2003-04-13 - 9:17 p.m.

4/3.2003

Oh what a wild and crazy two days I have had.

On Friday morning I wake up at Dan’s place. The maintenance guy for the apartment actually wakes me up. He knocks on the door at a little after nine in the morning. No one Dan knows would knock on his door at this hour. He’s an artist. He’s a poet. He’s a dope-fiend and a drunkard. He’s a late sleeper. If this one picnic day maybe his parents could be stopping by, but this is on picnic day eve. I don’t open the door. He opens the door himself. The maintenance guy. He asks me if it’s okay for him to some in. I tell him I don’t live here; I’m just sleeping off a drunken spell on my friend’s couch. I have no authority over anything. He tells me that they put a note on the door that says they can inspect the apartment. I was drunk the night before. It’s nine AM. I am not going to argue. Just stay and be quiet.

I finally get up at after 11. Dan is taking a shower up stairs. I go to my car to change. I walk to school and go directly to the quad. I see James and sit down with him and a girl whose name I can’t remember. He talks about my diary and about Karina the Christian. We don’t go into too much detail because the girl he is with is a little Christian, or at yeast conservative enough to not like Hedwig and the angry inch. Dan slowly walks over. Of course I could just say that Dan walks over, but I have to add a few words into the sentence because you have to take your time finishing it. Notice all the time I am taking up on Dan’s walking. I’m doing this because it takes a long time for Dan to walk some place. If you want to call it walking – I prefer to say that he meanders. You see him and you want to call out his name, but you know it will take a few minutes for him to get to you so you have to hold your tongue. Otherwise the silence in-between you saying hello and him actually showing up will feel uncomfortable. But he does –eventually. And then eventually we see Azver, and then Lisa shows up 30 seconds later. Lisa runs down Azver and then they sit down and Azver talks about getting pulled over by the Highway patrol for exceeding 100 MPH. He blames the cops for tailgating, as if they were pushing him up to the triple digits. When he talks to the cops he vomits into a cup. Nervous and quickly out a few hundred dollars.

One of Lisa’s friends sits down. A guy I have talked to many a time but can never remember his name. Emrita shows up with him, but only for a moment. Lisa’s friend says that he only sees me on the quad or the M. U. And by that he means that he always see me there. James leaves and Lisa and Azver come and go. I go to get something to eat and run into Jay from Write Club and my poetry class. I nice guy that I haven’t seen in a while. I ask him what’s he’s up to and invite him to a party and also to sit down with us on the quad. He does. And we all talk about California and alcohol. Then Aisha wanders over. At this point she introduces herself to Lisa’s friend. Jordan! That’s his name. So then I introduce everyone to everyone else. I tried to play it cool, like I just forgot to introduce people – but I didn’t want to expose my ignorance.

We all sit around and talk about stealing chairs from picnic day. We talk about where we are living next year. I’m living with Dan, Lisa, Vickie, and possibly Chris on Diablo Street around the corner from Covell and F. we’re going to call the house The Pentagram at Diablo.

At around 5 0’clock we all get up and go our separate ways. I go to the computer lab at the M. U. I leave at 6 PM. I see Aisha in front of the cross cultural center and talk to her about Deep fried Twinkies – or as I call them with blunt honesty, heart disease on a stick. There is a picture on the Twinkie booth that is set up for Picnic day of a big group on Smiling Twinkies all lined up with smiles on their faces to jump into a vat of flaming oil. The ones that are just about to jump in have this serious Zen look on their face. As if they know they are going to die and they have accepted it. Their destiny is not to survive throughout their 250-year shelf life, but to be deep fried and consumed by overweight American tourists. Their ability to accept this fate would seem brave – if they weren’t fucking Twinkies.

I tell Aisha I’m going to pick up my check. She probably assumes that I’m following her. I know I look creepy and at a few hundred times in my life I have been pathetic and desperate, but this is not one of them. So I tell her I’ll see her later. She’s supposed to call me and tell me about any parties that are happening.

I pick up my paycheck, which is considerably more than I thought it would be but I dropped my health insurance from my employer so I have some extra cash now. Plush I worked over 30 hours during spring break. Money is nice. Fuck what the hippies and communists say. Money is very nice. But not too much money. Money is liked deep-fried Twinkies. One is too many and a thousand isn’t enough. Or maybe a couple is okay, but dozens will destroy. Enough with the analogies, already.

I wander throughout Davis over to the El Maraichi. I sit and watch the war. The streets of Baghdad are filled with Iraqi currency. It looks like a ticker tape parade. All this confetti cash with Saddam’s mustchached mug littered in every gutter. People are jumping in it like they jump into piles of leaves every autumn in New England. It is a surreal sight to see.

