Going to Vegas with your sisters and cousins is probably a wee bit different than going with friends. Probably.
One afternoon we wake up and around 1pm and decide to just amble down the strip to Mandalay Bay and visit the sharks, gambling a bit and drinking the whole way.
Anyone who has wandered the Strip can tell you exactly how fucking awesomely preposterous it is - like the spoiled, overindulged offspring of Tony Montana, flaunting a wealth that means nothing, like bathing in champagne that costs $2 a bottle or surfing an ocean of pesos, building giant plasticine effigies of Roman civilization with none of the transcendence of time but thrice the august majesty (lookin' at you, Caesar's Palace, you grand crapbastard).
We know it's a facade, we feel the hollow insides and we celebrate the skin of it because it's something to celebrate, as if we as a society are so hyperly aware of our absence of depth that we just told ourselves, "Ah, fuck it. We will never build anything greater than our ego. Put an Eiffel Tower on it."
And then, amidst all of that, are a bunch of card-snapping whore solicitors.
You know who I mean - those people standing on every single corner slapping business cards for hookers with balloon boobs and nipple stars, shoving them in your face as you pass by. It's a Vegas tradition: hookers with business cards.
David and I pokemoned the fuck out of those cards.
We got them all. Every single one of them. We accept every card with grace, and if a solicitor does not offer one, we request one. Our pockets are bulging, my purse is completely jammed with hooker business cards. By the end of the round trip up and down we count 894 cards.
Then we get drunk, lose a bunch of money playing craps (lame) and more playing blackjack (lamer) and decide to head back out to the Strip, but this time we pick a corner and start snapping cards at tourists. They hate us.
After about fifteen minutes (probably more like four minutes, who are we kidding?) a man struggles up to us.
"Yo. Ya'll are on my corner."
David and I look at each other.
I don't know what to say. "Uhhhhhmmmmm."
"Well, we were just...well..." David begins, doing an awkward giggle scoff. "We just...we have all these cards."
"Yeah, see?" I pull them out of my pockets.
"Well. Ya'll wanna traffic? Here, feed that garbage can. Go on. Feed it. Here. Take these." He gives us his cards. We get back to snapping.
This guy is awesome. He buys us forties, tells us all about bein' a pimp.
"Is it hard out there for a pimp?" I ask. "You got a whole bunch of bitches jumpin ship?"
"Girl what?" He's never seen Hustle and Flow.
I last only for about an hour. Maybe it was twenty minutes. Time in Vegas is different than everywhere else. But either way, eventually I decide to tap out and go to bed.
"I got a suite up at Harrahs," he says when I say goodbye. Wanna come over? Party?"
Terrified of being sold into sexual slavery and waking up in Bangkok less a kidney and clitoris, I politely decline. Besides, Bangkok is one of those places I never, ever want to visit because it's hot and there are 14 million fucking people walking around and I hate crowds. Hate them. If New York City made me claustrophobic, what would Bangkok do to me?
David, however, agrees to go. I'm too tired to care.
"So," I said to David the next morning, over bloody mary breakfast, "What did you do last night?"
David's grin spreads over his face and he raises his eyebrows high. "Not cocaine."
Showing posts with label family bashery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label family bashery. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
Thursday, July 26, 2012
It's Fine.
This is Part 9 of the Wir Gehen Nach Deutschland series,
which is, apparently, a series now, because I just called it a series,
just now, and there are eleven of them, which is bonkers.
Anyway, back in Sweden...
The paw prints scatter down the castle stairs.
"Kitty!" MoLinder pounds after them and Katsisch and I follow, tracking the trail into a darkened room full of slithering shadows. A series of decayed shuttered windows creep over the walls, each one opening with a scream or a scrape, lazily hiding pictures of Swedish children's nightmares.
Rat silhouettes scurry across the base of a wall. In the distance, another room, I hear terrified shrieks, the slicing and meaty splat of a guillotine.
"What the fuck kind of children's museum is this?" I ask. To no one, really. I'm just asking, you know. The world.
The paw prints lead to a series of backlit etchings, and the cat's words narrate each one in turn: beaked Plague Doctors roamed the streets of Malmo in 1710, administering crap hack treatments and usually contracting the plague themselves; dogs and cats were drowned and murdered unceremoniously, believed to be plague carriers; with no predators, the resulting surge of the rat population happily inflamed the festering outbreak for four years, eventually killing more than a third of the population of Malmo.
