It’s Saturday night and I’m in a fantastic mood. Cat got put in Franklin Detention for shoplifting and I don’t have the money to bail her out. As I am the only one she knows who ever has a dime it means she’s stuck. She had 2Gs of merch from a fucking Kohl’s when they caught her. How someone tries to hide $2,000 in shitty department store clothing on their body I haven’t the foggiest. She told me it was bullshit but I just assumed it wasn’t because she thought her personality mattered to me. If I fuck her after this she’ll never get the hint.
So, why am I ecstatic over my steady vagina ending up in the jail? Find me an easier way of never seeing someone again than them going to jail. Besides, it’s hard to keep steady fresh. I can only spend so much time paying attention to conversations that don’t mean anything. On the first date I’m like Sherlock Holmes when it comes to details. After a few months I’m not gonna remember what the words tattooed on your back mean or what your dad said to you that made you cry. I guess it means I’m leading them on. I’m not a good person
When I told Eli and he saw my face I knew he was jealous. I knew this because he just instantly started getting ready to go out, his tell-tale sign of displeasure. I also know this because he told me.
“I spent three hours in a church parking lot trying to keep Lauren from beating me up. Why couldn’t she have just stolen some shitty clothing?” Eli says with the sincerest of inflections.
“Fuck cares. It was about fucking time and you know it,” I replied. He knows it because I told him. I started to think of the weirdest thing I had ever done in a church parking lot for three hours and this made me smile even more. I would tell Eli about it but it would only make him more upset.
Eli tried to insist on driving, but after I pointed out that I would probably have to drive him home anyway we had might as well take my car. He doesn’t like my car because it is ridden with empty cigarette boxes and smells of a cross between smoke and rotten fruit. Only one of those smells is my fault. We loaded ourselves into the car and began the drive to one finds themselves in such an attractive disposition as mine: the Blue Danube. A sort of home away from home, the Dube as we have learned to call it, satisfies all my egoistic tendencies. We would know nearly everyone in there, and everyone else we could easily ostracize.
Walking into the bar is an event into itself and certain rules apply. We must first find our favorite waitress and have her motion us towards her table. It’s all too often that we are fought over; as we tip well and have a habit of making the people around us drink more than usual. After taking our seat and throwing back a shot we begin to peruse the scene for people we wish to see and those we wish to avoid. This is much easier for Eli, as his enemies are restricted to those who dare disagree with him in class. If only my life was that simple.
The Dube has the amount of cliques in it equivalent to a high school cafeteria. All tend to stay to themselves and disputes rarely occur in house: a kind of throw back to the concept of hallowed ground. The majority is made up of hip college students valiantly defending their positions on an assortment of unimportant topics. They alternate pumping quarters into the jukebox, in some sick competition of who can play the most obscure song. As much as I despise these people, I have somehow become one of them. At least I’ll never be as bad as Eli. The man would suck Bob Dylan’s dick if given the opportunity too. He’d practice ahead of time too ensure satisfaction. And what a sight it would be.
“Hey boys haven’t seen you in a while. Where ya been?” The waitress asks us. We had been there on Monday. It was Wednesday. I hoped she was just drunk. “Jude we got some new shit on the jukebox. You think you can find my new favorite song?” I asked this girl out once, she’s never gotten over it. Too bad she’s married and has morals.
“Looks like more of a Tom Waits crowd tonight. Not making much money I take it.”
“Nah, but we started drinking early so it’s all good. We got specials on Miller Chill but it’s shit. Order draft Pabsts and I think I can hook you up.” Pabst Blue Ribbon is the official beer of Columbus. I have no idea why.
I indulge her and get a whiskey as well. Eli gets a shot and chocolate milk. Separate, of course. They fucked that up once. I was high on uppers and couldn’t stop laughing for several minutes.
Tyler doesn’t notice the dime piece behind him turning and giggling at us. I don’t recognize her which is for the best. He neglects the scenery and goes into the important stuff.
“I see Nick Cave’s got a new album. How does it feel to have an artist that does nothing but satisfy every aspect of your life?”
“My life is way too complicated to be defined by a single artist.” This isn’t true. Complicated or not, I wasn’t going to be able to win this argument.
“Oh, really? The guy has been writing about how much getting laid all the time causes him a seemingly infinite amount of sadness. He speaks as if there was a Great Gatsby and he was a god. He faked his own assassination at a concert! You would kill for that kind of attention!” I would. “For fuck’s sake the album’s called ‘Dig, Lazarus, Dig!’. You wish your tag was as good as that!”
He’s referring to the use of a figure from Christian mythology in an ironic sense. The concept gives me an intellectual erection. I always said the whole Christian doctrine plays as a sweet action movie (Tom Cruise plays the role of Joshua). Back when I used to paint I tagged Longinus. It’s the name of the Roman centurion who stabbed Jesus in the ribs with a spear to make sure the poor bastard was dead. He pierced the divine. That’s me. Un-fucking-stoppable. “Lazarus ain’t got shit on me.”
We don’t talk about Longinus much anymore. I don’t like taking anything seriously so when people started getting too hyped up I walked away. Some of the older fuckers decided to start disguising the fact that Columbus is more about love than being hood and got power hungry. At first the old crew tried to stand up for themselves, but we learned right quick the divine can’t do much in a dark alley behind a bar when firearms are involved. I’ve heard that there aren’t any atheists in foxholes. Maybe that’s true, but when you’re picking up the pieces of your best friends you start to have questions.
The Danube was one of the only places the crew could meet. Nobody brought any shit in here. People here were too intelligent and snobby to deal with other people’s drama. This isn’t the place for name dropping your crew and talking about godfathers and shit. I fucking love this place. Status doesn’t exist here. Just beer and shit food and art. It’s like walking into a hot spring. Hard to get into at first, but eventually you never wanna leave.
We both get drunk and laugh with the folks around us. We joke about Keanu Reeves and Ian MacKaye not being dead. We laugh at the thought of Henry Rollins performing poetry. A couple of guys get heated over semantics concerning Post-Modern charcoal drawings and I use this as an opportunity to flirt with the ladies they’re with. I play footsy with the one across from me without ever really looking her. I talk to Eli but steal a glance from time to time. It’s all about balancing your emotions. The cold demeanor, the sense of not really caring, pressed against the rare moment of intimacy. The drastic change can bring down just any wall you can build in front of me. I learned that from Sergei Eisenstein. Twelve grand a year to learn how to make a girl’s panties drip. Why the fuck not?
I only notice the smoking ban when it’s winter. All the democratic politicians around here do is take shit away from me, be it taxes or the warmth in my prick. Columbus has some of the worst weather in the country. Colder than shit in the winter, hotter than piss in the summer. Snow angels and sweating gets real old, this I can tell you. Footsy girl had followed me out. She was wearing Eli’s coat.
“You look like a dirty old man,” I told her with no edge of a smile on my face.
“Whatever I love flannel, it’s warmer than shit. What else matters in December?” she replied. Yeah fucking right I believe this broad actually has that intensive sense of pragmatics. She looked kind of cute though. She wore her eye make up all wrong and she had a bit of a snaggletooth but she looked…I don’t know. Nice?
She told me her name was Alicia, but like A-LEE-SHE-A. I wondered if her mother knows that’s how she introduces herself. Maybe she doesn’t have a mother. I wasn’t really listening to her; I was kind of drunk.
I came around at the end of the story she was apparently telling me; “—so yeah my teacher was totally just staring at my tits the whole time and the he was just like all ‘sure you can turn it in late’ and it was like so gross.” She talked too fast and she didn’t look at you when she did. That’s probably why she didn’t notice that I wasn’t paying attention. “I have to pee so bad. Can you hold my cigarette?” she asked me. There was maybe a drag left. I hate it when people do that. I held on to it and waited for her to turn around before I threw it in the street.
“Hey man can I bum a smoke?” some kid asked me. He looked familiar enough so I obliged him. “Shit music in there tonight, eh? It’s like the fixed-gear kids got a hold of the jukebox tonight.” I love what small talk is like here.
“Yeah how many times do I have to listen to the Liars and Mars Volta when I am allowed to publicly get annoyed without anyone looking at me like the anti-Christ. I mean I loved At the Drive-In just as much as the next guy but that shit was what a decade ago,” I replied. It’s not that I didn’t like the bicycle kids, they were just a bit too faggy for my taste.
I went home with footsy girl’s number and a pretty decent buzz. Tyler talked to some broad about teaching and the education system and a bunch of other nonsense, even though about five minutes in she told him she had a boyfriend. I would have hope he would have learned more from living with me by now, but after I heard him refer to a certain movie as being “poop-dick” I appreciated that I was making headway. I drove home and had only minor trouble in the snow.
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Monday, November 24, 2008
Tyler: Be Massive, My Friend
I’m relatively ecstatic and have several things to talk about. So as not to confuse myself here is my list of what I will discuss.
