From the time of our fateful introduction over groincobbling and beer, Tom and I became fast friends outside of the LARP world. Over the course of our friendship, he began to play a more frequent role as the "surrogate boyfriend" as my relationship with the Granola-Eating Assclown rapidly deteriorated, mainly due to the fact that Tom was *always* available to hang out whenever I needed someone to have a drink with because I felt like shit. At that time, "like shit" was a very frequent and familiar feeling.
Granola-Eating Assclown, you see, had a debilitating addiction to the massive multiplayer online RPG known as "Puzzle Pirates." Readers who have just re-read that last sentence to make sure I hadn't, in fact, said "World of Warcraft" should know that Mr. Clown hadn't really had the decency to develop a more manly type of gaming addiction than one which involved pirating on the high seas as a little tonka-toy-looking character challenging players 'round the globe to fierce bouts of Tetris. While I am by no means implying that the manliness of a Warcraft addiction supersedes that of a Puzzle Pirates addiction, all I am saying is that perhaps misrepresenting oneself as a sassy young lady because "guys are more likely to give you things and be nicer to you" leans a tad toward the creepy side of things. To those of you who have played Puzzle Pirates online and have flirted with a blonde pirate queen named Jaenelle - you should know that you were playing net-footsie with a scraggly long-haired 30-something year old sysadmin sporting a desk-gut reminiscent of a man smuggling a Christmas ham into a concert under his black Ani DiFranco T-shirt. Don't go asking for your dubloons back now, you don't want to know where he's put them.
I say this with not an ounce of bitterness toward the gaming world, but rather, toward those who would once again conflate reality with fantasy to the degree that Mr. Ass-Clown had. For you see, Mr. Clown had taken to fits of passive-aggressive rage when I didn't respect the sanctity of gaming by committing such heinous acts as asking him for a 2 minute ride over the steep hill to the bus stop (an otherwise annoying 15 minute walk, especially when carrying groceries) in the middle of a raid, or daring to invite him on any weekend outings without paying heed to his weekend pirating excursion schedule. At the time, I hadn't yet become cognizant of the fact that perhaps it was he who had the problem, and often took to drowning my feelings of inadequacy as a girlfriend in alcohol; after all, if the man I'd been with for several years now found it more engaging to spend time prancing about online posing as a puzzle-solving pirate queen than to spend it with me, that naturally had to reflect poorly upon my qualifications as girlfriend material.
As was the natural course of things once the relationship headed down the road of confidence-destruction, Mr. Clown dumped me for failing to respect his interests or anything, for that matter, about him (a job he made exceedingly difficult over time), and ended our last conversation as a couple with an exceptionally poignant and articulate "fuck you."
Continuing with the natural course of things, naturally, next came the "moving out" process of breaking up. Since Mr. Clown had originally been the one to insist on my moving in, it was up to me to move my ass out of our cohabited state. I lined up an apartment out in Alewife in record time, especially for mid-December, and was slated to move in no later than 2 and a half weeks from the date of our breakup. Most fortunately for me, during that time, I had the spare room in the house to sleep in. Most fortunately for Mr. Clown, that meant he could redecorate.
Mr. Clown spent the entirety of the first week of our awkward semi-cohabited state combing the aisles of Bed Bath and Beyond, along with several other interior deco/design stores. Much like the last two months of our relationship, the power of alcohol alone made these two weeks remotely tolerable, and what little time I spent in that house, I spent completely blitzed. Through my mostly-drunken haze, it seemed to me as though Mr. Clown was nesting. It was only a week later that the full understanding of why hit me, when Mr. Clown started speaking overly loudly on his cell phone in the middle of the living room one evening.
"What? Wait, you're not lost. Can you find the house?" asked Mr. Clown, careful to enunciate each word to his incidental audience of housemates. "No, you take a left onto Orient St. and we're the first house on the left. Okay!"
Already half in the bag by that point (as it was 7pm, and I had to get the party started early on weeknights if I wanted to be able to get up for work in the morning), I took no great pains to disguise my disgust when Mr. Clown opened the door and greeted a girl by the name of Harmony with a hug and a meow. Harmony was a girl Mr. Clown knew from a LARP, who played a fairy princess with a great big pocket of air between her ears. Reality, however, was not that far of a stretch. Mr. Clown's character had been wooing said fairy princess for *years* in-game, during which time, he'd gone so far as to have traded gifts with her, including a stuffed rabbit which he kept religiously tucked in his bedding each weekend we attended said LARP. Naturally, my burpy, farty ways could never compare to the delicate ladylike manners of Mr. Clown's fairy princess, and after years of hearing him make irritating comparisons of myself against her, it seemed only right that he would take the opportunity now that I was out of the way to ask her out. Of course, you were going to ask her out, Mr. Clown, of course.
My irritation having grown twofold at the fact that Mr. Clown didn't have the decency to wait until I was at least moved out of our goddamn house before finding another warm wet hole to plug, I called up Tom to come over to join me for a power hour of drinking in my guest room. Having nothing else to do that night, Tom was over within the hour and we began our work on a case of Stella.
Halfway into our drinkfest, Tom excused himself to go to the bathroom. Upon returning from taking his wicked piss in the bathroom down the hall, he seized my hand, a look of urgency in his eyes.
"Hey, you wanna go get sushi, like RIGHT NOW?" he asked.
"Oh my god, Tom," I replied, "it's 9pm. Why do you suddenly feel like sushi right now?"
"I just do... let's get out of here. Right now."
I began to bitch and moan about the logistics of our inebriated state, and how we would get there without a car, since obviously we'd both had too much to drink.
"We'll just take the bus!" he suggested, ever full of helpful ideas.
"I already paid for a 12 pack of beer," I complained as he dragged me to my feet and into the hall. "This isn't a fucking free ride night, I'm not going to pay for you to gorge out on sushi too. I thought you said you had pasta before you came."
Despite Tom's best attempts to hustle me down the hall and past Mr. Clown's door, my complaints were immediately silenced as I realized why Tom was so keen on getting me out of the house. The door to Mr. Clown's newly furnished room was mostly ajar, giggles, sighs and meowing emitting from within. Despite the wooden screen obscuring the view of occupants within, it sounded like a poorly voice-acted bestiality video in the filming (though sadly I knew better, for Mr. Clown had a tendency to purr and make other catlike noises). I threw up a little in my mouth, and it wasn't because of the beer.
As Tom and I stood, chilled to the bone, at the bus stop waiting for the 77 in the middle of the night in December, I looked at him completely speechless. For the first time since the beginning of our friendship, I didn't know what to say. I didn't know where to even begin explaining how I had ever gotten entangled with someone quite as indescribably revolting as Mr. Clown.
At last we boarded the bus and made our selection of the empty plastic seats. I pressed my forehead against the glass and vacantly focused on objects moving outside. It was all I could do to prevent the beersickness, carsickness, and heartsickness threatening to overwhelm in an all-consuming bus-soiling manner. Besides, I had no idea where to go for sushi at 10 o' clock at night in Arlington.
The 77 lurched to a stop in Arlington Center, and with it my gut. Making the keen observation that I had turned pale green and begun to yawn and gag, Tom pulled me off the bus to get some fresh winter air. I stood poised beside a trash can waiting for the world to stop spinning, as Tom assessed our present situation. As expected, most places in Arlington Center were closed; being an old-people town, no doubt its good citizens were all tucked away in bed watching Matlock by now. We began our dismal and aimless walk down Mass Ave back towards the Heights. If nothing else, our poorly-thought-out misadventure with the bus did at least get me out of the house.
Several blocks later, we passed a restaurant inset from the rest of Mass Ave with the lights still on. From the fogged up glass, they looked to still be serving food and drinks. Immediately upon entering, Tom and I discovered we were thoroughly under-dressed for the trendy dining establishment that went by the name of Tryst. Despite our shabby attire and my pallid complexion advertising that at any moment I might suddenly blurt out "can I use your bathroom? I'll buy something!" we were treated with immense kindness and warmth by a waiter named Paul.
Paul was a suave waiter with many rare qualities, including the ability empathically connect with his patrons upon first sight. He could tell by the look on my face that I needed a little warmth and unobtrusive cheer, which he provided with a pair of martinis and a steaming plate of mussels from their late night bar menu. I would remember his kindness fondly for years to come.
Slowly, my food proceeded to melt me from the inside out. Silently, I began to cry fat salty tears into the savory brine of the mussels on my plate. I thought about the sequence of increasingly drastic mistakes that had led me to this point in my life, the waste of 3 years that I would never get back, and how I had let myself slide so far into being a sad sack of a worthless person. I'd become exactly the kind of person I detested most: someone who'd become a garbling retard in the process of caring about someone else. I'd long ago stopped standing up for myself. I gave everything in my heart to something that had so very obviously passed its expiration date, and yet I kept partaking and regurgitating like so much bad milk. For years, I talked a tough game, but when it came down to it, I ate way more shit than anyone with an ounce of self-respect not utterly dissolved by the bilious acids churned out by an ulcerating love would have. I was so far in, I'd stopped taking care of myself. The catalogue of complete and utter bullshit that I'd put up with for years all began to run through my mind, one by one. All the times that Mr. Clown had done something completely appalling to everyone looking on, and I would continue lovingly pretending everything was fine, and that I understood why it was acceptable. That was who I was. A weak little fool so easily taken for a ride by emotions that I lost sight of everything else important in life. Succinctly put, I'd become a twentysomething pathetic mess. I was full of self-hatred. My martini became dirty with tears and a touch of snot as I sipped it to hide my face from anyone who could be looking.
