No, You're Not a Pervert

Attention, ladies and gentlemen of the world: you are not a pervert if you merely think about sex all the time, or if you stare at asses, or if you fantasize about sucking dick. Thinking about sex all the time is normal: it's what perpetuates our species. When I'm chatting with a lady and mention offhandedly that I'm a pervert, and she goes, "Omigod, me too!", odds are the poor soul doesn't really know what she's talking about.

Being a pervert is not simply really liking sex. If you make dick jokes all the time, it does not make you a pervert. I know this because I am a pervert, and I've worked hard to become one. I have visited some of the darkest and dankest corners of the Internet and challenged my sexuality in many different ways to come to the conclusion that yep, I'm a fucking deviant.

Have you ever listened at the door while a woman is using the bathroom? Have you ever worried about what will happen if you die suddenly without being able to clear out your computer first? Have you ever found a pair of lacy underwear in the communal dryer in your apartment building and used it as a masturbation prop? Have you ever done anything to yourself that you feel a little bit weird about afterwards? I may or may not have experience with these examples. Now, I would never force myself on anybody, I'm not a molestation risk, and there's nothing on my computer that is illegal (except maybe in this state), but the fact that I'm not dangerous does not preclude me from being way freakier than most people would be willing to admit.

So, what's the point? Well, the point is, when you call yourself a pervert, and you're actually just a person who has a healthy interest in butts and boobs and boners, you denigrate the hard work I've put into becoming the genuine article, and in a weird way, that sort of offends me. You don't get to claim perversion when you haven't earned it any more than a baggy-pants white boy gets to claim solidarity with the black struggle. If you haven't put in the hours in the porn-shop jerk-off booth, don't step to me with your phony "pervert" label.

Are You Not Entertained?

Occasionally, life presents me with an honest-to-goodness cultural stereotype. While working my un-fulfilling retail job yesterday, I passed by a middle-aged Asian woman, who suddenly, apropos of nothing, told me, "You look like that actor...he was in Proof?"

To which I responded, "Uh, I never saw that, who do you mean?"

"Proof, with, uh...Meg Ryan? No, not Proof...Proof of Life, yeah, that's it. Russell Crowe!"

Color me flabbergasted. I've been told that I look like two people in my life, and neither of them were Ridley Scott's favorite slice of Australian beefcake. A girl once told me that I looked like actor-director Kenneth Branagh, which is not a terrible resemblance, and a kid in a Taco Bell actually mistook me for the lead singer of The Spin Doctors, which is a similarity I categorically reject (even if I did have longish hair at the time and probably looked like an unwashed hippie).

For the record, here's Russell Crowe in the rarely-seen or remembered Proof of Life:

Here's the most recently available photo of myself (I'm the one on the right, smartasses):

For full effect, picture my face painted camouflage as I rescue David Morse while boning his wife on the side.

Interesting side note: here's David Morse in the same movie, who looks almost exactly like my dad:

So, to sum up, we have a lady saying that I look like an actor who I don't look like from a movie that nobody saw that actually features another actor who is a much better candidate for my doppelganger, all of which leads me back to the cultural stereotype I mentioned earlier:

Asians really can't tell us apart.

TEXT CHAT: Eagle

As Jill's son safely returned home from a long walk.

---

JILL: The eagle has landed.

ME: Nanda went to the moon?

How I'm Feeling

So as not to repeat myself, whenever somebody asks me how I'm feeling in the real world, I shall refer them to this post.

--

Eh, not bad, although I have this cold that won't go away. But I'm generally stronger and possess more stamina now.

Yes, I'm taking my medication regularly.

No, the doctors haven't told me the results of that last ultrasound.

No, I don't have an appointment for a check-up.

Yes, I said I was taking it, didn't I?

(At this point one of us will make an irreverent joke about me dying, and we'll both laugh as if it is funny.)

Yes, I got the bill the other day. Yes, it's exorbitant.