It never occurred to me, even in all of the places I've been - including twelve countries that barely survived the Black Death - it never occurred to me until this moment that there once was a plague upon a place I have stood. Suddenly I feel very indulged and spoiled, but tragically so.
I hear my sister scream.
Wuss, I think as her scream morphs into laughter, riddled with the guillotine slices and shrieks and MoLinder's low, gasping giggles. MoLinder plans on fucking with me as well, I'm sure of it, and I'm startled anyway when she gets her chance.
The thundering shink of the guillotine is louder in the next room, probably because you can lay down on a bloody chopping block. I look up. Hundreds of black paper skeletons dangle by the neck from the ceiling, fluttering around a glinting blade.
"Are you fucking kidding me?' I say softly, staring. English translations of the exhibits are sporadic, and this room offered none at all. A screen on the wall was playing some documentary in Swedish, which I obviously couldn't understand. The modern castle star-wiped into photos and then drawings of the past, showing a layout of the dungeons and the Dalby Gallows Hill outside, where prisoners and vagrants were whipped, and I giggled.
...
Because one time I was wandering in Printer's Row and I found a risque little leather book called Flagellation and the Flagellants: A History of the Rod in All Countries, from the Earliest Period to the Present Time. It was a brilliant thing, published in like the 1870s. I couldn't afford the $200 copy in my hand, but I sat in a corner and skimmed it for awhile, soaking in the subtle comedy, learning all I could about the medical, disciplinary, and erotic history of flogging.
"The line between pain and pleasure is as thin as the tail of a whip."
...
I run my hands over the walls. During the Renaissance this place was a fortress. Eventually another wall was built around Malmo, and this building served as citadel. After that it became a castle. And after it was a castle, it was a prison. Now a museum. So much history in here, I think, tracing a pattern onto the wall with my finger, yeah...so...this is not the original wall. Stop touching it like you can feel its memories or something. Okay.
"Ross. Ross. RASSLES. Get over here. Have you read these?"
Thankful to be distracted, I bolt to MoLinder, who's standing in front of a fake door of a jail cell and reading something from out of a drawer.
"Dude. Read this. It's so fucked up. And dude...watch." She peers through the barred window, triggering motion sensors. A recording launches of a man's maniacal laugh and thud of an axe, the sound of splattering blood - through the window, a shadow passes over a white wall streaked with dark, thick red.
Similar doors are spaced throughout the room, with their own drawerful of stories and freaky deaky sound effects of birds screaming and crying babies. Next to each door is a hole in the wall filled with random questionable items. Like mice.
We couldn't see inside some of the holes, and as I have a fear of sticking my hand in things, I was petrified. Is there a name for that? The fear of sticking your hand into the unknown?
I stand in front of one of the crudely cut holes and shove my camera inside, taking picture after picture to create a panoramic view of everything that lives in the hidey-hole.
"Just stick your hand in there," Katsisch teases.
I brace myself and stretch my fingers, reaching slowly into the hole, and snatch my hand back fast because something is totally going to grab me, and I don't know if it's MoLinder or if it's someone who is paid to grab people that are scared of putting their hands into dark holes or what, but I knew my shit would get grabbed and I would probably cry.
But I was laughing, and trying to take pictures of the inside of the hole so I could assure myself that nothing was in there, that nothing was going to slip over my hand and pull or knaw or drill into my marrow, and as I was freaking out and Katsisch was laughing MoLinder stomped over and jammed her hand into the damn thing.
"There is nothing in there," she said, and I'd never seen a braver thing in my life. "It's fine."
We kept wandering through the prison, and then the trail of paw prints ended with the silhouette of a cat. So we kept walking, and then we were in an art museum, and then we were in a clothing design exhibit, and then we were in an aquarium, and then we were in a historical Swedish furniture display (until Ikea), and then we were surrounded by taxidermied white reindeer doused in glitter, and then we were in an HIV room, and then there was a suit of armor dangling from the ceiling by its neck, and then we were in a modern art exhibit about how humans are pigs, and then we were in a room stocked with live bats and scorpions.