Tom reached over and held my hand. "Don't cry..." he said with the earnest pleading tone of a boy consoling momma after daddy done been a bad bad man. His sympathy broke my heart.
I excused myself to go to the bathroom, wiped my leaky face up, and we ate the rest of our food in relative silence, punctuated by stilted conversation prodding fun at the elephant in the room that was sure to be waiting for me back at home. After dropping the sizeable bill on my credit card, we caught a late cab back to the Heights. I resumed silently crying after I verified that Tom had passed out in a drunken stupor on my futon.
The next morning I awoke to find that Tom had wandered off (presumably in a hung over stupor) to work. It was perhaps just as well, as my breath smelled like dog shit floating atop red tide, and nobody deserved to be greeted with that. Well, almost nobody. I took my shittybreath to the bathroom that I shared with Mr. Clown to perform my morning ablutions, only to find a shit streak smeared across the seat of the otherwise pristine white john. I merely shook my head in disapproving silence, toothbrush protruding from my mouth, as I heard an overly perky voice declare from the kitchen downstairs "chocolate makes a perfectly fine breakfast! It's a Harmony breakfast!"
It would be years later before I felt any remorse for blaming that shit stain on Harmony. Despite the humor I found in imagining Mr. Clown diddling his fairy princess in the bum til her poo fell out, in all likelihood, the shit stain was probably Tom. However it wasn't until I found identical shit stains again on my toilet seat two apartments later that I finally put the puzzle pieces together and determined that Tom was a master of the Shit & Run. For the time being though, I contented myself with thoughts of Mr. Clown committing acts of butt piracy on the high seas, and Tom for having the decency to respect his sugar momma.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Sunday, November 14, 2010
I'll Be Your Woman, If You'll Be My Groincobbler
I first made the acquaintance of Tom in the spring of 2005. For years we attended a live-action roleplaying game (or "LARP", to those in the biz) that met 6 times a year at a 4H camp in Spencer, MA called Legends; the same said LARP of internet-fame thanks to the brilliance of our world-renowned Lightning Bolt video - the brainchild of some marketing genius looking to dissipate the perpetual stench of "uncool" surrounding the roleplaying crowd. That, of course, worked out well for all involved; especially "Tilanthis" (the gent featured in said video chucking "lightning bolt" birdseed packets), whose performance earned him a television appearance as one of the single most embarrassing people captured on video posted to the internet. He now charges $5 per signed "spell packet" at science fiction conventions. True story, people. America digs nerds, and I, for one, can't wait until he starts doing product endorsements.
Alas, for all the fame and fortune that befell our dear Mr. "Tilanthis" Boucher, neither Tom's nor my LARPing experience ever resulted in quite such wild success. Tom and I got each other (for better or for worse), a handful of embarrassing alcohol consumption problems, and a tight-knit group of friends who have become as close to family as I'm sure to find on the East Coast. Really, that's not such an awful tradeoff in the grand scheme of things.
Both Tom and I were the type of people who enjoyed humorously jerking other people around (I moreso than he, when it came to roleplaying, though when prompted towards original thought, Tom had an excellent mind for a well-crafted prank). Therefore, we relished those 6 weekend events each year as opportunities to show off some truly masterful feats of offensive humor... often times elevated to performance art. While never harmful or destructive to anyone else's good time, I personally liked to think that the elaborate anachronisms we added to the game really helped our fellow gamers lighten up a little and see the humor in the fact that they were running around the woods brandishing weapons made of PVC and foam, answering to Balendorf Breakswind, Hunter of the Drow. In the world of live-action roleplaying, few social pitfalls are greater than that of conflating the winning qualities of one's game character with those in real life. In fact, I daresay that being self-aware of its inherently humorous nature is the only way I feel safe in allowing myself to indulge in the escapism of fantasy roleplay at all. The world will rue the day that I ever forget "it's only a game."
The Granola-Eating Assclown I was dating at the time, however, was one such roleplayer who frequently fell victim to social pitfalls that come with forgetting the difference between fantasy and reality. He frequently took other players' snipes at his remarkably one-dimensional character as personal affronts to his manhood and on several occasions took serious issue with me for the unladylike behavior (read: swear-words, burps and farts) I exhibited when roleplaying my character, the town drunk. Frankly, I think I was as much of an embarrassment to him as he was to me. After seasons of consoling Mr. Clown for days after attending a roleplaying event he deemed unsatisfying due to game staff "totally messing up his plot" and my make-believe burps and farts, associating with people who took the game much less seriously became a necessary breath of fresh air to maintain my sanity (and what little there was left worth maintaining in my relationship with that limp-wristed ponce).
Despite our shared enjoyment of being the metaphorical saran wrap on the toilet seat of Legends, my interaction with Tom was fairly infrequent for the first four years we attended the game together. In fact, it was not until one particularly bad night where alcohol reserves ran dry that I sought out his company in earnest.
After a year or so of having to endure Mr. Clown's constant complaints, I took up drinking with my friend Steve after "game over" was called for the night at each weekend event. Since drinking was forbidden on the campsite according to the official game rules, I found myself often counting down the hours until 2am, when I could change into my jeans and split a bottle of fortified wine in the woods somewhere until I was sufficiently drunk enough to wander back to the tiny little cabin I shared with Mr. Clown and pass out. On nights that I was especially lucky, our drinking sessions would go late enough that I would wander into the cabin just as Mr. Clown was finishing noisily snapping on the gazillion pieces of armor which comprised his costume and heading out the door at the asscrack of dawn to beat everyone else to the "good loot" the game staff laid out on the trails for people. If ever there were a blessing to be had in Mr. Clown taking the game so seriously, it was the fact that I could occasionally drunkenly snooze undisturbed for several hours.
However, one particularly miserable evening, Steve and I discovered that the experimental bottle of chardonnay I had purchased from the local liquor store was absolutely disgusting. We looked woefully at each other, then the bottle of skunky wine, and discussed our limited options. Until fairly recently, the practice of drinking after spending an entire day roleplaying with a bunch of nerds had been somewhat limited to Steve and myself sneaking off into the woods and brown-bagging some wine. However, a recent tent encampment had sprung up in the lower part of the 4H camp centered around a bum-campfire, and was rumored to be a second bastion of post-game alcoholic delight. In hopes of pawning off our gross bottle of wine in trade for something palatable, Steve and I made our way to the camp.
It was here that I was first introduced to the Dirty Mercs - a group of people that would later become some of my closest friends both in real-life and within the world of LARP. The Dirty Mercs were called such for the fact that they roleplayed a group of mercenaries, led by Tom, during game hours, and for the fact that they enjoyed nothing better than playing a good rude joke on someone if given the opportunity. The kind of folks you'd really want to be stuck with if you were roleplaying with your boyfriend for a weekend at a 4H camp.
As we introduced ourselves to this group, it became clear that it would be no mere feat to fool this bunch into drinking our sour wine. Fine beers and choice liquors peeped out of paper bags clutched in the hands of these crude men and women - this was not a Bud Lite crowd. Despite our sub-par offering of wine, however, the Dirty Mercs were happy to share their contraband with Steve and myself after hearing my explanation for why I needed to drink. To them, it seemed, there were few fates worse than crawling into bed next to Mr. Clown sober. Despite my misgivings regarding the slander of the man I was dating, I undoubtedly agreed.
Our conversations took us many places that night. Among them was a comparison of the most useless prop items we had received over the years as part of the roleplaying game. LARPs sure do give away a lot of crap. I wonder if the LARP industry of New England is secretly responsible for single-handedly keeping the Christmas Tree Shops in business.
"I have this 'minotaur horn' made out of duct tape and foam," I admitted. "I got it as a prize when I went 'minotaur tipping' with the rest of the town drunks."
"What does it do?" asked Tom.
"Nothing, as far as I can tell. It's just a useless trophy item. I wish I could do something good with it."
"If it had something written on it in Elvish," Tom suggested, "you could totally get half the suckers in the game to fight over it. Especially Tilanthis. Nerds love Elvish. Hell, I bet if it were a strap-on, people would fight for it."
"Hah!" I said, "that would be priceless! A gilded Elvish codpiece of the Gold Court. I can just imagine that being the mother of all boy scout badges for the avid LARPer. If you tell them it's a magic item, I bet they'd wear it. I'd want to see Mr. Clown wearing it - he'd probably gnaw off Tilanthis' right leg for it."
"If you will paint it, I will make a strap for it."
Ladies and gentlemen, I know there's something deeply wrong with a woman who is charmed by a man's groincobbling skill, but then again, I wasn't being given a lot to work with in the Mr. Clown department. A man willing to support me in my tasteless endeavor to make people fight over a gold Elvish strap-on, purely for the sake of my amusement... well that was about as good as being swept off my feet. This is really how Tom won my heart.
