlfriend, you can last forever. When you're single, forget about it."
He placed his hands out in front of him, beer in one hand, and thrust his hips forward, making the O face. After three thrusts, he shrugged and sat down.
"I've found the solution to that one," shouted T-Rex. "You just have to squeeze the tip of the penis. It lasts longer."
He stood up, thrust three times, and then squeezed his hand into a fist in front of his crotch.
"You just squeeze it, 'Oh ya baby, you like that? You like Papa?' The harder you squeeze, the longer you last. It's like Viagra."
Sinner stood up again. "I'm squeezing my dick, it's physics, Bitch!"
"You just grab it and, aggghhhh, aggghhhh," T-Rex screamed like a rapist.
I was giggling and unintentionally squirting beer out of my nose. I felt like a dysfunctional drinking fountain. When I was capable of speech again, I said that as a girl, if I was in the middle of the mattress mambo, and the guy I was with strangled his schlong and shrieked, I would be concerned.
"But girls like it when you last longer. And that is how you last longer," T-Rex said. He then repeated the squeezing motion and screamed.
"And suffocating your dick is the answer?" I asked.
"Dude, by squeezing my dick, I can last like thirty seconds longer."
I choked on my beer.
"Seriously. You squeeze, you thrust, you squeeze, you thrust. I've lasted a LONG time. It's like Viagra. I'm telling you."
"Dude, if you have a girlfriend, you can go all night," one of the serial monogamists said.
T-Rex laughed. "That's impossible. I have a sex mix. With shortened songs. The more songs play, the longer the girl thinks it lasts. I'm serious. Eight minutes!"
Some of our other friends choked on their drinks.
"Eight?"
"Ok, wait, let me think. I've gone twelve minutes before. I gave that sex kitten the ride of her life. Twelve minutes, you guys. Twelve. I'm not exaggerating!"
He's never been in a relationship before.
January 12th 2011 10:05am - Bady and Piping
Some of my friends have the texting skills of a crocodile. I can usually decipher. However, when I receive a text message that is complete gibberish at four in the afternoon, I have to assume that whoever sent it was drunk. Knowing my friends, if I get a "qwgr r up pll?" text at eleven in the morning, someone was drunk. When the entire text is impeccably written in coherent English except for one pig latin word, I get confused.
We were sitting in a circle in our room at Vegas' Rio getting our drink on before embarking on our quests. Most of the guys wanted to locate girls with low self esteems. I wanted to ride a mechanical bull.
Sinner blinked at his phone twice and then announced to the room, "I think she's kinda drunk because she just texted me, 'Wanna pipe?' What is that? How do you respond to that? What's piping? What does that mean?"
We stared at our phones for five minutes trying to determine what she might have intended to type.
"Maybe she meant the word sire?" someone suggested.
"Sire? 'Wanna sire?' No way man. This isn't the goddamn Renaissance."
"What does sire mean?" someone else asked.
"Never mind."
"But what does pipe mean?"
"Maybe it means dance?"
"What about talk?"
"No girl asks a guy if they wanna talk."
"Who would use the word pipe if they wanted to dance?"
"Agghh what is pipe?" Sinner yelled, throwing his hands up in the air. He was addressing God.
"It's from a girl, right? Just say yes. Always say yes," I advised.
"It must have been a typo. I just responded with, 'What???'" Sinner replied. "Three question marks. I couldn't wait any longer before replying. It had already been eighteen minutes."
T-Rex then shouted, "I just got a text from a girl who said, 'Maybe bady.' I asked her if she wanted to hang out tonight, and she replied, 'Maybe bady.' What the hell is a bady? And what the hell is up with these girls?"
"Maybe she's calling you bad. Like you bad boy. You bady," I suggested.
My brother walked into the room, and I asked him if he knew what piping or bady meant. He said that piping meant to have sex.
"So, 'wanna pipe' means wanna have sex?" I asked.
"Nooo," screamed Sinner. "I'm texting her, 'Let's pipe' right now!"
She never responded.