1. MASSIVE
2. Roger’s Birthday
3. Cool by Virtue of Youth
If you hadn’t heard, Massive (the Columbus Crew) won the MLS Cup for the first time in franchise history and I really couldn’t be happier about it. Growing up, all I did was play soccer and when I say that it is almost literal. If not at school or sleeping, chances are I was practicing either with my team or on my own. Back in 1996 my family had season tickets for the inaugural season and it was incredible. It has been amazing watching the league grow over the years not just in teams but in talent as well. It’s obvious that MLS teams can’t really compete with the top clubs in the English Premier League (Man U, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool) but what you never hear is that we are as good as the rest of the EPL. The MLS is getting some great players from around the world and young American players are as good as any in the world. Freddy Adu gets a lot of shit from a lot of media sources but the bottom line is incredibly young and good enough to lead his club team to the Champions League. The future looks great for American soccer and for Massive. Without a doubt, Massive won the MLS Cup amongst the best talent the MLS has ever seen. Final note on this issue, if you’re a Toronto FC fan, in your fucking face! Can’t wait to see you next year when we sweep the Trillium Cup.
So last night was Roger’s birthday party and I haven’t had that much fun in a long time. Roger had fun, I don’t know, if he so chooses he can write about it but this is my post so this is all about me. So for the past year, year and a half I’ve been very limited as to how much I can go out to bars and stuff because of various medical stuff. Anyway, so last night was one of the few times I’d been out recently and there are very few greater feelings than having several people come up to me to say it was good to see me. It was flattering. The entire night was fantastic. So many people came out to karaoke and sang and drank and everyone was so excited to celebrate the 22nd anniversary of Roger’s birth. I love Columbus. I love the people around me. Life is pretty good right now.
So I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately. I’m 21 and wear thrift store clothes. Something about this combination does something to how I’m perceived by many people. I was with my brother and a couple of his friends months ago and I was wearing this odd v-neck shirt with another shirt underneath because it was all I had as far as clean clothes. My brother said something about how weird it looked (which it did) and his friend countered with something along the lines of how I could pull it off because I was fashionable. Don’t get me wrong, I think I usually dress very nice (voted best dressed in high school just so you know) but on that day I looked like an idiot. There is something about being young and different looking that makes me immune from fashion criticism. I’m at a good place in life, I think.
1. MASSIVE
2. Roger’s Birthday
3. Cool by Virtue of Youth
If you hadn’t heard, Massive (the Columbus Crew) won the MLS Cup for the first time in franchise history and I really couldn’t be happier about it. Growing up, all I did was play soccer and when I say that it is almost literal. If not at school or sleeping, chances are I was practicing either with my team or on my own. Back in 1996 my family had season tickets for the inaugural season and it was incredible. It has been amazing watching the league grow over the years not just in teams but in talent as well. It’s obvious that MLS teams can’t really compete with the top clubs in the English Premier League (Man U, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool) but what you never hear is that we are as good as the rest of the EPL. The MLS is getting some great players from around the world and young American players are as good as any in the world. Freddy Adu gets a lot of shit from a lot of media sources but the bottom line is incredibly young and good enough to lead his club team to the Champions League. The future looks great for American soccer and for Massive. Without a doubt, Massive won the MLS Cup amongst the best talent the MLS has ever seen. Final note on this issue, if you’re a Toronto FC fan, in your fucking face! Can’t wait to see you next year when we sweep the Trillium Cup.
So last night was Roger’s birthday party and I haven’t had that much fun in a long time. Roger had fun, I don’t know, if he so chooses he can write about it but this is my post so this is all about me. So for the past year, year and a half I’ve been very limited as to how much I can go out to bars and stuff because of various medical stuff. Anyway, so last night was one of the few times I’d been out recently and there are very few greater feelings than having several people come up to me to say it was good to see me. It was flattering. The entire night was fantastic. So many people came out to karaoke and sang and drank and everyone was so excited to celebrate the 22nd anniversary of Roger’s birth. I love Columbus. I love the people around me. Life is pretty good right now.
So I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately. I’m 21 and wear thrift store clothes. Something about this combination does something to how I’m perceived by many people. I was with my brother and a couple of his friends months ago and I was wearing this odd v-neck shirt with another shirt underneath because it was all I had as far as clean clothes. My brother said something about how weird it looked (which it did) and his friend countered with something along the lines of how I could pull it off because I was fashionable. Don’t get me wrong, I think I usually dress very nice (voted best dressed in high school just so you know) but on that day I looked like an idiot. There is something about being young and different looking that makes me immune from fashion criticism. I’m at a good place in life, I think.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Roger: Another chapter: Goodbye Horses
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Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Tyler: Chaotic Tranquility
Hi, hello. So I started this story a couple days ago and just now finished it. And I like it so that's good too. If you actually read this and have any reaction to it at all, please let me know. Any response is good. Anything.
Also, it's called 'Slight Rebellion off Acton' which is a direct homage to my favorite short story of all time by JD Salinger.
Elliot’s annual Arbor Day Extravaganza was winding down along with my spirits. Lately I’d been lacking in attention from women and hurting from it. Actually, that is an understatement on two counts. When I say women were paying me no mind, that is not just limited to the romantic kind. I mean, I could not get any girl to look my way even for some platonic companionship. Beyond that, I literally was hurting from it. It wasn’t the kind of emotional pain one gets from pining after some girl with no results. My loneliness had manifested itself into a cancerous entity that started by weakening my joints and had lately been working on providing me with insomnia in addition to a twitch I would get whenever I thought about the last time I laid with a woman. A fucking demon it was.
I made up my mind that I had to get out of there. Scratch that, my mind made the decision for me seeing as it had been doing many things without my consent as of late. At any rate, I had to go. Now this is not a knock on Elliot’s party. The Arbor Day Extravaganza was one of the highlights of April in our neck of Clintonville and we treated it as such. I was simply too tired to continue drinking mindlessly and too depressed with the selection of girls left. They were all out of my league; some higher, some lower. The only girl in which I had any interest was Madi and she’d left hours ago. I had been Madi’s best friend for years and she had been my secret, probably disinterested love interest for about the same period of time. Over this time I always sat back watching her make poor choices in men, judging and feeling sorry for myself from a distance. She watched and encouraged my flights into dating never knowing what I really wanted. I don’t need to really tell you this though, everyone I know has gone through it and knows the pain that goes with the unrequited love cliché.
I was clearly done there but did not want a big send off saying goodbye to the forty remaining people, most of whom, I didn’t know. With most exits blocked I made my way for the remarkably deserted front door. Once I was on the porch I’d be safe from any outbursts of spontaneous dancing which seem to consume anyone within striking distance like a drunken tornado of bad rhythm. So as inconspicuously as possible I made my move for the door.
“Eli! You son of a bitch. You need to get back here and take a hit of this,” I turned to see Kyle running at me with a bowl and lighter outstretched. My escape had been postponed but at least I wasn’t dancing. Having started my departure without giving any ‘goodbyes’ I should have known I’d be caught by someone and, on the bright side, that person did have a bowl for me.
“Fine Kyle, but just because I can’t resist your beautiful blue eyes,” His eyes were highly glazed over but I’m a nice guy so I’m all about doling out compliments. He handed me the blown glass bowl and a pink lighter. I sat myself down on the steps of the porch and sparked the Bic a couple times getting a feel for it. The butane smelled like my friends cars in high school. Actually, so did the weed. I lit it and watched the herb sparkle before settling on a sunset orange color. I breathed the smoke in, closed my eyes and held my breath as long as I could before coughing up a whole bunch of potential lung cancer.
It wasn’t my strongest hit ever but it certainly wasn’t the weakest either, “Not bad, Kyle. Who’d you get this from?”
He looked ecstatic when I asked him, “Me, man! I fucking grew it myself. In my bathroom!”
That last part was supposed to impress me but I’d seen this kids bathroom and it was more suitable for growing mushrooms than weed. I managed to keep a look of disgust off my face as well as vomit from spewing out my mouth. Needless to say, I was beyond done with it, “Well, thanks buddy but I think I’m going to get going. You take care of yourself, alright?”
“Alright, man, alright. I’ll see you later,” he stumbled back into the house and I remained quite content staring at the chaotic tranquility of High St. from the porch.
Columbus was a great town at night. Light pollution from the city was usually low and provided ample stars to enjoy. If you were out at the right time you might also be privileged enough to see the drunks stumbling to their respective homes whether they be high class, faux industrial lofts or actual abandoned industrial buildings. That’s one of the greatest things about alcohol, it cares not for your social status but only your tolerance level. To be honest, Columbus shared that attribute with alcohol which might be why I love this city so much. You could run in any circle so long as you could drink with them.
As I sat contemplating the love triangle that was Columbus, alcohol, and me I felt the cold chill of ice on the back of my neck causing my immediate jump and scream, “Fucking hell! What the fuck?”
Madi nearly fell over laughing before settling down next to me, “For Christ’s sake Eli. You’re a little jumpy, aren’t you?”
“Well, shit, you gave me a fucking heart attack,” she handed me a beer and it was all I could do to be completely appreciative and resentful toward her at the same time, “Thanks, I guess.”
“It’s what I’m here for, sugar,” she took a long drag on the bottle and smiled in my direction melting me.
“I thought you left here awhile ago. I mean, I least I thought I saw you go,” I tried to play it off like I hadn’t noticed her whereabouts but I never hid my intentions very well.
“Well, I did, kind of. I ran into Brook Sutton, do you remember her from high school?”
