If they do as expected, I'm sure they'll be taking lots of hard drugs unavailable in this town, acting even more pathetic and listless than usual, but somehow still getting into more than their fair share of unnecessary legal trouble.

T


his morning I hung out a little with Deya after I came in from work. I was trying to fix an old cassette tape player, but it had several things wrong with it. Every source of music is important these days because in the post-Monster Boy era our entertainment options are very meagre. There's no VCR, record player, tape deck or working CD player, the teevee only tunes in to twelve channels of pirated cable, and, until today, there wasn't even any telephone service. We have a new phone number now, but I can't remember it for the life of me.

In addition to the lack of entertainment is a lack of social diversion. Matthew Hart and Angela pretty much keep to themselves. They've stopped encouraging others to come visit, and they don't socialize with Deya and me all that much either. Right now they're on a road trip to New Orleans to see Ani DiFranco. If they do as expected, I'm sure they'll be taking lots of hard drugs unavailable in this town, acting even more pathetic and listless than usual, but somehow still getting into more than their fair share of unnecessary legal trouble.

Deya says she's becoming stir crazy from the lack of entertainment and socializing. She says that maybe she'll start hanging out in coffee shops.

Some of our friends have gone to college. Others have gone on road trips. Still others have been displaced to distant places and visit only occasionally or not at all. Some, such as Morgan Anarchy and Vanna the Increasingly Gothic Punk Rock Girl, have disappeared off the radar entirely.

And what with Matthew's recent socio-sexual turmoil (and its chilling effects on the social climate throughout our group of friends), the damage to the connections within our scene has been severe. There's no more Leah and there's no more Rory.

It's true that occasionally girls have been calling me and getting me out of the house for their own nefarious purposes, but this hasn't been especially socially satisfying. I'm just not in a very intimate mindset these days, at least with the people around me. If anything, intimacy has been a diversion from the more complicated social situations for which I've been starved of late.

Deya says she's becoming stir crazy from the lack of entertainment and socializing. She says that maybe she'll start hanging out in coffee shops.

T


wo questions occurred me while I was in the bathtub this afternoon.


Perhaps being vegan is a subconscious path to identity and a way to withdraw into your own little world. It worked for the Jews, after all.

1. What in addition to meat, eggs and dairy products is being avoided by someone who chooses to be vegan? I wondered this because I was trying to imagine a hypothetical long-term relationship with a vegan girl, somebody like Freedom or Cory the Former Coffee Cart Girl. While it would be refreshing not to have eggs in the refrigerator (I have a biological aversion to them), I'd still want to eat chicken and cheese. Would there be a constant state of tension over the things I put in the refrigerator? And what would happen when we settled down to eat dinner? Despite the fact that I love pizza, I couldn't just go and order a vegetarian pizza, it would have to come without cheese. And what kind of pizza doesn't have cheese? Answer: very very bad pizza. Perhaps being vegan is a subconscious path to identity and a way to withdraw into your own little world. It worked for the Jews, after all. In Charlottesville, this definitely seems to be the case. The vegans are a very cohesive unit. There's Franz, Cory, Freedom, Freedom's boyfriend, Kirstin the Eco-radical, and Elizabeth (even though Elizabeth may not be a true vegan, she's allergic to so many things that she's hyper-conscious about what she puts in her mouth). They have Sunday night vegan pot-lucks, they dread & bleach their hair, they hang out together, they take drugs together. It's all very warm and communal, and even somewhat exclusive. As a meat/cheese eater (and occasional fan of vegan cooking), I don't feel especially excluded, but I don't feel like I would ever completely fit in with the vegans either. Then again, with whom have I ever completely fit in?

   I fully support people who burn bulldozers or spike trees to protect land from development.

2. Damn it, I can't remember the other question. Maybe it was this: Why is there such a strong aversion to "computers" among so many of the supposedly educated people whom I know? Cory the Former Coffee Cart Girl is a case in point. She takes a dim view of "getting on the Internet," sending and receiving email, and using computers for anything that could be done in any other way. This mindset makes no sense to me. Computers have only enriched my humanity. While the technical and even logistical details of what it takes me to get an HTML page up and on the Web might make for a dull read to the vast majority of potential readers, there's much going on here that would make sense to a Neanderthal.

