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March 21, 1997, Friday

Now I say: I always suspect strangers to be abnormally normal, though they usually turn out to be normally abnormal.

Deya was in my bed when I got off work. She'd left her keys at Theresa and Persad's and I had let her sleep at my place. It's a big enough bed for two.

I awoke in the late afternoon to Theresa's demanding presence. She wanted me to go with her to get liquor. Waiting outside in a red pickup truck was Diana the Redhead, who is back in Charlottesville on Spring Break. She attends New School in New York City. The red pickup belonged to Sundew, a girl who lives in Fratville and who now attends Oberlin College (where I was once a student). She's also back for Spring Break, but I she was no where to be found.

I suffer some sort of amnesia about the bad parts: Theresa's violence, dumb things I do of an often sexual nature, ridiculous risks that I take, the hangover the next day, etc.
Diana drove Theresa and me to the Barracks Road Shopping Center and I bought a half gallon of Jim Beam bourbon at the ABC store using Theresa's money.

Theresa was excited by the prospect of drinking tonight. I should have been concerned, but everytime a night of drinking is to begin, I'm excited by the prospect of adventures and mayhem to come. I suffer some sort of amnesia about the bad parts: Theresa's violence, dumb things I do of an often sexual nature, ridiculous risks that I take, the hangover the next day, etc.

I usually forget girls have breasts until they remind me.
After much experience, Persad has gone on record in opposition to Theresa's drinking. Her performance on the 28th of February was sort of a watershed moment and she has excercised restraint since. But not before Persad and her broke up "for the last time" and she entered into a week of reclusion. While we were going to the Kroger for mixers she mentioned some details that she recalled from the night of the 28th. She said that while we were kissing I grabbed one of her breasts (I find this very hard to believe; I usually forget girls have breasts until they remind me). In response, she says she hit me.

But today Theresa figured she could drink bourbon in peace; Persad was scheduled to work and wouldn't be around to manage her Friday night.

Not so fast. The relationship of Theresa and Persad is one of measures and counter-measures. They know each other very well and can anticipate each others moves. It is a finely-tuned dance. They cannot exist outside of it, thus their relationship can never end. And so today when Theresa and I (Diana had some other engagement by this point) came waltzing into Goth Central, who should we find within (in addition to Deya and Monster Boy) but Persad. He'd decided to be late for work and stick around just long enough to see what naughty things Theresa had planned for tonight. The moment he found out bourbon was in the picture, he called work and said he wouldn't be in tonight. Tensions mounted. They were wordlessly expressed for the most part, but I started feeling uncomfortable all the same.

By the way, Monster Boy had never left town as we'd thought. He'd been reclusive yesterday, perhaps for reasons that I'll elaborate upon later.

It was such a nice day that I wanted to go spend time outside. Persad wanted to go into the woods; that's his idea of a good time on a nice day. But Monster Boy and I are kind of sick of the woods; we wanted to go hang out on the Downtown Mall, which we anticipated would be a fun sociological experience. The clash of ideas about how to spend the evening dragged on as it always does, but finally what happened was that Monster Boy, Deya and I departed for the Downtown Mall in Monster Boy's Monstermobile, leaving Theresa and Persad to go ahead and have that fight that was brewing.

But unlike the inbreeds one sees at the Pantops Shopping Center, these youths all had intelligence glimmering from eyes sunken into their pizza-like countenances.
By now I was stoned and a little drunk. We had little containers of bourbon which we sipped as we walked, and we did the usual Downtown Mall, east as far as Chaps Icecream and then back towards the west. As we passed the fountain near Central Place, we noted a particularly ugly group of individuals gathered to enjoy the spring weather. Some looked vaguely goth, one girl was horribly obsese, others had strange physical anomalies. But unlike the inbreeds one sees at the Pantops Shopping Center, these youths all had intelligence glimmering from eyes sunken into their pizza-like countenances. There could be no mistaking that this was the Charlottesville's Dork Contingent. Deya confirmed this diagnosis.

We went into the Downtown Artspace, where Jen Fariello, looking very femme in contrast to the rude masculinity of the industrial strength wet-vac she was pushing, was cleaning up a terrible water spill with origins in the Jefferson Theatre upstairs. It seems that Jessika's friend Dave Sickman from Belmont had been doing some plumbing tinkering as part of his theatre maintenance job and had instigated a flood of near-biblical proportions. It had pooled to a depth of two inches in one of the gallery's side rooms.

While she worked, Monster Boy, Deya and I were around the corner in the gallery mainspace smoking some kind bud (the most powerful form of pot). It was Monster Boy's.

We went to the Mudhouse and I checked my email and drank coffee while the others grew impatient.

As we left the Mudhouse, we passed a little music group comprised of Phil the Rogue Ginini, his older alcoholic Irishman squeeze-box buddy, and some violin-playing woman. They'd just been joined by a long haired country boy with a guitar. He started singing Little Feat's "Willin" with a loud honest country boy voice that seemed to flow like golden clover honey.

And I've been from Tuscon to Tucumcari
Tehachapi to Tonapah
Driven every kind of rig that's ever been made
Driven the back roads so I wouldn't get weighed
And if you give me: weed, whites, and wine
And you show me a sign
Well I'll be willin', to be movin'

I stood and watched; I was amazed. I'm not a fan of Little Feat, mind you (and only know that particular song is by Little Feat from subsequently doing Web research). But there was something compelling going on here. There was something compelling about the elderly couple and the children whose faces lit up as they heard this familiar song. There was also something compelling about the fact that the long haired country boy only knew the first stanza and the chorus. None of this appealed to Monster Boy; he wanted to just keep on walking. Deya was ambivalent.

