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September 2 1998, Wednesday

M

att Rogers came over in the afternoon on a plan to accompany me dumpster diving and trash picking on the streets of Ann Arbor's collegiate neighborhoods. It really just a social call, of course, since the school year is here and trash picking season is over. And even if there was good trash to be picked, I'm certainly in no position to be picking it, since just about every cubic centimeter of Kim's Volvo is already spoken for.

I fixed Matt and myself both coffee cups of vodkatea and we went out on the streets. I made the best of the walk by using it as an opportunity to put farewell musings promotional flyers up around town. All the new students will be looking for something to clue them in, and it might as well be my website, as irrelevant as it might be to the "faketopian" existence they will be experiencing in this town. How I hate that word, "faketopia," another Matt Rogersism, but somehow it seemed appropriate just then. I was especially obnoxious with my placement of flyers, choosing to cover up other flyers that annoyed me no matter how slightly, especially those with an antiquated neo-Marxist message.

We didn't find anything worth taking. Most of the dumpsters we encountered were completely empty, and the few piles of trash we encountered contained no prizes. Matt carried a milk crate he'd found for a little while, but those can be had anywhere.

When the vodkatea ran out, I hit a bank machine for some flow and got a half gallon of Heaven Hill vodka from the party store at the intersection of State and Liberty.

We headed over to the Diag to refill our cups. As we passed the punks and grubby hippies who hang out on the town end of the Diag, one of their numbers was making a show of shocking new University of Michigan students. For some reason he decided to try shocking me, asking me loudly if I'd ever sucked some famous Greek philosopher's dick.

Matt and I sat under a big old American Elm and watched the people passing. "I need a girlfriend to drive out West with," said Matt. He's given up on Ann Arbor after his run of bad luck in getting a girl, getting a job, getting stopped for drunk driving, and getting a new motherboard for his old computer. I watched the various girls walking by, trying to pick one out for him on a conceptual level. But for the most part they seemed like they probably lacked a sense of humour (or else they most definitely lacked nice breasts, a Matt Rogers necessity). Still, there were lots of girls, all of them young, collegiate, and nubile.

B

ack at Spunky Lisa's place, we sat around feeling lethargic from too much vodkatea drunk too early in the day. To give us some energy, I made us some tea. Gradually all the others returned from their jobs, or, in the case of Kim, from ordeal by Mother. Kim was cranky from both the things she needed to do and low blood sugar levels. I decided to take Sophie for a walk with Matt.

We walked south down Division Street towards the university practice fields, where marching bands were either practicing their craft, preparing to practice their craft, or heading home after what has sounded like a full day of practicing their craft. Band nerds, brass nerds, marching nerds, nerds every one of them, milling, flirting, getting in our way, wearing ugly uniforms unabashedly, tooting on their horns, each independently tuning and limbering up, in their masses sending up a horrid groaning, moaning wooooooooohhhhhhhhnnnnnnnk. A big university with a big football team evidently needs an awful lot of horn players, and they all need to practice a lot this time of year. The first big game is to be played on Saturday.

Being suddenly this close to all the football noise and pomp of a major university (and having no interest in it whatsoever) takes me back to the days of living at Kappa Mutha Fucka, when we lived so close to the stadium we could hear the crowd roar with every minor football triumph. On those strangely sad autumnal days, cars and people and tailgate parties clogged our neighborhood and we tried our best to live our lives as if none of it was really happening.

I again took the opportunity to put up musings promotional flyers, though I wasn't exactly soliciting readers from the ideal demographic.

A

fter all appropriate avenues of socializing had been exhausted, Matt Rogers headed home. The plan (and plans seem to be very important to Matt) was to drop my Dodge Dart off at his mother's place in Ypsilanti this evening. But Kim and I rapidly became tired and decided to put the mission off for tomorrow.

We were busy getting our clothes washed and packed. Lisa and Josh were going out for sushi tonight, and invited us to come along, but we were too frazzled and bothered to leave the house. So we had them bring food back to us instead. Unfortunately, the Japanese folks who prepared our take away gave us only a tiny amount of wasabi, which was unfortunate since I like to put a big dollop of of the green stuff on each and every sushi roll I devour. I like the feeling that the back of my head is being smashed out with an ice pick. Sadly, most Americans cherish comfort, especially from the food they eat, and this usually gives sushi chefs an excuse to economize on wasabi. Not to restate a cliché without good reason, but I am not your typical American.

Kim says that coke heads like sushi a lot, since the wasabi rush is similar in some ways to the experience of snorting cocaine (something I have never done).

Kim and I hit the sack at 10pm.

one year ago
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