This led to some amusing speculation about what I'd do if she turned out to be a fat girl.

I


n the morning came a phone call from Katie, the girl who found me on the Internet with a search engine. She wanted to be picked up at the airport at 11:30 am. She'd actually convinced her Dad to fly her up. This news was met with wonder and surprise by my housemates and the Brazilian Girls, the latter of whom had to drive back to Brooklyn today. Matthew Hart asked if I even knew what Katie looked like, and I said no I didn't. This led to some amusing speculation about what I'd do if she turned out to be a fat girl. I said that no matter what happened, it would be an interesting experience, and that I had no expectations one way or the other.

My car makes a funny chugging noise when I drive it, and it is associated with one of the wheels. I thought maybe it had something to do with the front right wheel, and so went to exchange it with the second of my two spares, but realized at the last moment that the spare was almost flat. So I decided I'd drive the car and let the chugging be damned. This is not foreshadowing; nothing bad came of this decision.

She's a pretty girl with longish blond hair, blue eyes, an eyebrow ring and a pierced tongue. Both she and her father are tall and thin.

I


  drove up 29 North to the Albemarle County Airport some 7 miles north of Charlottesville to pick up Katie at the appointed time, and didn't wait long before seeing a six-seater blue Cessna taxi to a halt, park, and a man and woman get out. Of course the woman was Katie, who is only 16, but since she's as tall as I am, she looks older. In fact, Katie looks almost exactly the way I'd pictured her. She's a pretty girl with longish blond hair, blue eyes, an eyebrow ring and a pierced tongue. Both she and her father are tall and thin.

It was an obviously uncomfortable situation for two people who had only know each other through two dimensional computer displays (including, at least in my case, some grainy photographs). Katie dealt with it by having me read some of a book she'd been reading called Splatter Punk, a kind of anthology of outrageously gruesome vignettes. But I couldn't read anything just then. Reading is something you do when you're bored or on the pot, just like life is what you do when you can't get to sleep.

Perhaps I'm still skating on my youthful appearance, but I don't exactly look like a teenager anymore, you know.

Anyway, the Dad asked if I was the "famous Gus" and I said yeah. He and Katie argued for awhile about how much time she'd have to hang out with me. He was interested in using this as an opportunity to tour the campus of UVA, something she had absolutely no desire to do. But when she protested he said "we can go back right now." Yes, it was a very father / teenage-daughter situation. I stared off into space. How many years of this have I been exposed to now? I don't have any idea what the father thought of me nor do I know what he thought my intentions toward his daughter were. Perhaps I'm still skating on my youthful appearance, but I don't exactly look like a teenager anymore, you know. It was all very strange. Here he was, a presumably high-rolling doctor shooting his entire day to appease the whims of his daughter, without really knowing what it was she'd come for. But what matters is that he turned her over to me, and she and I parted together without further supervision. He had a rental car of his own for the day.

As it happened, Katie and I were able to converse easily with one another. She looks like, talks like, and behaves like an adult, and further still, she has an understanding of such useful linguistic tools as irony and sarcasm. In short, I didn't have have the feeling I was hanging out with a child. If anything, what immaturity she had was the same kind I have and that I fully anticipate carrying with me to the grave.

Oh look, courteousy of White Trash Online, an age of consent listing by state. Virginia: 16, South Carolina: 16. It looks like I'm golden.

I


  drove us to the Downtown Mall, and that's where I learned that the videocamera I'd brought had dead batteries, so I utterly failed to photodocument the event. I kind of hoped the thugs would be out so Katie could videotape an incident, but the only thing interesting that happened was me introducing Katie to Wei the Alien. She was very enthusiastic to introduce herself, claiming she was one of my Oberlin chums.

Don't expect me to tell you that Katie drank anything other than beverages strictly appropriate to her years.

We walked to the C&O and sat downstairs. Leah was the only waitress, and Matthew was doing some prep cook stuff in the kitchen. Other people there at the time included Adam (a member of the Curious Digit) and Tyler (who is the lunchtime bartender). And there were others as well. I introduced Katie to everyone and we ordered drinks. Don't expect me to tell you that Katie drank anything other than beverages strictly appropriate to her years. And far be it from me to suggest that any drinks we had came as a courteousy of the bartender. By the way, Katie knows her drinks. Today she taught me that a Tom Collins is a sour drink consisting of vodka and grapefruit juice.

The portebello mushroom sandwich I devoured was excellent, and Katie enjoyed whatever it was she had. And why not? It's a five star restaurant for Christ's sake.

Occasionally people would pop out of the kitchen to check out the situation. It was so marvelously weird that they couldn't help themselves. It turns out that Katie is almost as much of an extrovert as Matthew, and she even went back to the kitchen at one point when it occurred to her that she should tell him about the time she was placed in Charter for Obsessive / Compulsive Disorder.

But when Katie and I went to my room, that place was still in its usual state of disaster.

O


n the ride back to Kappa Mutha Fucka, Katie proposed that we have a policy of saying whatever was on our minds no matter how embarrassing or private. It sounded like a good idea, but it didn't really work.

Monster Boy was at the house when we got there. He'd initiated a cleaning campaign and the living room was unusually tidy. But when Katie and I went to my room, that place was still in its usual state of disaster.

I think I should mention that by this point we were completely sober. This made what followed seem very unusual, but also somehow strangely richer and more wholesome. During the next twenty or so minutes, the most humourous event was when the little barbell in her pierced tongue got stuck in the gap between my two front teet.

T


he clock read 2:30, and that was when we were supposed to meet her Dad at the UVA rotunda. So we hurried ourselves together and hopped in my Dart.

I let her off near the rotunda and went to park, but of course she became totally lost as well as distracted by her extrovertism.

To please Katie's Dad, I gave a little walking tour of the core of the campus, pointing out the things that interested me. Here's where the balcony collapsed and killed a person, there's Cocke Hall where I work on web pages, that sort of thing.

We waded into the amphitheatre, which was crowded with students and tables and flyers and brochures. It seems that the various student organizations were recruiting fresh blood. As we wandered about, various people tried to interest us in joining their groups. Katie played along with them, acting as if she was a UVA Freshling. She collected all the free stuff being offered. Whenever she saw an instance of one of those little 40s-style hats (the kind that has suddenly become popular with young white men), she yanked it up from behind just enough to bewilder its occupant. As she put it, "I can do anything I want in this town; I'm about to hop into an airplane and fly away."

She seemed to have more familiarity with my paintings than I do.

K


atie's Dad was growing restless, which is hardly surprising considering the only recreation he had all day was listening to books being read over a set of headphones. And there was nothing really left to show of UVA within walking distance. Katie, who proved herself to be stubbornly manipulative, had the idea of stalling long enough so we could meet up with Matthew Hart after he got off work. But that just didn't seem like it was going to happen. So we bid each other adieu. Just as Katie was departing with her Dad in the rental car, I loaned her my painting entitled Mistitled. She seemed to have more familiarity with my paintings than I do. Evidently she'd been studying my art page.

Let me just say, my experiences today were a hot topic for discussion back at Kappa Mutha Fucka.

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