People Talk By Talking

Just a smattering of some of the dumb conversations from this weekend.

First one:
I was out with a friend and stepped out of the bar for a smoke. The bouncer asked me to watch the door, so I asked him what the date was and started a short sentry duty. There was a chick, her date and some random dude talking for a bit. It turned into arguing and then the chick and her date went inside. The third wheel turned to me and said "Hey dude. What's like the most superior chord in the United states?"

I thought for a second and replied "A minor seventh."

He looked back quizzically and really confused and I said "Fine. C major then. All white keys on the piano. No sharps or flats."

Still confused, he just stared at me and said "No. Most superior court!"

I just replied "Oh, the Supreme court you retard. Why?"

Then he told me he was trying to impress the girl he was talking to because she was a lawyer and he was a doctor.

I told him to lay off. She was on a date and he was in no condition to impress even if he was a doctor. He then showed me some kind of doctor card and I told him that I had totally lost interest in the conversation even if he had a doctor card.

Second one:
Lawyer chick comes back out and looks at me sitting on the stool next to the door.

"I don't like your shirt."

I replied "Okay. Sorry about that."

She then said "I don't like your glasses."

I said "All right. How about my shoes?"

She looked at my shoes for a bit and said "Your shoes are good. You have good hair, too."

I thanked her and said that I'd take two out of four.

She then asked to try on my glasses and I let her. She said "Last time I tried on someone's glasses I broke them."

I told her that it would be okay as long as I supervised the situation and she told me that I had a good prescription and I marked that down as three out of five. You take what you can get.

She went back inside after a brief introduction between us both and her date.

Third one:
After witnessing a guy with Down's syndrome get into a dance off to "It Takes Two" by Rob Base and DJ EZ Rock, my friend and I left to go wait for our cab. On the way out, I nodded goodbye to the lawyer chick and she grabbed me by the face and kissed me. I apologized to her date and walked the fuck out.

As soon as I got out the door, I turned around and there she was with her date. First impulse was to remove my glasses and get punched in the face, but instead her date started talking to my friend about cars and she started talking to me about whatever. I went along with it and she knew my mom from court and also the judge that my mom works for a lot. Then she looks at me and says "Give me your hands."

I replied, "Why?"

She just replied authoritatively "Give me your fuckin' hands."

I was like whatever and gave her my hands. She took them and rubbed them across her stomach on the way to her hips and placed them firmly there and looked at me and said "Am I fat?"

I started giggling and just said "Seriously, hon? You're not fat and now take your date home and be nice to him."

I jumped in the cab with my friend and he goes "What the fuck was that?"

I just started laughing and told him that apparently I was the go-to guy when lawyer chicks think they're fat and that people are fucking weird.

Get Back, Jo Jo.

"Man, I blew it. I blew it, man"
"Kumar, what were you doing in the freezer?"
"I don't know, man, I lose my touch, man."
"Did you ever have a touch to lose, man?"

So, strange turn of events this morning. I think my dad may be reading my blog. He called this morning and invited me out to my little brother's barbecue this Sunday. Super random. We talked briefly about nothing and then I went back to work. I told him that I would go, but I may flake. It would be pretty tough right now. Nothing to lose, though, I suppose. Plus, who would ever miss a trip to a real life alpaca farm.

This is funny and I am old. About five years ago, I blew out my L5 and the disc back there gets a little bit weird sometimes and will block nerves to my leg or just create havoc across my lumbar making it totally a pain above the ass to bend over or lay down. It's been fine for a while now.

So, on Wednesday, I'm at work and I go to the bathroom and I'm at the urinal and it just goes out. It felt like a strip of barbed wire running from my lower back up to the bottom of my neck and back down. I almost fell down. I got through the rest of the day, but had to leave a little early and go home and try and get it back into alignment. It wasn't happening and the next morning it was worse. I had to work from home and call in for a sub for soccer. That sucked.

I worked from home and it was actually quite brilliant. Ran into work for a sec and grabbed some documents that I needed and got more work done at home than I usually get done at work. Chased that at 3:00 PM with pool, iPod and Pynchon time. I'm determined to finish Against the Day and hit page 800 on Thursday. 300 more to go. Plan on finishing it this weekend. One thing to watch out for when working from home, though, don't go back to work with a sunburn. It shows lack of foresight.

The ironic thing is that I talked to my physical therapist out of the blue this weekend (think she was drunk) and she moved to the city finally. We talked some shit for a bit and then she joked that I should hurt myself and go back to her for physical therapy. I never went back to her after our second round of dates due to a conflict of interest. I told her that getting injured was a bit of a stretch and congratulated her for her move to the city. We don't date anymore or even talk much, but she enjoys telling me her horrible dating stories now and then and they are genuinely funny most of the time. She knows why the caged bird sings and also has a good sense of humor about it. I blame her for the back injury and think she may be a witch. Regardless, giving it two more days before checking back into physical therapy.