But I will leave you with this, with one of the most fucked up things I've read in a children's museum.
...
Anyway, back in Sweden...
The paw prints scatter down the castle stairs.
"Kitty!" MoLinder pounds after them and Katsisch and I follow, tracking the trail into a darkened room full of slithering shadows. A series of decayed shuttered windows creep over the walls, each one opening with a scream or a scrape, lazily hiding pictures of Swedish children's nightmares.
Rat silhouettes scurry across the base of a wall. In the distance, another room, I hear terrified shrieks, the slicing and meaty splat of a guillotine.
"What the fuck kind of children's museum is this?" I ask. To no one, really. I'm just asking, you know. The world.
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| Add caption |
It never occurred to me, even in all of the places I've been - including twelve countries that barely survived the Black Death - it never occurred to me until this moment that there once was a plague upon a place I have stood. Suddenly I feel very indulged and spoiled, but tragically so.
I hear my sister scream.
Wuss, I think as her scream morphs into laughter, riddled with the guillotine slices and shrieks and MoLinder's low, gasping giggles. MoLinder plans on fucking with me as well, I'm sure of it, and I'm startled anyway when she gets her chance.
"Are you fucking kidding me?' I say softly, staring. English translations of the exhibits are sporadic, and this room offered none at all. A screen on the wall was playing some documentary in Swedish, which I obviously couldn't understand. The modern castle star-wiped into photos and then drawings of the past, showing a layout of the dungeons and the Dalby Gallows Hill outside, where prisoners and vagrants were whipped, and I giggled.
...
Because one time I was wandering in Printer's Row and I found a risque little leather book called Flagellation and the Flagellants: A History of the Rod in All Countries, from the Earliest Period to the Present Time. It was a brilliant thing, published in like the 1870s. I couldn't afford the $200 copy in my hand, but I sat in a corner and skimmed it for awhile, soaking in the subtle comedy, learning all I could about the medical, disciplinary, and erotic history of flogging.
"The line between pain and pleasure is as thin as the tail of a whip."
...
I run my hands over the walls. During the Renaissance this place was a fortress. Eventually another wall was built around Malmo, and this building served as citadel. After that it became a castle. And after it was a castle, it was a prison. Now a museum. So much history in here, I think, tracing a pattern onto the wall with my finger, yeah...so...this is not the original wall. Stop touching it like you can feel its memories or something. Okay.
"Ross. Ross. RASSLES. Get over here. Have you read these?"
Thankful to be distracted, I bolt to MoLinder, who's standing in front of a fake door of a jail cell and reading something from out of a drawer.
"Dude. Read this. It's so fucked up. And dude...watch." She peers through the barred window, triggering motion sensors. A recording launches of a man's maniacal laugh and thud of an axe, the sound of splattering blood - through the window, a shadow passes over a white wall streaked with dark, thick red.
We couldn't see inside some of the holes, and as I have a fear of sticking my hand in things, I was petrified. Is there a name for that? The fear of sticking your hand into the unknown?
I stand in front of one of the crudely cut holes and shove my camera inside, taking picture after picture to create a panoramic view of everything that lives in the hidey-hole.
"Just stick your hand in there," Katsisch teases.
I brace myself and stretch my fingers, reaching slowly into the hole, and snatch my hand back fast because something is totally going to grab me, and I don't know if it's MoLinder or if it's someone who is paid to grab people that are scared of putting their hands into dark holes or what, but I knew my shit would get grabbed and I would probably cry.
But I was laughing, and trying to take pictures of the inside of the hole so I could assure myself that nothing was in there, that nothing was going to slip over my hand and pull or knaw or drill into my marrow, and as I was freaking out and Katsisch was laughing MoLinder stomped over and jammed her hand into the damn thing.
"There is nothing in there," she said, and I'd never seen a braver thing in my life. "It's fine."
We kept wandering through the prison, and then the trail of paw prints ended with the silhouette of a cat. So we kept walking, and then we were in an art museum, and then we were in a clothing design exhibit, and then we were in an aquarium, and then we were in a historical Swedish furniture display (until Ikea), and then we were surrounded by taxidermied white reindeer doused in glitter, and then we were in an HIV room, and then there was a suit of armor dangling from the ceiling by its neck, and then we were in a modern art exhibit about how humans are pigs, and then we were in a room stocked with live bats and scorpions.