Sinner went on a drunken tirade. "Damnit, it took me twenty-six minutes after her initial text to reply 'Let's pipe!' She's probably piping some other dude right now. Girls have it so easy. I'm such a loser. I'm not piping anything right now. I'll be piping my laptop in a few days. T-Rex has been piping his laptop since he was sixteen. He's in a long-term relationship."
T-Rex: "She doesn't get viruses. She's clean."
Sinner sighed, "She's got a cute screen."
T-Rex: "She's got an amazing screen. Twenty-seven inches. But seriously guys, more importantly, what is a bady? And why would that chick respond with, 'Maybe bady?'"
Natty Light looked it up and informed us that according to Urban Dictionary, a bady is: "A spelling of baby for people (usually people who think they are gangsters) who are particularly retarded."
"I'm so excited," T-Rex exclaimed.
"Why, because she might be particularly retarded, or because she thinks she's a gangster?" I asked.
"Both!"
January 6th 2011 10:40am - NYE 2011 Vegas Quotebook
Sinner: "Every girl I've ever seen, I've considered sticking my weiner in her."
Parrot: "I feel like sex with T-Rex always ends with an apology."
Pakistan: "Smell this. It smells awesome."
Me: "Mmmm, cinnamon."
Parrot (smells it): "Is this chewing tobacco?"
Pakistan: "It's soap!"
Pakistan: "Even those children Parrot was working with were attractive."
*Note: kids were 8-17 years old*
Ass-Flash: "No wonder you were telling me yesterday that the sex registry is a bad idea."
Sinner: "The fact that I know where I am is good."
T-Rex (singing): "And then I go agh ungh agh agh ungh (with pelvic thrust) in her va-jay-jay."
Sinner: "Exact quote from the girl I'm texting: 'I'm not gonna lie, I made out with three guys last night.' Oh, and her name's Candy."
T-Rex: "I need to find a girl with low self-esteem that will let me stick my pee-pee in her mouth."
Me: "Kissing is easy, you just have to rape a girl's mouth."
T-Rex: "If I was gonna rape a girl's mouth it wouldn't be with my mouth."
Sinner: "A lot of girls say things that T-Rex might say, they just say it a lot less."
T-Rex: "You should hear the stuff I don't say. You're hearing the censored shit."
Sinner: "If girls like wrinkled shirts and weird neck hair, I'm in."
Sinner: "She wasn't great. She wasn't good."
T-Rex: "I think I'm going to lower my standards tonight."
Delight: "Tell me what that means so I can stop you from doing anything you'll regret."
T-Rex: "No one with a dick."
January 4th 2011 5:08pm - Punched in the Head
When most people think of Vegas, they think of money, whores, lights, drugs and booze. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Unfortunately for my friends, what happens in Vegas does not stay in Vegas. I write that shit down.
This year was New Year's Eve Vegas Round 4. I had severe reservations about going to Vegas for the fourth year in a row. I would have preferred to be in Ko Phangan, Thailand, drinking rum buckets and getting molested on the beach. However, I surrendered my doubts to America and the promise of temporary alcoholism and excessive depravity. That, and I had no money. After traipsing around the world for two years, I was homeless with no job, no car, and no cash. However, my birthday and Christmas are both right before New Year's Eve. I win. I begged my relatives for monetary donations with the pledge that I would not become a hooker. They obliged.
My friends and I drove from Sacramento, California, to Las Vegas, Nevada. In a motorhome. For ten hours. Alcohol saved my sanity. We began playing drinking games a few hours outside of Vegas. By the time we got to Sin City, dignity had been lost and coherence was in jeopardy.
We arrived at the Rio, yelling inarticulately. A stranger in the casino's reception accused us of sounding like dinosaurs.
We did the only logical thing: continued drinking in our hotel rooms, and then we went out. We didn't make it very far: my friends and I ended up at VooDoo Rooftop Nightclub. It's in the Rio.
While we were in our hotel room playing the game let's see who can get drunkest fastest, I realized that I like big clown hair. Not colorful hair that extends a foot from the scalp that potentially has feeding parasites in it, but I'm a fan of big hair. Hair that says, I don't give a damn. My friend Pakistan (he's obsessed with Pakistan) had big clown hair and a bit of a beer belly. He wore a long-sleeved collared shirt and glasses. Apparently he looked like a drug dealer.