"Really? You'd do that for me?"
"Absolutely. I'll bring my leatherworking kit next game and you will have your harness."
Follow-through. I like that in a man. People fear follow-through. Inspiring fear that you'll do what you threaten to do - that's where I get my jollies in life. I could tell this was going to be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
"Let's do this," I said.
Alas, for all the fame and fortune that befell our dear Mr. "Tilanthis" Boucher, neither Tom's nor my LARPing experience ever resulted in quite such wild success. Tom and I got each other (for better or for worse), a handful of embarrassing alcohol consumption problems, and a tight-knit group of friends who have become as close to family as I'm sure to find on the East Coast. Really, that's not such an awful tradeoff in the grand scheme of things.
Both Tom and I were the type of people who enjoyed humorously jerking other people around (I moreso than he, when it came to roleplaying, though when prompted towards original thought, Tom had an excellent mind for a well-crafted prank). Therefore, we relished those 6 weekend events each year as opportunities to show off some truly masterful feats of offensive humor... often times elevated to performance art. While never harmful or destructive to anyone else's good time, I personally liked to think that the elaborate anachronisms we added to the game really helped our fellow gamers lighten up a little and see the humor in the fact that they were running around the woods brandishing weapons made of PVC and foam, answering to Balendorf Breakswind, Hunter of the Drow. In the world of live-action roleplaying, few social pitfalls are greater than that of conflating the winning qualities of one's game character with those in real life. In fact, I daresay that being self-aware of its inherently humorous nature is the only way I feel safe in allowing myself to indulge in the escapism of fantasy roleplay at all. The world will rue the day that I ever forget "it's only a game."
The Granola-Eating Assclown I was dating at the time, however, was one such roleplayer who frequently fell victim to social pitfalls that come with forgetting the difference between fantasy and reality. He frequently took other players' snipes at his remarkably one-dimensional character as personal affronts to his manhood and on several occasions took serious issue with me for the unladylike behavior (read: swear-words, burps and farts) I exhibited when roleplaying my character, the town drunk. Frankly, I think I was as much of an embarrassment to him as he was to me. After seasons of consoling Mr. Clown for days after attending a roleplaying event he deemed unsatisfying due to game staff "totally messing up his plot" and my make-believe burps and farts, associating with people who took the game much less seriously became a necessary breath of fresh air to maintain my sanity (and what little there was left worth maintaining in my relationship with that limp-wristed ponce).
Despite our shared enjoyment of being the metaphorical saran wrap on the toilet seat of Legends, my interaction with Tom was fairly infrequent for the first four years we attended the game together. In fact, it was not until one particularly bad night where alcohol reserves ran dry that I sought out his company in earnest.
After a year or so of having to endure Mr. Clown's constant complaints, I took up drinking with my friend Steve after "game over" was called for the night at each weekend event. Since drinking was forbidden on the campsite according to the official game rules, I found myself often counting down the hours until 2am, when I could change into my jeans and split a bottle of fortified wine in the woods somewhere until I was sufficiently drunk enough to wander back to the tiny little cabin I shared with Mr. Clown and pass out. On nights that I was especially lucky, our drinking sessions would go late enough that I would wander into the cabin just as Mr. Clown was finishing noisily snapping on the gazillion pieces of armor which comprised his costume and heading out the door at the asscrack of dawn to beat everyone else to the "good loot" the game staff laid out on the trails for people. If ever there were a blessing to be had in Mr. Clown taking the game so seriously, it was the fact that I could occasionally drunkenly snooze undisturbed for several hours.
However, one particularly miserable evening, Steve and I discovered that the experimental bottle of chardonnay I had purchased from the local liquor store was absolutely disgusting. We looked woefully at each other, then the bottle of skunky wine, and discussed our limited options. Until fairly recently, the practice of drinking after spending an entire day roleplaying with a bunch of nerds had been somewhat limited to Steve and myself sneaking off into the woods and brown-bagging some wine. However, a recent tent encampment had sprung up in the lower part of the 4H camp centered around a bum-campfire, and was rumored to be a second bastion of post-game alcoholic delight. In hopes of pawning off our gross bottle of wine in trade for something palatable, Steve and I made our way to the camp.
It was here that I was first introduced to the Dirty Mercs - a group of people that would later become some of my closest friends both in real-life and within the world of LARP. The Dirty Mercs were called such for the fact that they roleplayed a group of mercenaries, led by Tom, during game hours, and for the fact that they enjoyed nothing better than playing a good rude joke on someone if given the opportunity. The kind of folks you'd really want to be stuck with if you were roleplaying with your boyfriend for a weekend at a 4H camp.
As we introduced ourselves to this group, it became clear that it would be no mere feat to fool this bunch into drinking our sour wine. Fine beers and choice liquors peeped out of paper bags clutched in the hands of these crude men and women - this was not a Bud Lite crowd. Despite our sub-par offering of wine, however, the Dirty Mercs were happy to share their contraband with Steve and myself after hearing my explanation for why I needed to drink. To them, it seemed, there were few fates worse than crawling into bed next to Mr. Clown sober. Despite my misgivings regarding the slander of the man I was dating, I undoubtedly agreed.
Our conversations took us many places that night. Among them was a comparison of the most useless prop items we had received over the years as part of the roleplaying game. LARPs sure do give away a lot of crap. I wonder if the LARP industry of New England is secretly responsible for single-handedly keeping the Christmas Tree Shops in business.
"I have this 'minotaur horn' made out of duct tape and foam," I admitted. "I got it as a prize when I went 'minotaur tipping' with the rest of the town drunks."
"What does it do?" asked Tom.
"Nothing, as far as I can tell. It's just a useless trophy item. I wish I could do something good with it."
"If it had something written on it in Elvish," Tom suggested, "you could totally get half the suckers in the game to fight over it. Especially Tilanthis. Nerds love Elvish. Hell, I bet if it were a strap-on, people would fight for it."
"Hah!" I said, "that would be priceless! A gilded Elvish codpiece of the Gold Court. I can just imagine that being the mother of all boy scout badges for the avid LARPer. If you tell them it's a magic item, I bet they'd wear it. I'd want to see Mr. Clown wearing it - he'd probably gnaw off Tilanthis' right leg for it."
"If you will paint it, I will make a strap for it."
Ladies and gentlemen, I know there's something deeply wrong with a woman who is charmed by a man's groincobbling skill, but then again, I wasn't being given a lot to work with in the Mr. Clown department. A man willing to support me in my tasteless endeavor to make people fight over a gold Elvish strap-on, purely for the sake of my amusement... well that was about as good as being swept off my feet. This is really how Tom won my heart.
"Really? You'd do that for me?"
"Absolutely. I'll bring my leatherworking kit next game and you will have your harness."
Follow-through. I like that in a man. People fear follow-through. Inspiring fear that you'll do what you threaten to do - that's where I get my jollies in life. I could tell this was going to be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
"Let's do this," I said.
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Miracle on Fairmont St.
During the chillier months of 2006, as Tom and I wintered in my poorly insulated second-floor apartment (the front wall of which might as well as not have existed, for all that it leaked heat like a sieve), drinking became a regular pastime. Its benefits for me were twofold: warmth for one, and second, the temporary ability to ignore my present living situation ensconced in the squalor of Tom's belongings by riding the highs of being invincibly drunk. Our regular Bacchanalian activities led to the birth of Wednesday Night Dipshittery - a tradition (often involving unintentional humorous nudity) celebrating the finer points of getting fuh-trashed in the middle of the week and easing into that downhill slide towards the weekend.
Our good pal Bob happened to be in town for one such Wednesday night, which was a special treat since his work often carried him to locales afar for long periods at a time. Naturally, Bob's inclination towards fine dining and quality libations and the company of good friends led him Arlington-wards, to my frigid hovel for the night.
At around 7pm, Bob's gorgeous red Mustang pulled into a prime parking spot in front of my second-floor icebox on Fairmont St. Holding a sack of groceries in tow, Bob informed us of his intent to cook us a French meal of steaks with Bordelaise sauce. His proclamation was met by no resistance on our part - after all, nobody argues with free T-bone steak, especially prepared by Bob, whom we all knew to be an excellent chef.
We proceeded to make introductions all around with the various vintages we'd each procured for the Bob Edition of dipshittery that Wednesday night: Tom's dates for the evening included an amazing 10 year old Madeira, a 12 pack of quality German beer, a somewhat less spectacular bottle of Skyye, and a wholly unimpressive Red Bull knockoff that surely would have earned the most discerning frat boy's disdain.
Amongst Bob's selection was a bottle of 20 year old tawny port. Now, Taylor Fladgate it was not, but a 20 year old port nonetheless; the merits of which were not being lost on one such as I, who was far too poor to afford *any* port nearly old enough to buy itself. As if to illustrate exactly how well his company paid him for his time abroad, Bob planned to cook with this port.