“I don’t know, maybe.” I did. Brook Sutton was the kind of girl that wouldn’t look my way in high school but as soon as she started drinking and smoking I was suddenly perceived as wildly intriguing. I had run into Brook several weeks before and was very confused to find that where I was once a social outcast I had more recently become someone to know apparently. In high school I was the weird kid who sat by himself and yet I was somehow transformed into a weird kid that knew several integral people and several integral Columbus scenes. Our meeting ended when she started being excessively nice to me and in my discomfort I abruptly left the situation surely leaving both parties equally confused.
“She was a cheerleader, I don’t know if you knew her. Anyway, I ran into her and we started talking about books so I started talking about Palahniuk. She’d never even heard of him so we went back to my place so I could just give her one of his books.”
This worried me a little. Palahniuk was my third favorite author and I felt deeply that one must earn the right to read his best books. Now, Fight Club can be read by anyone because it belongs to the people due to its theatrical release. Same goes for Choke though not nearly as many people have enjoyed that work. I was hoping Madi had given her something easy and less involved to read like Lullaby but really I was hoping that she’d given Brook Invisible Monsters because that is by far his worst book. She deserved it. My greatest fear, however, was that Madi had given her Survivor, my second favorite book of all time and the single greatest concept for a book ever. I prayed Brook didn’t receive Survivor.
“What book did you give her?”
“Snuff.” I could deal with that. It was an unimaginative look at the porn industry and I found it rather suited to Brook.
“Cool.” My beer was near empty but sitting with Madi was more than enough to sate me.
“Yeah, it was totally weird though. I hadn’t seen or even thought about Brook in ages and then she just showed up here out of nowhere. I’d nearly forgotten about her. I mean, I almost didn’t remember her.”
“Yeah, I can never remember the people I forget.” It was cheesy but it got a laugh out of Madi so I was happy. Her laugh, God, it killed me. She laughed from deep down but still managed to make it come out in an adorable manner. I’d fallen for this girl long ago and her laugh was a large part of it. That and just about everything else about her.
I moved the conversation to more pressing issues like her asshole boyfriend, “So how’s your boy?”
“He cheated on me with his ex a couple weeks ago,” I’d heard this same sentiment from her several times but it never made me feel good.
“Christ, I’m sorry. What happened?”
“I don’t know. I found some messages they were writing each other. It was pretty bad.”
“So what did you do?”
“I haven’t talked to him in a couple days but I think we’ll work it out.”
“Why?”
“I can’t help it Eli, he does something to me.”
“You have a nasty habit of dating assholes.”
“I know.”
I pulled out a cigarette to take the edge of the moment off, “You want one?”
“I quit.”
“Yeah, so did I. Twice.” I lit up and took a long, hard drag.
I paused as long as I could trying to come up with the perfect words because I knew whatever I said then couldn’t be taken back, “I’m not an asshole, you know.”
“Yeah, I know.”
Also, it's called 'Slight Rebellion off Acton' which is a direct homage to my favorite short story of all time by JD Salinger.
Elliot’s annual Arbor Day Extravaganza was winding down along with my spirits. Lately I’d been lacking in attention from women and hurting from it. Actually, that is an understatement on two counts. When I say women were paying me no mind, that is not just limited to the romantic kind. I mean, I could not get any girl to look my way even for some platonic companionship. Beyond that, I literally was hurting from it. It wasn’t the kind of emotional pain one gets from pining after some girl with no results. My loneliness had manifested itself into a cancerous entity that started by weakening my joints and had lately been working on providing me with insomnia in addition to a twitch I would get whenever I thought about the last time I laid with a woman. A fucking demon it was.
I made up my mind that I had to get out of there. Scratch that, my mind made the decision for me seeing as it had been doing many things without my consent as of late. At any rate, I had to go. Now this is not a knock on Elliot’s party. The Arbor Day Extravaganza was one of the highlights of April in our neck of Clintonville and we treated it as such. I was simply too tired to continue drinking mindlessly and too depressed with the selection of girls left. They were all out of my league; some higher, some lower. The only girl in which I had any interest was Madi and she’d left hours ago. I had been Madi’s best friend for years and she had been my secret, probably disinterested love interest for about the same period of time. Over this time I always sat back watching her make poor choices in men, judging and feeling sorry for myself from a distance. She watched and encouraged my flights into dating never knowing what I really wanted. I don’t need to really tell you this though, everyone I know has gone through it and knows the pain that goes with the unrequited love cliché.
I was clearly done there but did not want a big send off saying goodbye to the forty remaining people, most of whom, I didn’t know. With most exits blocked I made my way for the remarkably deserted front door. Once I was on the porch I’d be safe from any outbursts of spontaneous dancing which seem to consume anyone within striking distance like a drunken tornado of bad rhythm. So as inconspicuously as possible I made my move for the door.
“Eli! You son of a bitch. You need to get back here and take a hit of this,” I turned to see Kyle running at me with a bowl and lighter outstretched. My escape had been postponed but at least I wasn’t dancing. Having started my departure without giving any ‘goodbyes’ I should have known I’d be caught by someone and, on the bright side, that person did have a bowl for me.
“Fine Kyle, but just because I can’t resist your beautiful blue eyes,” His eyes were highly glazed over but I’m a nice guy so I’m all about doling out compliments. He handed me the blown glass bowl and a pink lighter. I sat myself down on the steps of the porch and sparked the Bic a couple times getting a feel for it. The butane smelled like my friends cars in high school. Actually, so did the weed. I lit it and watched the herb sparkle before settling on a sunset orange color. I breathed the smoke in, closed my eyes and held my breath as long as I could before coughing up a whole bunch of potential lung cancer.
It wasn’t my strongest hit ever but it certainly wasn’t the weakest either, “Not bad, Kyle. Who’d you get this from?”
He looked ecstatic when I asked him, “Me, man! I fucking grew it myself. In my bathroom!”
That last part was supposed to impress me but I’d seen this kids bathroom and it was more suitable for growing mushrooms than weed. I managed to keep a look of disgust off my face as well as vomit from spewing out my mouth. Needless to say, I was beyond done with it, “Well, thanks buddy but I think I’m going to get going. You take care of yourself, alright?”
“Alright, man, alright. I’ll see you later,” he stumbled back into the house and I remained quite content staring at the chaotic tranquility of High St. from the porch.
Columbus was a great town at night. Light pollution from the city was usually low and provided ample stars to enjoy. If you were out at the right time you might also be privileged enough to see the drunks stumbling to their respective homes whether they be high class, faux industrial lofts or actual abandoned industrial buildings. That’s one of the greatest things about alcohol, it cares not for your social status but only your tolerance level. To be honest, Columbus shared that attribute with alcohol which might be why I love this city so much. You could run in any circle so long as you could drink with them.
As I sat contemplating the love triangle that was Columbus, alcohol, and me I felt the cold chill of ice on the back of my neck causing my immediate jump and scream, “Fucking hell! What the fuck?”
Madi nearly fell over laughing before settling down next to me, “For Christ’s sake Eli. You’re a little jumpy, aren’t you?”
“Well, shit, you gave me a fucking heart attack,” she handed me a beer and it was all I could do to be completely appreciative and resentful toward her at the same time, “Thanks, I guess.”
“It’s what I’m here for, sugar,” she took a long drag on the bottle and smiled in my direction melting me.
“I thought you left here awhile ago. I mean, I least I thought I saw you go,” I tried to play it off like I hadn’t noticed her whereabouts but I never hid my intentions very well.
“Well, I did, kind of. I ran into Brook Sutton, do you remember her from high school?”
“I don’t know, maybe.” I did. Brook Sutton was the kind of girl that wouldn’t look my way in high school but as soon as she started drinking and smoking I was suddenly perceived as wildly intriguing. I had run into Brook several weeks before and was very confused to find that where I was once a social outcast I had more recently become someone to know apparently. In high school I was the weird kid who sat by himself and yet I was somehow transformed into a weird kid that knew several integral people and several integral Columbus scenes. Our meeting ended when she started being excessively nice to me and in my discomfort I abruptly left the situation surely leaving both parties equally confused.
“She was a cheerleader, I don’t know if you knew her. Anyway, I ran into her and we started talking about books so I started talking about Palahniuk. She’d never even heard of him so we went back to my place so I could just give her one of his books.”
This worried me a little. Palahniuk was my third favorite author and I felt deeply that one must earn the right to read his best books. Now, Fight Club can be read by anyone because it belongs to the people due to its theatrical release. Same goes for Choke though not nearly as many people have enjoyed that work. I was hoping Madi had given her something easy and less involved to read like Lullaby but really I was hoping that she’d given Brook Invisible Monsters because that is by far his worst book. She deserved it. My greatest fear, however, was that Madi had given her Survivor, my second favorite book of all time and the single greatest concept for a book ever. I prayed Brook didn’t receive Survivor.
“What book did you give her?”
“Snuff.” I could deal with that. It was an unimaginative look at the porn industry and I found it rather suited to Brook.
“Cool.” My beer was near empty but sitting with Madi was more than enough to sate me.
“Yeah, it was totally weird though. I hadn’t seen or even thought about Brook in ages and then she just showed up here out of nowhere. I’d nearly forgotten about her. I mean, I almost didn’t remember her.”