When Pakistan went to the bathroom at Voodoo lounge, he walked past a man that asked him for drugs.
"I'm not a drug dealer," Pakistan responded.
"Yo man, I know you have drugs," the guy said.
"I don't have any drugs."
"I know you have drugs, hook me up man."
"Dude, I'm not a goddamn drug dealer." Pakistan continued walking, and then he flipped the guy off without looking back.
When he was about to exit the bathroom, a guy with the Hulk muscles wearing a tiny wife beater, earrings, sunglasses, and lip gloss approached Pakistan.
"Hey man, you got a problem?" Guido asked.
Pakistan looked up into his gorilla frame and honestly didn't recognize the guy. He was confused.
"No. What are you talking about?"
"I just saw you in the hallway. You got a problem?"
"Oh. I told you, I don't have any drugs."
"I know you have drugs. Hook me up, man."
"I'm not a drug dealer. I don't have any drugs," Pakistan repeated.
"You have drugs. I know it," Gorilla Guido insisted.
"I don't have any fucking drugs."
"I know you have drugs."
This exchange continued for three minutes.
Pakistan was infected with drunken confidence and Kongism. He thought it would be a good idea to stand up to Gorilla Guido. It was not.
Two of our other friends walked into the bathroom to witness Pakistan getting punched. In the face.
He was punched in the head for not being a drug dealer.
January 3rd, 2011 4:52pm - Christmas and Fire
My least favorite thing about Christmas is church. My most favorite thing about Christmas is stalking shoppers walking to their cars. I follow unreasonably close and pursue them like a creeper. I flash my lights. I throw the car in park and rev my engine. When shoppers turn and look at me, I shout "Merry Christmas." I smile and wave like a normal person. It confuses people.
This Christmas, my mom bought matching pajama pants for herself, me, and my sister. They were from Abercrombie & Fitch and collectively cost what I had been getting paid for a week's work in New Zealand. I tend to shop at Forever 21 and H&M. All major clothing chains employ children and are ensconced in labor scandals. I might as well get my clothes cheap.
Christmas morning, we opened presents. My mom, sister, and I wore our matching pajamas, and my brother got my mom a big-ass candle.
"It smells so good!" she exclaimed and immediately lit it in her bathroom. Minutes later, my sister changed out of her new pajama shirt and pants. She threw those pricey p.j.'s on the bathroom counter. On top of the candle. The candle exploded.
Christmas casualties one and two: new pajamas, new candle.
December 28th, 2010 10:55am - Home for Birthday
My birthday spanned three countries and forty-eight hours. I flew from Cairns to Brisbane, Brisbane to Auckland, and Auckland to San Francisco. I was in the air for seventeen and a half hours. When I landed in Brisbane, I was tired. When I landed in Auckland, I was exhausted. When I landed in San Francisco at ten o'clock in the morning on my birthday, I was as useless as non-alcoholic beer.
My mom wanted to spend the day shopping. I wanted to spend the day in a horizontal position. The word comatose replayed in my brain. For two hours out of the six-hour timeframe my mom had delegated for splashing the cash, I forced my sister and mom to sit with me at Lefty O'Douls. They watched me drink beer and mumble delirious and sleep-deprived nonsense. At one point I talked about obtaining a pet alligator. In retrospect, they would make horrible pets. They're not soft.
My best friend Princess and I have the same birthday, and our moms had organized a birthday dinner for us at Bin 38.
As it was a few days before Christmas, San Francisco was as packed as Beijing. It took us forty-five minutes to get to the front of the line at the Union Square parking garage exit. When my mom reached for the parking ticket, she realized she didn't have it.
"Where's the ticket?" she asked.
"I don't know, you just had it."
"But where'd it go?" she continued.
"I don't know, you just had it!" I repeated.
Amid honks and profanities, we ransacked the car. Three minutes later, my mom sprinted to the payment booth in her heels. People behind us got out of their cars to yell at me. Those in the holiday spirit granted me the double middle finger. We sat in the idling car for nine minutes, never found the ticket, and were late to dinner.