Needless to say, his steak Bordelaise was amazing. Fresh peppercorns, caramelized shallots, steak seared to juicy perfection, all topped with a rich, creamy, sweet-savory sauce; this meal captured the very essence of decadent artery-clogging richesse that once plugged the greedy cakeholes of the 18th century French bourgeoise. Pardonnez-moi, Madamoiselle Antoinette, mais you can take your cake and shove it, I'll take yer meat and wine!
As Bob prepared his meal of a thousand bougie delights, Tom attempted to put a cap on my delusions of grandeur by mixing us all up a try of his 2 penny hooker juice: a big ol' glass of Rockstar and Skyye.
"Just try it baby, try a sip," he cajoled with the proffered glass.
With a grimace I replied, "it tastes like smashed assholes."
To those of you who might deem yourselves connoisseurs of energy drinks: you should be informed that "Rockstar" is but a reference to any occupational delusions you might have when you consume said beverage by the same name. It tastes like licking the last bits of crack off a prostitute's ass, but quite frankly, for many it's as close as they will get without learning how to play the guitar.
Bad drinks aside, we enjoyed our meal accompanied by a bottle of 2000 Clos du Bois (zee wahn zat is from Sonoma County... nat France). Upon completion of the first bottle of wine, we finished the remaining port and proceeded to the deck, where Tom built a bum fire in my copper fire bowl. Huddled around our (no doubt illegal) urban rooftop conflagration, we dipped into the German beer, and Tom his hooker drinks, and horrified my neighbors with crude conversations for the next several hours. As the fire died down we retired to the relative chill of my living room and left the rest of it to burn off.
This, of course, is approximately where the fun began. Fun a la Tucker Max.
At that point in time, it was safe to say that Tom was fucked-in-twain, and Bob not far behind. Having refused to partake in the Rockstar and vodka mix, I was left to the role of "Tard Farmer." That is to say, I got stuck with the job of wiping the asses of two very inebriated gentlemen barrelling around my home. More of this would come back to haunt me, as one may guess in the paragraphs that follow. But first, allow me to quickly preface this with an explanation as to how this related to Tucker Max, a man who elevated the act of being belligerently drunk to an art form, and one of my foremost heroes.
I'd taken Tom to the Tucker Max book signing event at BU the weekend prior, where he promptly bought a book and had it autographed. "Tom - I'm awesome. Tucker Max," the personalized inscription read. Ever since that day, he'd been reading the Tucker stories every opportunity he had. Not only did he become more enamored of Tucker with each story, he has began to make loud unfounded (and frankly laughable) assertions, my favorite of the assortment being "you know what? If I'd gone into law school, I'd probably be a lot like Tucker. Because, you know, I was thinking about going to law school back then."
It had been nearly a week of Tucker talk, and to be honest, the whole thing had gotten pretty old. In a way, I agreed Tom shared some similarities with our dear Mr. Max - mainly in that he'd thrown his dick into some pretty rancid holes in the throes of alcoholic rapture - but I dare say anyone worth their liver's done a bagger or two in their lifetime. In any case, as one might imagine, as Tom became increasingly fuh-tarded, his desire to emulate his newfound hero grew increasingly stronger:
"I'm Tucker Max Drunk!" he declared.
"No you aren't," I replied. "At most you're kind of fucked up. You haven't insulted anyone yet. Except maybe yourself."
Five minutes later, he began again, "I'm Tucker Max Drunk! Wooo!"
"Seriously babe, you don't need to use Tucker Max as a metric for your drunk-o-meter. Moreover, I can *assure* you right now that you are definitely not that drunk, and back it with the fact that you haven't destroyed anything in my house yet." At this point, dear reader, both you and I know that I should have made no such assertion, bearing in mind now that I'd certainly jinxed myself with that statement. 20/20 hindsight.
Tom, stumbling to get up, moaned "I hafta peeeee. Kim, come help me pee, I can't pee by myself."
I could see from his display of epileptic gymnastics that I was going to have to help him up unless I wanted to bear witness to a encore display consisting of his Cro-Magnon forehead going through my glass coffee table. This thought did not appeal to me, as the tard-proofing warranty I purchased on that table was only good for one glass-replacement call. I propped his ass up and lead him to the bathroom.
"Help me pee, I can't pee straight."
I understood that this was his special way of trying to live out another Tucker Max moment directly from The Pee Blame story. I should never have never let him touch that book. At this point I decided I was well and fed-up with his bull, and I called him on it.
"You wanna be Tucker Max? You really want someone to HELP YOU PEE? Fine."
With the bathroom door still open, I yanked down his pants and boxers, and aimed his dick at the toilet. Considering my options of "aim now" or "mop later," this really was the better choice.
"Oh my god, is for real?" he slurred.
"Yes asshole," I said. "Now take a piss. Because if you don't, I know you're going to end up pissing all over the floor somewhere."
Mid-piss, Tom raised his arms and started turning from side to side, yelling: "I'M TUCKER MAX!!!" Before he managed to utter the last syllable, I shut him up by poking him hard in the butt with my knee. "Shut up and piss straight," I ordered. With a yelp and a jump, Tom complied. He hated having anything go near his butt. I, on the other hand, had no desire for piss on my toilet, nor on my floor, but the bottom edge of his T-shirt was acceptable collateral damage, and in fact, partial repayment for my participation in his Tucker Max moment.
Upon the completion of dewatering his reactor, Tom ran off into the living room to aid Bob in polishing off the Madeira.
It was about 1:30am by the time the alcohol was finished, and we all came to the horrible realization that we have to get up for work in less than 5 hours. Tom more so, given that he was the only one of us three with a job where he could *not* roll into the office at whatever the hell time he wanted.
The committee reached a unanimous decision to put our special little R-tard to bed. As I assisted him towards the bedroom, he stumbled backwards and fell flat on his ass onto my palatial bathroom floor. It was at this point that I contemplated putting him to sleep in the bathtub for the night because, as Head Tard Farmer, I reserved the right to refuse to sleep next to GI Sloppy Joe, boyfriend or not. Going against this instinct, I fear, was the biggest mistake I made the entire evening. In fact, the one lesson I will take away from the events of that night is that I am always right, and should never second-guess myself.
I was momentarily distracted from weighing my options by Bob asking permission to go out onto my deck to have a smoke. Bob, as I discovered that night, was the most apologetic drunk in the entire world. During my momentary lapse of attention, Tom managed to sneak into the bedroom and get into my bed. I died a little inside. I struggled to help him navigate the single comforter on top of the bed (as I understand it, a layer of cloth can be tricky) only to be interrupted by the sound of shattering glass in my kitchen.
Upon investigation, I discovered Bob standing completely silent, and completely still with his mouth hanging wide open and a cigarette hanging out of one side of his slack jaw. On my kitchen floor, I found the stem and base of a wine glass and glass McNuggets everywhere. It looked like Clos du Bois committed seppuku. Bob began to mumble a stream of apologies while I quickly swept every last crumb off the floor before my nosey little shit of a cat could book herself a trip to the vet emergency room (which would have increased my number of handi-tarded charges from 2 to 3).
As I cleaned everything up, I asked Bob to have a seat on the floor where the glass shards had not reached. I noticed then that his pant legs and socks were filled with tiny glass shards. Images of Bob Riverdancing on broken glass filled my head. Bob silently clutched his left foot. There were little glass bits poking out of it.
Eventually, after coaxing him out of his little apologetic ball of pain, I managed to get him to let go of his foot and apply a little Neosporin and a bacon bandaid. Clearly experiencing the miraculous healing effects of bacon, Bob headed out for a smoke barefoot onto my freezing-ass deck, only to return shortly thereafter (still mumbling and apologizing all the way). With a final declaration of "no, it's not cool, man... I'm sorry, I broke a glass," he passed out facedown on the floor in my frigidaire living room.
Glass, $3. Trip to the emergency room, $500. The expression on Bob's face in the morning when looks at his foot and realizes he shouldn't have turned down my offer to call him a cab to Mt. Auburn Hospital: Priceless.
I returned to my room to find that Tom had fallen asleep in fetal position, right in the center of my bed. I crawled in beside him and proceeded to yank and abuse the shit out of his back until he relinquished some of the blanket to me. As with all drunkards who pass out, it was impossible to move him off to one side of the bed, despite my kicking him in the behind hard several times. In retrospect, this may have been the triggering point for a most unpleasant morning surprise, but I myself was too drunk have had that much forethought anyway.
Before passing out, I tested to make sure he really wasn't paying attention or using his drunken state as an excuse to be an asshole. I picked up one of my pens from my nightstand and I poked him right in the stinky. His normal butt-phobic ways would have had him wailing like a little pantywaist at this brand of treatment, but this time, he remained completely still. As a reward for inflicting his drunken stupor on me, before falling asleep, I carefully signed in small letters along his buttcrack "Tom - I'm awesome. Kim."
***
My alarm clock went off at 5:45 am. I shook the shit out of Tom, who was still curled up in fetal position.
"Get up," I said firmly.
"Muh?" he responded as he picked up his head. "Why am I wet?"
Noticing the dampness under him, I sleepily replied "you were probably sweating like a motherfucker, as usual. Get up."