I go back over to my car at Baker’s Square. I see Dan. Wow, I saw Dan. Are you surprised? Are you tired of me running into Dan? Well, if you are then tough shit because it’s going to happen many more times. Dan needs help with his painting in the art building so we walk over there and he takes some pictures of it. It takes about an hour’s time. I’ve never looked at the art building so closely. I critiqued or insulted or praised or ignored many pieces of art on the walls of the 3rd floor, where Dan’s studio is.

We went back over to Dan’s place and talked to Chris on the phone. Chris will be ready in half and hour. I look through the yellow pages because it interests me. I haven’t looked through the yellow pages of Yolo County before. The first thing I always look for is Adult Entertainment or Escort Services. There is no Adult Entertainment other than phone sex lines and the only Escort Services are based out of Sacramento. What a sad sad county.

We go pick up Chris and bring the beer left over from last night with us. We drive back over to Dan’s. There is supposed to be a party a Dan’s apartment complex. We look outside and see two guys standing the central plaza. We say fuck it and walk over to 9 something 8th street. Aisha said there was a party there, she would be going there after she leaves the frat party that she would attend first. Its humorous to me that she bad talks fratboys because they were the type of guys to insult her while she was still honoring hajab and wearing a scarf but she spends so much time hanging out with them. I guess when you are an 18 year old girl you get the free booze however you can.

We walk over there and as we show up I see Gordon drive up. Dan tries to walk into the part but apparently it is closed. Gordon hollers that it’s no big deal because he was just going to bring a bunch of girls anyway. I yell that it wouldn’t matter because the house if full of faggots anyway, not that there is anything wrong with that. But they should just stop living a lie. I introduce Gordon to Dan and Chris. They have met before but under far more drunken conditions. Gordon says there is a party in Vacaville, but we don’t want to go to Vacaville. We say there is a party at Dan’s place. Gordon doesn’t want to give us a ride because we have beer and he isn’t 21. Plus the containers are open – holy shit that’s a mortal sin – so we down them and hop in. Aisha calls me and I tell her that her party destination sucked and I told her where we were going. Gordon dropped us off after circling the block trying to find some place to park. He was very nervous about parking in the wrong space. He says he’ll find a place. I keep telling him to park at baker’s square but he’s too dumb, too smart, or too nervous. Well, I’m not one to talk because I’ve wasted over a hundred dollars on parking tickets so it’s better him to be safe than be a wretched old regretful fuck like I am.

The party is alive. In less than an hour 2 people because several dozen. The beer is flowing and the spirit of America is alive. At first Dan, Chris, and just talk amongst our selves but as the beer gets in our belly we spread through out the crowd. Chris talks to a guy named Carl that has his arm in a sling. Chris tells him that he should say he is a war hero. I expand on this and tell everyone around us that Carl is a war hero. He has killed 2 men in the desert. He has a Purple Heart. He helped have that Lynch girl a week ago. Woman should fuck him as their patriotic duty or men if he swings that way. I think I make Carl nervous. Eventually Gordon and his friend Yao show up. It took them longer to park than it does to drive to Vacaville from Davis. But whatever. Gordon doesn’t take any beer because he wants to steer correctly and that means sobriety. But he does talk on his cell phone more often than Puff Daddy, a drug dealer, and a pimp – combined.

Chris introduces me to some people. He points out this girl named Charlee that is Egyptian. He didn’t need to point her out; parts of me were already pointing toward her.

I talk to Chris friend Rune about the magazine girl we all smoked out with a few months ago. The little filthy girl that was cute sexy naughty with a mouth full of nasty jokes. I told her that she almost gave me a blowjob for $40. She didn’t, but in the right circumstances she would have, I don’t know if I would have. But prostitution is a bridge that you decide to cross when you come to it.

Aisha shows up with her friend Robin. She is immediately frightened of me – or so it seems. Rune and Robin apparently hit it off. He got to take her back to her apartment but he failed as a man and only talked to her. She was an all right catch but come Saturday morning Rune would only have regrets and blue balls.

Earlier I had run into Piam from my Hemingway class and I invited him because he only lives about 300 feet from the party. I run into him there. I start talking to a group of people that didn’t give me their correct names. One I called Fuck, the other It Must be Piss, another Shit, and another Lexicon. Lexicon had a sister, but she didn’t divulge her name. There was also a girl that smiled at me earlier in the day when I bought a salad from her at the M. U, that was there. Try as I might but I can’t remember her name. At one point some one mentions Howl and that I read it at an open mic. They say something incorrect about the poem so I bust it out of my jacket pocket and start reading it outloud. Chris comes over and spares the people and tosses the book inside of Dan’s apartment.