Princess and the rest of our families had been at the restaurant for almost an hour and had eaten their way through appetizers and wine. I wanted to sit for two hours at the restaurant, and then I wanted to go to my girl E's apartment, shower, and sit some more on the couch with friends and Cali wine I hadn't seen in a year. I wanted it more than Christmas.
I sat down with a jet lagged sigh. The food portions were enough to satisfy a gerbil. I had been there for two minutes before Princess suggested we go to Bar None.
I was more likely to experiment with anal beads than go to a bar.
"But I'm going to Bar None to meet up with a guy I'm kind of seeing, and you have to come! We're leaving in fifteen minutes," Princess insisted.
"Um. No. That sounds like an absolutely terrible idea. That's the last thing I want to do."
"But you love Bar None."
"I loved Bar None my junior year of college. Why in the world would you think I want to go there now? I don't want to go to a bar at all."
"Please go to Bar None, it'll be fun! Two of your friends are there."
"Two of my friends are there? Which ones? Why would my friends go to Bar None? We haven't hung out there in three years."
"E and Fi-Town."
"I want to go to their house and shower and then sit on the couch and drink a bottle of wine! And you told them to go to Bar None? I can't even go to their place now? You told my friends to go to a bar? That's the last place in the world I want to go. I've been in three countries in the past forty-eight hours, and on four flights. I'd rather run home to Santa Rosa than go to a bar."
"Just for one drink? Please come out with us! Just for one drink!"
"Fuck no! I refuse to go."
Princess was insistent.
"I refuse to go to a bar just so you can be all over some guy. Two years ago, we lived together and on our birthday you didn't leave your goddamn room. I'm not going just so you can have a hook-up tonight."
Princess cried.
Then she called my friends, who were already at Bar None. I told them that I didn't want to go to some bar, and that I'd rather be around only the people I care about. They said I should just come out for one beer, and then we could go and sit on a couch.
I didn't want to go to any bar, and the dinner options were as appealing as the movie Flubber.
The only thing on the menu that was potentially a decent portion of food was the burger. I threw the menu down in disgust.
"Who the hell picked this place? They don't even have real-person portions."
Princess and our good friend from high school had decided upon the place.
"Please come just for one drink! There might be friends of yours who you haven't seen in awhile. Let's leave in five minutes."
"Nobody in their right mind would go to Bar None. I just want to shower and sit on a couch. Not watch you flirt with some guy you probably don't even care about."
Princess cried again. She told me that she had organized a surprise birthday party for me and we were supposed to have arrived there forty minutes ago. She was just trying to make me happy.
December 25th 2011 7:55pm - Gilligan's and Shaka Shaka Shaka
Last week I laid out on the beach at Surfer's Paradise with a few friends and a book. There is a hole in the ozone above Australia. I should have worn sunscreen.
The next week, my entire body was peeling. I was shedding skin like a snake. My skin got so burnt that it split and an open gash formed on my leg. My bottom lip produced growths that comprised of multiple sun blisters layered over each other. I clearly contracted a serious case of herpes from the sun.
I was going home for Christmas and my first flight, from Cairns to Brisbane, was at 6am. While I was in the tourist office arranging transportation, some guy glanced at me and then screamed that I looked like a gremlin. I don't know what a gremlin looks like, but people stared at my cracking and blistering skin. My lips were the size of a ball sack.
The kind souls in that tourist office booked me a shuttle for four in the morning. At three, I hadn't gone to sleep yet. I had thought it more important to pack and then watch while Manchester made friends with a vagabond on the street.
Manchester and I had been walking back from the corner store when we were approached by a homeless man. He didn't speak, but he motioned for food. I was intoxicated and more engrossed with pounding back water like a crazy camel lady than paying attention to the exchange. I was trying to sober up for my flight and water tasted fantastic. The liquid was crisp and cold. I was happier than if I had smoked pot. It was so good, I swear I could have been drinking God's saliva.
I took four sips and then Manchester castrated the water bottle from my hands and offered it to the derelict.
"What? Why?" I asked Manchester.
