March 2 1998, Monday

The stereo was a real piece of work. I'd asked if it had a tape deck and my mother had assured me "oh yeah, and he's sending you a whole box of tapes too!" Well, guess what kind of tape deck it had? That's right, an 8 track. My mother doesn't know enough about electronic gadgets to distinguish between an eight track and a regular deck; it hadn't seemed odd or dated to her in the least. I've learned to expect my mother to view things from a thoroughly 60s technologic perspective. But it was nice of her to bring it. I could tell that Jessika and Deya were very excited by the prospect of collecting 8 track tapes. They really go for that retro crap. And they tell me that the Salvation Army is groaning with piles of 8 track tapes that no one else in the whole world could possibly play.

The tapes that Josh had seen fit to include were classic redneck fare: Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson and Emmylou Harris. Of course there were also a few classic rock standards: Billy Joel, the Doors, Aerosmith, Rush, and let us not forget Led Zeppelin's In Through the Out Door. Josh also included a few classic bits of vinyl. Most intriguing of these was an album by that 80s glam metal sensation Winger, a band about which no one even bothers to ask, "Where are they now?" Deya insisted that we put it on immediately.

Meanwhile, Don was having a monologue with Jessika. I say monologue, because he never gave her much of an opportunity to respond. He was telling her about Archæopteryx, that fossil missing link between reptiles and birds that so fascinates him, but which Jessika has (in all likelihood) never considered. But she's a patient listener with a keen interest in the disconnected babblings of lunatics. I'd peek in every now and then to behold it all in bemused wonderment.

We of Kappa Mutha Fucka had errands to run, so Hoagie and Don took their leave.

D

eya drove us out to Barracks Road, where she was paid and I dipped into my accounts. We needed big money for the month's rent.

We met back at Deya's place of employment, Rebecca's Natural Foods, and did a little shopping for food items. Interestingly, suddenly we're not just shopping for ourselves; we're pooling our money and buying food that any of us may freely eat. That's a fairly fundamental new result of Jessika's presence.

We randomly ran across Peggy and the Baboose in Rebecca's, and she had Matthew Hart news. Matthew drank a few beers and went driving around in Waynesboro with Morgan Anarchy. He wasn't that drunk, but when a cop pulled him over, he was detectably intoxicated. His car was impounded and now dear Angela must drive him the 40 miles to work every weekday. Of course I feel sorry for him; that sort of thing can happen to any of us; we all drive drunk on occasion. But Matthew has dodged more bullets than any of us. I guess his time is up.

After we'd paid our rent, Deya let me off at the intersection of Emmett Street and US 250, and I walked to Clemmons Library at UVA to check my email. It was the first time I'd been on the Internet since Friday.

I walked all the way back to Kappa Mutha Fucka and filled out my unemployment forms for the past two weeks. Deya and Jessika returned from a trip to the pet store. I think Jessika would like a pet, but not the kind you can get in a store, more the kind you have to steal from a circus.

O

n and off today, Jessika puttered around fixing up her new room and making it suitable for several months of reasonable human living. Our little world overlaps some pretty fucked-up other worlds, putting before us strange duties. For example, one of the things Jessika had to do to make her room liveable was clean the hypodermic blood off the walls. She knows a lot about junkies, and she says they like to shoot their blood at the wall when they rinse out their works. Evidently our own hometown junkies wanna-bes are no different.

W

e drank Sloe Gin Fizzes and watched endless television. Steve Weiner (apparently tipped off about Jessika being here, but not yet about her living here) suddenly arrived, and he sat around and talked with us for awhile.

For a time Deya and Jessika were out getting a local paper (looking for job want ads), and I was alone with Steve. He's much better without Jessika around to distort his behaviour. He and I discussed a wide range of issues, from whether or not there are more gay people today than back in the 20s, to some of the sick things that perverts do.

Steve told me about guys in Paris who leave bread in the public urinals and collect it at the end of the day, laden with a great diversity of urine. I guess they eat it, but the thought of them doing so makes me somewhat queasy.

Steve also told me that he's finally concluded that (at 50) he's much too old for 22 year old Jessika. The generational differences are just too vast. No matter what he does, he said, he's firmly stuck in the 60s, those were the times that shaped him, the ones that affect his sense of good taste and his nostalgia. Jessika could never relate to any of that. I agreed, saying that being eight years older than Jessika and nine years older than Deya, I can also sense a certain amount of generation gap, albeit nothing like Steve's. For example, I often make assumptions about people knowing pop music from my childhood, but Jessika and Deya have never heard such music as "Sky rockets in flight / afternoon delight" or "I like piña coladas / gettin' caught in the rain / I ain't much into health food / Come with me and escape."

Steve kept trying to interest us in going out to get ice cream or something, promising that he'd pay. But we all knew better. Every time he ever promises to pay, it always ends up that he has no money. Another problem was that he had arranged no ride back home, so of course Deya had to drive him.

Late at night we watched some soft-core porn on one of the premium cable channels. It was pretty dull, and we kept falling asleep.