"No, I'm all wet."
At that moment, my Tard Farmer instincts kicked in and the horrible realization of what had actually happened sunk in. I forced Tom completely out of the bed only to discover a puddle the size of Lake fucking Eyrie. The puddle was the most amazing fucking thing I had ever seen. It was at least as long as Tom's torso, spanning from his upper thighs past his face, in a perfect silhouette of a torso curled up in fetal position.
"Tom, you pissed yourself."
"No... no I didn't! It can't be piss. It doesn't smell like piss. It smells like smoked mozzarella!"
"The smoke is from when were out on the porch next to the bum fire. It's pee."
"No! Maybe I puked. Did I puke? My mouth tastes terrible."
"There's no chunks! Admit it, you pissed yourself. IT'S PEE!"
"Maybe I puked behind your bed and Blackberry's snacking on it, just like Tuck-"
"No way asshole. You're nowhere as slick. Furthermore, if you puked behind the bed, all you'd end up getting is your own clothes since you throw them everywhere because you're a fucking slob."
"Oh... yeah I guess that's true."
"You peed yourself you jackass. Get into the shower and wash off the filth."
"I peed myself! I'm Tucker Max!"
"Fucking christ. You're not and you're a failure because you failed to pass the blame on to me. I'M the one who found the pee. You're caught red fucking handed. Now go wash."
I sent Tom packing, butt-ass nekkid to the bathroom. I'm pretty sure he was still drunk at the time, since he was still giggling like a schoolgirl over his urine puddle, and furthermore probably giving Bob an unnecessary show of junk. In the meantime, I stripped down the bed and started to pour water on it in order to dilute the piss. From this I discovered another incredible fact: my futon pad was Scotch-Garded. The water quite literally beaded and bounced off every single place it hit, *except* for the pee stain. This made me seriously wonder just how long Tom had been marinating in his own urine. I began to sop and scrub with paper towels, only to be interrupted by Bob's howling.
"Augghh! What happened to my foot?! It's SWOLLEN! Owwwww!"
It appeared that Bob did not remember his little tap dancing incident with the glass from last night. He hobbled into my bedroom and took off his sock.
"I have a piece of bacon on my foot."
"Yes Bob, I put it there. And your foot is right fucked up. Are you SURE you got all the glass out of it?"
"I broke a glass?"
"Yeah. I cleaned it up and put a band aid on your foot when you stepped in it."
"Oh man, I don't remember breaking a glass. I'm sorry... that's not cool, man. I broke a glass..."
Tom returned to the bedroom wearing nothing but a towel and took a look at the bed.
"Aww, baby you stripped it all down..." he slurred, clearly still drunk from the night before.
"Clever observation dipshit. Did you see the size of this puddle?! YOU WERE SLEEPING IN IT! That's how you got so wet! Do you see how far up it goes? YOU PROBABLY PISSED IN YOUR OWN FACE!"
"I did not..." he denied "that's not pee. I swear, it doesn't smell like pee! I think it's puke."
"No, puke has a very distinct odor," interrupted Bob. "I think you wet the bed. Oh god... you wet the bed."
"I'm still not convinced..."
"Yes, Tom" I added, "denial is the first step to admitting you FUCKED SOMETHING UP."
There comes a time where a sensible person knows when they've lost, and stops making up hairy-cocked theories about how mysterious liquid ended up in a bed right beneath where they were sleeping. This was one of those times. Tom, however, was not one of those people. He proceeded to ask me if he'd brought a glass of wine to bed... the only flaw in his thought process being THE STAIN WAS FUCKING YELLOW.
To his credit, the piss puddle did not smell of piss at all. In fact, much to my dismay and amazement, the piss puddle smelled exactly like 20 year old port. With a hearty dose of Madeira. I shit you not, Tom drank so much fortified wine that night that he was literally pissing a tawny. It is times like these where I thank god that we are wine snobs, otherwise my bed might have ended up smelling like Carlo Rossi, or worse. The fact that Tom pissed an exact mirror of his earlier libations, only yellow, impressed me so much that I have since considered renting him out to parties in the future.
Dear readers, you can see for yourself how impressively large this lake of urine is. For size reference, I have included my cat, Blackberry, in the picture. She explored the puddle with an unhealthy fascination, probably due to the unique odor it lent to my futon. For those of you are familiar with her, this puddle measured two Blackberrys long and one Blackberry wide. The futon pad has since become a holy relic, dubbed the Futon Pad of Turlit, the site of the First Miracle of Tom, in which he turned wine into piss. Wine-scented piss. Religious scholars, backed by proof via photo and xray chromatography, say an exact imprint of Tom lying in fetal position can be discerned from the yellow-brown stain.
After soaking up some more of the Texas-sized piss lake, I dropped Tom off at the T stop a little over a half hour late for work. As he stepped out the door, I caught him leaning over to Bob and saying proudly, "hey Bob, I pissed the bed and she didn't yell at me, and she didn't throw me out. She's a keeper!"
I found myself wrestling with a momentary pang of guilt as I imagined him falling off a ladder and dying while working in the ceiling later that day.
***
On my way home from work that evening, I stopped by the Petco. I figured I'd have the chance to get some real cleaning done that night, since I knew I would be returning to the bliss of an empty apartment free of Tom's presence (for the one thing bigger than Tom's butt-phobia, was his debilitating phobia of responsibility, consequences, and cleaning up after his mistakes). For the first time in my life, despite being a pet owner of many years, I was in the market for enzyme cleaner.
"Excuse me," I asked one particularly overenthusiastic employee, "do you guys sell any of that enzyme cleaner that gets rid of pee?"
"Oh why yes we do!" he replied, "right this way! It comes in three different sizes, the 8 oz, the 12 oz, or the 1 gallon bottle with the pump-action spray. Which one do you need?"
It was very clear that this was his first day on the job, and I had no interest in customizing my pee-b-gone.
"I don't know," I said "you tell me which one."
"Well, how big's the dog?"
"Oh, about 6'1 and 160 lbs."
"... I'll go get you the pump-action one."
Our good pal Bob happened to be in town for one such Wednesday night, which was a special treat since his work often carried him to locales afar for long periods at a time. Naturally, Bob's inclination towards fine dining and quality libations and the company of good friends led him Arlington-wards, to my frigid hovel for the night.
At around 7pm, Bob's gorgeous red Mustang pulled into a prime parking spot in front of my second-floor icebox on Fairmont St. Holding a sack of groceries in tow, Bob informed us of his intent to cook us a French meal of steaks with Bordelaise sauce. His proclamation was met by no resistance on our part - after all, nobody argues with free T-bone steak, especially prepared by Bob, whom we all knew to be an excellent chef.
We proceeded to make introductions all around with the various vintages we'd each procured for the Bob Edition of dipshittery that Wednesday night: Tom's dates for the evening included an amazing 10 year old Madeira, a 12 pack of quality German beer, a somewhat less spectacular bottle of Skyye, and a wholly unimpressive Red Bull knockoff that surely would have earned the most discerning frat boy's disdain.
Amongst Bob's selection was a bottle of 20 year old tawny port. Now, Taylor Fladgate it was not, but a 20 year old port nonetheless; the merits of which were not being lost on one such as I, who was far too poor to afford *any* port nearly old enough to buy itself. As if to illustrate exactly how well his company paid him for his time abroad, Bob planned to cook with this port.
Needless to say, his steak Bordelaise was amazing. Fresh peppercorns, caramelized shallots, steak seared to juicy perfection, all topped with a rich, creamy, sweet-savory sauce; this meal captured the very essence of decadent artery-clogging richesse that once plugged the greedy cakeholes of the 18th century French bourgeoise. Pardonnez-moi, Madamoiselle Antoinette, mais you can take your cake and shove it, I'll take yer meat and wine!
As Bob prepared his meal of a thousand bougie delights, Tom attempted to put a cap on my delusions of grandeur by mixing us all up a try of his 2 penny hooker juice: a big ol' glass of Rockstar and Skyye.
"Just try it baby, try a sip," he cajoled with the proffered glass.
With a grimace I replied, "it tastes like smashed assholes."
To those of you who might deem yourselves connoisseurs of energy drinks: you should be informed that "Rockstar" is but a reference to any occupational delusions you might have when you consume said beverage by the same name. It tastes like licking the last bits of crack off a prostitute's ass, but quite frankly, for many it's as close as they will get without learning how to play the guitar.
Bad drinks aside, we enjoyed our meal accompanied by a bottle of 2000 Clos du Bois (zee wahn zat is from Sonoma County... nat France). Upon completion of the first bottle of wine, we finished the remaining port and proceeded to the deck, where Tom built a bum fire in my copper fire bowl. Huddled around our (no doubt illegal) urban rooftop conflagration, we dipped into the German beer, and Tom his hooker drinks, and horrified my neighbors with crude conversations for the next several hours. As the fire died down we retired to the relative chill of my living room and left the rest of it to burn off.
This, of course, is approximately where the fun began. Fun a la Tucker Max.