"Shaka Shaka Shaka," replied the hobo. And then he chugged the rest of the water bottle. I watched him gulp it down his trachea.
"The man's just thirsty and hungry," said Manchester. "He needs food."
"Shaka Shaka Shaka," said the transient.
We were on the street outside of Gilligan's Island, our badass backpackers accommodation. I looked at Manchester, at the hobo, and at the door.
"What's your name, man?" asked Manchester.
"Shaka Shaka Shaka."
"Your name's Shaka?"
"Shaka Shaka Shaka."
Some Aussies entering into Gilligan's screamed at us to leave him and come inside.
"It's okay, we're just talking to the man," yelled Manchester. "He's just hungry."
"Leave him, he's an Abo," they replied.
"He's a man," Manchester hollered, "and the reason he is this way is because of the British."
I stared at the man's eyes. They were bloodshot with yellow. I didn't know how that was possible, and I was just impressed.
Exhaustion was beginning to affect my brain functions, but we walked back to the corner store to buy Shaka some food. Manchester told him he could choose five dollars worth of food. Shaka threw an armload on the counter, and then went to the aisles for more. It amounted to thirty-two dollars.
A half hour later, I psuedo-sleepwalked down Gilligan's stairs with my bags. I returned the room key and put the ten dollar key deposit in my wallet. I then went outside and sat on the curb waiting for my shuttle. I sat half-comatose for an hour.
My senior year in high school, I received the most honorable of awards: Most Likely to Fall Asleep in Class. The next year, my brother got the award. We have skills. Sleeping skills. The shuttle that was supposed to come at four in the morning didn't come until five. When I stood up my right ass cheek stuck to the concrete. I'd been sitting in gum for an hour. It wasn't until the shuttle pulled away from the backpackers at 5:20am that I realized I had left my cell phone on the counter when I checked out.
December 24th 2010 9:50am - Dirty Head
Cairns is the Barbie of Australia. Barbie has everything. Cairns has everything.
Cairns boasts Great Barrier Reef diving and snorkling, sky diving, bungy jumping, horse riding, rainforest swimming, river rafting... and everything costs $250. Average. A bus trip up the coast to Cape Tribulation costs $150. For a bus trip.
I won a jelly wrestling contest in a bar and subsequently won a white water rafting trip valued at $250. In Peru, I paid $15 to white water raft. In India, I paid $8.
As a birthday present, my mom paid for me to dive the Great Barrier Reef. I couldn't afford anything else. No backpacker could.
Thus, Manchester, Ireland, Scotland and I wandered around Cairns doing things that were in our budget. We drank beer, ate McDonald's sundaes and tried on hats.
We strolled past a tourist shop with hat stands near the sidewalk. Scotland is a woman. She picked up and considered buying a pink Cairns hat. Manchester is a man. He elevated a bright pink hat that my grandma would wear to church. He placed the pink floppy hat on his head and rotated towards us with an angelic smile. A sweating man who worked at the shop bowled over to us and screamed, "Get your dirty head out of my hat."
I thought he was joking. I laughed. He turned on me.
"You wouldn't think it was so funny if someone didn't pay the ten dollars to buy the hat because there had been a dirty head in it," he shouted in my face. Some of his spit landed in my wide open mouth.
"Get your dirty head out of my hat," Shopkeeper shouted. His eyeballs looked like they wanted to inject us with tranquilizers.
Manchester was confused.
"I'm sorry," he replied, "but I don't think my head is dirty. I washed it this morning with Women's Grapefruit Body Wash."
December 20th, 2010 8:25am - December 2010 Photo of the Month
Queenstown, New Zealand
View from the house I stayed at
December 17th 2010 9:43pm - A Toilet and a Plane Flight
When I woke up the morning after my going away BBQ, I felt fantastic. The world was glowing and my life was perfect. I was happy and warm. I was tingly. I was still drunk. That feeling rapidly abandoned me. When Boyfriend dropped me off at the airport to fly to Australia, a racquetball game was playing inside my stomach. I had started to sweat. Rum exuded out of my pores. My arms, legs, stomach, head, everything hurt. My toenails hurt. I felt like I'd been trampled by an elephant. My hangovers vary from slight stomach unease to bodily distress, akin to death.
