My body felt as if it had been carved out of fragrant hand soap, and the inside of my eyelids burned faintly every time I closed my eyes.

I


n the morning, I rode my bike to UVA's Olssen Hall and checked my email for the first time in over 30 hours. I would have worked on my musings, but I was feeling lousy. Not only did I have a touch of a cold, but I also had a Dextromethorphan hangover. I don't normally get a hangover the day after an evening of DXM abuse, but two days of the stuff had definitely taken their toll. My body felt as if it had been carved out of fragrant hand soap, and the inside of my eyelids burned faintly every time I closed my eyes. My emotions were behaving oddly in subtle annoying ways, and I had trouble motivating myself to do anything. My intestines were unsettled and I suffered from constipation.

As controversial as I try to be, I get remarkably little hate mail. Today, however, I got several unique hate mails that are interesting because they don't fall into the usual "excuse me but I don't understand satire or irony" category. The first one addressed my rambunctious behaviour at Warren Wilson College, and raises a few valid points:

I am a student at Warren Wilson College. I have saw your spoof page a long time ago and for some reason I have never gotten around to telling you how your own words make you seem like an absolute loser. It gives the impression of some slack rich kid living off thier parents coming in and trashing someone's home and then being surprised when that pisses the inhabitants off. Yes, when you fucked up our campus, it is WE STUDENTS who had to clean it up. Perhaps WORK is something strange to you, but we all have to do it. When you attack Jim Watson, you attack a friend. Jim is very concerned about students and a very gentle person. Most schools would have hauled your butts off campus for what you did rather than making a fair offer to let you clean up the mess that you brag about, and then try to pretend you did not cause. We are a community here and when you destroy it, you destroy our home and our family. Would you like it if some one barged into your living space and started spray painting the walls or something?

You would do yourself a favour by getting rid of that page. Even the acount that you yourself wrote makes you seem like a mean spirited, slack-ass, credit-card-punk. Hey, maybe you are, maybe you are a better person than this page makes you seem to be. Who knows.

mark

Next I got an email from Monster Boy's old girlfriend, Rebecca, who, back in February, dumped poor Monster Boy for Doug, the pompous plaintiff in the infamous Dink Boy Case. Here's the complete text of her email:

Subject: Callate, Pendejo!

Gus,

Once again I find myself addressing a pissed-off missive to my least favorite Charlottesville "personality." I enclose that last word in quotation marks because I have it on the word of a trusted friend that you have "the personality of a rock." Is that a childish attack? Sorry, maybe with the help of smart drugs I can arrive at some gems like "Dink Boy." If you had actually come up with that one yourself, instead of just mimicking Theresa, I would believe that you were truly a genius, albeit a retarded one. But a thousand brainwashed 18 year olds couldn't be wrong in their estimation of you, could they?

If there's one thing I've discovered in my own travels, it is that most people are stupid. If you were writing incisive sociological and political analysis and commentary, nobody would read your musings. Your observations are shallow and superficial. Your sociobiological analysis of sex and gender was ridiculous even by the most lax of academic standards. Most of the time, you sound like a fairly bright high schooler who, if he were to read a lot more and experience a lot more life, might actually have something valuable to say.

And yes, I am still reading your Musings, despite the fact that most of the time I find them boring. I read them because every once in a while, I find a description of some loser ex-"friend" of mine making a complete ass of himself or herself. You may call some of these people friends because you feel they impart some of their coolness factor to you (I said FAIRLY bright high schooler), but most of them are mediocrities. I distinctly remember finding it impossible to conduct even a semi-intellectual conversation with any members of that crowd. Not only did they lack the formal education that I possess, but they were remarkably poorly-read. They lacked intellectual curiosity and sharpness and originality of mind. I see you as basically being on the upper border of that crowd. You're not, by any stretch of the imagination, an intellectual (at least not as evidenced in your Musings), but you perhaps have more potential than Theresa or Glenn (at least outside the fields of prostitution and drug dealing).

So I just wanted to thank you for your continued vilification and misrepresentation of me and Doug on the net. Keep your fucking paws off of my life. You do not have my permission to use details of my life, no matter how distorted, to bolster your reputation as man about town. This town is a backwater, and hence I'm too readily identifiable. Already I've lost at least one potential friend because they've read your bullshit. For that, if for nothing else, I have to thank you.