At that point in time, it was safe to say that Tom was fucked-in-twain, and Bob not far behind. Having refused to partake in the Rockstar and vodka mix, I was left to the role of "Tard Farmer." That is to say, I got stuck with the job of wiping the asses of two very inebriated gentlemen barrelling around my home. More of this would come back to haunt me, as one may guess in the paragraphs that follow. But first, allow me to quickly preface this with an explanation as to how this related to Tucker Max, a man who elevated the act of being belligerently drunk to an art form, and one of my foremost heroes.
I'd taken Tom to the Tucker Max book signing event at BU the weekend prior, where he promptly bought a book and had it autographed. "Tom - I'm awesome. Tucker Max," the personalized inscription read. Ever since that day, he'd been reading the Tucker stories every opportunity he had. Not only did he become more enamored of Tucker with each story, he has began to make loud unfounded (and frankly laughable) assertions, my favorite of the assortment being "you know what? If I'd gone into law school, I'd probably be a lot like Tucker. Because, you know, I was thinking about going to law school back then."
It had been nearly a week of Tucker talk, and to be honest, the whole thing had gotten pretty old. In a way, I agreed Tom shared some similarities with our dear Mr. Max - mainly in that he'd thrown his dick into some pretty rancid holes in the throes of alcoholic rapture - but I dare say anyone worth their liver's done a bagger or two in their lifetime. In any case, as one might imagine, as Tom became increasingly fuh-tarded, his desire to emulate his newfound hero grew increasingly stronger:
"I'm Tucker Max Drunk!" he declared.
"No you aren't," I replied. "At most you're kind of fucked up. You haven't insulted anyone yet. Except maybe yourself."
Five minutes later, he began again, "I'm Tucker Max Drunk! Wooo!"
"Seriously babe, you don't need to use Tucker Max as a metric for your drunk-o-meter. Moreover, I can *assure* you right now that you are definitely not that drunk, and back it with the fact that you haven't destroyed anything in my house yet." At this point, dear reader, both you and I know that I should have made no such assertion, bearing in mind now that I'd certainly jinxed myself with that statement. 20/20 hindsight.
Tom, stumbling to get up, moaned "I hafta peeeee. Kim, come help me pee, I can't pee by myself."
I could see from his display of epileptic gymnastics that I was going to have to help him up unless I wanted to bear witness to a encore display consisting of his Cro-Magnon forehead going through my glass coffee table. This thought did not appeal to me, as the tard-proofing warranty I purchased on that table was only good for one glass-replacement call. I propped his ass up and lead him to the bathroom.
"Help me pee, I can't pee straight."
I understood that this was his special way of trying to live out another Tucker Max moment directly from The Pee Blame story. I should never have never let him touch that book. At this point I decided I was well and fed-up with his bull, and I called him on it.
"You wanna be Tucker Max? You really want someone to HELP YOU PEE? Fine."
With the bathroom door still open, I yanked down his pants and boxers, and aimed his dick at the toilet. Considering my options of "aim now" or "mop later," this really was the better choice.
"Oh my god, is for real?" he slurred.
"Yes asshole," I said. "Now take a piss. Because if you don't, I know you're going to end up pissing all over the floor somewhere."
Mid-piss, Tom raised his arms and started turning from side to side, yelling: "I'M TUCKER MAX!!!" Before he managed to utter the last syllable, I shut him up by poking him hard in the butt with my knee. "Shut up and piss straight," I ordered. With a yelp and a jump, Tom complied. He hated having anything go near his butt. I, on the other hand, had no desire for piss on my toilet, nor on my floor, but the bottom edge of his T-shirt was acceptable collateral damage, and in fact, partial repayment for my participation in his Tucker Max moment.
Upon the completion of dewatering his reactor, Tom ran off into the living room to aid Bob in polishing off the Madeira.
It was about 1:30am by the time the alcohol was finished, and we all came to the horrible realization that we have to get up for work in less than 5 hours. Tom more so, given that he was the only one of us three with a job where he could *not* roll into the office at whatever the hell time he wanted.
The committee reached a unanimous decision to put our special little R-tard to bed. As I assisted him towards the bedroom, he stumbled backwards and fell flat on his ass onto my palatial bathroom floor. It was at this point that I contemplated putting him to sleep in the bathtub for the night because, as Head Tard Farmer, I reserved the right to refuse to sleep next to GI Sloppy Joe, boyfriend or not. Going against this instinct, I fear, was the biggest mistake I made the entire evening. In fact, the one lesson I will take away from the events of that night is that I am always right, and should never second-guess myself.
I was momentarily distracted from weighing my options by Bob asking permission to go out onto my deck to have a smoke. Bob, as I discovered that night, was the most apologetic drunk in the entire world. During my momentary lapse of attention, Tom managed to sneak into the bedroom and get into my bed. I died a little inside. I struggled to help him navigate the single comforter on top of the bed (as I understand it, a layer of cloth can be tricky) only to be interrupted by the sound of shattering glass in my kitchen.
Upon investigation, I discovered Bob standing completely silent, and completely still with his mouth hanging wide open and a cigarette hanging out of one side of his slack jaw. On my kitchen floor, I found the stem and base of a wine glass and glass McNuggets everywhere. It looked like Clos du Bois committed seppuku. Bob began to mumble a stream of apologies while I quickly swept every last crumb off the floor before my nosey little shit of a cat could book herself a trip to the vet emergency room (which would have increased my number of handi-tarded charges from 2 to 3).
As I cleaned everything up, I asked Bob to have a seat on the floor where the glass shards had not reached. I noticed then that his pant legs and socks were filled with tiny glass shards. Images of Bob Riverdancing on broken glass filled my head. Bob silently clutched his left foot. There were little glass bits poking out of it.
Eventually, after coaxing him out of his little apologetic ball of pain, I managed to get him to let go of his foot and apply a little Neosporin and a bacon bandaid. Clearly experiencing the miraculous healing effects of bacon, Bob headed out for a smoke barefoot onto my freezing-ass deck, only to return shortly thereafter (still mumbling and apologizing all the way). With a final declaration of "no, it's not cool, man... I'm sorry, I broke a glass," he passed out facedown on the floor in my frigidaire living room.
Glass, $3. Trip to the emergency room, $500. The expression on Bob's face in the morning when looks at his foot and realizes he shouldn't have turned down my offer to call him a cab to Mt. Auburn Hospital: Priceless.
I returned to my room to find that Tom had fallen asleep in fetal position, right in the center of my bed. I crawled in beside him and proceeded to yank and abuse the shit out of his back until he relinquished some of the blanket to me. As with all drunkards who pass out, it was impossible to move him off to one side of the bed, despite my kicking him in the behind hard several times. In retrospect, this may have been the triggering point for a most unpleasant morning surprise, but I myself was too drunk have had that much forethought anyway.
Before passing out, I tested to make sure he really wasn't paying attention or using his drunken state as an excuse to be an asshole. I picked up one of my pens from my nightstand and I poked him right in the stinky. His normal butt-phobic ways would have had him wailing like a little pantywaist at this brand of treatment, but this time, he remained completely still. As a reward for inflicting his drunken stupor on me, before falling asleep, I carefully signed in small letters along his buttcrack "Tom - I'm awesome. Kim."
***
My alarm clock went off at 5:45 am. I shook the shit out of Tom, who was still curled up in fetal position.
"Get up," I said firmly.
"Muh?" he responded as he picked up his head. "Why am I wet?"
Noticing the dampness under him, I sleepily replied "you were probably sweating like a motherfucker, as usual. Get up."
"No, I'm all wet."
At that moment, my Tard Farmer instincts kicked in and the horrible realization of what had actually happened sunk in. I forced Tom completely out of the bed only to discover a puddle the size of Lake fucking Eyrie. The puddle was the most amazing fucking thing I had ever seen. It was at least as long as Tom's torso, spanning from his upper thighs past his face, in a perfect silhouette of a torso curled up in fetal position.
"Tom, you pissed yourself."
"No... no I didn't! It can't be piss. It doesn't smell like piss. It smells like smoked mozzarella!"
"The smoke is from when were out on the porch next to the bum fire. It's pee."
"No! Maybe I puked. Did I puke? My mouth tastes terrible."
"There's no chunks! Admit it, you pissed yourself. IT'S PEE!"
"Maybe I puked behind your bed and Blackberry's snacking on it, just like Tuck-"
"No way asshole. You're nowhere as slick. Furthermore, if you puked behind the bed, all you'd end up getting is your own clothes since you throw them everywhere because you're a fucking slob."
"Oh... yeah I guess that's true."
"You peed yourself you jackass. Get into the shower and wash off the filth."
"I peed myself! I'm Tucker Max!"
"Fucking christ. You're not and you're a failure because you failed to pass the blame on to me. I'M the one who found the pee. You're caught red fucking handed. Now go wash."
I sent Tom packing, butt-ass nekkid to the bathroom. I'm pretty sure he was still drunk at the time, since he was still giggling like a schoolgirl over his urine puddle, and furthermore probably giving Bob an unnecessary show of junk. In the meantime, I stripped down the bed and started to pour water on it in order to dilute the piss. From this I discovered another incredible fact: my futon pad was Scotch-Garded. The water quite literally beaded and bounced off every single place it hit, *except* for the pee stain. This made me seriously wonder just how long Tom had been marinating in his own urine. I began to sop and scrub with paper towels, only to be interrupted by Bob's howling.