Yes, I swear, I'm feeling much better. Except for the cold. There is no earthly reason for me to lie about that.

Okay.

I'm glad I didn't die also.

Mortality Rears Its Ugly Head

Readers who follow my Twitter are aware that I spent three nights last week sleeping in a local hospital. I did this because my blood pressure was measured at around 190/130, which, if numbers baffle you, can more correctly be read as "Jesus Christ" over "Holy Shitfuck". The doctor at the cheapo clinic I go to for these things freaked out and literally ordered me into the hospital. I came to learn that my body fundamentally does not work. They don't know why yet, but something in there is causing my blood pressure to escalate, causing my heart to over-exert, causing that very important organ to fail. If I had dicked around and let myself worsen for another week or month, I'd be posting this blog from the grave.

So, yeah. I am now in the position of "living with heart failure". I take five pills every morning to manage my BP, including aspirin, which makes me feel like one of those actors in a Bayer commercial, only 20 years younger. The one thing I heard from nurse after nurse during my stay is that I'm way too young to be experiencing this; I don't know if that makes me feel better or worse.

The thing about staying in a hospital is that death stares you in the face all day long. There's nothing to do but sit around and think about how poorly you feel (the usual manner of relieving boredom--masturbation--is not really available to you with people sweeping in and out all day. Statistics for the curious: three attempts, one success.), and you are constantly reminded that people are literally dying all around you. Pages that contain coded messages about dying patients are blaring all about the halls, machines are pinging and beeping everywhere, and the old man down the hall has a thundering cough that you wake up to every morning. Death is loitering in the room, impatiently tapping his scythe and looking at his watch.

My blood pressure was taken several times a day, so I could know how close to cardiac arrest or stroke I was at any minute. They took blood twice and inserted two IV's. I had things glued and stuck to my body then later painfully removed. I experienced an angiogram, which required a nurse to shave part of my pubic hair so that the doctor could make an incision in my groin and stick a catheter inside me to have a look around. Complete strangers saw my genitals at this point and I was well past caring. Another hospital phenomenon: the loss of modesty. It happens around the third time a nurse grills you about your urine.

More than anything else, a hospital stay teaches you this: it's not a very pleasant place to be. I'll be damned if I'm giving them an excuse to put me back in there. So, I'll complain about it, but I'll take my pills, and I'll cut way back on sodium, and I'll limit my fluid intake, and I'll try to get some excercise. Because I'm not particularly afraid of death, but I am afraid of lingering forever in that cold environment, where people are constantly pricking and poking and prodding you, and where you can't even get enough alone time to play with yourself.

Fussy Eater or Discerning Palate?

Lately, Jill's sister-in-law has accused me more than once of being a "fussy eater", simply because I don't like certain things. The same woman has two young children that are the very definition of "fussy eaters", by the way (as well as fussy sleepers, fussy television watchers, fussy ping-pong players...kids at that age are just friggin' fussy), so you'd think she'd understand the difference between somebody who is fussy and somebody who is 38 years old and just has a very clear idea of what he does and does not prefer to eat.

To my memory, the things I have expressed a lack of enthusiasm about eating in her presence are:

Pineapple
Ham
Certain vegetables (though not the usual suspects: I love broccoli and spinach, for instance)
A Hostess Zinger

Now, look. I'm almost 40, and I decided a long time ago that pineapple is fucking disgusting. And it is. I don't know how people eat this spiny cocoon of pure poison. I honestly don't. Also, a big-ass slice of ham makes me want to puke. Put the two together and you have an easy recipe for Kevin's Least Favorite Food.

I don't think my likes and dislikes are any more extreme than anybody else's. Jill's mother will only eat about three vegetables, but nobody's accused her of being a fussy eater. Jill has suffered this same accusation, which I think is mainly because she's a vegetarian; not eating meat for idealistic and/or religious reasons is not the same thing as being finicky.

