2002-06-06 - 11:49 p.m.

And one quick change later. . .

So it's Thursday night and we're no closer to finding out the identity of the Angel of Death that is stalking Corday's patients than we were almost 8 months ago. Oh well. Angels of Death are like that - sneaky.

I should be going to beddy bye as my long awaited, eventually missed, then rescheduled, then once again awaited court date is in the morning. Mmmmmmmm, paying Durham money. I love it.

I stupidly bought this Cheeze-It Snack Mix since I was delirious and didn't know what I was doing but was just hungry. For some strange reason I hate most snack mixes (GORP being the exception). And this Cheeze-It Mix did nothing to change my vote on snack mixes. And I tried to slug it off on Ben. And he thought it tasted gross and didn't want. BEN. Thought it tasted gross. BEN. Who eats cheese substitues. BEN. Who eats soap & mustard flavored candy and asks for seconds. Anyway, I like Cheeze-Its ok, they're snack mix sucks though. You know when you eat a lot of Cheeze-Its and then you get this cheezy paste that builds up in your gums and then you can scoop it out with your finger and then eat it off your finger? That is so gross but I love it. Cheeze-It Cheeze-It Cheeze-It

I think a bug just stung me in the eye. It fucking hurts. Stupid fucking bug. Ok, I need to move on here, so here we go . . .

So I'm at work yesterday afternoon. And it's hotter than the Water Street Cafe kitchen outside. And as we all know, the AC doesn't work, so the store is hotter than Bob St. Lawrence in speedos. Apparently it's out of freon. The AC, not my old high school principal's speedos. I would say it was like a dry heat. But I don't really get the concept of dry heat, so I'll say it was a wet heat, since I was sweating like Tituba [NOTE: Arthur Miller's lawyer's would like to note that you have already used one Tituba joke in the last 7 days. Another infraction such as this and you will be forced to go back to quoting Tim Kelly. Are we understood?] So I was outside by the compacter, thusly compacting when an old woman asked me if I could help her load some stuff into her car. So, since I still needed my Help Annoying Old Crone Merit Badge I obliged. "They're just mostly some odds and ends and my knick-knacks." she informed me. "I have a question, why the fuck are you even parked in this loading dock/compacter area to begin with you crazy old loon?" I asked. But it came out sounding more like "Oh. . .ok." So I start helping her load all this pipe-cleaner, arts & crafts, Category 11, Chickie-could-make-this-better crap into her car while she makes sure to do a good job of watching me do it. So I'm leaning into her car to put one of the last boxes in and she looks at me like she just saw the ghost of Abe Vigoda and says matter-of-factly "You're bleeding". "What?!" "You're bleeding." Well, sure as I'm sittin' here, I was bleeding, like a bloody faucet, out my nose. Now make all the jokes you want about my cocaine habit ("I knew it!" - Aunt Linda), but this was unexpected. I get them every once in a while, but Ben has bloodied up far more pillow cases and priceless heirlooms with his irresponsible olfactory bloodletting than I could ever hope to. So I was like "Um, I have to go." I feel I may have bled my way straight out of a nickel tip, but oh well, you lose some you lose some. So I run inside, nose aloft, pinched with my fingers, thinking "Wait, is it head back is bad for you or head forward?" I'm thinking I should send it back to my brain where it probably came from, so I throw my head back. I run into the Fox Run Mall public bathroom that is right inside and run to one of the stalls for toilet paper but ALL THE STALLS ARE FULL. I go to get paper towels, but they have those electric hand dryers. ARGH. I am NOT about to ask some guy to "spare a square" Elaine style, so I do not pass Go and run directly to work. Security would no doubt have tripped me and kicked me in the eye for good measure had they seen me, but I eluded their fake-badged bloated bodies and got to G. Willikers in time for Michael to look at me horrified while I ran out back to quell the crimson tide. Man, this is only my NOSE and once every like 7 months, I don't know how girls handle it. So I finally get all the blood off and then go back to work. Fun start to shift. {"Hey, when do we get to my part, where I bleed freakishly out of my eye and you all turn on me?!?" "That's an entirely different story all together Gabe." "Oh. . .carry on then."}