When I'm hungover, consuming soda provides me with a false sense of functionality. I like to believe that the carbonation soothes my wreck of a body. It doesn't. I bought a bottle of 7-Up and then sat in the airport's waiting area with my head back, my eyes half-closed, and my limbs feeling like they had been attacked by a rabid dog. The airlines called everyone to board, I got in line, and when I extended my arm to hand over my ticket, I could feel my body rejecting the soda I had just swallowed. I screamed, "Oh God! Hold the plane," pivoted away from the line, and sprinted to the toilet.
Seven minutes later, nobody was in the line, and the airline attendants were waiting for me looking anxious. In a country with a population of four and a half million, they hold planes. My friend Rob Awesome was once standing outside the airport in Nelson smoking a cigarette when he received a call from Air New Zealand saying he had checked in but wasn't on board, and every passenger on the plane was waiting for him. He finished his cigarette and then got on the plane.
I had been assigned a middle seat in aisle four. The only toilet was in the back of the plane. I breathed shallowly and closed my eyes. The first time I asked a stewardess if I could go to the bathroom, she replied that the plane hadn't even left the ground. The fourth time I asked, she said that the fasten seatbelt light should turn off momentarily.
Forty-five minutes into the flight from Auckland to Brisbane, everyone knew my name. The first three times I got up to sprint to the bathroom in the back, the man sitting next to me in the aisle seat groaned. The fourth time he muttered, "For fuck's sake." In my subsequent sprint down the aisle, I shimmied around an old man and almost knocked a small child on his head. An hour and a half into the three hour flight, the stewardesses moved me to an aisle seat one row in front of the toilets. I had easy access and I was ecstatic.
During our descent, a steward asked me if I had vomited during the flight.
"Clearly," I replied.
"Once we land you're going to have to go through an extra interrogation before you're allowed to enter Australia."
"What?" I managed to utter. My eyes were closed. I had a second heartbeat in my head and the mental capacity of a file folder.
"Do you have any idea why you're vomiting?" Steward asked.
"I'm hungover as all hell." I stuck out my tongue. It was suffocating me.
Seven minutes later, the fasten seatbelt sign was on and I asked a stewardess if I could use the toilet.
"No, sorry, you have to stay in your seat. We're in our final descent."
"I'm going to puke on this seat."
The generous soul handed me seven barf bags.
December 14th 2010 8:00pm - Goddamn Cameras
In the past two years, I've hit up Peru, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, India, Nepal, New Zealand, Fiji, and Australia. I had a camera in five of those countries. In March 2009, I left my camera on some rocks while looking at condors in the Colca del Canyon in southern Peru. In October 2009 in India, a monkey attacked my replacement camera. He assaulted it like my technological life was a female in heat. I never saw the camera again. Finally, my last night in New Zealand, I lost the camera I'd had for a year. Cameras document my life. I have adored every one of them as much as I will my future children.
My friends in Auckland threw a BBQ in my honor and, upon arrival, one of the boys taped my hands to a wine bottle. He initially endeavored to attach each of my hands to wine bottles, but as I've aged I've clearly become an alcohol prude. I have standards. Wine is meant to be sipped and relished. I wouldn't allow my pride at being a lady tarnished with a bottle of wine in each hand. That's just not classy. I finished the one bottle in a half hour.
Within a few hours, someone had vomited, someone had overflowed the toilet, and one of my friends had repeatedly announced, "I'm a good Christian girl. I don't do bad things. I'm a virgin. Sort of. No, I am a virgin. Sort of. I'm a good Christian girl." She had had a bottle of wine taped to her hands as well.
We relocated to the bars in the Viaduct. We ultimately ended up in the bar Provedore, also known as Provide-a-Whore. Provedore is the bar where I met Boyfriend.
Mistake #1: I took my camera out with me. I wanted to archive my last night in New Zealand. Mistake #2: I offered my camera to a stranger to take a photo. He took the photo and then backed away. I was absolutely ecstatic that, 1: I had commandeered a Santa hat and was still wearing it, and 2: that we were taking pictures on my last boozy night in Kiwiland. I never retrieved my camera from him.