“Yeah, I can never remember the people I forget.” It was cheesy but it got a laugh out of Madi so I was happy. Her laugh, God, it killed me. She laughed from deep down but still managed to make it come out in an adorable manner. I’d fallen for this girl long ago and her laugh was a large part of it. That and just about everything else about her.
I moved the conversation to more pressing issues like her asshole boyfriend, “So how’s your boy?”
“He cheated on me with his ex a couple weeks ago,” I’d heard this same sentiment from her several times but it never made me feel good.
“Christ, I’m sorry. What happened?”
“I don’t know. I found some messages they were writing each other. It was pretty bad.”
“So what did you do?”
“I haven’t talked to him in a couple days but I think we’ll work it out.”
“Why?”
“I can’t help it Eli, he does something to me.”
“You have a nasty habit of dating assholes.”
“I know.”
I pulled out a cigarette to take the edge of the moment off, “You want one?”
“I quit.”
“Yeah, so did I. Twice.” I lit up and took a long, hard drag.
I paused as long as I could trying to come up with the perfect words because I knew whatever I said then couldn’t be taken back, “I’m not an asshole, you know.”
“Yeah, I know.”
Friday, November 14, 2008
Tyler: Indestructible
A good while back I had a dream in which Jay Gatsby introduced me to a prostitute and the next morning, upon reflection, I realized that my dream was a pretty good description for what I think my literary styling is. In my most egotistic moments I fancy myself as a cross between Charles Bukowski and F. Scott Fitzgerald. I really, truly enjoy talking (and writing) as though I am smarter than I really think I am. I don’t think its because I’m trying to impress anyone, I just think people spoke in a way cooler manner in the roaring 20’s. In my stories I call girls dolls because that’s what I call girls in my day to day life. At the same time, though, I love the vulgarity and honesty of Bukowski. If anyone asks me what his writing is like I tell them to open up ‘Women’ to any page and read it. One of my favorite passages from ‘Women’ goes a little something like this (just a little because I’m paraphrasing).
Random girl talking to Chinaski (Bukowski’s alter ego): I want to destroy your face with my cunt.
Chinaski: I’m not so sure you can do that.
Girl: Your face doesn’t stand a chance.
Chinaski: You’re right. Cunts are indestructible.
‘Cunts are indestructible.’ It’s insane. You cannot find that kind of writing in just about any other literature.
Me, though, I still think I fall somewhere in between Buk and F. Scott. I’d like to think so, at least.
I’m currently reading ‘This Side of Paradise’ by Fitzgerald and I’ve stumbled over a thought that never occurred to me whilst reading anything before. I’m not incredibly deep into the book but I feel like I have a good understanding of Amory Blaine. I was reading today and through my mind the idea scrolled, “I have never encountered a character in a book that was so essential to literature.” Now, what the fuck does that mean? Let me try to explain.
Romeo and Juliet: Classic young love that is naïve. Essential to literature.
Ahab: Definitive monomaniac. Essential to Literature
Holden Morrisey(seriously) Caulfield: Drunken, angsty teen. Essential to literature.
I hope you get my point. The difference though is that for those three (and many, many more) we are told that they are important characters and very pertinent to literature on the whole. With Amory and ‘This Side of Paradise’ though, I came to the conclusion on my own. Amory is an unforgivably arrogant egotist that I truly think everyone can relate to on one level or another. I will tell you, though, feeling yourself relate to such a character is a little depressing. I’d like to think I’m not as shallow as Amory but at the same time its very possible that I’m a bigger douche than I realize.
On an entirely different note Massive (the Columbus Crew) is in the MLS Finals and I am fucking ecstatic. So ecstatic that my brother and I are actually looking for a way to get out there for it. I love Columbus.
Columbus till I die
Columbus till I die
I know I am I'm sure I am
Columbus till I die!!!
Be Massive!
Random girl talking to Chinaski (Bukowski’s alter ego): I want to destroy your face with my cunt.
Chinaski: I’m not so sure you can do that.
Girl: Your face doesn’t stand a chance.
Chinaski: You’re right. Cunts are indestructible.
‘Cunts are indestructible.’ It’s insane. You cannot find that kind of writing in just about any other literature.
Me, though, I still think I fall somewhere in between Buk and F. Scott. I’d like to think so, at least.
I’m currently reading ‘This Side of Paradise’ by Fitzgerald and I’ve stumbled over a thought that never occurred to me whilst reading anything before. I’m not incredibly deep into the book but I feel like I have a good understanding of Amory Blaine. I was reading today and through my mind the idea scrolled, “I have never encountered a character in a book that was so essential to literature.” Now, what the fuck does that mean? Let me try to explain.
Romeo and Juliet: Classic young love that is naïve. Essential to literature.
Ahab: Definitive monomaniac. Essential to Literature
Holden Morrisey(seriously) Caulfield: Drunken, angsty teen. Essential to literature.
I hope you get my point. The difference though is that for those three (and many, many more) we are told that they are important characters and very pertinent to literature on the whole. With Amory and ‘This Side of Paradise’ though, I came to the conclusion on my own. Amory is an unforgivably arrogant egotist that I truly think everyone can relate to on one level or another. I will tell you, though, feeling yourself relate to such a character is a little depressing. I’d like to think I’m not as shallow as Amory but at the same time its very possible that I’m a bigger douche than I realize.
On an entirely different note Massive (the Columbus Crew) is in the MLS Finals and I am fucking ecstatic. So ecstatic that my brother and I are actually looking for a way to get out there for it. I love Columbus.
Columbus till I die
Columbus till I die
I know I am I'm sure I am
Columbus till I die!!!
Be Massive!
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Tyler: Writing DemiGod
Good evening America! It is a glorious Sunday in beautiful Columbus, Ohio and I do not have to do dishes. Now you may ask yourself, Tyler don’t you have a dishwasher? You may ask yourself, why don’t you have to do dishes? You may tell yourself, this is not my beautiful house. You may tell yourself, this is not my beautiful wife. Those last two are directed exclusively at David Byrne, mind you. The point still stands though, I do not have to do dishes. You see, last Sunday Roger and I made a deal, if he wrote 3,500 words for DoubleBook, I would do all the dishes and, alas, he has not.
In the short term I am very happy because I think Death is currently living in the depths of our sink. The entire apartment reeks when the dishes are left undone to the point where I bought a circulating fan to try to disperse the smell on bad days. Buying an apartment with no dishwasher is a very bad idea, if you were wondering.
In the long run, though, this is bad. It means I’ll have to stay in school another week because our book remains unfinished and 100% unpublished. The thing is that I think I’m only really good at one thing and that is writing. I’m not one of those people that say I can’t live without writing/music/some other bullshit because I could. Easily. Anyone could. I mean, to think otherwise is inane. No one has ever dropped dead because their iPod battery died (my apologies if you know someone who did, that was very insensitive of me). I am, however one of those douchebags that thinks they’re the greatest living writer. Seriously, I’m fucking great. Deal with it. So being in school basically just sucks and until I write this book I can’t drop the fuck out.
On a entirely different and unabashedly nerdy note, Roger and I just beat Gears Of War 2 on Co-op. It confirmed my suspicions. I am bad at every game besides Pokemon. No lie, I’m a Poke-fucking-master.
In the short term I am very happy because I think Death is currently living in the depths of our sink. The entire apartment reeks when the dishes are left undone to the point where I bought a circulating fan to try to disperse the smell on bad days. Buying an apartment with no dishwasher is a very bad idea, if you were wondering.
In the long run, though, this is bad. It means I’ll have to stay in school another week because our book remains unfinished and 100% unpublished. The thing is that I think I’m only really good at one thing and that is writing. I’m not one of those people that say I can’t live without writing/music/some other bullshit because I could. Easily. Anyone could. I mean, to think otherwise is inane. No one has ever dropped dead because their iPod battery died (my apologies if you know someone who did, that was very insensitive of me). I am, however one of those douchebags that thinks they’re the greatest living writer. Seriously, I’m fucking great. Deal with it. So being in school basically just sucks and until I write this book I can’t drop the fuck out.
On a entirely different and unabashedly nerdy note, Roger and I just beat Gears Of War 2 on Co-op. It confirmed my suspicions. I am bad at every game besides Pokemon. No lie, I’m a Poke-fucking-master.
Friday, November 7, 2008
Tyler: Don't Hate Me
I read this line in some shitty music magazine recently and I think it kind of stuck with me. It was basically a list of things that are always overrated. One of the top 5 or so things was the music you listened to in high school which I get. I understand that. I listened to some shit I wouldn’t be ready to admit in most circumstances but I feel relatively safe writing it here because, well, I think only me and Roger actually read this.
Freshman year of high school had ridiculous pop punk going on.
1. Blink-182
2. New Found Glory
3. Good Charlotte
4. Mest
5. Relient K
I mean, I still love Blink and I think I always will but the rest of that list actually hurts to look at. Just fucking embarrassing really.