I eat plenty of things that other people don't. I like jalapeno jelly. I eat the rind when somebody serves brie. I'm a fiend for Indian food, and the hotter the better. I finally gave sushi and sashimi a try a couple years ago, and what do you know? It wasn't bad (although I'm not going to eat sea urchin eggs or octopus; that's just nasty). I am the very definition of a non-fussy eater, because I'll give anything I haven't eaten the benefit of the doubt (except for the aforementioned octopus). Fussy eaters refuse to eat things because they don't like the way they look or smell; I don't eat things because of the way that they taste, which is the way it's supposed to work.

What I'm saying is, if you serve dinner to me and I don't dig into it with gusto, it's not because I'm a "fussy eater". It's because of one of the following two reasons: 1) you have prepared the meal with something I utterly despise, or 2) you're a terrible cook.

I don't believe either of those reasons denotes a character flaw on my part.

On Suicide

A friend of mine committed suicide last Thursday, August 27, 2009. He did it by jumping off the Vista Avenue Viaduct, or "Suicide Bridge", in Portland, Oregon, which, if you ask me, is a pretty cliched way to go out for somebody who considered himself an iconoclast. I mean, the bridge is called the fucking "Suicide Bridge", for chrissakes. But I guess, at the end, he was less interested in a final stroke of creativity than in sending a message, and when it comes to bridge-jumpers, the message is invariably, "Fuck you, world! Look what you made me do! Now clean this up."

Suicide is normally a private affair, and it takes a special kind of egotist to do it in public and to leave one's broken body for an innocent mass-transit commuter to stumble over. He was a friend, and I've known him for over 20 years, and I was even his room-mate on two separate occasions, but that doesn't excuse this self-indulgent act of emo nihilism. Suicide is a big middle-finger to everybody you've ever known who has struggled with depression and came out the other side better for it. It's the final solution of those too lazy for life.

Life is hard, and it's littered with more disappointment than victory. It's filled with disloyal friends, bad parenting, poor decisions, and uncooperative weather. Welcome to the party, pal. I'm sorry you took 40 years and never figured that out. The secret to contentment is not to dwell on everything dark, but to exult in everything bright. Maybe I sound like a motivational speaker when I say that, but it took me awhile to understand that basic truth.

I've been depressed. I've contemplated suicide. I've been broken-hearted, betrayed and some other alliterative state I can't think of right now, but no matter how much thought I paid the easy way out, I never took it. I never took it because I don't hate my friends and family. Their sorrow and anguish was too high a price to pay, so I struggled through, and things got better. Things got a lot better.

Maybe things would have gotten better for you, but unfortunately, you'll never know that because you decided to be a coward. I'm going to miss you, and I will fondly remember laughing around the D&D table, but that doesn't mean I'm not profoundly fucking furious with you, asshole. Because your final gesture was an act of pure hate for everybody in your life, and I'm afraid I can't find it in myself to repay that much hate with too much sympathy.

You killed yourself; nobody did it for you.

Personal Message

Whatever half-ass apology you sent me recently has been deleted unread. If I hadn't been looking in my Trash for an old email, I never would have even seen it. The Trash is where all communication from you goes. It has been going there for a long time, and it will henceforth continue to go there until the day one of us dies. You have no invitation, implied or offered under any circumstances, to ever be a part of my life. I thought that I had made that more than clear. Whatever relationship you had with me in the past, be it familial or friendly, no longer exists. It never will exist.

You severed that relationship. You made a choice, and the last thing I want from you at this point in my (quite content) life is one of your patented, self-serving, weak-sauce "apologies". Just go on about your life, lie to whoever you need to lie to to get what you want, and forget that we were ever related to each other through some sick genetic joke.

If you attempt this again I will undertake procedures to bar you from contact in any way legally available to me.

Do you get it?

GOOD BYE. I don't expect to hear from you again.