We walked to the C&O in hopes of finding Diana the Redhead. Instead, we found Karen the German Girl1 (who has been in Germany since this summer), Zachary and Leticia the Brazilian Girl. It felt like a different world all of a sudden; suddenly it's warm and all these people from the past are back in Charlottesville.

We started walking back to my house. As we passed the Federal Building beyond the Omni and the West End of the Mall, Monster Boy (who must have been pretty stoned) suddenly recalled that he had a car; he, Deya and Leticia went off to ride it back to the Corner while I walked with Zach and Karen. Monster Boy's car is too full of junk to seat more than three.

As Zach and I walked, we sang loud, drunken a'cappella rap music. Sometimes one of us would imitate an instrument, other times we'd both sing. The funniest lyric of all was when I started rapping "I'm the whitest nigga in Shallutsville." I mumbled the lyrics somewhat whenever we passed folks who I thought might take offense. I have to say it was an intense experience to sing that loudly for the course of the entire walk from the Downtown Mall to the Corner.

Jatasya Season Begins

Somehow we all ended up in front of Goth Central. Diana the Rehead appeared from somewhere, Karen the German girl left but then returned, Monster Boy, Deya and Leticia came from the Downtown Mall, and in addition to those people, suddenly Jatasya appeared. If you read my musings often, you'll notice that I have almost never mentioned Jatasya. She disappears during the Winter. But on the first warm nights of Aries she usually emerges from hibernation. Tonight it seemed she had nothing else to do but hang out with me and my friends. This was made easier by the presence of Diana, since they are good friends. But you must understand, Jatasya and I have a history of conflicts that make us uneasy around each other (see the Storm of the Century for example). Among other annoyances, she has a smarmy habit of telling me to "be careful" and that she is "worried" about me. And of course she had more than once expressed concern about how much alcohol I drink. But tonight, she was drinking like everyone else, and thoroughly enjoying herself.

The booze was running kind of low at this point. I went into Goth Central and found Hobi and Persad holed up in there; they'd drunk quite a bit and contended that they were reserving the rest for Theresa, who was "somewhere" (my memory is spotty at this point).

Monster Boy had said something about the situation being "weird" and I'd had my suspicions, but this was a little weirder than I'd expected.
Let's see; Theresa appeared from "somewhere" and she drove Diana and me to the ABC store at Barracks Road so we could get more booze before the place closed at 10pm. We picked up a half gallon of some kind of spiced rum; paid for partly by Diana and partly by me. Out in front of the ABC store, we ran across Angela's (Theresa's Sister's) boyfriend Aaron standing around with some youthful chums. He was despondent. He'd been trying to track down Angela all night and he couldn't find her anywhere. Some crisis has apparently resulted from the night Monster Boy and Angela split a half gallon of vodka between them. That was the night they stopped by to visit me at Comet. It seems, according to Aaron, that the whole story is that Monster Boy and Angela ended up together in Monster Boy's bed in a state of undress the following morning. Monster Boy had said something about the situation being "weird" and I'd had my suspicions, but this was a little weirder than I'd expected. Upon hearing this news, Theresa became enraged. She felt she'd been deceived by the account she'd received from her sister and Monster Boy.

Back on Wertland, there was (according to Deya) some sort of physical struggle between Angela and Theresa. This is what I think happened next: Theresa and Persad remained at Goth Central to have another fight while Hobi, Diana, Deya, Jatasya, Monster Boy, Angela, Leticia and possibly Zachary and Karen all came with me back to my house, the Dynashack. We were joined by housemates Elizabeth and Andrew. We hung out in the living room and those of us who had been drinking liquor seemed to be in a sort of alcohol-induced state of mutual friendliness, so to speak. Had the lights been lower and the furniture more comfortable, I think something very embarassing could well have happened. I say this with whatever confidence my foggy memory of the evening can muster.

She tried to heal me with some concentrated psychic vibes and when that didn't work, she began assigning people tasks based on their astrological signs.
Jatasya was in an exceptionally spiritual mood and quickly decided she has some sort of cosmic connection to Elizabeth, whom she had never met before. She sat on her lap and kept looking intently at her, as if through Elizabeth's flesh and into her very soul, saying "Leo...Leo...." (Elizabeth's sun sign). Meanwhile the pot was being passed around relentlessly. We'd moved by this point to Elizabeth's room and I was lying on my back thinking about the joys of vomitting. As this thought passed through me, I apparently lost all blood flow to the surface of my body and turned ghostly white. Elizabeth told me later that my lips turned blue and my skin became as white as my teeth. Everyone started commenting about how white I was and I began to entertain the notion that I might die. I needed to get away from all the prying eyes. So I went down to the first floor bathroom and threw up. I puked only a tiny amount at first. But then came the real stuff. The vomit was almost completely clear and had a slimy consistency.

As I lay in my bed, various people were fussing over me. Elizabeth got me some water (and for some reason my response was "don't patronize me") and someone else got me a bucket in case I needed to vomit again. Deya had sort of taken charge of the "take care of Gus" operation, while the others tried to do their part. All Jatasya knew how to do in such a situation was be spiritual. She tried to heal me with some concentrated psychic vibes and when that didn't work, she began assigning people tasks based on their astrological signs. She was carrying astrology to the most absurd extreme.

I slept for awhile and then awoke to hear a party raging outside my room. Dynashack was getting down. By this point I'd more or less recovered from my liquor poisoning and I considered joining the party. But I was comfortable where I was so I rolled over and went back to sleep.

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