It's not the conceit: it's the stupidity.

I


  picked up my monstrous AT-cased 486 from Comet, where I'd been loading it with software during my night shifts. All I need is a modem to do the old homegeek thing, and Ken allowed me to borrow a 14.4 kilobaud modem indefinitely. Unfortunately, it's a plug and play sucker with no jumpers. It's supposed to be easier for the great unwashed to install. But it's impossible to get running on a Windows 3.11 machine. So I had to set out on an ultimately doomed mission on 29 North in the Dodge Dart to find a new modem. Walmart, by the way, has very affordable 33.3 kilobaud modems. But it was still more cash than I had on me.

Going north on 29 is such an unbearable ordeal that, as I return, I almost always go south on the winding, tree-lined Park Street and end up on the Downtown Mall. Fridays are good days to be on the Mall, even if few of the people I know ever go there anymore.

I


n front of Mudhouse, I came across Farrell. He sat in the oppressively hot sun wearing his trademark earth-tone jacket and bow tie, sipping an iced mocha and scoping out the chicks in their skimpy little wind-tossed dresses. He always says hello to the girls who meet his standards and then he turns and whispers unkind comments to me as they inevitably keep on walking. His luck with girls is pretty good though. He's a charmer and he trawls with a wide net.

Farrell always talks at a whisper, perhaps a habit he developed to encourage girls to lean towards him.

As usual, Farrell encouraged me to do more performance art. He aspires to build a network of progressive southern towns which could host a rotating schedule of performances by regional artists and actors. Towns he mentioned include Chapel Hill and Asheville, North Carolina and Athens, Georgia.

While we discussed these things, local artist Jacques DeBeaufort showed up. Jacques and Farrell are made for each other in a way that would not be credible in a work of fiction. I was surprised that they'd never met each other before. While Jacques has pretensions of artistic greatness (justified or otherwise), Farrell has hopes (not really pretensions) of orchestrating a Charlottesville renaissance. Farrell always talks at a whisper, perhaps a habit he developed to encourage girls to lean towards him. Jacques, on the other hand, always talks loudly and never really listens. I just sat there observing their discussion and chuckling to myself, saying "uh huh" at all the right moments when they would turn to me.

Unlike most people in Charlottesville, Jacques has a good record of carrying through on his ideas.

Jacques talked about a piece of performance art he thought up while watching apes in the zoo. When you watch the apes, he reasoned, it's like looking into somebody's living room. In his performance art, he wants to replace the apes with young men. The "Young Men's Shop," a stogy conservative clothing store on the Downtown Mall for the up and coming business man, is closing down, and Jacques wants to borrow the store for a few days and have young men (Farrell and myself, for example) live in the window and do young men stuff like apes in a zoo. It would be part of the publicity for a huge chaotic multi-artist performance in the Downtown Artspace. Unlike most people in Charlottesville, Jacques has a good record of carrying through on his ideas. This is the reason he can get away with so much ludicrous behaviour without my ridicule.

In addition to being a notorious womanizer, Farrell is also an underground publisher. He says the print version of my tales from Big Fun has sold over 20 copies. There's far more content in my Big Fun website, though. And it's all free.

I


  was actually friendly to Peggy back at my house. She and Zach were busy moving out, and there's no reason for animosity anymore. I wish them the best of luck.

Matthew Hart and Monster Boy had gone fishing somewhere. I don't really understand the point of fishing just for the fun of it. I like to eat fish, and that seems like the only justification for the activity. But Matthew's a vegetarian. I'm sure he has no sympathy for the piercings he puts in the lips of his prey; he has been known to make a show of piercing his own lip in exchange for a beer.

Meanwhile Leah was interested in drinking Mad Dog, the cheap fake vino concoction. There's a new flavour out that is coloured the same artifical blue as toilet bowl cleaner. Those guys at Mad Dog are pretty shrewd marketeers; Generation Xers love a product best when no obvious attempt is made to fool them.