Here’s the thing though, I still need that music. Maybe you know me, maybe you don’t, I don’t know. If you do you might know that I’m usually pretty laid back but every other month or so I will just flip out. My brain will stop functioning on a normal level and will just elevate itself to this really fast paced rambling with which I can’t keep up. It’s absurd. I was at my parents house today and I was looking in the mirror of my bathroom and all I could think was, “I’ve got to get some of this fucking hair off my head.” And I did. It was almost unconscious. I got out the trimmer and went to town. My sink looked like it was growing baby rats. At the end I looked around at the mess of my departed hair (does this pun work here? Like, it’s gone but it’s also not parted anymore. I don’t know.) and kind of felt like Edward Norton at the end of Fight Club when he shoots his jaw and kills Tyler Durden. Fucking weird. And right now, I keep saying ‘fuck’ over and over in my head. Fuck fuck fuck.
So before I left my parents’ house I looked through my old cd’s and found a mix a friend made for me junior year of high school I think. It starts off with Mest, goes on to some hardcore punk stuff I never really liked (I liked pussy pop punk, remember?) and track 11 is where I jumped. That’s where she implanted four Get Up Kids songs that still haunt the depths of my brain. I just looked up the name of the song I’ve been singing all day, it’s called “Don’t Hate Me.” I listened to it for the entire ride back to my apartment and it calmed me down better than my prescriptions so I think that’s pretty good. I don’t know, maybe if I didn’t find that song I would have listened to Death From Above 1979 on the way back and wondered what the fuck I was actually listening to. I’m pretty glad I still have all the music from high school. I wouldn’t go preaching that to a crowd but I still need my Get Up Kids every once in a while.
Freshman year of high school had ridiculous pop punk going on.
1. Blink-182
2. New Found Glory
3. Good Charlotte
4. Mest
5. Relient K
I mean, I still love Blink and I think I always will but the rest of that list actually hurts to look at. Just fucking embarrassing really.
Here’s the thing though, I still need that music. Maybe you know me, maybe you don’t, I don’t know. If you do you might know that I’m usually pretty laid back but every other month or so I will just flip out. My brain will stop functioning on a normal level and will just elevate itself to this really fast paced rambling with which I can’t keep up. It’s absurd. I was at my parents house today and I was looking in the mirror of my bathroom and all I could think was, “I’ve got to get some of this fucking hair off my head.” And I did. It was almost unconscious. I got out the trimmer and went to town. My sink looked like it was growing baby rats. At the end I looked around at the mess of my departed hair (does this pun work here? Like, it’s gone but it’s also not parted anymore. I don’t know.) and kind of felt like Edward Norton at the end of Fight Club when he shoots his jaw and kills Tyler Durden. Fucking weird. And right now, I keep saying ‘fuck’ over and over in my head. Fuck fuck fuck.
So before I left my parents’ house I looked through my old cd’s and found a mix a friend made for me junior year of high school I think. It starts off with Mest, goes on to some hardcore punk stuff I never really liked (I liked pussy pop punk, remember?) and track 11 is where I jumped. That’s where she implanted four Get Up Kids songs that still haunt the depths of my brain. I just looked up the name of the song I’ve been singing all day, it’s called “Don’t Hate Me.” I listened to it for the entire ride back to my apartment and it calmed me down better than my prescriptions so I think that’s pretty good. I don’t know, maybe if I didn’t find that song I would have listened to Death From Above 1979 on the way back and wondered what the fuck I was actually listening to. I’m pretty glad I still have all the music from high school. I wouldn’t go preaching that to a crowd but I still need my Get Up Kids every once in a while.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Tyler: A Little More Chapter 1
So I think my part of DoubleBook is driven mostly by plot with events happening to and around the protagonist (Eli) so most of the characterization is developed through his reactions to these events.
I get bored with that though so I've been trying add more and more Columbus as I've written (just so you know, I've written a little over 35,000 words totaling 10 chapters out of an outlined 17 chapters but out of those remaining 7 chapters I've written about 3 of them so I'm closing in on something of a finish). I've tried to describe my city the best I can where I can and think this passage is part of that.
Roger and I both posted parts of our opening chapters but I'm not really a big fan of how mine started so I'm going to post a little more of my first chapter. This passage is basically a description of Hound Dogs and Ravari. I'd like to know if anyone else likes it or even thinks it's accurate because, really, I think it's fucking great.
So, without anymore of my really boring prologue bullshit, here is a little more from chapter 1 of DoubleBook.
Ravari was a filthy pizza place with a bar attached at its side like an underdeveloped Siamese twin on a drunken homeless guy and it had been our second home for some time. It was the kind of place that looked like it only had a back door, which, in actuality, it did. It had a very unique aura about it. The carpet inside Ravari looked like it came from Dresden circa 1946 and the walls were covered with flyers for bands and grindhouses and all the other underground shit you can force on a wall. There were makeshift tables in the pizza part of it that had to have been doors in previous lives and the wood chairs were all but a few patrons away from being kindling. Surrounding the bar were simple stools and several surprisingly nice pool tables, which had so much pizza and beer spilled on the felt that all the balls had a permanent greasy sheen to them. The grease inadvertently added an air of sophistication that made the balls look like polished marble; the juxtaposition was irresistible. There was a singular jukebox that supplied all the music in Ravari and offered both Michael Jackson and Gwar and every genre in between. The staff seemed required to have purposefully unkempt hair and tattoos of obscure things like artichokes and portraits of Queen Elizabeth with Shakespearean quotes underneath. Going to Ravari was like going to one of your best friends’ parties where everyone there is inexplicably cooler just by being there but you have to ignore that someone just shit on the coffee table. It was a decent place.
Jude and I found some chairs by the pool tables and appraised the room. There was a table of guys in girl pants and girls with guy haircuts. I know there is some kind of literary device I could use here but I can’t put my finger on it. These kids just threw away all the reality I could hold on to and gave me something M.C Escher wouldn’t understand. But I’m open-minded so I said nothing. Another group of kids clustered some stools together and formed their own section of the bar. They were all wearing khakis and had heavily gelled hair. No one wanted to be in their section of the bar so it was perfect. Then scattered throughout the rest of Ravari were the typical ‘non-conforming’ girls that were always there. They all were basically a mold of each other though none would admit it. Black hair cut at some ridiculous angle with streaks of every other color of the rainbow that couldn’t possibly be natural. A tight black shirt that either had guns and hearts on it or skulls and hearts, it made no difference really. Every so often a girl would try to come in wearing a shirt sporting both guns and skulls but removal was quick because those girls were far to dangerous to be mixed in with the general populous. Loose cannons they were. They all had tight jeans and shoes that couldn’t be found in Columbus, much less Ohio. If you were a girl in Ravari, you probably looked just like the two other girls you came with. These girls never interested me but one man's trash is another’s treasure; more times than not, Jude’s treasure. Who am I to judge? Jude and I rarely shared interest in the same girl, which was nice. It worked on two fronts. Firstly, we never wanted each other’s woman, no hassle. Secondly, it made it that much easier to make fun of each other’s terrible choices in women. A waitress who looked just like all these girls except with a much more extreme haircut with more angles in it and less color came and asked for our drinks.
“Two smashies.” Jude knew the names of all the drinks. A ‘smashy’ was a shot of whiskey with a half glass of Coke. I never understood the Coke part. I never got the point. Our waitress wrote the order and turned to leave. No dice. No smashy for me, “Can I get a double bourbon?” She looked back to acknowledge me and seemed slightly surprised to have three drinks to bring back. She must have been new there.
I get bored with that though so I've been trying add more and more Columbus as I've written (just so you know, I've written a little over 35,000 words totaling 10 chapters out of an outlined 17 chapters but out of those remaining 7 chapters I've written about 3 of them so I'm closing in on something of a finish). I've tried to describe my city the best I can where I can and think this passage is part of that.
Roger and I both posted parts of our opening chapters but I'm not really a big fan of how mine started so I'm going to post a little more of my first chapter. This passage is basically a description of Hound Dogs and Ravari. I'd like to know if anyone else likes it or even thinks it's accurate because, really, I think it's fucking great.
So, without anymore of my really boring prologue bullshit, here is a little more from chapter 1 of DoubleBook.
Ravari was a filthy pizza place with a bar attached at its side like an underdeveloped Siamese twin on a drunken homeless guy and it had been our second home for some time. It was the kind of place that looked like it only had a back door, which, in actuality, it did. It had a very unique aura about it. The carpet inside Ravari looked like it came from Dresden circa 1946 and the walls were covered with flyers for bands and grindhouses and all the other underground shit you can force on a wall. There were makeshift tables in the pizza part of it that had to have been doors in previous lives and the wood chairs were all but a few patrons away from being kindling. Surrounding the bar were simple stools and several surprisingly nice pool tables, which had so much pizza and beer spilled on the felt that all the balls had a permanent greasy sheen to them. The grease inadvertently added an air of sophistication that made the balls look like polished marble; the juxtaposition was irresistible. There was a singular jukebox that supplied all the music in Ravari and offered both Michael Jackson and Gwar and every genre in between. The staff seemed required to have purposefully unkempt hair and tattoos of obscure things like artichokes and portraits of Queen Elizabeth with Shakespearean quotes underneath. Going to Ravari was like going to one of your best friends’ parties where everyone there is inexplicably cooler just by being there but you have to ignore that someone just shit on the coffee table. It was a decent place.