Hmmm... I wonder who the trusted friend was who claimed I have the "personality of a rock." If Rebecca's pompous socially/emotionally/economically/chemically-challenged boyfriend, Dink Boy, is so amazingly intellectual and full of personality, I'd rather be the cream of the immature lugnuts. This sort of email begged for the following response:

yah!

sorry i am such a non-intellectual bore. your husband, doug, he's ever so much more interesting than the rest of the scruffy charlottesville underbelly. i fondly recall with what wit and whimsy he did contribute to our conversations back at Goth Central. i always felt like an intellectual midget in his presence, and that reason alone will always compel me to work in my own crude poorly-considered ways to hasten his downfall. sorry you had to get caught in the crossfire; nothing was ever aimed at you. not only are you a beautiful young woman (worthy for that reason alone of my tenderest considerations) but you have proven yourself to be intellectually cunning and refreshingly blunt.

the friend you lost due to my musings was surely not worthy of your company anyway. it seems doubtful that anyone who can't see through my obvious smoke, mirrors, distortion and lies would ever have much to offer you anyway.

though i'm humbled by your analysis, i'm pleased that you're still reading.

--gus

B


ack at Kappa Mutha Fucka, I passed out printouts of the above emails for the enjoyment of all. Jessika and Sara read them as their first act of the new day. We all had a good laugh, especially at the notion that, in apparent stark contrast to our limitations, Doug Dink Boy is such a scintillating companion. Or that in hate mail to me, Rebecca actually gave me credit for being the brightest of my crowd.

Angela said I was awful, but she was laughing so hard that I feared she'd lose control of the car.

T


oday was the day for Sara and Jessika to return to Philadelphia. First, though, we all went to Bodo's Bagels on Preston Avenue for lunch. There were seven of us, and we rode in Angela's big white Cadillac. As we passed the Haunted House, we could see that someone had hit the street out in front pretty heavy with stencil tags painted in K-Mart gloss white. One said "BAD VIBE" and another said "GAS ASS." There were also various combinations of phrases that ended "in a TERRY NUTKINS STYLEE." A particularly mysterious stencil design read "RUBADUB 9." Perhaps this was meant to include Plan 9 Steve in the apparent vitriol. But nothing specifically singled out Tyler. We later learned that Tyler thought it was all rather amusing, but still "immature." In my life I've gradually learned that "immature" is a meaningless criticism.

The Bodo's lunchtime line was intimidatingly long, but I have to give them credit for having perhaps the fastest line in the business. We had are food in almost no time at all.

At the Greyhound station, we hugged our goodbyes and saw the girls off into their grungy overcrowded bus. A short little navy man in his white sailor suit stood in line in front of them. I joked to Matthew that he'd be an asset should the bus go over a bridge. "Everybody stay calm! In case you haven't noticed, I am a navy man! Does anyone know where the rudder is on this thing?"

I have to admit I was the author of some racist humour on the ride home on JPA. A red haired asian girl almost stepped in front of Angela's Cadillac, and I joked to the others, "I will have kamikaze mission against you American car!" Angela said I was awful, but she was laughing so hard that I feared she'd lose control of the car.

The DXM hangover actually seemed to get worse throughout the day.

P


rior to a mission to UVA, I tried in vain to find my headphones, tearing up much of the living room in the process. Perhaps the ferret stole them; ferrets are notorious for taking a liking to small personal effects and accumulating them in their "hidey holes" (a term that Sara Poiron loathes but for which there is no synonym). Deya showed me a foam rubber hose that we'd lately been using as a casual coffee-table toy (accoustic telephone, cat terrorizer, etc.). It had somehow found its way behind the couch to near the steam radiator, where the ferret has been constructing a hidey hole. She'd chewed up the hose almost completely.

The day was not productively spent. I went to UVA to work on my musings a second time, but could not motivate myself at all. The DXM hangover actually seemed to get worse throughout the day. So I took a nap and felt vaguely miserable.

---

Get a sense of what I was like exactly one year ago today.

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