Brought to you by Towel, again:
Here's the Facebook message, verbatim, that I sent Gina a couple days back...
Subject: Gina, holy shit.
Message: alright i'm supposed to be studying for an exam right now, but i just remembered that i meant to tell omething you after i knew i'd never see you again: i had a huuuuuge crush on you. and i used to hope that whatever guy you ended up with'd have a good understanding of what exactly it is he's got in life. that's it. even though i didn't know you hardly at all, that's it.
i meant to tell you awhile back, but i ddn't. (that's college's fault.)
I was drunk. That was July 20th at 12:34 a.m. Two days later I had post-confession remorse. But rather than take back what I said, I did this...
Subject: Uh, take your time reading this.
Message: I mean I guess you don't have to respond to that confession, though it sure makes me feel like an ass. Your muteness reminds me, however, that I gotta explain myself a little better... It's not like I kept a diary about you, or stared longingly at you when you weren't looking, or wrote Gina poetry, or anything creepy. And I know for sure that those things *are* fucking creepy because this one chick in my math classes DID all that shit at me.
The reason I promised to tell you was because of one night when my crush on you got me really confused. For whatever reason, you came and picked me up and meant to drive me somewhere. And I dug you but I couldn't for the life of me think of anything to say the whole ride. We didn't even GO anywhere, you just took me home after like a half hour. The kicker is we hardly ever spoke again after that. Did I just awkward things to death? I mean I didn't know whether to regret that night or not, cause I just had no scope on things. I had no scope on whether or not you liked me, you know, or whether you were just being cool to me.
So honestly, life went on. Yeah t's silly, I know. But so was high school. And so was instant messenger. And so is facebook. The point is I'm pretty sure you and i aren't gonna meet up again anytime in the near future--or, for that matter, the distant future--so why *not* tell you that I was crazy for you? Here's to one last time, and this is mostly just cause I always wanted to see this written out and know you'd read it: Gina Murante, I would donate my arms and legs to charity just to get to spend one hot night with you.
Alright, back to my homework. Fuck summer classes.
I was sober this time. That was sent at 12:22 a.m. tonight. Hopefully nobody reading this thinks less of me or less of their memory of high school Towel.
Cause I'm serious:
For HER?? Fuck my arms and legs.
This has been Towel, over and out. (But you guys can always tell it's me, anyway.)
Today, a hungry grumpy koala-shaped man came into the country club poolside lounge where I work. The lounge is a men's only affair, so I thought it strange that a marsupial so obviously trying to impersonate a human had found its way into a seat at one of the tables. This is not fiction.
The koala man-bear ordered a Tanqueray and diet tonic, which I promptly provided. At one point, he wanted some popcorn. I was actually busy popping a new batch. He lumbered over--clearly uncomfortable on his hind legs--and demanded some just before I started salting the corn. "Now!" he sputtered adorably and asked "What am I, chopped liver?" as though he were trying out for a role in some seventies daytime TV show. So I got nervous and a little excited at the prospect of animal-to-human communication and I accidentally knuckle-punched the piping hot corn kettle and dropped the salt. To my knuckle's chagrin, the kettle was more than prepared to counter the blow. The burn didn't hurt the few moments after it happened, though. I was distracted, anyway, just trying to translate the bear's manlike pragmatics and apologize for dropping the salt at the same time. But then after he had returned fuzzily to his seat, and I had returned to my spot behind the bar, I was granted a few minutes of private pain realization.
My inner dialogue was interesting: "Ffffffffuhhhh-huhhhhh-kin cattle nuts. Okay, maybe I should find something sharp and pop this impending blister. No. Wait. Cutting could just hurt more! Pinch it. But wait. No. What if THAT hurts more than just poking it open? What's there to poke with around here? Steak knives. They have steak knives. Fuck. No. Not knives. I'd get in trouble if I was caught. Or something. I'll just pop it. Here, think of something else, brain, while I---oghhh ungodly fuck rape! Hey, sweet. It SQUIRTS. It's like a pussy party-favor water gun! Mega!"
And it *was* mega. We don't often get cool wounds to play with, so I savored my opportunity tonight. Once you get past the pain, there's an undeniable glee in fiddling with dying tissue.
But my gaze wandered back to the koala man-bear after awhile. I wondered if he had ever just looked into a picture of himself among his human friends and thought: "Gosh I sure look... I don't know. Maybe I'm just too familiar with my own face." You follow me? Haven't you ever looked at a photo of your face or maybe a parent's among his/her/your peers and realized you see theirs/yours in a completely different way? It's a hard difference to explain, something selfish with the way we see the shapes in them/us. We seem to compare others to us, as if we and our family're the base forms. And why not?
But this homo sapien marsupial--or homarsupien, if you will--does he just think we were all skinny and hairless? Just cause we're skinnier and less hairy than him? And what of our hands? Our straaaaange hands, you know, compared to his.
I hate reading the word "comfortable" aloud. "CUMPH-turble" is how you WANT to say it. But when one is actually faced with the written form, it's hard to deny that extra O. Honestly, I really think I sound smarter if I say, "CUM-furtible." These are two different Danas that I waffle between... the one who says cumph-turble in conversation and, when he gets a moment to think about it, thinks "man the dana who says cum-furtible is a tool;" and the one who says cum-furtible when reading and, when he gets a moment to think about it, thinks "man the dana who says cumph-turble is an ass." I don't think it's abnormal to feel like we have these polarities, but I think it is abnormal to be a fucking koala.
He looks like a FUCKING koala.
But do you think he knows it? Can you be an asshole and a koala at the same time? Cause this guy managed it. And I didn't think that was possible. "So maybe it isn't possible," I got to thinking. "Maybe he isn't an asshole, because, as I've always believed, koalas are not and cannot be assholes." So I started trying to relate to him. And I accidentally did. Isn't it intimidating or daunting or anything how you can relate to anybody if you try hard enough? And by daunting I mean... doesn't it sometimes make you feel obligated to relate to *every*-body just, you know, when you can get around to it? I call this numb state of mind The Lament. But like with the cumph-turble thing, I'm not always in the mood. So sometimes I just truly don't give a shit about relating to the people around me, and I think, when i get the chance to think about it, that "Man, Lamenting dana is a foolhardy sell-out." But then Lamenting dana thinks that particular dana is an anti-social sellout. It's a pickle, we're in, this being "individuals" gig.
Gig. Listen to me. I called something a "gig" that had nothing to do with actual gigs. That fucking seventies daytime TV show language must've rubbed off on me. Probably cause of the trauma that my subconscious attributes to it--the knuckle-scorching, I mean. God that fucking hurt, but thank god it at least squirted pus really far.