Lock up Your Dogs

The other day, I was driving back from the store, and I saw a guy in his driveway trying to separate a couple of playing dogs. One of the dogs was a sort of white-and-gold colored one, and the other: holy shit, was that Stella?

What the hell was my shaggy black bitch doing out of the house and playing around with a random dog several doors down? I slowed down to get a good look at the situation, and since I am near-sighted, I had to squint at the dogs as I cruised by at a creep. It turns out it wasn't Stella, but actually another black dog which, in the final analysis, didn't look much like her at all. It was just another gift given to me by my poor vision, like when I see a business sign that reads, "Shelly's Lock and Bolt" but I think it reads, "Shelly Licks Cock." When you are near-sighted, every street-sign is a look into a parallel universe.

I sped up and pulled into my own driveway, went inside, and pet my own dog, then started wondering what that little situation had looked like from the perspective of the man trying to separate his dogs. He had seen a random car slow down to a crawl while the driver squinted up his eyes and stared intensely at his two harmless, fun-loving dogs, probably with the intention of coming back later and molesting them. Yep, I'm pretty sure that at least one of my neighbors now considers me a potential dog-rapist.

Every week I add another neighbor to the list of people I can't make eye contact with.

Conversations with a 13-Year Old: "Towels"

Nanda comes into the front room, holding the dirty towel he used to clean the bathroom. He points at the basket of towels that I am folding.

NANDA: Are those clean?

ME (looking at the towel I am currently folding): What do you think?

NANDA: Well, I don't know, I was just asking...

ME: Try this out next time you have a question: actually observe your surroundings and try to answer it yourself, and maybe you don't get so many pissy, sarcastic comebacks.

-----

Maybe I'm an asshole, but seriously, kid?

Let's Talk Sexual Fetish

We all have them, after all, even those of you who claim not to. Even you women who claim to have no kinks eventually reveal that you like to be tied up, or that you like watching men make out with each other. It's human nature, after all.

My primary fetish, for instance, is watching women urinate. I don't feel like this is much of a big deal, because if the internet has taught me anything, it's that there are a lot of frigging people who feel the same. I don't know the numbers exactly, but judging by how many hits you get when you type "pissing porn" into Google (over 8 million of them), it's a significant number. So significant that I'd say it's not beyond the realm of probability that somebody reading this post also likes to watch the ladies on the toilet (you filthy pervert).

When it comes to sexual talk, with friends at parties and what have you, there's a line, it seems, beyond which nothing shall be discussed. Ladies can talk about the sort of men then like, their preferred penis size, and men can talk about whether they like blonds or Asians or cheerleader costumes, but if you chime up and mention that you like to watch girls pee, everybody will get all awkward and change the subject. I think that's because when it comes to sex, people like to discuss universals rather than specifics, lest they actually reveal something about themselves. After all, who doesn't like cheerleaders, right? It's a no-risk proposition confessing that you like girls in cheerleader costumes. It's a mild fetish that's still socially acceptable. In fact, it would probably be considered weird if you didn't like girls in cheerleader costumes. (I prefer schoolgirl costumes, myself.)

Women generally don't seem to think that a pee fetish is much of a big deal. I figure they must think, "Well, I pee all the time anyway. If I can turn him on by letting him watch, that's a pretty easy deal for me." Also, some men are much bigger perverts than me, and I think just about every woman has been with at least one guy that blows my kink out of the water. However, when I told a male I used to be very close with (family-wise) about the same thing, just in casual conversation, he fucking flipped out. He simply could not accept that I could find anything erotic about urination, and he brought it up almost every future time the subject of sex was raised (as it was frequently, since we were guys, and that's what guys talk about). Eventually, he had twisted my fetish into something so reprehensible that he felt completely justified in stealing my girlfriend from me behind my back. (We don't talk any more.) The truly bizarre thing is that I've known him his entire life, during which time he has said things to me like: when he was young, he sexually experimented with farm animals; when he masturbates, he lets his dog lick the semen off of his hand; and he enjoys going down on women when they are menstruating. These things are all perfectly normal as far as he is concerned, even though, guess what: yeah, I've never done any of them, because they are disgusting to me. However, I didn't judge him the way he judged me over a little pee.