Jude and I found some chairs by the pool tables and appraised the room. There was a table of guys in girl pants and girls with guy haircuts. I know there is some kind of literary device I could use here but I can’t put my finger on it. These kids just threw away all the reality I could hold on to and gave me something M.C Escher wouldn’t understand. But I’m open-minded so I said nothing. Another group of kids clustered some stools together and formed their own section of the bar. They were all wearing khakis and had heavily gelled hair. No one wanted to be in their section of the bar so it was perfect. Then scattered throughout the rest of Ravari were the typical ‘non-conforming’ girls that were always there. They all were basically a mold of each other though none would admit it. Black hair cut at some ridiculous angle with streaks of every other color of the rainbow that couldn’t possibly be natural. A tight black shirt that either had guns and hearts on it or skulls and hearts, it made no difference really. Every so often a girl would try to come in wearing a shirt sporting both guns and skulls but removal was quick because those girls were far to dangerous to be mixed in with the general populous. Loose cannons they were. They all had tight jeans and shoes that couldn’t be found in Columbus, much less Ohio. If you were a girl in Ravari, you probably looked just like the two other girls you came with. These girls never interested me but one man's trash is another’s treasure; more times than not, Jude’s treasure. Who am I to judge? Jude and I rarely shared interest in the same girl, which was nice. It worked on two fronts. Firstly, we never wanted each other’s woman, no hassle. Secondly, it made it that much easier to make fun of each other’s terrible choices in women. A waitress who looked just like all these girls except with a much more extreme haircut with more angles in it and less color came and asked for our drinks.
“Two smashies.” Jude knew the names of all the drinks. A ‘smashy’ was a shot of whiskey with a half glass of Coke. I never understood the Coke part. I never got the point. Our waitress wrote the order and turned to leave. No dice. No smashy for me, “Can I get a double bourbon?” She looked back to acknowledge me and seemed slightly surprised to have three drinks to bring back. She must have been new there.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Roger: Chapter One - Vodka Sours
I have always been uncertain as to if I have ever slept in my life. You would think that the fact that I wake up at all would suggest it, but the feeling of complete exhaustion and doom acts as a fairly decent counterpoint in my book (and this is my book, so you might as well just roll with it). The best thoughts of my life have occurred between six and seven in the morning. Unfortunately, the racing of my mind makes it hard to settle down and actually rest. And my parents wondered why I never wanted to get up for the fucking paper route. Since I have begun getting some sort of fucked up for the past six months or so, the hangovers have made it nearly impossible to even get out of bed. Maybe you don’t understand hangovers. Maybe you haven’t had the experience of not being able to eat for days because of a few hours of debauchery. Allow me to explain, you poor lost soul.
We will begin from the end and move back to the beginning. My current disposition is that which I have experienced nearly every morning since the summer between my second and third year of college (I don’t know why I started drinking so heavily. You’re probably smart, you figure it out). A weak night of casual drinking is eight to ten drinks. A good night I have no idea. I’m classified as a moderate to heavy binge drinker. I start at about eight PM on non-work days (I try not to drink until much later at work). I’ll stop around four AM. I’ll eventually pass out, hopefully but not always in my own bed. I wake up too early and just lay around for awhile. Whenever I decide to sit up is when I start getting the “swallows” as I like to call them. I then run to the bathroom and puke twice. I brush my teeth and make a pot of coffee then take one of about four beer shits. On a bad day I won’t be able to eat and any real physical activity will just make me dizzy. Some people talk about their cures for this sickness. These people clearly don’t actually drink that much (my suggestion: slow paced video games and pornography).
(Ravari)
I had to drop Eli off due to his ability to sleep at night (it’s one of his worst qualities). We left Mayne before close for the first time since I can remember due to
I would have just sat around and geeked for several hours but as it was a Monday I got the inevitable call from Cat. Cat always got drunk on Mondays, as she found it made her week go a bit faster. I once caught her waking up and mixing a G&T at eight in the morning but she gave me some hooplah about it making it easier for her to sleep that night. She called saying she wanted to see me and I bit and crawled over there like the little bitch that I was. I got to Cat’s at or around three. Her roommates were sitting around drinking shit vodka and watching shit TV. Before going upstairs I got the usual rounds from the four cunts.
“So Jude, how’s academic probation going?” asked one of them; she had a terrible nickname I could never remember. Cat had the tendency to tell everyone everything she knew about me. Every time I bitched about it she would just tell me it was because she was so intrigued by me and I should be happy with that.
“Just about as good as it should be,” I replied as nicely as I could muster.
“So Mr. Film Theory Major, what do you think of Aladdin? Or are Disney movies too beneath you to give a shit about?” snottily asked the fat one who always seemed to have some awkward scumbag hanging on them. I would go into the complexities of the development of animation from the 1970s on, specifically the two dimensional department of the Disney Corporation, but what was the fucking point. I just stared at her for a moment, took the shot out of her hand and slow sipped the fucker like I was Thomas fucking Crowne. She called me an asshole and told me to go fuck myself. I smiled and turned around real slow towards the stairs. My swagger was interrupted by a new face. Tall girl with wavy hair and a big smile, a cardigan two sizes too big that I’d bet had sentimental value.
“Funny seein’ you here, deary,” she said to me coyly. Deary? Deary? Who the fuck says deary? More specifically, who do I know that says deary to me like that would go over well? This was a constant problem of mine, people remembering me like I gave them three abortions and me acting as dumbfounded as a Mormon call-girl.
I pretended like I knew who she was and asked her the normal “how’s it goin’s” and what not. I would have tested my interrogation skills but knew my window of opportunity with Cat was closing pretty fast. The vodka on these bitches breath was starting to get stale and I knew how Cat has a tendency to pass out early. I said goodnight and walked up the creeky carpeted stairs to Cat’s room.
Cat was as much of a scumbag as a twenty-year-old girl could be. She was dirt poor and always asking for money, but for no more reason than she couldn’t hold a job and she did too much blow. Her room was a mess of crappy books, photography, and posters. She had a mattress on the floor with a cheap TV at the edge. She was watching a terrible B horror flick with the subtitles on. I hate it when people do that; how is it that people can’t pay enough attention to a fucking movie to hear what the people are saying.
“S’about time asshole,” she slurred at me. I dropped my hat on the ground and sat at the edge of the mattress. She got up and started shoving her tongue in my ear in an attempt at sex appeal. She thinks I like it because it makes me quiver, but for the record, I fucking don’t. I reference Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn for my aversion towards fucking slugs in my ears.
What a terrible fucking moment. I start to take my shirt off and she switches off the light. I know all too well that the only possibility for the rest of the night is terrible sex and an argument. Same shit every time. I could walk just stand up and walk away. I could. But I’m fucking bored so that’s how things will turn. I don’t make excuses or blame other people for why I’m so unhappy with my life; I’m quite aware that it’s my fault. But, I’m simply not that good of a person and there’s nothing else to do in this town.
I crawled away early in the morning before she woke up. I couldn’t get off on account of the liquor and didn’t feel like looking her in the face. I snuck down the stairs and headed for the door. Before I left I opened her fridge and stole a yogurt and her coffee. She would notice the coffee missing and would know it was me. I think this is what people refer to as “spicing up the relationship.” It’s so twisted I couldn’t stop smiling while I ran to my car.
I love it when I start my car in the morning after a long night of partying. It smells like cigarettes and sweat and the music is up so loud it makes me jump. On the drive back I start to piece together everything that happened the night before. I’m the type of person that thinks back on past events and gets embarrassed. It’s one of my most masochistic elements.
Tyler: DoubleBook
So, writing as we do, Roger and I are trying to write a book. I think we'll post some of here from time to time. No matter what Roger says, the book will be called DoubleBook. Fuck Yeah. Here's what I got.
CHAPTER 1: Point Break to Morpheus
“No, I know how hilarious ‘Point Break’ is but just because it’s funny does not make it a comedy. Genre depends on the intent of the creator. That’s just the way it works.”
To Jude’s ridiculous statement I had to respond, “But you have to take into account the cast. Keanu Reeves. Patrick Swayze. Anthony Kiedis. Gary Busey. Come on, Gary Fucking Busey. You cannot tell me whoever cast that movie actually thought it was going to be just an action movie. They knew what they were doing was hilarious. Look, his name is Johnny Utah for Christ’s sake.” He was still unimpressed, “Okay, so say you’re a director or something and someone comes in and says ‘Yeah, so, Reeves and Busey are a pair of undercover cops.’ If you heard that you would instantly think, ‘This shit is going to be amazing.’”
“I don’t know, man.”
“He was the quarterback for Ohio State. It’s so rich.”
Realizing there was no way I was going to concede defeat when I was so far in the right, my roommate opened another beer and changed the subject, “So what’s the deal with you and Lauren? It all seems kind of confusing.”