Patrick, Dan’s roommate, eventually comes down from smoking pot with his friend Jake and another guy that I am forgetful of his name.

At one point they set up a luge pipeline of vodka shots coming down from the laundry room rooftop. One girl takes a shot. I take two shots, but they a bigger than your average shot, and then Aisha takes one. I know at this point that I am going to be fucked up. I’m not really sure when this actually happened. This could have been before I read excerpts from "Howl."

I see a guy that I had a midnight snack with at the Denny’s in Dixon with Lisa Davis last winter after a concert in San Francisco. The show was with Thrice and Hot Water Music. Chris talks to him about the name of the group Hot Water Music, which is a title of a Charles Bukowski book.

So I start screaming or yelling or shouting at people thought out the night. Chris keeps coming over and leading me a way from people. He finds it amusing but he doesn’t want things to get to the point where people see him and walk to the other side of the street because of his crazy friend. I frighten a lot of people.

At one point I don’t feel to well so I go sit down and lean against the wall over by Dan’s screen door. I then throw up and bunch.

I think I drift out of consciousness for a bit.

I hear people say stuff to me and I still manage witty comebacks to make them laugh. But how witty do you have to be to amuse drunk people?

Chris tries to get me to come inside but I tell him that I may puke some more and I don’t want to do so in Dan’s apartment.

I continue with the wit while I guy that I only recognize as having nice black stripes on starts taking to me. He asks me if I know where I am. He seems very sober. I keep responding somewhat coherently. I’m busting wise cracks and he laughs a couple times. My head is resting on my shoulder as if I am doing an inebriated impersonation of Steven Hawking. I never look up. He asks me what my name is? Rob Roy. Really/ Yes, it really is. And then Aisha shows back up. She vouches for me. He wants to see her ID. She has a picture of Marilyn Monroe taped over her face and he makes her take it off. The cop then says that I should go inside. I tell him I will as soon as my stomach settles. I mean couldn’t they see the putrid adaptation of the salsa bar a foot from where I sat? Eventually, upon my own accord and alone, I go in and crash on Dan’s couch.

I wake up 10 O’clock and it is raining. Good – that means my vomit has been cleaned up by the grace of God.

I go outside and change my clothes in my car. There is vomit on my pants and shirt. I bet all the ladies of the party last night are going to fawn over me the next time the see me. I’m the soiled degenerate – sarcastically sexy.

I begin to walk around the campus enjoying the picnic day festivities. I am not hung over. I’m never hung over. The only thing I need is a drink of water because my throat is the only body part that feels the affects. I’m sure my liver does also, but it doesn’t tell me so via nerve endings.

The quad seems empty besides water. I pity the people trying to raise funds. Nobody is stopping at their booths. And I’m nobody too. I walk along the path of the parade and through the rain. Silly Stream is all over the sidewalk. The audience seems sparse. I watch the marching bands. My favorite is the Humboldt Lumberjacks. I’m attracted to their drum major. She has a presence to her as I enjoy the band’s rendition of Touch Me and Down on the Corner. She dances and waves an axe around and shakes her ass. She has such a self aware care freeness to her. Plus she is wearing a flannel coat that is in the Rob Roy plaid. She has my name written all over her in a way. Oh, is my body was all over her – that would make for a pleasant afternoon.

I go over to the campus and look for the activities fair. It is in Hickey gym. I walk right in and see the Seele booth. I go up and start talking to a girl that I recognize from Alternative Film Club but I don’t know her name. I find out her name is Brooke. We talk about Seele. I say that I wrote the poem "Pick Up Lines for Horny Poets." She says she loved the poem. She also knows that I am the founder of Write Club. Only one other person talks to her while I am there. I give her a hard time about the idea that they suggest donations for a copy of a magazine of for a button when there are signs up that say "Donate Now." Suggestion – yeah right. She says that we are doing horrible things to James by drinking during the movies. I say that James shouldn’t worry because he doesn’t condone. How is he supposed to control us? I also separate myself from Dan and Chris because they get a little crazy and start running around the Theatre. That wasn’t me. I do heckle a little bit though. Okay, maybe a lot. But I’m respectful of my fellow audience members. But everyone in the Alternative Film Club must remember one thing. ITS FREE. So how much can you complain. Brooke talks about being from Red bluff and I say that I know a guy from Red Bluff. She asks me more about this person and it turns out that she also knows Scott Snider. In fact he was her first kiss in kindergarten. She hasn’t seen him since he left for Poland two and a half years ago. He goes to Berkeley now – that’s where I now him from. I make a phone call and write his number on a writeclub.net flyer and give it her. I know, I’m a nice guy.