And really, what's the purpose in judging? Your kink and somebody else's kink are just two different versions of the same phenomenon: getting all uptight because you found out your friend likes shemales or your sister likes rubber is silly and dishonest. Because I may like urine, but you've fucked dogs by your own admission, so which of us has the real problem?

So, what I'm saying is, maybe we should all get a little less uptight about all of this. In a world where politicians are constantly being busted for having fetish sex with prostitutes, maybe it's okay to tell the people you trust about what turns you on. After all, if you told somebody about it, maybe you wouldn't have to go to a hooker to get it. I also don't think it's very healthy to have so many deep, dark secrets. They eat away at you, you know?

So anyway, my name is Kevin Wolf, and I like to watch girls pee. Big deal.

What about you?

Always Behave as if Somebody Is Watching

This morning, I sat up in bed alone, probably belched or farted, reached to get my sweat-pants, and clumsily put them on. I then decided to roll toward the end corner of the bed, put my hands on the floor and sort of scrabble myself to a standing position. It was a very awkward and lazy way to get oneself out of bed. The first thing I saw was Jill looking at me with an amused half-smirk.

ME: "Oh! I didn't know you were there."

JILL: "Yes, I've been sitting here the whole time."

ME: "If I'd known that, I probably wouldn't have gotten out of bed all retarded."

Let this be a lesson to you all. You never know who's watching, or how stupid you look to them.

BE EVER VIGILANT.

Porn Stars Who Remind Me of My Ex [Not Safe for Work or Moms]

When I say "my ex", I speak specifically of a woman who tore my heart out, betrayed me as cruelly as she possible could, then slandered me all over the internet afterward. She will of course remain nameless, because I have more class that that slime-trail leaving slut. After the catastrophe, I found myself for awhile unable to watch porn featuring black girls, or in fact any ethnic women at all. When the skank who broke your heart is black and Thai in derivation, it cuts down on the sorts of women you can masturbate too without pain.

However, I grew out of this faze, and now, if a woman reminds me of [name withheld], I just consider that an added bonus, particularly if the scene I'm watching involves throat-gagging, ass-ramming, cum-glazing rough sex.

I didn't say it was healthy, it's just the way it is.

Here are a handful of porn stars who vaguely remind me of her:

Lucy Thai

Physically, she doesn't look much like her. For instance, her body is way more womanly, what with her hips and full tits and all. However, her face has a certain something about it, particularly in those plump lips, that perhaps makes perhaps it more satisfying than usual to watch her suck cock or take massive loads on the face.

Kapri Styles
This woman, however, seems to have practically the same body, down to the itty-bitty titties. She specializes in anal scenes with multiple partners, which is a-okay with me. Maybe her ass is too big to be a total fit with the ex, but hey, I'm not actually looking for girls who are reminiscent of her, I'm just saying that these girls coincidentally are, okay?

Jasmine Byrne
Here we have the "best of both worlds", I suppose. She has a face that for some reason reminds me of her, and also a trim little body with not enormous breasts. She is a very enthusiastic performer who also seems to specialized in taking it up the ass (something these women all have in common).

I'm not going out of my way to find women who look like or sound like or otherwise remind me of this ex, and contrary to what some might think, I don't really think about her unless something comes up in conversation to jar a painful memory (there are no good ones). I just happen to have a certain "type" for my fantasy woman, and this is it, which I guess explains why I pursued her in mad defiance of all the warning signs (not that I could have predicted that she would fuck my own brother and then blame it on me).

This has been a little trip through Kevin's psyche. Hope you enjoyed it. Interestingly enough, now that I've put this out in the open, I feel a lot better about both myself and that fucked-up relationship. Time to bury it.

