Went home to Rolla for Christmas and just made the rounds, hanging out with sisters, Ed, grandparents, rents, friends old & new. Rolla now has hangouts. Or maybe it always had hangouts and I just wasn't 21 enough. Anyway one night we went to Stingers, a dance club down by Zeno's, and it was actually kinda cool. Cool for Rolla. Saw a bunch of people that I hadn't seen since high school, many of them suddenly so fat that I hardly recognized them, but a few others that hadn't changed one bit.
Dustin Woody is now in a band with Eddie Weldon, the mad guitarist who used to wash dishes with me at Sirloin Stockade. I remember that sometimes after work we'd go over to his house (if you could call it that even--a few piles of trash and clothes and a mattress in the corner) and he would sit on the floor and jam for me, making Stevie Ray Vaughan faces of musical torture. The next day I'd just tell the rents that it took extra long to close.
Saw Hilary Miles, the girl I had a crush on for like five years in elementary and middle school. She was always in my homeroom, each year for five years, and I took this for a sign that it was meant to be. Now she's big. And I'm mean. For saying that she's big, that is.
Saw Chris Roberts. He is an arm wrestling champ supposedly, talks in a hick drawl and smokes cowboy killers. I smoked a cowboy killer with him. It's the taste that kills man, I don't see how people do it. But anyway he was cool and gave me the lowdown on the Rolla scene.
On different nights we also hit All Stars, the sports bar that is now in the old Uptown theater, and the grotto. Hung out a lot with Bri and Jeff, some with Turco, Daria, Suzannah, saw Uriah and Sarena. Played some Axis & Allies with Charles & Bri. So basically a bunch of random people all coping, as best they could and in their own ways, with the fact that they were in Rolla Missouri. Rolla is a sort of common enemy that people our age can unite against.
In the first experiment the subject was placed in an orange room 7 feet on a side and left to record the effects of the color orange on his psyche. There were no doors or windows in the room save one small mail slot through which the experimenters would push tabloids and tv guides, 48 times a day, once every half hour. Although the subject was expected to last at least three days, he was removed after two due to evidence of profound psychological distress. He has since reported torrential vomiting in supermarket checkout aisles. The researchers concluded that "orange should be used only in small quantities. It expresses energy, spirit, hope, courage, and cordiality."
The second subject was placed in a yellow room of similar dimensions. He was given a tape recorder and a watch and asked to describe his emotional state at 15 minute intervals. A man-sized tarantuala with a plastic Dr. Phil head attached to its abdomen was also placed in the room. Although the subject lost twenty pounds in ten days, he gained it all back, and the tape was found to consist mostly of hoarse screaming which grew weaker until it was barely at the level of a whisper. "Small objects of yellow in a living room supply permanent sunshine in it," wrote the researchers.
The third subject occupied a green room for the span of a week. Learning from earlier mistakes, the researchers furnished the room with all manner of material comforts, including a recliner chair and a washer and dryer set. The subject was fed regularly and could make phone calls free of charge to anywhere in the U.S. Once a day a Nascar fan entered the room and beat the subject senseless with a red white and blue billy club. In follow-up interviews, the subject reported no serious long-term ill effects, insisting that he was "proud to be an American" and spontaneously wetting himself when shown a picture of the American flag. The researchers were quick to note that "if greens are used in the country they should harmonize with the foliage, but green is less necessary for decoration in the country than in town. Green can be used also on the exteriors of houses."
Well this Saturday Jake & I went out party seeking. We ended up at Claremont apts. at 3 am, like we've done before, just walked around until we saw something promising through a window and invited ourselves in, pretending to be looking for a dude named John or whatever it took. Finally we found a prospect. The guy gave us a hard time at the door but once we went in we found, weirdly, that it was the same place we'd gotten into last time, when Jake told some beligerent dude he liked his haircut so we could slip out the door.
Here there was a really drunk guy who attempted the worst handspring I've ever seen, and knocked a big chunk of trim off one of the doorways. Jake got into one of those long discussions about mutual acquaintances that you can only have in your hometown. Then the testosterone levels got too high for us and we left.
Ironically, as we were arriving at the next party a gang fight seemed on the verge of breaking out. The friendly (to us) guy on the porch started yelling stuff at a bunch of figures across the street, who massed and walked over all 5 of them. Jake and I wanting nothing to do with this ducked inside to tell the guy's friends. When we went back out there, it was all handshakes and joking...apparently the 5 turned out to be hispanic. The guy on the porch as we later found out was 18 and about to enter Marine bootcamp. He says later, "I'm going out there to defend good Americans like Jake and Alan here," gesturing at us, "not those kind of guys out there who don't appreciate it..." He made it abundantly clear that "those kind of guys" meant anyone black or acting black.
And yet here's the guy himself bagged out with backwards cap. "I used to try to be black," he confided in us and you could only think "used to?" It was kind of fascinating, this simultaneous hatred for and idolizing of black culture that existed in the guy, who was probably the biggest racist I've met in a long time. He almost seemed conjured up to disprove a statement I'd made earlier that evening to Jake: that with each successive generation the echo of racism gets fainter until with ours, it's almost too faint to hear, we just don't care about it anymore, it's a non-issue. Well okay I am full of crap and generalizations, always have been.
After hanging out for a while we went to Hi-way Diner, where we lit an enormous fire in our ash tray that would gobble up the sparking packets of creamer that we fed it. That was really dumb and the whole place smelled like smoke afterwards. But it was 6:30 am and we are young and live dangerously, besides.
Yet another dream in which my teeth begin to crumble and I spit tooth-bits at random intervals. This one I wake up from deliberately, in order to experience the relief of running my fingers over my actual teeth.
It has apparently become okay to put a 6 foot tall inflatable polar bear in your yard to celebrate Christmas, as our neighbors did even before Thanksgiving. It's one of those cases that in Missouri would blossom into full-blown lawn gnome disease: the lights are all out, and there's also a giant Santa Claus figure backing him up. Anyway the spread eagle inflatable polar bear rocking pelvically in the wind was too hard to resist; we spotted a six foot long blowup red chili pepper in a Mexican restaurant we go to on Thursdays. The owner was nice enough to dust it off and donate it, free of charge, to the cause. The pictures unfortunately didn't turn out or you'd laugh as hard as we did.