Ideally my internet life would take on all the richness and texture of my more primitive life in the flesh.

M


y Sundays are like the Saturdays of other people. I wake up hungover, content in the knowledge that I can do whatever harm to myself I desire and not have to imminently face the requirements of my job. Usually I struggle off to one of the various UVA computer labs to check email and perhaps update the musings if I'm not in too bad of a state. Today I was in too bad of a state. I'd been sending and receiving drunkenly flirty emails the night before and now found myself dealing with them in a more sober, embarrassed fashion. This is not to say that the excercise in shyly sexual internet discourse was an unfortunate one. Far from it; ideally my internet life would take on all the richness and texture of my more primitive life in the flesh. We'll have to wait for HTML 9.0 for that, I suppose.

B


ack at Kappa Mutha Fucka, Matthew Hart was enthusiastically preparing for tonight's barbecue in our backyard. I don't know how this barbecue was planned or even if it really was. Matthew operates almost entirely by impulse, yet it's difficult not to find his enthusiasm contagious. Especially when food is involved. He deals with food in the same way I deal with interface cards in a vintage AT-compatible computer. Cooking for him is a combination of pleasure and showmanship, and he delights in leaving catastrophic messes in his wake.

Matthew had bought a large number of items for the barbecue: big brown portabello mushrooms, tof and green peppers (to shishkabob) and eggplant (to filet like fish. For the carnivores, he'd bought catfish filets. Today he intended to actually eat some of the catfish he would prepare, which is remarkable because he is normally a strict vegetarian and has even been the ultimate food-fascist: a vegan. Horrors!

I always feel like such a bad boy when I'm buying a keg, like it's something on the very edge of criminal.

Of course, that was back when he was being, for lack of a better term, severely pussy-whipped. Leah, you see, was a vegan up until February and she still avoids dairy and eggs as much as possible. In the distant past, Matthew tells me, he used to eat cheeseburgers with gusto.
No barbecue is complete without an endless supply of beer. And there is no better source of endless beer than a keg of beer. For the number of visitors we normally entertain, one keg is plenty. No, one keg is too much. We decided to get a half of a regular keg, which, for reasons known only to keg manufacturers, is actually called a quarter keg. The beer was to be Budweiser, Matthew's favourite American beer these days.

He and I went down to Farmer Jack to pick up the cute little keg, along with ice, cups and floor cleaner (a specific brand heartily recommended by a random plump black housewife). Oh yeah, and Matthew bought some zuccini for Leah, his demanding vegetarian girlfriend/wife. I'm sure this shopping list reading experience is the highlight of your day. I always feel like such a bad boy when I'm buying a keg, like it's something on the very edge of criminal. Given all the underage drinkers I hang out with, this is perhaps only natural.

But you know, there really weren't that many under age drinkers at our barbecue tonight. There was just Leah, Matthew Hart, and Deya. Everyone else: Ami Sage, Monster Boy, Natalie, Ian Cohen, Brick Mansion Sam, Steve Weiner, Tyler, the Roebuck brothers, are all over 21. Ian, Tyler and Sam are actually in their mid-20s and Steve Weiner is in his mid-40s. So you see, my peer group is not entirely inappropriate.

Rory and Jenfariello were both at work and couldn't come.

She also accused me of being more mean to her than I am to either Matthew or Leah, something I'd never noticed.

Matthew was particularly proud of his barbecue sauce, which, judging from its liberal application on just about all things eaten, was fully warranted. But Deya, who will usually find something to criticize in every good thing, was unimpressed to discover that the sauce didn't have that "store bought taste." Matthew translated that to mean "it didn't have that cheap taste." When the shishkabobs had been eaten, we moved on to the eggplant and the catfish. Then I proceded to eat chicken breasts that had been frozen for weeks in our freezer waiting for just this day. Steve Weiner lingered by the barbecue smoking continually and having people prepare him food. He stayed there even after most everyone else had moved to the front porch.

When we were especially drunk, we found ourselves dancing around to the music playing in the living room. Ami Sage taught me enough of the rudiments of the Tango that we could do something other than step on each others' feet.

I insulted Deya in some completely casual manner, the details about which I do not recall. She fled in tears. I chalked this up to hypersensitivity, but I felt bad about it later when she explained how completely insensitive I had been. She also accused me of being more mean to her than I am to either Matthew or Leah, something I'd never noticed.

Over at Abundance House, the hippie house on Grove Street near the hospital, another of their weekly vegan pot luck dinners was winding to a close. Ami Sage and Sam are regular guests there, and though I have been there before, none of us Kappa Mutha Fucka people frequent that place very often. Anyway, after our food had been eaten and our keg largely exhausted, I wanted to extend the evening a bit further, and so did Matthew and Leah. So we all drove out to Abundance House. I rode with Sam, and we picked up some vino at the JPA Fastmart as our contribution to the festivities.

I didn't care, I was plinking away on a cheap cardboard dulcimer owned by the überhippiechick, Kirstin.

T


he fun was mostly over with when we got there. There was still plenty of food to pick through, and it all tasted wonderful, but most of the people had gone. Elizabeth and Chesney, my old Dynashack housemates, were there. Elizabeth's hair is now bleached and dread locked nearly to the max. Cory the Coffee Cart girl was also there, as was the tall unassuming guy named Brook (apparently stoned as usual), the spectacled bleach blond chick named Freedom, and the especially tall skinny Chaps employee who once called me "Satire." Today he kept asking me for no apparent reason "Why are you such a bitch?" And it's not like he's gay or anything. He said he was very stoned. I didn't care, I was plinking away on a cheap cardboard dulcimer owned by the überhippiechick, Kirstin. But I was on the edge of passing out. Or passing gas. The latter happened on the drive home with Matthew and Leah and I laughed so hard as they debated who was responsible for the foul odour that I started hiccuping uncontrollably. I don't know about that eggplant.

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