I walk around the gym more and see the Republican that I hate. This girl with short black hair that I argued about the morning after pill with. I pity republicans because she gives them a bad name. She is at a booth for the Traditional Woman’s Coalition. They are pro-Family, Pro-Life, and pro Gun. They are "the right kind of feminist," Get it – the ‘right kind.’

I walk over to where a fashion show is supposed to be at 12:30. I have to be at work at 1. I see James and Kristin. I stand around and talk to them. James is waiting for Annaliese. I wonder what that means. How their relationship has been going the last few weeks James is always waiting for Annaliese. At least today he is just waiting for her to show up, instead of waiting for her to make up her mind. There is another guy that she is interested, as far as I know – it depends on the moment, that works with her at KDVS. All I know about him is that his name starts with a T. and he looks like Kurt Cobain. Although James claims to hold no animosity toward the guy I bet you deep down he really wishes the guy looked like Kurt Cobain. And by that I mean having his brains dripping down the wall behind him.

The fashion show begins. Its outdoors. So is the rain. And there is a lot of rain. I’ve been developing a theory about the rain. It is God’s vengeance upon Davis for enacting the no-open container policy for alcohol. Throughout the day I walk around and piece a poem together about the subject. The fashion show is being photographed by Kristin. There is a guy in front of me that is drunk and proceeds to make many a rude comment throughout the show. The girl directly in front of him seems to know the guy but she is informed and contained. An informed woman turns me. Half-naked models turn me on. This was an exciting, albeit wet, event. But I keep this all to me self. Well, I did make some comments to Kristin but they were all understandable and low key. There were many great selections. Kristin designed a few of the outfits. As did Kat – one of Kristin’s friends that I know. At one point she went out with a nylon suit and what looked like a black peacock tail and shook her ass. The drunken guy looted and hollered. Kat designed an outfit that also detailed another woman’s ass. The drunk guy told the poor model that he noticed this by yelling that her cheek is exposed. Aisha was a model in the show. In the particularly arty section. When Models walked slow and wore all white and a plaster breastplate. They counted their paces to themselves. One by one and held a lily in their fingers. The rain also picked up at this moment and the tarp above the stage dropped buckets of water down on the models. A big splash fell on the umbrella above Aisha’s head. It was horrible and amusing all at once. I know I shouldn’t say it. But I’m just too fucking honest. Later I also recognized my friend Nadia from my fiction class, as a model. I felt so posh knowing all these designers and models. The drunken guy knew one of the designers and doggedly yelled their name over and over and over again while the models for the designer walked the catwalk.

I had to run to work. The rain poured the hardest on my way to work. I had to run, as if I could beat the rain at a race. I lost.

At work they old me I wasn’t need until 3. I walked to my car to change my clothes. My jacket was so wet it wouldn’t have made a difference if I just soaked it in a bathtub. I needed to buy an umbrella. I went to the bookstore and they were all out so I just bought a sweatshirt. A forty-dollar sweatshirt. All because it says U C D on it. That’s ten dollars for the sweatshirt and ten dollars per letter. It all reminded me of the Simpson’s episode where Homer spends $20,000 on a plumber when all her needed was a washer that cost 50 cents. If I just had an umbrella. I’m no Boy Scout. If I was, I would have been dry.

I run into Kristin and Annaliese. And James. And then Sophie and Becca. And then Gordon. All in the M. U. All at once. And they didn’t really know each other. Gordon has a friend take a picture of himself with me and Sophie and Becca. Then Gordon leaves. Sophie and Becca leave. It’s so nice knowing people. When I was walking around the parade I ran into no one that I knew. That’s rare for me. I’m not famous with the tourists only with the locals. This girl named Kit comes up and talks to the 4 of us and James says that I’ll like Kit. She’s crazy like I am, but more than I am. Kristin introduces me to her and then Kit and her friends leave. And then Kristin and Annaliese leave. I go get a salad. I get a bigger salad than normal because I want to replenish my body because I vomited the night before. The body is the temple and I’m so often sacrilegious.

The three of them show back up again and we walk around looking for the Unitrans booth. I take them back to hickey and we run into Grace at the yearbook booth. I show them the traditional values women. James is a republican but I can respect the guy. He forms his opinions by being informed. I don’t think these women do the same. James talks to the people that run the Anime club on campus. Their club meets at the same time as Alternative Film Club. Its like Jay Leno and David Letterman standing off.