The next morning, I realized that I didn't have my camera, and that good Christian girl sort of virgin gave head to a stranger in a bathroom stall.
December 12th 2010 10:23pm - Phone out Window
I had been without a phone for five days and I swear my brain was attempting to implode. My life was lost. Scraps of paper with notes ornamented my bookshelves, windowsills, and couch. I woke up one morning with a piece of paper in my hair. It had Boyfriend's number on it. Another morning when I flushed the toilet, my To-Do List went down the tank. That To-Do List had my Australia flight details on it. The list must have either been in my underwear or pants. I certainly hadn't intentionally thrown it into the toilet.
Skype became my most valuable asset. Without a phone, I didn't know if it was November or December. Though I commonly listed reading the sun as one of my countless talents on my resume, in reality I couldn't tell if it was dawn or two in the afternoon. To wake up in the morning, I set an alarm clock through the internet. Half of the time it worked. Or my laptop turned itself off.
I was ninety percent positive that I had been so lost trying to get to Boyfriend's Air Force Town Green extravaganza that I had soberly thrown my phone out the window and then soberly blacked out. It seemed like the most logical explanation.
I had called my phone multiple times over the past five days. I decided to harass it like a male nymphomaniac calling for some cooter. The fifth time I called, someone answered and then hung up. The seventh time, someone picked up, I screamed, "This is my phone!" and they hung up. The sixteenth time, a pubescent male voice answered, "Hello?"
"This is my phone!" I shouted with the gusto of a drunk Italian.
He told me his little brother had found my phone in the middle of the street. This made sense.
"You want to come by later tonight?" he asked.
I looked at my laptop. "Well, it's eight o'clock," I responded. "Is it possible to come by now?"
"You should come by much later."
Under normal circumstances, I would have classified him as a weirdo stalker teenager and hung up. But I was going to Australia in a few days and wanted my phone. After losing my sanity driving around lost for forty minutes, I located the street.
Linguist has also been listed among my resume plethora of specialties. I hadn't understood the crazy Kiwi accent when they gave me the address of the house, but I had heard an aggressive dog barking. I went to two wrong houses before I found the correct one.
When I got my phone back, the ninety dollars credit had been used up. Calls to Australia had been placed. He had charged a five dollar IOU on the phone. He had messaged someone, "Hey babaayyy, I want to cum cum cum cum cum cum cum cum." My brain sang the cum's into a tune.
December 9th 11:30pm 2011 - Bathroom at the Point
The five kids I babysat, their mom, and I went to Bastion Point in Auckland for the last dinner I would have with them. We had McDonald's and carrot cake. When the mom had asked me the day before what cake I would like, I said chocolate. She bought carrot cake because the nine-year-old was on a diet.
The five-year-old wandered in the street, the baby shoved french fries in his mouth, the nine and seven-year-olds futilely attempted to get their kite out of the tree, and I watched the three-year-old's facial expressions as he played with himself. After two minutes, I needed to pee.
"Hey baby, do you need to go to the toilet?" I asked.
"I not a baby, I a big boy. I have a baby," the three-year-old responded.
I wasn't about to destroy his delusions about having a child two years younger than himself, so I agreed with him, swung him onto my shoulders and carried him to the bathroom.
When I removed his hands from torturing my hair and set him down in the bathroom, he informed me, "I have to do big poos."
I covered the toilet seat with toilet paper and set the kid on it. Four minutes later he was still discussing the size of his impending excrement, I was still standing in his stall, and I had to pee. My bladder pain began afflicting my brain.
"Are you almost done?" I asked.
He grunted and repeated, "I have to do big poos."
I went into the next stall to pee. As I was sitting down, the three-year-old informed me, "You have to do poos."
"I don't have to do poos! I just have to pee," I replied.
"You have to do poos because I'm doing poos.""Logical. But I think I might just pee."
"Kara, do you love me?"
"Of course I love you, but that doesn't mean I can force myself to do poos."