It was. Kind of. I had met Lauren Cody two years earlier at a party through my sister, she being cooler than I and knowing more people than I ever would. The first time I saw Lauren I was immediately smitten. She had plastic rimmed glasses that framed blue eyes that would make poets want to write using every cliché they knew; they were really pretty. She had curly brown hair that defied gravity for the most part and on her cheek she had three freckles that, according to her, made a backward ‘J’ though I never really saw it. Strangely she never referred to it as an ‘L’ which seemed vastly more logical. Finally, she had one of the most incredible bodies my young eyes had seen. It was quite nice. After our initial introductions her first words to me were ‘smell my hands.’ I did and it didn’t seem as strange then as it does now. After we got over her hands the conversation made its way to literature where we compared authors. I was a fan of Bukowski while she was well read in most of the American and British canon thus sparking my inferiority complex. Eventually we got to music, specifically Modest Mouse and we agreed that we must have looked like the wallflowers at that particular party and that we indeed were like black Cadillacs outside a funeral. We went on several extended dates and I learned she had a boyfriend which was slightly off-putting but I’d never let that stop me before and after a brief courting period and the dropping of her boyfriend she was mine. We dated for two years and all was well and I, as I have found out time and time again, do not do well when all is well. Absolutely nothing was wrong in our relationship but I began to get itchy. My brother had just gotten engaged and through that I could see my window of singledom was rapidly closing. I still had youthful looks and whether they were good or bad I wanted to take advantage of them while I still could. The break up itself was rough. It lasted about two hours in a parking lot of a church in my car. So bad. There was crying and yelling and near violence and it was all the very worst degree of unpleasant. I eventually took her home and she proceeded to call her parents and all her friends so that everyone knew to hate me, which I can’t really complain about having done it to myself. I went home, turned my phone off and went to sleep at some point. The next morning brought a slight sense of freedom and feelings of impending doom. We had nearly all the same friends and were working in the same goddamn place so things were not going to be easy no matter where I went. I called her and we ironed things out with more rational thoughts and words, less profanity. I think after some explaining she could see that we were very close to being married and that was possibly the furthest thing from where I wanted to be. We determined that we would not try to make things anymore awkward than they had to be and decided to strive towards friendship while maybe seeing other people at the same time. At that point I should have known that things would eventually blow up, good or bad. Possibly both. Probably just bad. But I was young and naïve and found confidence in something about myself of what nature I still am not sure. The call ended and I breathed and all seemed relatively good. It was then that I decided to write a novel in an attempt to have a record of what I’d done wrong and to whom I did it.
“I don’t know. It wasn’t really working. We’re doing the stereotypical ‘seeing other people’ thing.” I nonchalantly said while grabbing a beer and sitting back to meditate on my newfound lack of relationship obligations.
“How’s your novel coming?”
“Shitty.” And it was.
CHAPTER 1: Point Break to Morpheus
“No, I know how hilarious ‘Point Break’ is but just because it’s funny does not make it a comedy. Genre depends on the intent of the creator. That’s just the way it works.”
To Jude’s ridiculous statement I had to respond, “But you have to take into account the cast. Keanu Reeves. Patrick Swayze. Anthony Kiedis. Gary Busey. Come on, Gary Fucking Busey. You cannot tell me whoever cast that movie actually thought it was going to be just an action movie. They knew what they were doing was hilarious. Look, his name is Johnny Utah for Christ’s sake.” He was still unimpressed, “Okay, so say you’re a director or something and someone comes in and says ‘Yeah, so, Reeves and Busey are a pair of undercover cops.’ If you heard that you would instantly think, ‘This shit is going to be amazing.’”
“I don’t know, man.”
“He was the quarterback for Ohio State. It’s so rich.”
Realizing there was no way I was going to concede defeat when I was so far in the right, my roommate opened another beer and changed the subject, “So what’s the deal with you and Lauren? It all seems kind of confusing.”
It was. Kind of. I had met Lauren Cody two years earlier at a party through my sister, she being cooler than I and knowing more people than I ever would. The first time I saw Lauren I was immediately smitten. She had plastic rimmed glasses that framed blue eyes that would make poets want to write using every cliché they knew; they were really pretty. She had curly brown hair that defied gravity for the most part and on her cheek she had three freckles that, according to her, made a backward ‘J’ though I never really saw it. Strangely she never referred to it as an ‘L’ which seemed vastly more logical. Finally, she had one of the most incredible bodies my young eyes had seen. It was quite nice. After our initial introductions her first words to me were ‘smell my hands.’ I did and it didn’t seem as strange then as it does now. After we got over her hands the conversation made its way to literature where we compared authors. I was a fan of Bukowski while she was well read in most of the American and British canon thus sparking my inferiority complex. Eventually we got to music, specifically Modest Mouse and we agreed that we must have looked like the wallflowers at that particular party and that we indeed were like black Cadillacs outside a funeral. We went on several extended dates and I learned she had a boyfriend which was slightly off-putting but I’d never let that stop me before and after a brief courting period and the dropping of her boyfriend she was mine. We dated for two years and all was well and I, as I have found out time and time again, do not do well when all is well. Absolutely nothing was wrong in our relationship but I began to get itchy. My brother had just gotten engaged and through that I could see my window of singledom was rapidly closing. I still had youthful looks and whether they were good or bad I wanted to take advantage of them while I still could. The break up itself was rough. It lasted about two hours in a parking lot of a church in my car. So bad. There was crying and yelling and near violence and it was all the very worst degree of unpleasant. I eventually took her home and she proceeded to call her parents and all her friends so that everyone knew to hate me, which I can’t really complain about having done it to myself. I went home, turned my phone off and went to sleep at some point. The next morning brought a slight sense of freedom and feelings of impending doom. We had nearly all the same friends and were working in the same goddamn place so things were not going to be easy no matter where I went. I called her and we ironed things out with more rational thoughts and words, less profanity. I think after some explaining she could see that we were very close to being married and that was possibly the furthest thing from where I wanted to be. We determined that we would not try to make things anymore awkward than they had to be and decided to strive towards friendship while maybe seeing other people at the same time. At that point I should have known that things would eventually blow up, good or bad. Possibly both. Probably just bad. But I was young and naïve and found confidence in something about myself of what nature I still am not sure. The call ended and I breathed and all seemed relatively good. It was then that I decided to write a novel in an attempt to have a record of what I’d done wrong and to whom I did it.
“I don’t know. It wasn’t really working. We’re doing the stereotypical ‘seeing other people’ thing.” I nonchalantly said while grabbing a beer and sitting back to meditate on my newfound lack of relationship obligations.
“How’s your novel coming?”
“Shitty.” And it was.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Tyler: The Beginning Continued
Hi, is this your first time? Yeah, me too. I always thought my first time would be more intimate…
Right, so my name’s Tyler and I live here in beautiful Columbus, Ohio with my buddy Roger. We’re 21 to 22 depending on when you read this and to whom you’re talking. We’re both fairly close to graduating from our respective universities with degrees in film and English. It’s all very, very exciting. So basically I’m trying to write books and Roger is trying to write movies. I imagine we’ll be posting things we’ve written here so, you know, go ahead and humor us and read it.
I refuse to post a generic, drawn out survey going over everything from our eye color to the streets we grew up on so, since I have Roger sitting conveniently across from me, I’m going to conduct a survey of my own with pertinent information.
Best Drunk Moment?
Roger: Everytime I make a woman fall in love with me
Tyler: Halloween party at Roger’s a couple years ago. I had eight shots of Maker’s Mark. Smoked a bowl. Won a game of flip cup and passed out all in 30 minutes.
Favorite Video Game?
R: Chrono Trigger
T: Any and every Pokemon RPG game
Favorite Movie?
R: Oldboy
T: Say Anything
Favorite Book?
R: Jude The Obscure
T: Women
Greatest Pop (Soda if you’d like to pretend you’re not from Ohio) Ever Created?
R: Dr. Pepper is my favorite SODA
T: Sunkist till I die
Favorite Soccer Team?
R: Liverpool
T: Team Massive (aka Columbus Crew)
Favorite Football Team?
R: Baltimore Ravens
T: The Heartbreaking Cleveland Browns
Baseball Sucks.
Strangest Pickup Line You've Used That Worked?
R: You look like you're ready to make some bad decisions
T: Oh, really? That's very interesting. Tell me more.
Least Prized Possession?
R: Entire wardrobe
T: The third pillow on my bed
Worst Drunk Moment?
R: Repeatedly embarrassing myself to the point where I wake up and can’t stop blushing
T: Never a bad moment while drunk. It’s the sober moments that bring me down.
Biggest Fear?
R: Working in the service industry forever
T: Having to work for a living
Smallest Fear?
R: Anything with more than 6 legs
T: Tiny, tiny Vikings
Fun Fact About You:
R: I can crack every bone in my body
T: I have a twinkle in my right eye. For real.
Favorite Joke?
R: What's the difference between a lawyer and a prostitute? A prostitute will stop fucking you when you're dead.
T: What's brown and sticky? A stick.
Greatest Invention?
R: Antibiotics, no wait and being able to turn on your video game system with your controller
T: Pokeballs
Greatest American?
R: Teddy Roosevelt is the most American American (Take from that what you will)
T: Jesus
You First Saw A Playboy When You Were 11 In Your Friend Stephen’s Basement, Right?
R: What?
T: Yes
Favorite Food?
R: Calamari
T: Something Italian, maybe. Certainly something with breadsticks.
Second Favorite TV Show?
R: Venture Brothers
T: It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia
Favorite Swear?
R: Cunt
T: Fucking Hell
Greatest Band That No One You Know Listens To?