But I will leave you with this, with one of the most fucked up things I've read in a children's museum.
Prisoner No. 14, 1896
Bength Nilsson, known as "The Chicken Man"
Born 7/1/1841, sentenced on 8/9/1876 to life imprisonment with hard labor, for incest and illicit sexual relations
Bengt Nilsson bought chickens from the farms and sold them in town.
There were also fine-looking women on the farms. He could bandy words with them and squeeze them when he got the chance, but they were always on their guard. But there were lots of little girls around...
Bengt knew how to attract and deceive the small, shy blue-eyed creatures. A few of them began to blubber, of course, but when he threatened to give them a good thrashing, or boxed their ears once or twice, they kept quiet about what was going on.
And then of course, he always had his daughter, Nilla, at home. She never denied him. A few times he had to threaten to take one of her sisters instead, and then she was more than happy to make herself available to him. Four children were the unhappy result, though thank goodness two did not live long.
Is he not fully within his rights to take possession of what is his?
...
Friday, June 29, 2012
But you know. Sweden.
This is Part 8 of the Wir Gehen Nach Deutschland series,
which is, apparently, a series now, because I just called it a series,
just now, and there are eleven of them, which is bonkers.
We go to Sweden, mostly because we can. We were in Denmark and now we're in Sweden, like going to fucking Indiana. Trains over there have designated baby areas because they are designed by geniuses. Katsisch, MoLinder and I avoid them neatly. Twenty minutes tops, and we're standing in cold, gray Malmo.
Unsure of our first move, we head to Starbucks to check in at 'Sweden.' It feels right, but MoLinder can't find a proper signal, and we leave to wander slowly down an empty street towards what we suspect is a castle or a fortress or something, stopping every so often to see if MoL can jump on the FB. She is fucking determined to check us in.
"It's fucking cold, hurry up," I tell her, annoyed.
"Chill the fuck out. It's not real if it's not on the FB. Besides, I thought you looooved the cold. Oh, I'm Rassles, and I loooooove the cold, I'm so much haaappier when it snows."
"Shut up. Smart phones are dumb." I look around. "Is that a...is that a house falling into the canal?"
"Hord orn...jursh...hord orn..." Katisch looks up from her phone, also trying to check in, holding her gloves in her teeth while she fidgets and shivers.
"That's awesome," MoLinder says, tapping away on her phone.
"Ish mor rike a shurd."
"A what?"
Katsisch yanks her gloves from her mouth. "A shed."
"Whatever, I'm gonna tell people it's a house." I take a picture. "Do you think it's like a warning?" We stand at an open intersection, and the wind whips around us. I put on my gloves. "I should have brought my hat."
"Well, you didn't." Katsisch is only wearing a zipped sweatshirt. Well, and pants and stuff, of course. She keeps sniffing. She is allergic to Scandinavia, and she's been leaking out of her face ever since we landed in Copenhagen, poor thing, and she can't find any allergy medicine because, well...she's afraid to ask the Scandinavians for help. She's not as leaky when we're indoors, but standing all exposed on this barren, windy street is probably not helping.
"Want a Kleenex?" I ask her.
"I'm fine, let's just start moving."
"Got it!" MoLinder calls, successfully checking us in on FB. "Now you guys can stop your bitching. Where are we going?"
I pull out the map from my pocket, because I have no problem being a blatant tourist. That's something I never understood. "The castle thing is in this park."
"Okay, you guys, let's just go, can we walk, please?" Katsisch sniffs pathetically and crams her gloved hands into her pockets. "This way?"
"Yeah, I think so."
"It is too cold for 'I think so.'"
"I'm sure."
"Fine." She hunkers down and walks into the park, heading between tall hedges that block the wind.
These gardens are probably gorgeous in the summertime, but right now everything is soggy, brown and gray. People would Instagram the ever-filtered fuck out of this place. Rugged little blue flowers litter the ground in front of a quaint stone windmill. Geese are honking and shitting all over things, and there is a fucking moat around the castle.
"I think the entrance is on the other side," I tell them. We walk briskly, because seriously it is cold as fuck. Duh. Sweden. No one is around.