[Hey, ex, dig this: these women are all less of slut than you are, and they eat semen for a living. Think about that.]

Okay: NOW it gets buried.

I Was on a Boat

I spent the last few days with Jill's family at Jordanelle State Park, which is one of those great state campgrounds that is to camping as watching pornography is to fucking hot girls. The place even has a playground with a brightly-colored jungle gym structure, just in case your kids get tired of playing in nature. Despite the frankly ridiculous claims that staying here is "camping" by any stretch, I had a good time, and we went out on the boat several times over the 4-day stay.

Here are some things that happened:

1. Day one, I got a massive sunburn on my scalp that actually leaked pus for two days all over my pillowcase. This was disgusting, and I felt like a leper. Good thing they had showers on-site.

2. Jill and I slept in a "two-person tent", with my dog. Please note that the "two-person tent" designation is an exaggeration even without the dog, who doesn't really know how to keep to herself. For any future tent-sleeping, we're going to have to acquire a "two-person and dog with huge ass tent".

3. I played Clue for the first time in maybe 15 years. For those of you who think this is a boring game, let me tell you how to spice it up: read all of your suggestions and accusations as dramatically as possible in the voice of the character you are playing. I was Colonel Mustard (because, seriously, why would you play anyone else), and many of my suggestions went like this:

(With pompous English accent.) "Professor Plum! You hide behind the facade of a mild-mannered academician, but beneath that false exterior lies the trecherous heart of a murderer! I suggest that YOU, Professor, did commit this terrible dead HERE, in the ballroom, in the dead of night like the sneakthief that you are, with that most opportunistic of weapons: the candlestick!"

The best part is that when you are so loud in your accusations, you wake up Jill's parents from their afternoon naps.

Anyway, try it the next time your child wants to play Clue. You'll find the time just flies.

4. I was telling Jill's son what I assumed were bullshit stories about the town that had been submerged when the reservoir was formed, and everybody called me out on my fiction. Then, upon returning home, I checked out the Jordanelle Reservoir Wikipedia page to find that not one, but TWO towns were drowned, which pleases me to no end, and when I see Nanda in a couple days I shall be totally vindicated. I love it when my silly lies turn out to not only be the truth, but when the truth is more extreme than I was lying about.

However, I think my stories about late-night lake ghosts are probably still poppycock.

We're the Campers Who Ruin It for Everybody Else

I was "camping" today with Jill and her parents in a Winnebago at a campground with fresh water, toilets, showers, and a general store and diner all within walking distance. But I got a sunburn, so fuck you, I was camping.

Within a couple hours of arriving, Jill's son was pulled over by the park cops for riding his little lawn-mower-engine-having scooter with no helmet and no safety certification, and apparently that crappy little scooter is considered an atv and isn't allowed in the campground anyway. Soon after the same cops talked to Jill's father down at the dock, and he didn't have proof of registration or insurance on him. Later, we were admonished for having my dog off her leash.

Later still, we discovered that we had, with no malicious intent, broken several other minor rules.

So, if you're camping this summer and you wonder why there are so many bullshit rules you have to follow, it's because of people like us. We're the fuckers who ruined your vacation.

Sorry about that.

You Are a Credulous Irritant, Grandpa Hippie

I went up to a family fathering of sorts yesterday (Jillzey's family), and the day passed enjoyably enough at her aunt's cabin until...

The crazy raw-foods-eating vagabond hippie father of one of the attendees started preaching 9/11 consipiracy theories!

It started when I heard him (jeans, white polo shirt, hippie bead necklace) talking with another guest about the inanity of religion, which I agree with but don't espouse smugly at parties, when he says, "Do you believe all those other little fairy tales...LIKE WHAT HAPPENED ON 9/11?"

