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lunch good.
October 11, 2004
My good friend Nikki suggested that my new web site could be called harpharpharp.com, paying homage to both the fizzy truth serum/muse that I love so, and the ranting that I tend to do. It's still under consideration, and today, it's moved into being a major contender.
I'm up here at the glorious Texas Board of
So much of my writing and creativity and, hell, happiness has been beer-driven lately. Can I function without it? Depends on what you mean by "function." I can walk, talk, and tie my own shoes without it. But in terms of feeling better and writing... not so much.
Cut to almost two hours later. Decided to experiment. Took my exciting new camera and its instruction manual, both of which just arrived via UPS to the office today, and went to Fado's for a nice sandwich and a pint. Or three. Took what might be some nice pix, though they're on film, not digital, so it'll be a few days. Or maybe tomorrow, if I drunkenly snap the rest of this roll of film up in my office, which I'm afraid to leave (even though I have to pee really badly) because, well, I'm a little more drunk than the average state empkoe emploue dammit (deep breath) employee should be. Felonious dentists beware! I'm on the clock, I've got a monster buzz, and nothing to lose!
Oops, just got an email - Friday is our big potluck. Though, sadly, no luck, and no pot. Just kidding. Sort of.
Look, here's today's deal: I was stuck in settlement conferences all day Friday. At least one promised to be extremely entertaining, though, ultimately, sad. It had adulterous lesbian affairs (not that there's anything wrong with that, but it still makes for a better story), drug diversion, violence, vandalism, and, possibly, the poor seating of a crown. It was the holy grail of entertaining cases. Problem is, I am not allowed to blog about that.
Saturday, I had a date, on the spur of the moment. And, it hurtled towards what seemed an inevitable conclusion, towards a "reconvening the procedure," as Julie might put it. But then, the train jumped the tracks, and suffice it to say: that ship has sailed. Let your imaginations run amuck as they may - you probably have no clue. Regardless, can't really talk about that either, here.
So, it's not as if I've nothing to write about. But as much as I've heralded this blog as the opportunity to let honesty reign without censorship... I can't write about any of the major events of the last few days. Dammit. But stick with me... more to come... more Harp, that glorious Canadian-made jet fuel for writing, is awaiting me in my fridge. For now, however, like one of those episodes made up entirely of clips from past seasons, I give you... a rerun:
envision success
So, homeless, jobless, near penniless, and less my most recent intense relationship, I have decided to turn my attentions to finding the girl of my dreams. Given the numbers, one should think this easy – there are just so many options. I know and my friends constantly reinforce that the keys are to be open-minded, and to just put yourself out there to be... had. As if I have not been had enough in relationships.
There is, for example, the girl working at the local coffee shop, perhaps a bit young for me, shy, coquettish smile, a bright vision through the haze of body odor poorly masked by patchouli that so many of the angst-ridden, coffee-swilling intelligentsia clientele there seem to emit. For the sake of conversation only, I will call her Celeste. Ahh, Celeste. Perhaps, tomorrow morning I’ll smile with my probably ten years of additional mature appeal as Celeste hands me my slice of rosemary apple pie and iced tea. I’ll quote Sartre or Camus, or someone else that I haven’t actually read but whose orts of wisdom are quickly and easily accessible on the Internet. She won’t be familiar with the arcane quote either, being only a freshman journalism major who hasn’t quite made it through Intro to Literature during her provisional summer school coursework.
Nevertheless, Celeste will recognize my superior age and wisdom, lower her head into a smile, and blush, and I’ll ask for her name. She’s undoubtedly as intelligent as she is cute, and I know she’s probably The One. We’ll skip together along the lake as the summer loses its burn slowly to fall, see both art-house movies and the latest Vin Diesel flick. We’ll be the cute couple everyone gravitates towards at the mix of happy hours with my balding friends, and at the keggers with her smelly young friends that we attend.
We will love and respect and be completely and utterly devoted to each other. A couple of months into our relationship, I will walk in on her and a Spanish exchange student named "Joaquin," who is actually a French exchange student named "Remy." She will cover her nakedness and look ashamedly away, as Remy/Joaquin/Euro Shit Boy tries to assure me in soothing tones that while I was like a father to her, he was like the brother that never touched her the way he did. He further validates this Oedipal bit of B.S. by reciting a line from that Spanish poet guy that had a movie made about him with the subtitles. He will get halfway through the second verse when I smite him utterly and completely across his beautiful cheekbones with the first thing I find handy, which is the tire iron from the trunk of my car, parked two blocks away.
There is always, of course, the girl in the Aveda shop at the mall. Last September, I was there because I thought the mall was a good place to hang out on the state’s annual tax-free weekend debacle. And it is, in fact, a great place to be at that time, for families wishing to save $16 on $200 worth of seemingly pre-mutilated Abercrombie & Fitch t-shirts, and for pedophiles lacking fast and reliable Internet access.