The others went off on foot to carry out the old hug & coo routine that young liberal women do in lieu of meaningful reunion.

We ended up getting a gallon of Carlo Rossi Paisano instead. Leah, Deya and their friend Sarah "Rosy" Rosenthal (who desperately wants to be mentioned in the musings) had an appointment to touch bases with Allie Vining at the Espresso Corner. Allie and I had a fling once, and because that didn't end on a particularly good note, I stayed in Deya's car while the others went off on foot to carry out the old hug & coo routine that young liberal women do in lieu of meaningful reunion. My abandonment wasn't so bad; I had Leticia the Brazilian Girl to entertain me. She and I mostly discussed the uselessness of the refinements of industrial society. She obviously has a large Portuguese vocabulary, since whenever I use big English words with Greek or Latin origins, she knows what I'm talking about; such words almost all have similar-sounding Portuguese equivalents. An example: most Americans do not know what an onomatopoeia is, but Leticia does. The word in Portuguese is exactly the same.

Back at my house, Matthew Hart and Monster Boy had returned from fishing. They had a new person along with them, a guy with a cool mid-caste English accent named Rory. He's a waiter at the C&O.

I'm continually amazed by all the English nationals in the greater Charlottesville area. When I lived near Staunton there were the blacks on "that side of the tracks" and there were the Scotch-Irish white people. Their names all ended with "--baugh." And that was it.
Rory turned out to be a wild and crazy kind of guy. He's yet another Aquarius, you see (as is Sarah "Rosy" Rosenthal). Best of all, he said my faux British accent was fairly convincing.

Anyway, upon arriving with four girls in tow, I declared as "officially over" the sausage party of Matthew, Monster Boy and Rory. This came as a relief to Rory; he's on the prowl for what he terms "tasty birds" with which to "shag." That's the Queen's English for scoping out babes so that a guy might get laid.

W


e all went to a party on near the corner of Wertland and 10th street, rather near the Dynashack but closer to the brink of the 'hood. It's Ian Cohen's new house. I haven't ever really talked much about Ian. Suffice it to say he's a short skinny guy with increasingly big hair. Ian has that stereotypical Jewish businessman gene. But instead of opening a deli, pawn shop, linen service or shoe repair store, he aspires to lead the regional techno dance party movement. Tonight's party had a strong techno theme going on. In the back a PA had been set up, along with two turn tables and keyboard. Various DJs were scratching out the "tunes" at full blast. Are they even called tunes? They're more like musical collages. Only on Wertland can such noise be made without fear of someone calling the police.

It's a real abomination to drink a high-dollar beer in this way, but sure enough I did.

What did I do there? Let's see, I was innocently fondling Cory the coffee cart girl because she likes that sort of thing. Meanwhile Rory the British guy was lying on his back, ridiculously trying to woo her from the depths of his drunkeness. When he later started jumping around with a bamboo pole, I feared I'd lose an eye.

Ian and Matthew Hart had a beer bong going. A beer bong is basically a funnel with a wide-bore hose attached, and it is used to minimize the time necessary to consume a beer. Using the device, I killed a Milwauki's Best (complete with foam) in about three seconds. Later I found a Pete's Wicked Ale in the fridge and Ian said I could have it if I beer-bonged it. It's a real abomination to drink a high-dollar beer in this way, but sure enough I did. Instead of getting drunk in my usual gradual manner, tonight I did so in a stair-step pattern.

And unlike my current housemates, she usually makes sense.

I was in a forgiving mood and went across the street to the old residence of the skinheads. They don't live there anymore (I'm not that forgiving). The people living there now are mostly a collection of my old Dynashack housemates: Elizabeth, Ches and maybe John, along with Catherine deGood and her dog Deeohji. I can't think of any reason to be mad at Elizabeth anymore. Everything worked out for the best, after all, and she's one of the world's better people. And unlike my current housemates, she usually makes sense. So I sat on the porch and chatted with her and the others a little. Elizabeth and I first became romantically involved almost exactly a year ago.

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