"Augghh! What happened to my foot?! It's SWOLLEN! Owwwww!"
It appeared that Bob did not remember his little tap dancing incident with the glass from last night. He hobbled into my bedroom and took off his sock.
"I have a piece of bacon on my foot."
"Yes Bob, I put it there. And your foot is right fucked up. Are you SURE you got all the glass out of it?"
"I broke a glass?"
"Yeah. I cleaned it up and put a band aid on your foot when you stepped in it."
"Oh man, I don't remember breaking a glass. I'm sorry... that's not cool, man. I broke a glass..."
Tom returned to the bedroom wearing nothing but a towel and took a look at the bed.
"Aww, baby you stripped it all down..." he slurred, clearly still drunk from the night before.
"Clever observation dipshit. Did you see the size of this puddle?! YOU WERE SLEEPING IN IT! That's how you got so wet! Do you see how far up it goes? YOU PROBABLY PISSED IN YOUR OWN FACE!"
"I did not..." he denied "that's not pee. I swear, it doesn't smell like pee! I think it's puke."
"No, puke has a very distinct odor," interrupted Bob. "I think you wet the bed. Oh god... you wet the bed."
"I'm still not convinced..."
"Yes, Tom" I added, "denial is the first step to admitting you FUCKED SOMETHING UP."
There comes a time where a sensible person knows when they've lost, and stops making up hairy-cocked theories about how mysterious liquid ended up in a bed right beneath where they were sleeping. This was one of those times. Tom, however, was not one of those people. He proceeded to ask me if he'd brought a glass of wine to bed... the only flaw in his thought process being THE STAIN WAS FUCKING YELLOW.
To his credit, the piss puddle did not smell of piss at all. In fact, much to my dismay and amazement, the piss puddle smelled exactly like 20 year old port. With a hearty dose of Madeira. I shit you not, Tom drank so much fortified wine that night that he was literally pissing a tawny. It is times like these where I thank god that we are wine snobs, otherwise my bed might have ended up smelling like Carlo Rossi, or worse. The fact that Tom pissed an exact mirror of his earlier libations, only yellow, impressed me so much that I have since considered renting him out to parties in the future.
Dear readers, you can see for yourself how impressively large this lake of urine is. For size reference, I have included my cat, Blackberry, in the picture. She explored the puddle with an unhealthy fascination, probably due to the unique odor it lent to my futon. For those of you are familiar with her, this puddle measured two Blackberrys long and one Blackberry wide. The futon pad has since become a holy relic, dubbed the Futon Pad of Turlit, the site of the First Miracle of Tom, in which he turned wine into piss. Wine-scented piss. Religious scholars, backed by proof via photo and xray chromatography, say an exact imprint of Tom lying in fetal position can be discerned from the yellow-brown stain.
After soaking up some more of the Texas-sized piss lake, I dropped Tom off at the T stop a little over a half hour late for work. As he stepped out the door, I caught him leaning over to Bob and saying proudly, "hey Bob, I pissed the bed and she didn't yell at me, and she didn't throw me out. She's a keeper!"
I found myself wrestling with a momentary pang of guilt as I imagined him falling off a ladder and dying while working in the ceiling later that day.
***
On my way home from work that evening, I stopped by the Petco. I figured I'd have the chance to get some real cleaning done that night, since I knew I would be returning to the bliss of an empty apartment free of Tom's presence (for the one thing bigger than Tom's butt-phobia, was his debilitating phobia of responsibility, consequences, and cleaning up after his mistakes). For the first time in my life, despite being a pet owner of many years, I was in the market for enzyme cleaner.
"Excuse me," I asked one particularly overenthusiastic employee, "do you guys sell any of that enzyme cleaner that gets rid of pee?"
"Oh why yes we do!" he replied, "right this way! It comes in three different sizes, the 8 oz, the 12 oz, or the 1 gallon bottle with the pump-action spray. Which one do you need?"
It was very clear that this was his first day on the job, and I had no interest in customizing my pee-b-gone.
"I don't know," I said "you tell me which one."
"Well, how big's the dog?"
"Oh, about 6'1 and 160 lbs."
"... I'll go get you the pump-action one."
Friday, November 5, 2010
Winning the Bonus Round
The December following my unfortunate breakup with the ex whom Tom had dubbed the "Granola-Eating Assclown," I moved into a tiny one-bedroom apartment next to Alewife, just over the Arlington town line. It was a rushed job and, in retrospect, a downright shitty apartment for the price. Fortunately, at the time, I had few possessions to my name, and a much greater desire to live unburdened by the dipshittery of cohabitants. Of course, this marked the beginning of a period in my life during which I learned to expect Tom as a regular visitor, invited or otherwise, and rarely with advance courtesies, much like my Aunt Flo, though at about 31 times the frequency.
It began scant days after my moving in, conveniently right after the weekend Tom had "taken me shopping" and convinced me to drop hundreds of dollars into "necessities" for my new home (among said "necessities" were a copper fire bowl and an abomination of a cheap pressboard wine bar, along with several bottles of fine vintage with which to fill said bar). It was only after the fact that I noticed that he had absconded with my extra household key and made a copy for himself. Perhaps it was an overdose of gratitude for his emotional support at the time that caused me to turn a blind eye to this otherwise suspicious behavior, which I would learn much farther down the line was the first major sign of dealings with a professional mooch.
However, during the months in between my moving in and my learning that lesson, I had the privilege of Tom's company on a near-daily basis. My apartment quickly became a convenient flophouse and showering facility a mere 30 minutes away from his place of employment (the importance of which will become very apparent further in this tale). While convenient for him for many reasons, amongst which was the luxury of sleeping in and taking the T into work most days, this somewhat non-consensual arrangement became something of a giant pain in the ass for me, mostly by way of lost privacy. Years later, I still wonder what brand of temporary insanity allowed me to slide down that slippery slope into unwilling cohabitation. Tom's ever-bumbling but well-meaning personality certainly made it seem as though I had nothing major to complain about at the time, at least until my first wake-up call came one chilly New England eve in the winter of '06.
I arrived home from work to have my already-dismal post-work disposition further marred by the presence of a pair of shit-colored size 10s, caked in snow, gently melting in the middle of my carpeted foyer. Tom was "home" and had clearly availed himself of my facilities. As I began to untie my boots, I was greeted by the presence of a small slinking cat, silently picking her way through the many shoes lining the edge of the foyer.
"Hi Buttberry!" I exclaimed as I reached out to pet her little black head. Blackberry scowled and withdrew in response. Settling in on her haunches, she narrowed her eyes and cast a disdainful look past my shoulder at the hallway.
"Well, fine then," I said. "Be a little shit."
It was not until I had put my shoes aside in a corner of my tiny foyer that I spied, with my little eye, a mysterious knotted Shaw's plastic bag containing a payload of unknown origin sitting in my back hallway next to the kitty's litterbox. The source of kitty's consternation became readily apparent.
Confusion at the appearance of this bag quickly turned to concern, as I noticed that the bag itself seemed to emit a halo of heat in a fashion not wholly unlike that of steam as it rested serenely upon the floor. It should be noted that my apartment shared the same insulating qualities as those of an inflatable bounce-house in the middle of a chilly New England winter; thus, the appearance of steam resulting from breath and body heat was not at all an uncommon occurrence. Nevertheless, the thought of something *else* emitting body heat from a plastic bag bothered me deeply. Very deeply, indeed.
"Tom?" I inquired, as I poked my head into the bedroom. There, I found Tom lying under the covers of my bed in his boxers, twiddling away on my laptop at some World of Warcraft campaign. His hair was freshly washed and smelled unusually inoffensive, almost as though the very sins against hygiene he'd committed over the years had been cleansed from his body through vigorous ablution involving much ceremony and scrubbing.
"Tom... what's in that plastic bag next to Blackberry's litterbox?"
"Oh honey," he cried, "it was terrible! I was having a farting contest with Matt at work while we were walking back to the hospital... and I won the bonus round."
To say that I was only partially surprised by this explanation was perhaps a sign that I'd been living with Tom for far too long already.
"At first we kept going back and forth, and then I felt a mean one brewing, so I told Matt and he said 'do it! Do it!' so I did, and then I won the bonus round while we were walking down the street."
"So Tom, you... forced so hard you shit a little, is essentially what you're saying. I think we've all been there... You only pooped yourself a little, right? I mean, we can't be talking about a whole loaf here. Couldn't you just throw your underwear away and call it a day?"
"No, it was like tar! It ran down the back of my legs and all the way into my socks. It was runny and terrible! I threw away the socks and underpants... they couldn't be saved. Luckily I had a pair of spare jeans in my work locker!"