He then proceeded, for about the next half an hour, to preach to this poor woman, and then his grandson, all of the usual gobbledygook bullshit about 9/11 that we've all seen on a series of YouTube videos: the fires weren't hot enough, the smoke was the wrong color, Bush's MY PET GOAT blunder proves he knew (I don't get this at all), bombs, oil, blah blah blah. It was the usual litany of ignorant "facts", all of which have been debunked by people who actually know a thing or two about fires, explosives, jet fuel, architecture, and human fucking nature (people love to blab...a conspiracy this massive simply could not stand for 8 years and counting).

Well, once he ran out of steam on that subject, look out, because he was now in the mood to tell people how they're living their lives wrong. He came over to our deck table and launched into a little sermon about the benefits of his raw-foods diet, informing us that the reason people can't look directly into the sun is because of all the modern "toxins" that are in your eyeball tissue (which begs the question of why not staring into the sun is ancient wisdom that has existed long before the evil toxins).

Then, the worst thing of all. One of Jill's aunts was recently diagnosed with breasts cancer, and when preachy hippie grandpa learned that fact, he said (as smugly as ever), "Oh, don't get me started on that," before getting himself started on that regardless of our input. He of course believes that decades of proven medical procedure is silly, and that we can all magically improve our health my drinking some magical mineral water that cures malaria in no time and, I can only assume, will make cancers shrivel up and write formal apologies for inconveniencing you.

I'm sorry, old man, but using a cancer diagnosis as a springboard for your crazy patchouli-scented theories about medicine is crass, rude, and so hostile to the feelings of others that you should never be allowed to socialize again. You are an idiot, and a gullible tool of your Cheech and Chong-esque homeopathic pushers.

Futhermore, fuck you. The woman has breast cancer, asshole. Go stick your head in a horse.

7-11 II: The Oldening

Today we drove by 7-11 to purchase a Slurpee for Jill. I had already been by earlier in the day with her son to buy drinks. So, this was the second time I had seen the Arabic girl who works the counter, who, yes, I have a bit of a crush on. You would too: she's very cute. Anyway, I made a big show of announcing that I was buying a Slurpee for Jill, and that I had bought a drink earlier for her son, making me the clear Sugar Daddy of the group.

Haha, I was just joking around, but I think my totally unnecessary announcement that Jill and I were a couple was some sort of weird guilt reaction to thinking the 7-11 girl was cute, which is so unlike me. I think girls are cute all the time. Big deal: Jill thinks guys are cute, too. It's part of being human.

It was another sign that I am turning into an Old Man. As if it weren't enough that I wake up with mysterious pains in my body after doing NOTHING all night long, it now seems that I will freak out and act weird whenever I'm in the presence of an attractive young woman. Woo!

If I could just hurry up and be 50, I'd be comfortable with all of this shit. Men in their 50's are expected to complain of odd pains and flirt with girls inappropriately in front of their wives/girlfriends.

Man, the 40's are going to be a long haul.

These Are the Things in My Neighborhood, in My Neighborhood

I semi-frequently go to the 7-11 a few blocks away to purchase beverages, and when I don't have the car, I walk. It's a nice walk, but occasionally it can be a bit arduous, such as when it's crazy hot, which was the case today.

The great thing about this walk is that something interesting is guaranteed to be seen or experienced on the way. You have your things that you see every time: the neighbors with the Western-themed home they have christened "The Bunkhouse", the out-of-control shrubbery that causes you to leave the sidewalk to get around it, the same pets and old people puttering in their yards. That stuff's all great, naturally, but what's really exciting are the things you have never noticed before, or that exist for only that walk.

