February 14 1998, Saturday

As I wolfed down my Big Macs in Deya's car, I noticed that the beef patties were awfully thin. Perhaps they're being shaved extra thin as a cost-saving measure in the midst of war.

B

ack at Kappa Mutha Fucka, Matthew headed off to Carter's Mountain to cook some gourmet tuna fish concoction of his own design for Peggy, who is going nuts from cabin fever trapped in that house by herself all day with a squalling Baboose. By the way, it's possible the Baboose has a name now. We're all trying the name "Oliver" as an experiment.

Meanwhile I flipped through the Buck Saver looking for a prospective car to buy. There's lots of cheap cars available out there. Unfortunately, none of them were being advertised in the Buck Saver.

S

ince my car is on the fritz, I never ever go home anymore. Hoagie, my mother has grown desperate; there are many things that need doing back at the childhood home, and I'm the only one to do them. So tonight she actually drove to Charlottesville just to pick me up (she'd be staying the night and we'd be leaving tomorrow). She arrived in the early evening, announced (as usual) that her stocks have been performing exceptionally well, and that she'd be taking us (Deya and me) to dinner anywhere we wanted to go. That was all well and good, but then Deya pointed out that since today was Valentine's day, all the restaurants would be crowded with nauseating couples and pinks hearts a'pitter-patter. So we decided to get pizza instead. Deya ordered from Hot Tomatoes, which has far and away the best delivery pizza in town. No matter, my mother is loaded.

She's so loaded in fact that's she's offered to contribute money to a car purchase if I need to make one. But as I flipped through the Buck Saver, it became increasingly clear that I should probably just fix up the Dart.

As we ate our pizza, Wilbur the Cockatiel clambered from Deya to me and back again and Nicholas the Cat badgered us for crust and cheese. Later on the cat and the bird could both be seen cuddling with Deya. They're fairly compatible, at least when Deya is there. The cockatiel sometimes likes to preen Nicholas' whiskers. It's amusing enough that Hoagie suggests we videotape it and submit it to America's Funniest Home Videos.

E

ventually Matthew Hart returned from Carter's Mountain complete with Shira the Dog (who was all tuckered out from chasing deer). Then Bn, my old Comet co-worker, randomly materialized. He's still working for Infi.net, but now he's homeless in Norfolk and living in his car. He says expenses aren't too bad when there's no rent that needs to be paid.

We all sat around talking about various things including stupid people who make tech support calls. "My coffee cup holder won't come out!" (in reference to the CD loading tray) and "I have the mouse on the screen, but now I can't see the cursor!"

Matthew also told an amusing story from his family. His grandmother is dying from bone cancer, and when he went to visit her the other day, his grandfather told him of the days when he was stationed in Cuba (back during World War II). It seems that Matthew's grandfather used to sneak out and shoot the cows of some of the locals and then serve his battalion beef (even while the other battalions were forced to eat Spam). One day, however, he was caught, imprisoned, and almost court martialed. It was such a big scandal that Franklin D. Roosevelt even got in on the action, writing his recommendation that Matthew's grandpa "needs to learn not to shoot calves." The story sounded very familiar to me; I have no doubt that Matthew's grandfather and Matthew both share an "impulsive sociopathy gene."

T

onight there was a party at Freedom's house (down on the corner of 10th and Wertland Streets) in celebration of the birthday of Dave Mac, a tall curly-haired guy who also lives there. Bn, Matthew and I all decided to go. Deya would have gone too, but suddenly she was feeling ill, so she went to bed. My mother stayed back at Kappa Mutha Fucka.

I rode with Bn in his car, and we parked several blocks away. Matthew was already at the party; he'd parked rock star stylee right in front of the house on the no parking side of the street. Just the other day his car was towed, and he'd been forced to pay over a hundred dollars in back parking tickets, but he never learns from such experiences.

