July 1998 Musings of the Gus

An Ann Arbor experience begins with a July 4th parade and moves on to romance.

• 01: better than making babies - With our powers of information storage and retrieval, biological reproduction is just the more anachronistic of the ways we humans can create.

• 02: off to Ann Arbor - After some halting steps and disenchantments, Jen and I finally hit the road.

• 03: a series of first impressions - All about Ann Arbor and some of the cool people who live there.

• 04: church of cards - I join a parade on the Fourth of July in Ann Arbor Michigan.

• pictures from the parade - Krazy Thom and the house of cards.

• 05: the luck of Wacky Jen - She pan-handles, wins at cards, and gets busy with me. Also, Matt Rogers, my college chum, pays a visit.

• 05: the luck of Wacky Jen - another version written after the first was accidentally deleted.

• 06: livin' on a porch - The cyber-porch of Matt Rogers in Ypsilanti, Michigan.

• 07: tussin' in Ann Arbor - Matt Rogers and I tour the Heidelberg Project and later hang out with a lady friend and take gel cap tussin.

• pictures from the Heidelberg Project and Detroit - rough neigborhoods and corroding factories.

• 08: Pranger & Pasco - Chris Pranger tracks me down in Ann Arbor after finding one of my musings promotional flyers.

• 09: especially geeky evening - We gather in Vanessa's basement for an evening of installing Windows 95 from floppy disks.

• 10: covert drinking in Ann Arbor - We walk the crowded streets with Arizona tea laced with vodka, and later visit a pixie-like girl named Karen.

• 11: WCBN people - I get lucky with a girl who I meet at a benefit for WCBN, a student radio station in Ann Arbor.

• 12: jealous boyfriend - Kim and I spend the day together in little towns to the west of Ann Arbor and then there's an altercation with her old boyfriend.

• 13: to grandmother's house we go - Escaping to Wyandotte to recoup from the stresses of Ann Arbor.

• 14: sex & muscle relaxants - It takes a long time not to come.

• 15: gated community - We visit wild Aunt Bettie, who has settled down in her marriage but who likes for her guests to stay refreshed.

• 16: much like the Truman Show - Is Kim, the girl I'm romancing, just like Truman in the Truman show?

• 17: luck while traveling - As represented by a rabbit foot hanging from the rearview mirror of a young mother from Tiffin, Ohio.

• 18: no rides from Oprah - The queen of daytime television fails to pick me up as I travel from Columbus, Ohio to Beckley, West Virginia.

• 19: changes in the observer - Make the observed difficult to recognize.

• pictures from the end of the Michigan trip - Kim, overpasses, and storms.

• 20: I'm my own person - So Kim discovers, but still she doesn't know the bigger frame around the world we're beginning to share.

• 21: give me my elevations - AAA road atlases prove shockingly inadequate.

• 22: congenital dambuilder - It's nice to have deep water when the weather is hot.

• 23: to take me home - My brother's fragrance, and Kim and I have a confusing series of discussions after she learns of the musings.

• 24: actually kind of bored - Mostly cultural comments on things like Hamburger Helper and insulting local advertisements.

• 25: it's time to move on - I don't need to play that stupid asexual game anymore.

• 26: local man comes a'court'n' - A redneck weirdo tries to woo my mother with peaches and apples.

• 27: teevee system - Fixing the local cable network.

• 28: boiled egg incident - My mother eats boiled eggs in the Shaque and I throw a fit about it.

• 29: whirlwind romance ends - Kim cannot stand her coverage in the musings and calls our relationship off.

• 30: retraction - Kim wants me back again.

• 31: loose ends in Charlottesville - I attend a photography exhibit at the Downtown Artspace and later make peace with some tough guys.