Boom. You're Done.

Faced with the chilly temperament of the big city after a heated workweek, I spent my Friday night playing volleyball with a group of 80’s ladies and embattled weakened warriors. I joined the Recreational Sand Volleyball league on Meetup.com, and they invited me out for a Friday sandstorm. After impressing 100% of the people there with my skills in the first few minutes, I spent the next two hours demonstrating to them that their faith in me was misplaced. My court flailing and failing dusted their eyes with sandy irritants, and my clumsiness left one lady with a bruised everything after I pinned her and her boyfriend under me in a midcourt display of stinky instincts.

I was able to repurchase some rapport, if not some credibility, when I opined that “the net just pinched my nipples.” Someone asked if I meant that my chest had hit the tape; if my nipples had brushed against the net. I replied with “Whatever you want to call it. Brushed, pinched, tweaked… The net just action-verbed my nipples.” By personifying the net and making it out to be a spindly beast with careless hands and a deviant sex drive, I was able to take the focus of my inadequacies. I like to think that my court name is IED (Improvised Explosive Device), but I know a few people would be delighted to swap “device” with “douche bag.”

Like a sandy little frog, or camel toad, I hopped to Wisconsin’s apartment to shower before heading to downtown Raleigh to meet Zhang it! and Joe (the Taxidermist). Zhang it!, who had sworn off Carbamas the weekend before, was doing a Carbama when I walked in. Joe had taken a cab to Raleigh (30 miles and $85) and was put in handcuffs twice in two different taxis. Joe’s pitbull was drinking vodka, water, and lemon slices.

We got dropped off and made a pretty straight line toward a bar called the Ugly Monkey. At the door, they tried to charge us $1 to become members, but I said I didn’t have any money, and Zhang it! told the bouncer that I was a member and that he was my guest for the evening. So we ended up inside, and I ended up with a membership and a sharpie I stole from the bouncer. I would call him incompetent, but it was the same guy that wouldn’t let me in with my work badge back when I forgot my license. Once inside, I began to mark Zhang it! up and down with marker, telling him that the cap was on. I marked every poison ivy spot that I could find, which added up to a lot, which resulted in a Zhang it! with a zillion tiny black X’s. We began to spread the rumor that he had Sherpes, a sharper, more permanent, STD.

Sitting on the sidewalk at the end of the night, listening to Zhang it! talk to someone irrelevant on the phone, I suddenly found myself in the middle of a near shoot out. Joe had managed to press roughly on a passing taxi driver’s buttons, apparently by jostling his crotch in the taxi’s direction. The driver started screaming at Joe, Joe was saying something New Yorkish (actually, it was “Boom, you’re done” over and over), and Zhang it! was giggling like a Hello Kitten stuck in a blending machine.

On the walk back, we came across a group of empty husks rustling with their tops off. About eight guys were gathered, gesticulating and threatening to hand out beatings to each other. I snatched a nice shirt off the ground, and we kept walking.

When we got back to Joe’s simple complex, Joe grabbed a mini-gargoyle from in front of a neighbor’s place and put it down next to a door a bit further down the hallway. Zhang it! was trailing a bit behind, probably still kicking it like a cicada into his cell, when he noticed Joe setting down the ‘goyle. I can only assume Zhang it! thought it was Styrofoam, because at that instant he sprinted unabashedly toward the squatting gremlin, and booted it as hard as he could. It moved about two inches, and Zhang it! went sprawling and howling first into a wall, then to the dusty expanse of unkempt flooring. Then, like a outcropped cherry hiding in a forgotten drawer, he rolled into a ball and waited for a night light or a dark spark. I typed out the following text and forwarded it to ten people: “Zhang just kicked a gargoyle.” I woke up trapped under a flood of concerned responses. Zhang woke up to Joe’s pitbull peeing on his bloody sock.

Last week Chris Lethal, my housemate, asked if he could use my red lunchbox. I said “sure” in the kind of way that most people say “no.” After an awkward moment, he told me that the lunchbox was his. It was suddenly clear to me why he had taken it from my room several times and set it on the kitchen counter. I had thought, “Hmm, curious,” and chalked it up to excessively polite behavior. As it turns out, he was taking it back for himself, but I was packing it and stealing it before he could get to it in the mornings. When my Grandma was alive she used to tell me that the early bird gets the worm, which was an excuse for us to go to BINGO before dinner and stay until after my bedtime. Back then, I had ink all over my hands from marking her B-19’s, and now I have ink stains from a night out spreading Sherpes. Early birds may get the multi-hearted dirt snakes, but the lovable, clueless sasshole gets the zippered red lunchbox.