The party had a number of problems right from the get-go. There were a lot of hippies there, you see, and they all were all dominating the dance floor with their ludicrous "dancing" and monopolizing the CD player with endless reggæ. Regardless what you think of reggæ, it's really not very good party music. You can't really dance to it, and for me, it's extremely irritating to listen to. But hippies sure love it, and in their oblivion it would never cross their minds that anyone in the world would ever listen to anything else.

From there the music grew even worse, some kind of African tribal crap, full of drums and hooting and hollering. Good god. Freedom knew there was a problem and could be heard complaining about it, but no one was willing to take control.

Beyond that, the kitchen smelled exactly like fart. I mean exactly. But unlike a fart, the odour lingered for hours. I had trouble making it to the punch bowl, so foul was the fart smell. But I found the situation very humourous and laughed my ass off as I told various people, "What this party really needs is some Megadeth and some Maalox."

But then Matthew the funk musician somehow made it to the CD player and put on some funk. Now I'm no big fan of funk. On most days I wouldn't cross the street to hear one of Charlottesville's many white boy funk bands play. But in this case, never had a change in music ever sounded so good. I was suddenly a fan of funk. And so were the other partiers. They came streaming out of rooms throughout the house and crowded the floor and danced like it was 1999. Along a wall a life-sized cut-out of Princess Leah from Star Wars gave the impression that the babe-to-dude ratio was pretty damn good.

Lots of people I knew turned up, including including Catherine DeGood and her dog Diohji. Diohji stood among the dancers at Catherine's feet for the whole night. His obsessive codependency is even more pathological than his weight problem.

The other day Angela told me that lots of people think I'm gay. Maybe it's that lisp that Nancy Firedrake noticed. For some reason I sort of like being thought gay even if I'm not, and tonight I delighted in introducing myself to people, girls mostly, and telling them that I'm gay right away.

There was this one guy at the party, his name was Chad, and he had a thick Southwest Virginia accent, punk rock hair and a wallet chain. Anyway, he was being really friendly in a drunk guy sort of way, telling everyone that I was just the greatest person he'd ever met. It turns that he was one of the strangers in my room smoking pot at the Aquarius Party. I don't know what he saw me doing that night, but tonight he was an evangelist spreading the pro-Gus word.

I'd been watching this one really cute girl on the dance floor as she danced exclusively with other girls. I know who she is, but I won't say here. Anyway, I found myself experiencing this kind of fetishistic interest in the triangle of skin that formed where the slit in her skirt intercepted the top of her very tall boots. Later on she came up to me and started dancing with me. The way she moved had a fascinating middle eastern quality. When she talked, though, I realized that she was incredibly drunk. She kept demanding that I "lead" as we danced, as if I knew how to dance at all. Eventually she went home with one of her girlfriends.

Later on I found myself in this one room where the pot was being smoked and an electric guitar was being quietly played, at times by Bn. An extremely drunk, extremely ugly young man careened into the room and ended up on his back among the potted plants. When he righted himself he began talking loudly, though he made no sense whatever. Then he wanted everyone to come up with synonyms for masturbation. When I expressed my irritation, he began to belittle me in his own drunken way, making light of my clothes. He called me "Don Johnson" because of my corduroy jacket (which he evidently thought I shouldn't be wearing because it was an 80s fashion). As he worked himself up, I responded by saying, "Oh my goodness, I'm hearing some belligerence in this land of happiness!"

As the party wound down, Bn was trying to track down his paraphernalia and I was wondering if I'd be able to find a ride back home. It didn't look so likely, so I just started walking. I wasn't especially drunk (the alcohol had run out an hour before) but I was a little stoned.

It seemed like an uncomfortably cold walk; the night air had a relentless chill and my corduroy jacket was the kind worn more for fashion than function. But I quickly discovered that if I ran for short little bursts I could heat myself up enough that the chill became a non-issue. I also discovered that it is possible to run fairly quickly down railroad tracks if one holds one's toes at the proper angle.