Anyway, I walked by the store and saw her, in her black smock, a good four to five years older than that whore Celeste, her eyes locked on me, smiling in a way different and more meaningful than the usual sales representative smile. For one thing, I clearly, visibly, have no need for Aveda products or any other cosmetic assistance. My hair is long and shiny, with a natural wave, needing no anti-humectant gels or de-frizzing pomades, and generally requiring little more than my allowing it to have its own space and political beliefs. My skin is smooth and unflawed, except where there are acne, blemishes, scars, and dry patches.
Clearly, this girl was looking with interest, looking longingly, feeling the tinge of primal familiarity deep in her soul. The so-human longing that is within most of us to make that one true connection flared brightly within both of us, poles aligning, gravitation struggling to pull us into mutual orbit, into the dance of mutual attraction and union.
I hesitated, uncertain. I smiled at her, decided that was a substantial-enough first move, and went to look at the exciting new Air Jordans at Foot Locker, the ones with the red trim rather than the blue. As I tried them on with no intention of purchasing them, they made me think of her.
I went back a few weeks later with my friend, Daryl. Daryl, despite her name, is a girl. Daryl’s a close friend that constantly provides me with comfort and guidance, which includes useful nuggets of practical wisdom like, “Please do not give your child a sexually ambiguous name.” Taking a girl with me made my presence in the store plausible. The whole scenario was rendered further perfect by the fact that Daryl, also unemployed (though neither homeless nor hideously and desperately alone in life like myself), had recently decided to stop shaving her legs. I decided this threw enough ambiguity in the mix to keep my own availability a very real possibility.
We cased the joint with a couple of close passes, and then went in. My girl, she who touched my soul, and who my instincts tell me is named "Alyssa," was not there. In her place were two, not-as-helpful trolls who, though probably perfectly attractive, are as dim, lesser brown dwarf stars, drowned in the pure white light of the quasar that is Alyssa. While Daryl asked impressively realistic-sounding questions about various hair-care products, I glanced about the store, careful to neither glance furtively, nor to allow my eyes to form the narrow slits that would have revealed our true purpose.
In our debriefing, Daryl and I surmised that Alyssa may only work there on the weekends, seeking not the extra pay, but only the pleasure of bringing wrinkled, frizzy, and otherwise awkward-looking commoners some small measure of the beauty God has blessed her with. Each week, via an elaborate system of couriers and faxing, she exchanges this additional income for gift certificates to a popular Peruvian department store, which she then sends to an orphanage for girls in La Paz.
During the week, Alyssa’s time is spent in more selfish pursuits, as a leading researcher in the fight against SOID, Supine-Onset Indigestion Disorder, which did not kill her birth mother, but often caused her to have to wait an hour after eating before going to bed. Meanwhile, Alyssa’s long-distance correspondence with astrophysicist Stephen Hawking has resulted in some practical experiments that require her presence aboard the International Space Station for a few weeks a year, but I could live with that, because we would talk nightly, and the time delay in communication isn’t really as bad or awkward as some astronauts or Asimov and his nerdish cronies would have you believe.
Alyssa and I will do well - I just know it. In the first month, we’ll travel to Australia and Sierra Leone, go to concerts and basketball games, talk about the knowable and unknowable in the universe. We'll throw dinner parties in my new apartment or her loft in downtown Austin, and couples will walk away, sated from the fine wine and the cuisine Alyssa and I create, and they'll make a vow beneath the stars to have as healthy and loving a relationship as we clearly have. She’ll wake me up in the middle of the night to ask my opinion on her application of a Fibonacci sequence to one of the components of her almost-completed, self-proving Grand Unified Field Theory. I’ll laugh at the kind of mistakes she makes when she gets all drowsy, and at how cute and childlike she looks, and then she’ll laugh, and I’ll kiss her forehead, and we’ll make gentle but passionate love (did I mention her incredible stamina and flexibility?) for two hours and eighteen minutes, before we stop because I know she needs the sleep.
Unfortunately, two months into our relationship, and just a few lines shy of completing her Unified Field Theory equation, Alyssa injects herself with a complex protein-oxidase derivative. So noble in her refusal to acquiesce to the offers and demands and death threats of the pharmaceutico-military-FDA complex, and unwilling to test the formula on a defenseless animal (even though Rob Schneider was available), she gives her own life to science, for the cause of all the people that have problems digesting when they lay down right after they eat. It is clear to me that foul play was involved, as I find evidence of tampering in her lab. It falls to me to bring the powerful men who conspired to kill her to justice, but hey, I’m not so young, and I have to move on.
Dating is so hard, it just seems overwhelming sometimes. I suppose there’s the woman I always run into at the local HEB, but while I think I have fallen in love with her and she might be The One, I’m pretty sure she’s a lawyer and a complete shrew. Yeah, to hell with her.
Posted by Rob at October 11, 2004 11:31 AM