My imagination went to all the places I'm sure yours, dear reader, is going right now. An image formed in my mind, of Tom polluting his britches on the streets of Brigham Circle, waddling back to the office, trousers completely browned, cleaning up with paper towels in a men's room at Brigham and Women's Hospital, carefully bagging up his pant-pudding in a bag stolen from Shaw's, marinating in his own special brand of A-1 for a half hour ride on the T, and socklessly trudging through the snow and up the stairs to my apartment to avail himself of a hot shower. This image was followed by questions. If it was that bad, why didn't he just throw ALL the clothes away? He works at a hospital, why didn't he just jump into one of the chemi-showers there and then go home? What does a man eat to make shit the consistency of tar? Most important of all, was the question "what did he expect to DO with the soiled jeans he'd saved?"
"I don't have a washing machine, Tom. You KNOW that." This statement was patently true, though had by no means been a deterrent to Tom leaving his filthy clothing strewn about my apartment in the past. Nevertheless, hope springs eternal when one is faced with the prospect of shittybritches tied in a bag sitting in one's back hallway.
"I know, I know. Don't worry, I'll take them back to my mom's and wash them tomorrow."
Surely, I should have objected, citing the 20 some odd lbs of dirty laundry Tom had already left in my apartment under the guise of "taking them back to his mom's to wash." Contemplating my options, I wondered if there was some special circle of Hell saved for those who sent their boyfriends to the laundromat to put a corn-laden pantload into one of the machines along with some Tide. Fishing around in my pockets for quarters, I weighed the prospect of fiery eternity against enduring a bag of bum gravy sitting in my back hallway for god-knows-how-long. Divine providence was determined to save my soul for another day, as I found no more than a dime and two paperclips in my pockets and resigned myself to believing the falsehoods falling out of Tom's mouth. No change, no laundromat, no Hell.
"Okay. You had BETTER make sure you go home tomorrow. You REALLY need to just GO HOME."
The winter of Tom turned to the spring of Tom, and spring at last to summer, during which time I was at last free from my 6 month lease on my igloo of an apartment. The move out turned out to be a small disaster, though the manpower and dedication of friends proved far stronger than any adversity furniture could throw our way.
"It's looking good," my friend Eric said as we finished up the final sweep, "I think we got everything."
"That's awesome," I replied. "I DEFINITELY owe you a beer for this."
"Oh, and by the way," Eric added, hefting the weight of an oddly familiar Shaw's bag clutched in his right hand, "what's in here?"
"Ah, that would be Tom's jeans, from the time he shit himself last winter while having a farting contest with his coworker, Matt."
"..."
Silence passed between the two of us as the bag landed with an audible wet plop against the freshly mopped hardwood floor. Abandoned in that empty room, we never spoke of it again.
It began scant days after my moving in, conveniently right after the weekend Tom had "taken me shopping" and convinced me to drop hundreds of dollars into "necessities" for my new home (among said "necessities" were a copper fire bowl and an abomination of a cheap pressboard wine bar, along with several bottles of fine vintage with which to fill said bar). It was only after the fact that I noticed that he had absconded with my extra household key and made a copy for himself. Perhaps it was an overdose of gratitude for his emotional support at the time that caused me to turn a blind eye to this otherwise suspicious behavior, which I would learn much farther down the line was the first major sign of dealings with a professional mooch.
However, during the months in between my moving in and my learning that lesson, I had the privilege of Tom's company on a near-daily basis. My apartment quickly became a convenient flophouse and showering facility a mere 30 minutes away from his place of employment (the importance of which will become very apparent further in this tale). While convenient for him for many reasons, amongst which was the luxury of sleeping in and taking the T into work most days, this somewhat non-consensual arrangement became something of a giant pain in the ass for me, mostly by way of lost privacy. Years later, I still wonder what brand of temporary insanity allowed me to slide down that slippery slope into unwilling cohabitation. Tom's ever-bumbling but well-meaning personality certainly made it seem as though I had nothing major to complain about at the time, at least until my first wake-up call came one chilly New England eve in the winter of '06.
I arrived home from work to have my already-dismal post-work disposition further marred by the presence of a pair of shit-colored size 10s, caked in snow, gently melting in the middle of my carpeted foyer. Tom was "home" and had clearly availed himself of my facilities. As I began to untie my boots, I was greeted by the presence of a small slinking cat, silently picking her way through the many shoes lining the edge of the foyer.
"Hi Buttberry!" I exclaimed as I reached out to pet her little black head. Blackberry scowled and withdrew in response. Settling in on her haunches, she narrowed her eyes and cast a disdainful look past my shoulder at the hallway.
"Well, fine then," I said. "Be a little shit."
It was not until I had put my shoes aside in a corner of my tiny foyer that I spied, with my little eye, a mysterious knotted Shaw's plastic bag containing a payload of unknown origin sitting in my back hallway next to the kitty's litterbox. The source of kitty's consternation became readily apparent.
Confusion at the appearance of this bag quickly turned to concern, as I noticed that the bag itself seemed to emit a halo of heat in a fashion not wholly unlike that of steam as it rested serenely upon the floor. It should be noted that my apartment shared the same insulating qualities as those of an inflatable bounce-house in the middle of a chilly New England winter; thus, the appearance of steam resulting from breath and body heat was not at all an uncommon occurrence. Nevertheless, the thought of something *else* emitting body heat from a plastic bag bothered me deeply. Very deeply, indeed.
"Tom?" I inquired, as I poked my head into the bedroom. There, I found Tom lying under the covers of my bed in his boxers, twiddling away on my laptop at some World of Warcraft campaign. His hair was freshly washed and smelled unusually inoffensive, almost as though the very sins against hygiene he'd committed over the years had been cleansed from his body through vigorous ablution involving much ceremony and scrubbing.
"Tom... what's in that plastic bag next to Blackberry's litterbox?"
"Oh honey," he cried, "it was terrible! I was having a farting contest with Matt at work while we were walking back to the hospital... and I won the bonus round."
To say that I was only partially surprised by this explanation was perhaps a sign that I'd been living with Tom for far too long already.
"At first we kept going back and forth, and then I felt a mean one brewing, so I told Matt and he said 'do it! Do it!' so I did, and then I won the bonus round while we were walking down the street."
"So Tom, you... forced so hard you shit a little, is essentially what you're saying. I think we've all been there... You only pooped yourself a little, right? I mean, we can't be talking about a whole loaf here. Couldn't you just throw your underwear away and call it a day?"
"No, it was like tar! It ran down the back of my legs and all the way into my socks. It was runny and terrible! I threw away the socks and underpants... they couldn't be saved. Luckily I had a pair of spare jeans in my work locker!"
My imagination went to all the places I'm sure yours, dear reader, is going right now. An image formed in my mind, of Tom polluting his britches on the streets of Brigham Circle, waddling back to the office, trousers completely browned, cleaning up with paper towels in a men's room at Brigham and Women's Hospital, carefully bagging up his pant-pudding in a bag stolen from Shaw's, marinating in his own special brand of A-1 for a half hour ride on the T, and socklessly trudging through the snow and up the stairs to my apartment to avail himself of a hot shower. This image was followed by questions. If it was that bad, why didn't he just throw ALL the clothes away? He works at a hospital, why didn't he just jump into one of the chemi-showers there and then go home? What does a man eat to make shit the consistency of tar? Most important of all, was the question "what did he expect to DO with the soiled jeans he'd saved?"
"I don't have a washing machine, Tom. You KNOW that." This statement was patently true, though had by no means been a deterrent to Tom leaving his filthy clothing strewn about my apartment in the past. Nevertheless, hope springs eternal when one is faced with the prospect of shittybritches tied in a bag sitting in one's back hallway.
"I know, I know. Don't worry, I'll take them back to my mom's and wash them tomorrow."
Surely, I should have objected, citing the 20 some odd lbs of dirty laundry Tom had already left in my apartment under the guise of "taking them back to his mom's to wash." Contemplating my options, I wondered if there was some special circle of Hell saved for those who sent their boyfriends to the laundromat to put a corn-laden pantload into one of the machines along with some Tide. Fishing around in my pockets for quarters, I weighed the prospect of fiery eternity against enduring a bag of bum gravy sitting in my back hallway for god-knows-how-long. Divine providence was determined to save my soul for another day, as I found no more than a dime and two paperclips in my pockets and resigned myself to believing the falsehoods falling out of Tom's mouth. No change, no laundromat, no Hell.
"Okay. You had BETTER make sure you go home tomorrow. You REALLY need to just GO HOME."
The winter of Tom turned to the spring of Tom, and spring at last to summer, during which time I was at last free from my 6 month lease on my igloo of an apartment. The move out turned out to be a small disaster, though the manpower and dedication of friends proved far stronger than any adversity furniture could throw our way.
"It's looking good," my friend Eric said as we finished up the final sweep, "I think we got everything."
"That's awesome," I replied. "I DEFINITELY owe you a beer for this."
"Oh, and by the way," Eric added, hefting the weight of an oddly familiar Shaw's bag clutched in his right hand, "what's in here?"
"Ah, that would be Tom's jeans, from the time he shit himself last winter while having a farting contest with his coworker, Matt."
"..."
Silence passed between the two of us as the bag landed with an audible wet plop against the freshly mopped hardwood floor. Abandoned in that empty room, we never spoke of it again.
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