R: Van Morrison
T: Two Gallants
Your Greatest Halloween Costume?
R: Faith from ‘Mirror’s Edge’ (It hadn’t come out yet)
T: Stay Puff Marshmallow Man
Strangest Gift You’ve ever Received?
R: Four of my aunts bought me the same Star Wars book
T: Paraffin Wax Set
Story You Haven’t Written Yet?
R: Story about a squatter punk
T: The four months following December 2002
Helen Mirren 1-10?
R: 10
T: Dime piece
Strangest Place You’ve Ever Slept?
R: Underneath a makeshift table outside a friends house in the middle of February because I didn’t want to sleep with the girl I’d just had sex with
T: An MRI machine
Afro Samurai. Your Thoughts?
R: It’s the most perfect use of teddy bears in anything ever
T: Coolest shit ever
Most Underrated Movie?
R: Miller’s Crossing
T: ATL. It’s the most Shakespearian thing I’ve ever seen.
Why Do We Have An Appendix?
R: I don’t know. Probably had something to do with digestion.
T: Life would be too boring if there was nothing inside us that might blow up at any time.
Meanest Thing Someone’s Ever Said To You?
R: You know, you really don’t have to try that hard
T: No wonder you’re crippled (Oh, I’m paralyzed by the by)
Greatest Purchase You Ever Made At A Thrift Store?
R: Shirt with a double-buttoned collar straight out of the 70’s
T: Either my brown polyester button-up or my typewriter
Can You Believe It’s Not Butter?
R: You know what, I can’t
T: No, I cannot
Describe Yourself In Three Words.
R: Observant, Accurate, Pale
T: Jackhammer, President, Soothing
Thing You Hate To Admit You Like.
R: Attention
T: Spooning. Big and little.
Which Of The Following Are Real? Bigfoot. Aliens. The Constitution. Loch Ness Monster. Mothman. Zombies.
R: No. Yes. Depends. I wish it was real more than most things in life. What the fuck is the Mothman? Depends of your definition of zombie, if the bird flu reaches epidemic levels and causes people to kill other people for food then yes.
T: Yes. Yes. Sometimes. No. No. That’s fucking stupid.
Favorite Song To Dance To At The Bar?
R: Junior Senior: Move Your Feet
T: Any Justin Timberlake. I love that shit.
Favorite Kind Of Underwear On A Girl?
R: Boyshorts
T: Lacy boyshorts
Shit, Do We Need Bread?
R: Didn’t you buy bread?
T: Yeah, I think I did.
So, yeah, that about covers it. I hope this thing doesn’t suck. I realize the focus of this entry, indeed this blog in general, is a bit clusterfucked but maybe we can eventually work that out. Or not.
Right, so my name’s Tyler and I live here in beautiful Columbus, Ohio with my buddy Roger. We’re 21 to 22 depending on when you read this and to whom you’re talking. We’re both fairly close to graduating from our respective universities with degrees in film and English. It’s all very, very exciting. So basically I’m trying to write books and Roger is trying to write movies. I imagine we’ll be posting things we’ve written here so, you know, go ahead and humor us and read it.
I refuse to post a generic, drawn out survey going over everything from our eye color to the streets we grew up on so, since I have Roger sitting conveniently across from me, I’m going to conduct a survey of my own with pertinent information.
Best Drunk Moment?
Roger: Everytime I make a woman fall in love with me
Tyler: Halloween party at Roger’s a couple years ago. I had eight shots of Maker’s Mark. Smoked a bowl. Won a game of flip cup and passed out all in 30 minutes.
Favorite Video Game?
R: Chrono Trigger
T: Any and every Pokemon RPG game
Favorite Movie?
R: Oldboy
T: Say Anything
Favorite Book?
R: Jude The Obscure
T: Women
Greatest Pop (Soda if you’d like to pretend you’re not from Ohio) Ever Created?
R: Dr. Pepper is my favorite SODA
T: Sunkist till I die
Favorite Soccer Team?
R: Liverpool
T: Team Massive (aka Columbus Crew)
Favorite Football Team?
R: Baltimore Ravens
T: The Heartbreaking Cleveland Browns
Baseball Sucks.
Strangest Pickup Line You've Used That Worked?
R: You look like you're ready to make some bad decisions
T: Oh, really? That's very interesting. Tell me more.
Least Prized Possession?
R: Entire wardrobe
T: The third pillow on my bed
Worst Drunk Moment?
R: Repeatedly embarrassing myself to the point where I wake up and can’t stop blushing
T: Never a bad moment while drunk. It’s the sober moments that bring me down.
Biggest Fear?
R: Working in the service industry forever
T: Having to work for a living
Smallest Fear?
R: Anything with more than 6 legs
T: Tiny, tiny Vikings
Fun Fact About You:
R: I can crack every bone in my body
T: I have a twinkle in my right eye. For real.
Favorite Joke?
R: What's the difference between a lawyer and a prostitute? A prostitute will stop fucking you when you're dead.
T: What's brown and sticky? A stick.
Greatest Invention?
R: Antibiotics, no wait and being able to turn on your video game system with your controller
T: Pokeballs
Greatest American?
R: Teddy Roosevelt is the most American American (Take from that what you will)
T: Jesus
You First Saw A Playboy When You Were 11 In Your Friend Stephen’s Basement, Right?
R: What?
T: Yes
Favorite Food?
R: Calamari
T: Something Italian, maybe. Certainly something with breadsticks.
Second Favorite TV Show?
R: Venture Brothers
T: It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia
Favorite Swear?
R: Cunt
T: Fucking Hell
Greatest Band That No One You Know Listens To?
R: Van Morrison
T: Two Gallants
Your Greatest Halloween Costume?
R: Faith from ‘Mirror’s Edge’ (It hadn’t come out yet)
T: Stay Puff Marshmallow Man
Strangest Gift You’ve ever Received?
R: Four of my aunts bought me the same Star Wars book
T: Paraffin Wax Set
Story You Haven’t Written Yet?
R: Story about a squatter punk
T: The four months following December 2002
Helen Mirren 1-10?
R: 10
T: Dime piece
Strangest Place You’ve Ever Slept?
R: Underneath a makeshift table outside a friends house in the middle of February because I didn’t want to sleep with the girl I’d just had sex with
T: An MRI machine
Afro Samurai. Your Thoughts?
R: It’s the most perfect use of teddy bears in anything ever
T: Coolest shit ever
Most Underrated Movie?
R: Miller’s Crossing
T: ATL. It’s the most Shakespearian thing I’ve ever seen.
Why Do We Have An Appendix?
R: I don’t know. Probably had something to do with digestion.
T: Life would be too boring if there was nothing inside us that might blow up at any time.
Meanest Thing Someone’s Ever Said To You?
R: You know, you really don’t have to try that hard
T: No wonder you’re crippled (Oh, I’m paralyzed by the by)
Greatest Purchase You Ever Made At A Thrift Store?
R: Shirt with a double-buttoned collar straight out of the 70’s
T: Either my brown polyester button-up or my typewriter
Can You Believe It’s Not Butter?
R: You know what, I can’t
T: No, I cannot
Describe Yourself In Three Words.
R: Observant, Accurate, Pale
T: Jackhammer, President, Soothing
Thing You Hate To Admit You Like.
R: Attention
T: Spooning. Big and little.
Which Of The Following Are Real? Bigfoot. Aliens. The Constitution. Loch Ness Monster. Mothman. Zombies.
R: No. Yes. Depends. I wish it was real more than most things in life. What the fuck is the Mothman? Depends of your definition of zombie, if the bird flu reaches epidemic levels and causes people to kill other people for food then yes.
T: Yes. Yes. Sometimes. No. No. That’s fucking stupid.
Favorite Song To Dance To At The Bar?
R: Junior Senior: Move Your Feet
T: Any Justin Timberlake. I love that shit.
Favorite Kind Of Underwear On A Girl?
R: Boyshorts
T: Lacy boyshorts
Shit, Do We Need Bread?
R: Didn’t you buy bread?
T: Yeah, I think I did.
So, yeah, that about covers it. I hope this thing doesn’t suck. I realize the focus of this entry, indeed this blog in general, is a bit clusterfucked but maybe we can eventually work that out. Or not.
First Post- The beginning
Hello internet! Roger here writing from the safe confines of me and Tyler's apartment on this lovely election day.
I am setting up this blog for the simple fact that I have somethings that I believe me and Tyler are knowledgeable of, or atleast passionate about. We will use this as an opportunity to discuss the writing projects we are working on, getting through college, what video games we are playing, and movies we are watching. It will also be used as a vehicle for our critique. Really we are looking for as much feedback and comments as possible from our readers, as writing is very much an interactive process and we need the help! Please feel free to post your own stuff as well!
--Roger out
I am setting up this blog for the simple fact that I have somethings that I believe me and Tyler are knowledgeable of, or atleast passionate about. We will use this as an opportunity to discuss the writing projects we are working on, getting through college, what video games we are playing, and movies we are watching. It will also be used as a vehicle for our critique. Really we are looking for as much feedback and comments as possible from our readers, as writing is very much an interactive process and we need the help! Please feel free to post your own stuff as well!
--Roger out
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