I go over to the Aggie both and talk to Fitz Vo – the editor in Chief. I talk to Ihsan, one of the columnists that happens to be there. I know him from Kristin and Seele. Ihsan says that I should write a column next year. I tell them my ideas for columns and they think it would all be interesting. Fitz is impressed that I actually know about the Aggie. By that I mean that I read it and don’t just do the crosswords. I know about the columnist that writes about swimming. I know about Jeff – a friend of Jackson Pritt that writes about the love problems of his friends. I know about Lamar, who writes about his problems with love also – that being that he can’t get any love. Not from women or from the customers of Safeway where he works. I talk about Hoang, a guy that is amusing just as Ihsan is. But maybe it isn’t fair that my two favorite writers at the Aggie are people that I know. All this impresses Fitz. He’s been in Davis too long. And by that I mean he’s been surrounded by ignorance for too long.

Its 3 O’clock. I have to run to work. On my way there I see mobs of people coming out of University Street. I was just walking this way to see if I could catch a quick moment of music from café Roma but all I saw was riots cops and drunkards. Earlier I had walked past a house on University with a couple dozen fratboy types chanting. I couldn’t decipher what they were saying. Could have been a) Chug b) beer c) Budweiser or d) All of the above. This was happening before noon. As I roamed earlier I saw people drinking in the early afternoon but these were the earliest drunkards I saw. I they say the early bird catches the worm, in their case that is referring to tequila. Now flash forward three hours and I see over a hundred people being pushed away from the house by shield wielding riot cops. I try to walk through. I’m sober, don’t you know (that would be me impersonating a Midwestern because maybe the fratboys we’re drinking pabst Blue Ribbon- hailing from Milwaukee.) The cop tells me that no one is going in. I say I’m walking to work. He says that no one is getting past him. I tell him that I may stutter my words but I don’t slur them. I’m sober. He just looks at me so I just walk down Third Street.

At work it is slow. Relatively, for it being picnic day. I wonder about how many thousands of dollars this rain has cost my employer. As I said it is god’s vengeance on the city of Davis. Imagine the sales tax revenue lost because of the rain. And why did it rain. Because of the open container policy. I thought we already covered this.

After work I go get something to eat. I am foreseeing myself drinking on this fine Saturday night so I don’t want an empty stomach. But if I drink too much then I will still have an empty stomach I’ll just have vomit on my clothes again. I don’t want that.

I go to the Wok and Roll and eat a bigger than average meal for me. I write my poem about God’s vengeance while I eat.

After that I go to delta Venus. Chris stopped by my work and asked how I was doing. He wanted to know if I slept outside or not, because that’s the last place he saw me. I tell him that I’m fine. He says he’s going to delta Venus and then we’ll meet up later. Aisha also called me at work. She wanted to know if I was alive. She was surprised that I remembered so much about last night. I remember everything when I’m drunk, unless I pass out, I can’t remember the unconsciousness, but I don’t think I have to, Aisha also told me that she isn’t interested in a relationship with me – just a friendship. I told her I already knew. She’s been stringing me along. But it’s my own damn fault. I’m a relatively monogamous person so when I get physical with someone I assume that it will reoccur and most likely be exclusive between the two of us. That isn’t the case with her. I hold no ill feelings and I as soon as I realized this about a week and a half ago I didn’t lie to myself anymore.

Chris isn’t at delta but I say hello to Jordan and Kris who are waiting for the KDVS fundraiser to begin. I then walk over to the battle of the bands. Once there I ogle the drum major of Humboldt some more. I talk to Joe, a friend of Aisha’s about the bands for about 10 minutes. Berkeley’s band is much more reserved than one would think. While Stanford’s is crazy. They look like circus freaks or dope fiends. Maybe they are or at least were in a previous life. The Aggie marching band pretty much fits the idea of the school- nerds. And Humboldt fits their persona also – potheads. I hang out for a bit. Humboldt plays some Sinatra and Berkeley plays some Queen. The Aggie mascot – that’s right, the tree- runs around flailing about. He’s missing his branches and he just has a metal back pack apparatus on that has foam tied to it. To quote a brilliant berkeleyite, "Fuck Stanford."

I then walked back over see if Dan was home. Chris was supposed to meet us there. Or at least that was a possibility.

I see Dan holding hands with a girl and I yell his name.

That’s right, I ran into Dan again.

(I will continue this later – I’m supposed to go see a movie with Chris)

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