Things like:

• The old dog laying on the front porch, not moving an inch or apparently even breathing. I saw it both coming and going, and the second time it still hadn't moved a muscle, leading me to the conclusion that it is actually a dead stuffed dog, because even when dogs get old, they still look at people. Its head was cocked at the sort of angle that I don't think dogs really prefer if they are alive, but I could totally see a taxidermist thinking it was "lifelike". A trifle creeped out by this.
• The massive ant swarm that occupied a whole sidewalk square. I haven't seen a single ant in the house, which is great, but boy, they travel in packs outside. I tried to avoid stepping on any, just so you know, but I can't make any promises.
• The youth who yelled me down from across the street as I emerged from 7-11, then jogged over to me to ask for "two dollars for a fountain drink". I never carry cash, which always makes me feel guilty in these situations, even as I'm cynically calculating the minimum quantity of cash required for a drug purchase. He slapped me on the upper arm and said it was okay, and as soon as I was far enough away from him, I shamefully checked to make sure he didn't somehow lift my wallet from the front.

Now, these events might not seem earth-shattering, but there's always a couple of them on the walk, which makes each excursion its own mini there-and-back-again adventure. Sometimes I'm actually glad that the car's not in the driveway.

The Tackiness of Douchebags

I have a very clear memory of my childhood stepfather and his father sweating all day long over a piece of kitschy ugliness that occupied a place of honor in our homes for several years. It was a piece of butcher block, stained to resemble a bowling lane, on four cheapo legs, standing about two feet high. The dimensions were approximately 3' x 4'. Into the top had been hand-drilled 11 holes, around 2 and a half inches in diameter, at a depth of maybe half an inch. Ten of these holes were arranged in the traditional bowling-pin triangle, and set into these were 10 empty novelty whiskey bottles. Guess what shape they were in? The eleventh hole was occupied by a glass "bowling ball", the part of which was played by a Chinese fishing float, clear, slightly undersized.

This tableau was set up in a corner just around from the front hall, in a risky high-traffic area, and woe be to any awkward teenager who might ever brush up against it, or heaven forbid, cause a bottle to topple, because this rickety ode to bad taste was prized above all other things, including your pathetic human emotions.

I mention the glass bowling-alley as the most extreme example of a consistently tacky approach to home design that I had to suffer through for the duration of this dickhead's marriage to my mother (over twenty years). The nonstop emotional abuse was of course the main feature of his tenure in my mother's bed, but the terrible taste in everything was a close second or third.

A quick rundown:

His favorite food: Hamburger Helper.
His favorite music: quite storm bullshit R&B.
His favorite movies: whatever won Oscars that year.
His favorite television: sports, and the Home Shopping Network sports memorabilia show.
His favorite weekend activity: walking through the mall without buying anything.

I have this theory about douchebags, which is that they, TO A PERSON, have horrible taste in everything. If they happen to stumble upon something cool, it's probably because somebody else told them it was good. Left to their own devices, they will purchase and enjoy only the lousiest, ugliest things in life, such as the following decor items that were, I swear to god, actually in our homes at some point:

• A silver-painted plaster statue of a horse's head, which my mother knocked from its pedestal and broke, possibly with malicious intent.
• A hand-made latch-hook rug hanging on the wall.
• An entire room filled with autographed sports memorabilia (his "office" aka "the place where all the pornography was hidden").
• An honest-to-goodness velvet painting of the Pink Panther.

I'm sure I'm forgetting quite a bit, but picture a home halfway between a sitcom set and a bachelor pad, and that's where I lived for my entire schooling years.

Need I mention that when he was single he dressed like a pimp? Like a stereotypical, blaxploitation, Huggy Bear pimp? Eventually, he settled upon a new look for his off-work self: warm-up pants, sports jerseys and baseball hats (he had a collection of them!), worn every day of his life.

This was the man who had the gall to consider himself better than me and my mother.

It's amazing, when you think of it, that I have grown up to be a man who likes Coen Brothers movies and Lyrics Born and Dashiell Hammett and Philip K. Dick and Edward Gorey art and other cool shit, when this douche was the overwhelming culture influence over my entire childhood, but I guess sometimes good taste can't help but win out.

Oh, he also sketched, and was pretty good at it, but only ever sketched celebrities out of magazines. As a gift, he sketched a portrait of my mother with her head stuck onto a Playboy bunny's body.

And that's all I think I need to say about that.