22 March 2004 ~ Degeneracy...

Just a quick observation... Why is wearing socks with sandals considered a fashion faux pas? I think sandals without socks look stupid, at least until it's about eighty degrees outside. Until then, you SHOULD be wearing socks with your sandals. Otherwise, it just makes you look lazy: like you slipped them on to go to the mailbox, but you couldn't be bothered to sit down and put your fucking socks on.

So speaketh the girl who wears jeans and skirts at the same time.

So speaketh the girl who would probably be shot for fashion noncompliance if she ever left western Washington dressed as she typically does dress.

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I wrote a little bit last night. It's all very disjointed; some of the worst crap I've ever written, really. But it's redeemable. Specifically, I was at the part where it starts raining and I sit on a bus imagining the Apocalypse in full bloody horror. Too much rain can do that to a person. Fortunately, it's almost summer here...

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Was having an instant-message conversation this morning with my friend Aaron. I haven't talked to him in a long time. I don't remember how we got onto the subject, but at once point, I asked:

"Dude, you don't remember J.?"

He said: "No, I don't think so..."

"He was that guy who lived with FatNasty, and we'd always go to Chances together and make fun of Chad?"

"Oh yeah! The freakishly tall guy!"

I replied: "Yeah, yeah, yeah! He got me the job at Burger King when I was working there, but the day I started, he got fired for allegedly sexually assaulting one of the fry boys..."

Aaron giggled. I didn't hear him giggle, but I just knew.

"Yeah," I continued. "So when I worked there, I didn't have any friends. Except the fry boy. But it took him awhile to warm up to me..."

At this, both of us had to laugh. Aaron said: "What a bunch of degenerates we know!"

It's kinda true... We DID know a lot of degenerates. The funny thing was, I wouldn't have classified J. as a degenerate. I mean, until after the second or third time he got put away for improper dealings with minors...

When I hear the word "degenerate," I think more along the lines of Tom. Tom was 30, give or take, and smoked pot everyday. Probably about twelve or thirteen times. Per day. He worked as one of those people who counts shit on the shelves at Wal-mart. Inventory people... He was quite proud of this job. He didn't have a girlfriend, but he did have a guitar, and as everybody knows, a boy with a guitar can get himself laid no matter what. He also had enough money in his pockets (from the inventory job) to regularly pay for a drink for an underage girl at a First Ward pub called "The New Cheers Pub." (It had been called "The West Side Cheers," but as it turned out, whatever it was called, it wasn't located on the west side, so they changed the name... After awhile, it wasn't new anymore, either, but they never did change the name...)

So, Tom would buy a girl a drink -- or maybe he'd just give her half of his. And then he'd invite her over to his apartment, which had a kitchen, a bathroom, and a bedroom, each of which was roughly the size of a shoebox. Alas, Tom was kind of a portly guy, and he sort of looked like he was wearing his apartment. There, he would offer the girl a hit of pot and a swig out of one of his forty-ouncers. Then, he would feel her boob.

When Tom wasn't being a creepy old man, he was spending his time in his music studio, which was called "The Studio." There, a bunch of bratty 16-year-olds regularly gathered to exchange drugs, money, and demo tapes. There was also a gentleman to whom Aaron and I referred as "Child Molester." Child Molester and Tom never really talked, but Tom never really had much to say. He just sat on his stool in The Studio, fat and grinning, taking hits of weed. He sort of looked like a very small Jabba the Hut like that. At the Studio, people talked a lot about how much they loved Tom Waits, and about how the Illuminati was going to... okay, I don't know what they were going to do, but it was something bad. What's even funnier is that I never once heard Tom play a Tom Waits song. Probably he just said that to get the little girls to suck his pee-pee.

Tom was a degenerate.

Child Molester probably was too. But one time, Child Molester bought one of my room-mates a beer, and the room-mate was weird, but I didn't think he'd go in for hanging out with a guy who was genuinely as creepy as his nickname. So, I sort of gave up the notion that Child Molester was a freak. Although he may have dated Valerie once. Valerie, who called herself Velvet, got locked in a nuthouse several times, fucked bunches of dudes for money, and then got herself hooked on smack... All this AFTER she deflowered my dear friend Aaron, got David arrested, and broke the heart of poor, dear Gary. If Child Molester really did date Valerie -- I mean, post-smack Valerie -- he really was a dumb fuck and a degenerate, no matter whom he bought a beer for...

...See, now you're starting to think I'm kidding.

Jake doesn't listen to my Binghamton stories anymore. He thinks everyone there is a degenerate. Except maybe my family.

You know Rose Nyland, from The Golden Girls?

You know how sometimes she says, "...back in Saint Olaf..." and then proceeds to tell some random story about a deformed farm animal, or a dumb-fuck townsperson?

I think I really do come off sounding like that... Like I'm telling stories about some freakish, not-of-this-planet, degenerate, hick town... And that's about half true. Except that Binghamton also has really cool old buildings, and a number of really cool people who only SOUND like degenerates when you describe them out loud. Like J., who lived with FatNasty, and got put away for molesting the fry boy at Burger King...

I gotta go.

Love,
~Helena*