"Is this place free?" MoLinder asks. "Are you sure we can go inside?"
"I'm sure. I think there's a museum or something in there."
"What kind of museum?"
"I don't know. Probably a history of the castle or something. It looks kinda cool from out here, though, don't you think?"
"Yeah, I'm down for whatever."
We walk to the front of the crumbly red castle and hear a blazing trumpet, freezing just in time to watch a giant white swan dive-bomb some geese that are lounging in the moat. It's terrifying. We all start laughing.
"What?" Katsisch giggles.
"Dude, swans are bitches," MoL smiles.
"God, I love it here." I and turn to the bridge across the moat. "Shall we?"
We cross the bridge - was it a drawbridge once? - and walk inside a courtyard. It starts raining. We bolt inside.
A giant stuffed giraffe welcomes us into the castle, and we glance around before heading over to the front desk to buy our tickets.
"Tak," I say to the guy after paying, and he smiles, handing me the tickets. We decide to head over up to the ramparts to soak in as much history as possible, and start the trek up the stairs. We turn, following signs for the history of the castle, and walk into a room full of tiny medieval figurines acting out clandestine activities. Everything is in Swedish, but we can glean mildly their meaning. A life-size scene shows a soldier shitting in a bucket and drunken monk baffing into a barrel. Sickness? The plague?
Turning, we face a collection of dioramas showing literally straw-haired figurines being raped by pirates, muscling the castle's bellows, rotating in jail cells on small metal spikes with tortured faces. A mirrored tower of clay pots tricks us into believing the collection is triple its actual size, crude murals of jesters and the castle guard decorate the walls next to shattered pieces of brick that you can touch, just so, even if you aren't supposed to. Of course I touch everything.
Random planks of beloved ships and gallows are nailed haphazardly all over walls, Swedish descriptions taped beneath them, typed onto yellowing paper years ago. We obviously don't understand a word of it.
We turn a corner and we're in a circular brick tower laced with arrowslits that have been plexiglassed up, revealing the rainy skies outside. Piles of cannonballs are scattered around every curve.
Portraits litter the walls. They're hundreds of years old, but without protective laser-trips and glass casing. We can just run our fingers over the oil paint, fondle the gold frames. In the middle of it all there's a lush black and white autographed photo of Spencer Tracy.
The next room is full of ancient furniture and grayed curtains, but again, we can touch everything. There are no signs forbidding running our rain-tinged fingers over the velvet, nothing preventing us from resting our asses on four hundred-year old dining chairs. We can just sit, feel, consume medieval tapestries and frayed leather globes. The Swedes don't give a fuck.
We stroll in a daze, constantly calling to each other: "Holy shit, look at this. Look at this. I'm just caressing the portrait of an ancient Swedish king, like nothing."
Eventually we encounter a weathered suit of armor pointing to our right, with a piece of paper masking taped to its chest: an arrow following its extended arm, indicating THAT WAY.
"That way" is a twisting, brilliantly red carpeted staircase encased with more funhouse mirrors. It seems out of place, but you know. Sweden. We climb it. At the top to the right are signs indicating downward again, down a deep wooden stairwell. To the left is a slippery brick hole blocked by plexiglass, a worn down shit chute leading outside the fortress. We go right. Painted cat-paw footprints trail down the steps, and in English it indicates: Children's Museum.
Giddy, we follow the footprints.
...
We go to Sweden, mostly because we can. We were in Denmark and now we're in Sweden, like going to fucking Indiana. Trains over there have designated baby areas because they are designed by geniuses. Katsisch, MoLinder and I avoid them neatly. Twenty minutes tops, and we're standing in cold, gray Malmo.
Unsure of our first move, we head to Starbucks to check in at 'Sweden.' It feels right, but MoLinder can't find a proper signal, and we leave to wander slowly down an empty street towards what we suspect is a castle or a fortress or something, stopping every so often to see if MoL can jump on the FB. She is fucking determined to check us in.
"It's fucking cold, hurry up," I tell her, annoyed.
"Chill the fuck out. It's not real if it's not on the FB. Besides, I thought you looooved the cold. Oh, I'm Rassles, and I loooooove the cold, I'm so much haaappier when it snows."