"Sometimes you have to squeeze it out. I'm squeezing it out now. I have a little bum. Not a lot of poos come out at one time."
"Sometimes you have to squeeze it out. I'm squeezing it out now. I have a little bum. Not a lot of poos come out at one time."
December 5th 2010 9:30pm - Chief Warrant Officer
Babies have a better sense of direction than I do. They find their mom's nipples with acute accuracy. They smell milk boobs. I can't find North.
New Zealand's Air Force hosted an event called the Town Green at Auckland's AF Base. The Town Green supposedly had live music, cheap beer, and countless drunks. Boyfriend was in the Air Force and half an hour after I was supposed to meet him at Base, I was driving in varying circles in towns I never knew existed. When I called Boyfriend and read him street signs I was passing, he said I was twenty minutes away. It takes twenty minutes to drive from my house to the base. I had been driving for forty. I stopped at three gas stations, a produce cart, and a jewelry store to ask for directions.
After the jewelry store, I decided to call Boyfriend again with a status update. I couldn't find my phone. When I drive, I usually put it in between my legs. In my crotch. It wasn't there. I pulled over and ransacked the car, my purse, and my pockets. I plundered under the seats and raided the glove compartment. I came to the conclusion that I must have thrown my phone out the window while driving through a neighborhood trying to find the freeway.
I arrived at the base without a phone an hour and fifteen minutes after I had left.
When I walked up to the gate, I was greeted by nine officers, average age forty.
"Ticket please?" Steroids asked.
"Oh, I actually don't have a ticket. I mean, I have a ticket, but I don't have it. My boyfriend does," I replied.
"Is he here?"
"Yes, he's in the Air Force."
"Okay, you're going to have to call him so he can bring it out to you," Steroids continued.
"I actually somehow managed to lose my phone while driving here. I'm pretty sure it's on a street somewhere."
"Okay... what's his number? I'll call him and get him to come sign you in."
Boyfriend and I had been together for nine months. I didn't know his phone number.
"You don't know his phone number? We can't let you in the gate unless someone signs you in and takes responsibility for you." Steroids was now looking at me like I was injectable.
"Can't you look up his phone number in the system?" I asked.
All nine officers laughed at me. They asked what system I was talking about.
"I don't know, like something online that documents contact info for everyone in the Air Force," I said.
They laughed harder. I had temporarily forgotten that I was in New Zealand.
"Alright, where does he live?" Yoked Grandpa kindly asked.
"He used to live in a house a few minutes away, but he's lived back on Base for about a month now."
"Do you know what building he's in?"
I had visited Boyfriend a couple of times. I had no idea what building he lived in.
"Were you supposed to meet him somewhere?" Steroids asked.
"No, I was supposed to call him."
"So you don't have a phone, don't know your boyfriend's number, don't know what building he lives in, and don't know where he is," Steroids summed up my brain capacity and intellect.
Yoked Grandpa assured me we'd find him. I hopped in the white molester van and we drove around the barracks seeing if I recognized anything. I didn't. The road split, so I pointed left. We drove for four minutes before Yoked Grandpa conversationally asked me if I knew where my boyfriend's ancestors were from.
"He was born in Durban in South Africa, but beyond that, I just don't know."
"He's not Maori? He does not live over here then."
I had pointed us in the direction of the Maori barracks.
Ten minutes later, one of the seventeen identical buildings looked vaguely familiar to me. When we walked into the dorms, everything appeared recognizable. After wandering up and down the halls and asking if anyone had seen him, some chick pointed us to the next building over. After I harassed everyone I saw in that building asking if they knew Boyfriend, I found his room. I was elated when the door was unlocked. But Boyfriend wasn't there.
We got his phone number off a dude that was clearly trying not to slur his words in front of Yoked Grandpa.
After I got handed over to Boyfriend and the molester van drove away, Boyfriend exhaled his beer breath.
"How did you end up with The Man? What did you say to him? What did he say to you?" he asked. "Do you have any idea who that is?"
"Yoked Grandpa?" I asked.
"Kara, that's The Chief Warrant Officer. He's The Man here."
"Yoked Grandpa was nice," I said.
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