   Besides, Cory is a hypocrite. She uses a CD player to play music, and she seems to know how to load it, select a song, make it play, skip songs she doesn't like, and stop it when she's sick of it. To do so, she's making use of a tiny high-speed computer. She's mastered its simple interface to command it to accomplish the tasks she requires of it. That's the same thing I do with the Internet, only what I do differs in the degree of flexibility granted to me because of the greater richness of my interface (in contrast to Cory's crappy little CD player interface). Actually, Cory makes use of computers every day: when she drives a car, negotiates a traffic intersection, or dials a telephone. To avoid computers only when they begin to offer almost unbridled interaction strikes me as arbitrary and capricious.

   This isn't to say that I am an evangelist for technology and the rise of "the machine." I am not. Indeed, I agree with being a Luddite where being a Luddite is necessary. For example, I fully support people who burn bulldozers or spike trees to protect land from development. But such people would do well to know the inner workings of the beasts they attack, as well as co-ordinate their actions with all the convenience presently available in the post-real^* age.

I asked Matthew if his father was going to miss something so big and so gone. "He hardly ever uses it," Matthew reasoned.

For various reasons, I have tonight off instead of tomorrow night off. I guess I'll have to think of something interesting to do. Maybe I'll do something I don't normally do, like drink a lot of beer at a bar.

---

I


t turned out that I was wrong: Matthew Hart and Angela had not yet left for New Orleans. That's something scheduled for the middle of the month. They've been out gallavanting up and down Interstate 64, from Matthew's father's place in Waynesboro, to Nick the Human's place in Richmond, and back again. Tonight Matthew finally showed up for the first time in days at Kappa Mutha Fucka. He brought with him a partial solution to our entertainment troubles. He'd stolen a big ass modular stereo system from his father's basement. It came complete with a record player and a CD player. I asked Matthew if his father was going to miss something so big and so gone. "He hardly ever uses it," Matthew reasoned. Whatever, it wasn't really my problem, but it definitely was my solution, so I set the thing up. It worked perfectly.

Matthew, you see, has a decidedly different view of hard liquor. For him, every bottle is an opportunity to "go into blackout," something to which he looks forward with great anticipation.

Deya came home and Matthew went off to take a nap. At that point Deya and I went on a run to the ABC store. She's not going to be 21 until February, so she needed me to pick her up some vodka. I got a liter each for her and myself, and back home we stashed these in our respective rooms. It's nice to have vodka around for the occasional drink every now and then. Deya and I have a relatively mature view of the stuff. That's why we hide it when we buy it. Matthew, you see, has a decidedly different view of hard liquor. For him, every bottle is an opportunity to "go into blackout," something to which he looks forward with great anticipation. I've gradually lost my fondness for the blackout ritual (not remembering a dangerous chaotic evening only to awaken the next day to find freshly broken windows, social turmoil and sadly empty liquor bottles). I can probably still find a use for blackout, but it's not the highest use for liquor.

Affirmative action, you see, sometimes operates on a personal level.

Matthew was up when Deya and I returned. I was feeling kind of hungry, so I convinced the others to go in with me on a pizza from Gumby's. Normally I don't have much fondness for Gumby's pizza, what with their slow delivery and penchant for adding extra aftertaste to every slice, but tonight I was intrigued by the prospect of seeing a "massive 20 inch" pizza they were advertising. I managed to convince Deya that getting such a pizza was a wise "investment" because she could use the huge box to help her with a sculptural project she's been working on (she's making a robot-like android out of empty beer cases and other sources of cardboard). Matthew likes pizza, so he didn't take too much convincing. Eventually the pizza arrived, and we were wolfing down the gargantuan three-topping slices. Deya tipped the delivery guy extra simply because he was black, even though the pizza had been slow and we only received one container of ranch dressing in which to dip our slices. Affirmative action, you see, sometimes operates on a personal level.

After the pizza, I wasn't good for much. I mostly lay around on the couch and felt uncomfortable. Deya and Matthew are dismayed by my continual failure to learn from my many earlier negative experiences with gluttony.