"Shut up. Smart phones are dumb." I look around. "Is that a...is that a house falling into the canal?"
"Hord orn...jursh...hord orn..." Katisch looks up from her phone, also trying to check in, holding her gloves in her teeth while she fidgets and shivers.
"That's awesome," MoLinder says, tapping away on her phone.
"Ish mor rike a shurd."
"A what?"
Katsisch yanks her gloves from her mouth. "A shed."
"Whatever, I'm gonna tell people it's a house." I take a picture. "Do you think it's like a warning?" We stand at an open intersection, and the wind whips around us. I put on my gloves. "I should have brought my hat."
"Well, you didn't." Katsisch is only wearing a zipped sweatshirt. Well, and pants and stuff, of course. She keeps sniffing. She is allergic to Scandinavia, and she's been leaking out of her face ever since we landed in Copenhagen, poor thing, and she can't find any allergy medicine because, well...she's afraid to ask the Scandinavians for help. She's not as leaky when we're indoors, but standing all exposed on this barren, windy street is probably not helping.
"Want a Kleenex?" I ask her.
"I'm fine, let's just start moving."
"Got it!" MoLinder calls, successfully checking us in on FB. "Now you guys can stop your bitching. Where are we going?"
I pull out the map from my pocket, because I have no problem being a blatant tourist. That's something I never understood. "The castle thing is in this park."
"Okay, you guys, let's just go, can we walk, please?" Katsisch sniffs pathetically and crams her gloved hands into her pockets. "This way?"
"Yeah, I think so."
"It is too cold for 'I think so.'"
"I'm sure."
"Fine." She hunkers down and walks into the park, heading between tall hedges that block the wind.
These gardens are probably gorgeous in the summertime, but right now everything is soggy, brown and gray. People would Instagram the ever-filtered fuck out of this place. Rugged little blue flowers litter the ground in front of a quaint stone windmill. Geese are honking and shitting all over things, and there is a fucking moat around the castle.
"I think the entrance is on the other side," I tell them. We walk briskly, because seriously it is cold as fuck. Duh. Sweden. No one is around.
"Is this place free?" MoLinder asks. "Are you sure we can go inside?"
"I'm sure. I think there's a museum or something in there."
"What kind of museum?"
"I don't know. Probably a history of the castle or something. It looks kinda cool from out here, though, don't you think?"
We walk to the front of the crumbly red castle and hear a blazing trumpet, freezing just in time to watch a giant white swan dive-bomb some geese that are lounging in the moat. It's terrifying. We all start laughing.
"What?" Katsisch giggles.
"Dude, swans are bitches," MoL smiles.
"God, I love it here." I and turn to the bridge across the moat. "Shall we?"
We cross the bridge - was it a drawbridge once? - and walk inside a courtyard. It starts raining. We bolt inside.
A giant stuffed giraffe welcomes us into the castle, and we glance around before heading over to the front desk to buy our tickets.
"Tak," I say to the guy after paying, and he smiles, handing me the tickets. We decide to head over up to the ramparts to soak in as much history as possible, and start the trek up the stairs. We turn, following signs for the history of the castle, and walk into a room full of tiny medieval figurines acting out clandestine activities. Everything is in Swedish, but we can glean mildly their meaning. A life-size scene shows a soldier shitting in a bucket and drunken monk baffing into a barrel. Sickness? The plague?
Turning, we face a collection of dioramas showing literally straw-haired figurines being raped by pirates, muscling the castle's bellows, rotating in jail cells on small metal spikes with tortured faces. A mirrored tower of clay pots tricks us into believing the collection is triple its actual size, crude murals of jesters and the castle guard decorate the walls next to shattered pieces of brick that you can touch, just so, even if you aren't supposed to. Of course I touch everything.Random planks of beloved ships and gallows are nailed haphazardly all over walls, Swedish descriptions taped beneath them, typed onto yellowing paper years ago. We obviously don't understand a word of it.
We turn a corner and we're in a circular brick tower laced with arrowslits that have been plexiglassed up, revealing the rainy skies outside. Piles of cannonballs are scattered around every curve.
