LONG WEEKEND (2.2)

not like me. nothing like me. why was i there in the summer? let me count the ways. my aborted college career was one of fits, starts, and giving ups. i changed my major so many times on multiple occasions i came back around to English because i realized i was just gonna be a fucked liberal-arts person the rest of my unnatural life anyway. there is no either, only ether. i would have gained more life experience apprenticing at an AutoZone on the weekends of a small town which had two strip clubs for every church. at one point i even considered changing midstream to Rhetoric cos i was visiting a job fair on campus with my parental units on a mental-health check and some old bucktoothed chick handling a boomerang like an asset dazzled me on Rhetoric, the wave of the future, the tool for all life professions. she didn't have buckteeth, she wore buckteeth around her neck. Rhetoric is just English, it's all just English. i quit uni all together the first time cos i had a panic attack at a Lucky's. the second time was right before 9/11 and i figured the universe was giving me a sign to slow down and relax and take stock of my life which of course can all be goned in a taken-away flash of puff. so i answered the call and did nothing. meditated and mostly vegetated on my fragile existence. plus the demonstrations here alone would have been so congested there was no higher learning to be had. my schedule was so jumbled now i was either getting ahead or catching up. whatever the case i certainly wasn't getting head. i think i was doing the right things, the smart things, moving forward, but it's tricky. 3 is the dangerous semester, a dark section of wishywashy uncertainty and trained trepidation. 8 is so far away...

_____________________

at FBI Headquarters, Comey is making headwinds.

Comey: my girlfriend is nagging me about this. i mean my wife. i want to talk about Buddha and wading in streams and grey rivers and shit but all anybody wants from me are those scratchy fighter-pilot tapes i held onto under my jet bed which verifiably and undeniably finally prove the existence of ET life. it's NBFD. everyone knows this for years. ET is real. ET saved me from committing a serious case of upset stomach by ingesting too many Pepto-Bismol pills. that's why the tabs are dotted. and no this isn't a clandestine promotion for the new season of X-Files, Fox is out there without a preserver on his own. but yes this does happen to be falling on the Winter Solstice.

at the Virginia Delegate Chase, the final voting tally after the third aborted recount is the exact same number for both the D and the R. dame and the rigor mortis. so, according to the constitution, they draw lots like a medieval charity case and that's democracy. Chris Matthews was right all along.

the madam candidate takes the coin upon her pretty little finger and flips it in the air. her male counterpart gets to call it in the air, it's only fair. she has less strength so at first everyone is thinking the flip didn't go all the way around and is invalid and she doesn't have thumbs. but it did. it's just that the coin is now floating in midair and will never land for all eternity. science.

the coin was stopped in its tracks by the spatial interference of the trail of time-dust left by the faster-than-a-sweating-bullet UFO which just whizzed by. no one will ever win.

Comey smiles knowingly. cos he's getting a twosome tonight.

at Anderson Cooper's sprawling palatial apartment on the Upper East Side, he's still tapping on the glass of his half-full stained goblet of Old-Fashioned.

Anderson: i feel half-empty. whom do i invite to New Year's? upfront just letting you know, it's not Wolf. this is turning my hair white. i have to start slashing this list and letting the losers down hard. time to thin the one who's thinning.

Anderson on his old-fashioned black phone with the long stem and streetlight speaker and dial-up plastic circle and receiver that hangs on a gold carriage and looks like a mini Bono plastic bullhorn: Billy? thought i lost your number. sorry, buddy.
Corgan: y'know even great bands have a shelf life. it's good for me and it's good for U2. the Foo Fighters have nothing left to foo i mean prove. i thought they said they had R.E.M.'d themselves long ago and faded into the sunset. be honest, you hate Ryan Seacrest more than me. you are sick of what the news has become now and wanted to Kelly Ripa yourself into oblivion.

_______________________

me: fernweh.

Auverin: doesn't count. that's just German saudade. or German sonder or something. btw nobody ever pronounces saudade the right Portuguese way with the je at the end.

me: thank god for Wikipedia. it's sad when you can't read your own writing.

Auverin: good luck. all i get are articles about donating $3.

me: can you belive THAT is Gary Oldman?

Auverin: i know, right? he is sure to win the Oscar. no seriously, useless to watch the broadcast this year, he is guaranteed 100% no-drama, he WILL win the Oscar. listen, Oscar LOVES when a seasoned veteran puts on hellish makeup and bad shoes and looks literally like a completely different person.

me: Hold Me.

Auverin: i thought you'd never ask.

me: no, the Fleetwood Mac video. with the desert mirrors, which are a bad idea when you think about it. that set was a fucking nightmare to work on. without their intra-relationship piranhic infighting that band would have broken up years ago. never has there been a band in the history of music that so wrote all of their songs strictly looking inward to their internal chaos and not once looking out externally to the larger world. theirs is the beautiful strains of one big lifelong strained orgy.

Auverin: what a sound! but that Mick Fleetwood was a British horndog. isn't it enough that the band was unceremoniously named after him when it should have been called Sex With Stevie? a toady toddy. no way a bloke that Bigfoot hairy would get bush without drumsticks in his oily palms.  

me: doesn't matter had sex. the ugly lanky man fucked Stevie Nicks, that's all that matters.

Auverin *laughing*: in her prime.

the fuck didn't go over too well in the library, we were asked to shut off the lights. or maybe the library was closing just then. we huddled together the two of us and i was told over the loudspeaker to take out those cute little lanterns from under our desks, the ones with shields made of stained-glass carnival glass, suction-cup them onto the tabletop, and flip the switch.

Auverin: do you believe human hibernation is possible?

me: you've asked exactly the wrong person. i would never tell you.

we just stared at my little lamp and its small shade. our limbs crossed on the puffy out-of-place couch. there is no night in a college student's experience, it's all just one big flowing stream of consciousness. after about an hour i realize how awkward it is for me to be holding two pillows while Auverin holds none.