HughVoltage Show, Beta Version.

I don't know where this is going, but I don't really have a proper outlet for it at the moment, so with a complete disregard for privacy, here it is.

Recently, I experienced a bit of emotional unsettlement. First reaction to disappointment was my old friend self-medication. The result was like that of being bitten by a dog. It failed miserably. After my medication trials of Memorial Day Weekend behind me, I tried hyper sleeping. I went to bed while it was still light out and woke up to the morning light after a slight 3:00 AM intermission. It was like living in Alaska. It was still a better alternative to self-medicating. Finally, this is a new thing, I reached out to friends and family to talk about things.

Started with a few friends and my sister. They were extremely supportive and helped immensely. They put a lot of things in perspective and expressed enough compassion to kill a small dog. It's just a few paper cuts on a heart. It's totally manageable.

Last night, it resulted in spending some time with my best friend I think I've got in my arsenal and his wife and his cute baby. We just watched a Giants game and ate ice cream and touched on the situation lightly. The situation is complicated and really logically unjustifiable. If you show up to the ice cream parlor and they don't have the flavor that you are looking for, there is no reason to sit and pout. Get a different flavor and fuckin' enjoy your ice cream. You STILL get fuckin' ice cream...unless you are lactose intolerant. If that's the case, you probably shouldn't get ice cream at all.

So, the reaching out project culminated with a just finished two plus hour conversation with my mom. The mom/son relationship is super complex and is really more of an old friends relationship. We fight like kids with each other. We hold grudges against each other and we even hurt each other a lot.

So, we talked about everything and started to get to the question of what prevents me from being happy. My dad and the old times were brought up and we started talking about my childhood. She started talking about how I was the happiest kid in the world and I told her that I didn't really remember a lot. I just remembered painful moments. It made no sense because she said I was the happiest kid in the world and everyone adored me. Based on this, the HughVoltage show may have been going on for longer than I thought. She told me about the time when I was two and a half and ran away. I had no recollection of it and she said, "Let me be your memory." At that point, I felt the bees starting to swarm in my chest and my allergies set in.

It was actually a really funny story. Apparently, we had been driving home from somewhere and I pointed at some girl on a horse and said that I was going to ride it. She gave it a whatever and we kept driving home. An hour later, I was nowhere to be found and was eventually found down the street on the horse with the girl. I had snuck out of the house and gone to ride the horse where the girl just grabbed me and threw me on the horse when I asked for a ride. I got invited back when it was all over.

I told her that she must be wrong because two and half seemed way too young to cross a road and get on a horse, but she swears by it. She said I had to be two and a half because it was before I ran away to Long John Silver's in Manteca when I was three. Her timeline checks out.

She went on to talk about how I would sneak out of the house a lot without telling her to spend breakfast with a neighbor family around that time without her knowing that I was gone. She commented that I was very good at coming and going as I pleased and that I ate two breakfasts a lot.

So, anyway, the question is Why do I remember so much pain as a kid when it seems like I was pretty happy. It really bothers me to talk about it. I thought I was all good, but I guess I've still got some of that crazy pissed off five year old weight buried in my head somewhere.

So, we talked forever and got into some really specific stuff about childhood and it really hit some buttons, but it was good to talk to mom in an unbridled situation. Painful as hell, but no longer an elephant in the room. We can be extremely open with each other and it's almost like my dad left both of us and we helped each other get through the whole thing, but we still share some resentment that is very similar. It was extremely disturbing when she told me that when they got married my dad told her, "Now, we never have to say goodbye again." Yeah, dude. Right. It was really weird to hear her tell me that my dad loved and adored me when I was a baby. I have no memory of a loving father ever, but if he had nearly the gleam in his eye that I saw last night at a friend's house and how much they loved their baby, I find it extremely moving. It's one of the most pure loves that you will ever see in your life.

I can't get into other specifics as they might get read into, but we seem to be very similar in some of our less self-serving traits. Especially the one where we neglect ourselves in lieu of others' needs. We agreed that we do it to ourselves and then we both took the blame for it and then agreed that we were doing it to each other.

She told me that I was one of the best things to happen to her when she was sixteen and that I really helped her get through the pain when she was young. It was really good to clear the air and talk about old times. It hurts, but it's good to talk about. Sometimes it feels like we were both growing up at the same time. So, heads a little fucked up from it all, but pushing along. Never going to stop pushing along.