I don't understand why the INS cracks down on hard working Mexican wetbacks when there are far more insidious illegal aliens like Rory running amok in this great land.

B


y the way: Matthew tells me that Leah is now living with Shonin's mother, Susan (nearer to UVA on Jefferson Park Avenue). Not only that, but Rory, otherwise homeless, has moved in with her there. They're living in Shonin's old room and sleeping (etc.) in Shonin's old bed. Rory's battered pea-green 1972 Ford LTD is usually parked nearby on JPA. I wonder if Susan knows what she's getting herself into. As I see it, it's only a matter of time before Rory steals her car and crashes it into a bus full of nuns (or commits some other wantonly stupid act of deportable sociopathy). I don't understand why the INS cracks down on hard working Mexican wetbacks when there are far more insidious illegal aliens like Rory running amok in this great land.

The pizza in my stomach exerted its own special form of gravity, and soon the conscious phase of the evening showed evidence of grinding to a halt. It looked like I wasn't going to be able to make any special use of my night off, other than by sleeping through it. But sleep does have its own virtues. If I could just make my dreams into more of a shared experience, there'd hardly be any reason to wake up. With that in mind...

Eventually she was a nubile maiden dressed in a white wedding gown, still begging me to fuck her while asking for $50.

I dreamed I was driving my Dodge Dart south down Ohio Route 58 from Lorain (located on Lake Erie) to Oberlin, eight miles away. The land in this region is a vast flat expanse of farmland divided by Pin Oak thickets into swampy rectangular fields crossed by big power lines. It's a frequent setting for my dreams.

At the intersection with Ohio route 113, I came across an unoccupied car which I knew I could steal. Somehow this involved pushing it with the Dart, and then abandoning my Dart entirely. By the time I'd climbed behind the wheel of my stolen car, a random older woman in conservative business attire had joined me. I started driving to the west on OH 113.

The woman pleaded "fuck me!" and then immediately qualified this with "it'll only be $50!" I wasn't interested in paying her anything, but I did tell her the details of the sorts of conventional sexual acts I could imagine myself doing to her. As I drove, she grew younger and younger and her clothes gradually changed. Eventually she was a nubile maiden dressed in a white wedding gown, still begging me to fuck her while asking for $50. We got out of the car at one point and did something sexual against a woven wire fence, but it wasn't stuff for which she was charging money.

Then I noticed we were being followed by two young alterna-women on foot. We climbed back into the stolen car and turned down a dirt road adjacent to a summer cottage development along a river. The two young alterna-women continued to follow us. Eventually they caught up. It turned out that our car belonged to them, but they were only mildly miffed that we stole it. I sheepishly turned it over to them and promptly woke up.

The time was about 4:30am. I walked around the house, drank some water, considered going off to do things, but since it was raining pretty hard outside, I returned to bed, and again I dreamed.

She instantly fell in love with me, and followed me outside, demanding my phone number.

I was walking through a crazy complex of college buildings, trying to track down a little Easter Islandesque sculpture I'd made (the sculpture actually exists) just so I'd have it in time for work. Once I'd found the sculpture, I was so overjoyed that I ran my fingers through some random girl's hair in an act of jubilation. She instantly fell in love with me, and followed me outside, demanding my phone number. Some guy was with her, shouting at me that it was the least I could do. Just as in reality, I couldn't completely remember my phone number, so the girl followed me to work. I didn't know what to do with her; I didn't want her with me any more. In fact, I didn't want to deal with her at all. I didn't even know her name. She had a pretty face but a small, ugly convex nose, and that nose began to bother me more and more.

When I finally arrived at work, I told her she couldn't follow me into the building. I said she'd have to wait until she saw my boss leave (at which point I described my actual boss, Ken) before coming inside.

Inside, Comet had changed a great deal. It was big, it was dilapidated, and it was dirty. But most of all, it was full of people. A circus of some sort was happening. As I waded through the jubilant crowd, I suddenly found myself carrying two slices of pizza, which little leaping labrador dogs were trying to take. The last hundred feet or so of my walk was occupied by a big hand-painted train on a set of tracks. I climbed aboard and rode into work. By this point, I think I was somewhat late.

---

^*I just made that term up.

one year ago

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