So I am waiting for the COAST Bus Wednesday night after work and was feeling rather glum as ol' Star was nowhere to be seen. There was this hoochie though that was sitting on the curb and kept asking me the time every 5 minutes, so to make sure she didn't miss the bus. Despite the fact that the first time she asked me I assured her she wouldn't miss it as I would be getting on it and it would be pretty tough to miss me getting on the HUGE bus that would eventually end up running over her feet if she didn't eventually move out of its path. Anyway, then this character comes out of Lidz (sort of like Lids, but more hardcore) and is wearing jeans, a tight wifebeater (signed by Jason Kidd no doubt) and he looks just like Vin Diesel except his nose isn't flat as much as Vin Diesel's, and he probably has a more normal name like Crackerjack Thompson. So he comes over and sits in between me and Askey McTimey. Askey is ALL OVER Crackerjack. It is clear that they know each other. SO they talk and gibber and jeeber jeeber until the bus gets there. I should mention at this point that Askey is no gross looking piece of Northfield trash, but is no nice looking piece of Alton trash either. So we get on the bus and it's pretty quiet for the whole ride home, except for the drunk UNH librarian who always rides home at night on the Coast bus (making pretend he doesn't recognize anybody) who was snoring in the back seat. Askey gets off one stop before me, by Cleary Cleaners and as soon as she is off the bus Crackerjack turns to me and he says to me "Yo, can you believe that shit?!" Right before answering I question to myself "Why me? Why God do you always send the crazy fucks to fuck with me?" and, not really knowing exactly how to answer his question I say "No shit." thinking that will keep me pretty safely non-committal. He then goes to explain to me, and due to his volume, the entire bus (even Drunky McBook rousts about for it) that right before they got on the bus at the mall she handed him a little card. He just assumed it was her number but wasn't sure. They had NEVER MET until she saw him at the bus stop. So, on paper, Askey and I had known each other quite a bit longer than she and Crackerjack - by at least 15 minutes. The card she gave him read, in her hadwritten red ink: "You know you want me. Wherever, Whenever. 555-5555" (No Fred, her # wasn't really 555-5555, but by law that's what I have to write.) We couldn't decide -we men of different walks of life rattling down Central Ave on that humid Wednesday night in June- what was worse: That she would write such a note, or that, due to its length for such a "spontaneous gesture" that the card may have been pre-written in case such encounters arose. Either way, Crackerjack looks right at me and says "Well, what da ya say? I can't help it. It looks like the Itallion Stallion strikes again." People. People listen. I cannot handle these type of situations. And yet, invariably, it is always *I* that end up elbow deep in the weirdosity of whatever folk populate the area I'm in at any given time. So I look at him and just say, poignantly, "It looks like he has." And then I rang the buzzer, got off the bus, and walked down Central Ave back home.

And now, for the unnerving mindfucking portion of our program, I present:

[I can add nothing to this]

So I get up this morning, early. Like 6 o'clock early. And I know it's gonna be time to walky walky to the bus stop and I'm praying that the splashing puddly noises I hear outside my window are just the water coming off the roof from what was left over from the thunderstorm last night. For the most part I am right. It is still slightly sprinkling out, but nothing major. I get showered and dressed, and deciding that (due to both my bloody heels and the damp weather) that socks and sneakers would be a better idea than sandles and that my hooded jacket might be good "just in case", I leave towards Central Ave. It was 7:30 when I left. In slightly over an hour - I'd be naked. As I approached the lights right before the exit for the Spaulding Turnpike the rain started to pick up. And then it started to get mean. And then it decided to get spiteful. It starts to rain SO hard that it is hurting. It's not piercing my skin but it feels like it is piercing my soul. The cars are all slowing down to a crawl because they can barely see. I am getting wet. Very wet. As in, if they were going to make my walk to the bus stop a movie, I would have to have Rori play me because I was just so damn moist. Anyway, as I walk over the bridge that the turnpike races beneath my shoes are actually squirting out water with every step. My hood is on but it's not doing much good since the water is actually going right through the jacket. (Never let it be said that Perry Ellis Blue Crayola Crayon jackets are water-resistant) SO I just take my hood off and my head just stays at a comfortable level of soaked. It's pointless to keep trying to clean my glasses off at this juncture so I just try to keep looking through the spots. I'm finally on to Silver Street and in the final third of my walk. Because this is a residential area, the speed limit lowers, but most of the cars don't realize that until they turn the corner by Woodman School. Thus, I contacted Guinness when EIGHT CARS IN A ROW managed to splash me when they hit the corner puddle. And by puddle I mean pond. I would just wave at them like "have a good one!" They must have thought I was really pissed, but at this point my skin was just prunifying so I really didn't mind. I can't really think what, besides a full body bubble, I could have worn to better prepare me for this situation. Well, there's always this:

[But they didn't have anything in my color]

So I start to pick up the pace as I realize my bus is going to arrive sooner than later. SO I start to run. I looked like some kind of blue Loch Ness Yeti (with all apologies to the Curtis Family) gallumphing down Silver Street at top speed. I finally get to the bus stop a slight but after the City Hall clock rings out 8 bells. I wait there, drenched to the bone, with my bus stop friend. I don't know his name, but he is always there when I'm there and doesn't speak but seems nice enough, so I will call him Theo. Theo is looking at me with kind of a weird look on his face. I just kinda smile back thinking "Why is Theo looking at me weird?" And that is when I notice it. I left the house in shorts. No big deal - it was more comfortable having my legs get wet directly than having them trapped under the confining wet denim of jeans. But I was wearing thin shorts. Thin, white shorts. And Red boxers. Red boxers with white polka-dots. All you could see of my shorts was the half-inch hem on the bottom of the leg. And you could see the pocket linings and the outline of my keys and change. And you could see my boxers. Hell, you could practically see the hair on my legs THROUGH the boxers. And the boxers, due to being seen through a wet white prism looked pink. SOOOOO, to the average bystander, say Theo, it appeared that I was parading around Central Avenue in my see-through pink shorts. Mortified doesn't even BEGIN to describe. So I try to pull my jacket down as far as I can while at the same time trying to figure out what the motherfuck I was going to do once I got to work. The bus pulled up and, of course, there were no free seats. Seats where I could sit and hide my flamboyantly translucent pants, whilst stewing in my own rain-soaked juices. So I had to stand. And be on display. FOR ALL the Rochester/Somersworth/Dover freaknicks to watch me in all my not so glorious glory. I kind of froze up at this point and my mind just kept trying to think of swimming and being underwater where no one could see me. But it didn't work very well. It made it difficult to concentrate because this 85 year old woman kept staring at me. I wanted to say "My eyes are up here lady!" The bus finally rolled in fron t of EMS and I got off to go to work. As I walked beside the bus before it took off all of the patrons, (young & old, black & white, Vanessa & Theo) looked down at me and just stared. My self-esteem and pride were about at an all-time high.

[My self-esteem, in picture form, at 8:21, Thursday morning]

It's 8:26 and I'm in the store. We don't open for another hour and half and no co-workers will be showing up for at LEAST an hour. So I do what any not-so-self-respecting person would do at this point. I take all my clothes off and hang them in the back room of the store while I hide back there in seclusion reading a book. It's 8:30 and I'm relaxing at work with a good book and no clothes. And Aeropostale doesn't open until 10. And the cowboy dressup outfit we have isn't anywhere close to fitting me. Especially the more important lower half of me. So, I do the only thing left for me to do. I call Andrea and BEG for her to come to the mall and help me out. Bring me a t-shirt, anything. Just help me somehow. So eventually, the crisis is resolved. Andrea makes it to the store seconds before Michael (at 9:55), and gives me temporary clothes until Aeropostale opens, when she goes over there, gets clothes (including the orange and red shirt we'd been eyeing for months now), brings them back and I am once again ready to start to the day, 3 hours after I was ready to start the day earlier. And the people of Silver Street, Central Ave, and the passengers of the Thusday Morning COAST Bus would never be the same.

Thursday night I had tacos for dinner. And I burped them up all night long. I'm sure Ben thought I was forcing it.

As I finish this it is now Friday morning. I am leaving to go (FINALLY) pay my fine and knowing that Jim Coffey now knows why I am going to court. Great. Super great.

It's been real,

Orko

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