Portraits litter the walls. They're hundreds of years old, but without protective laser-trips and glass casing. We can just run our fingers over the oil paint, fondle the gold frames. In the middle of it all there's a lush black and white autographed photo of Spencer Tracy.The next room is full of ancient furniture and grayed curtains, but again, we can touch everything. There are no signs forbidding running our rain-tinged fingers over the velvet, nothing preventing us from resting our asses on four hundred-year old dining chairs. We can just sit, feel, consume medieval tapestries and frayed leather globes. The Swedes don't give a fuck.
We stroll in a daze, constantly calling to each other: "Holy shit, look at this. Look at this. I'm just caressing the portrait of an ancient Swedish king, like nothing."
Eventually we encounter a weathered suit of armor pointing to our right, with a piece of paper masking taped to its chest: an arrow following its extended arm, indicating THAT WAY.
"That way" is a twisting, brilliantly red carpeted staircase encased with more funhouse mirrors. It seems out of place, but you know. Sweden. We climb it. At the top to the right are signs indicating downward again, down a deep wooden stairwell. To the left is a slippery brick hole blocked by plexiglass, a worn down shit chute leading outside the fortress. We go right. Painted cat-paw footprints trail down the steps, and in English it indicates: Children's Museum.
Giddy, we follow the footprints.
...
Saturday, June 23, 2012
Like Mountain
This is Part 7 of the Wir Gehen Nach Deutschland series,
which is, apparently, a series now, because I just called it a series,
just now, and there are eleven of them, which is bonkers.
The thing about stories, I mean, the reason things can feel terribly exciting is unrelated to action and unrelated to meaning and completely related to truth.
The truth behind an action, the motivation for an action or inaction is the truth of a story. Doing something for the sake of telling other people about is a quest for fame, not life. Sometimes I need to remind myself of that when I get all weird. Why am I doing this? Oh yeah. For me. To prove to myself that I'm not a waste. Because honestly, this is about me.
...
(I wrote all of that earlier, and now it's four-thirty and I'm drunk, but not too drunk, so hopefully this makes sense)
We forced ourselves out of bed the next morning and Katsisch was still pretty drunk, but we stumbled to the train and onto a plane and I snored the entire flight like a jackass.
Snoring, by the way, is a relatively new thing for me, lifre-wise. I think it started about two years ago? People complain about being single because they're lonely, they want love, sex, passion, someone to make sure they get home okay, someone for all-bed-all-day Sunday, for speaking in codes, for adventuers, for no other security than wrapped arms, for boozing and lazing and facebook updating, for dirty guilt and thought dumps, for hate and shame and squishing and groping, for dreams and futures and memories and all of those things that romantifc comedies make us believe we want, because really, we fucking do...but as of this moment, right now, I really need a chronolurgical snoring timeline.
Then Copenhagen came along, looming like dappled Legos, the city equivalent of cool, but rude, and everything there felt broken somehow but proud and healing. There was mystery leaking out of the cobblestones, because people were elusive and because every night the Tivoli would gear up just slightly in preparation for opening day, and it was eerie and sinister and always afterhours, and I was always afraid bad little boys were being magicked into donkeys because that is the goddamn scariest shit I've ever seen in a Disney movie ever, other than puppies being skinned and sewn into haute couture, and WHO THE FUCK WRITES CHILDREN'S BOOKS?
Hans Christian Anderson does. I feel sorry for Copenhagen, wonderful wonderful Copenhagen, because their mascot is a stupid martyred mermaid bitch that gives up everything so she can walk on daggers and die for the love of a douchebag who was never really that into her anyway, god girls are dumb.
And the fucking cunning grandeur of it all is this: Copenhagen doesn't fucking want your pity. They want your money. They want to charge you eight dollars to ride the bus. They put holes in their money (how quaint!) so silly Americans say things like, Oh, this looks like a donut! I will spend this willy-nilly. Look at me, I am well-traveled! Did you know ketchup packets and butter pats cost extra? Hooray, I get to use my octagon coin!
I know this because every time I used a donut coin I felt validated as a human being who has experienced other cultures. It's a brilliant scheme.
But then! They have secret trampolines along the coast that you can just fall onto if you aren't paying attention, and it's not uncommon to accidentally wander into a palace or a fortress shaped like a star. And they have a land with zero rules and red wagons full of puppies that are NOT being made into fancy clothes for rich ladies, and there are so many drugs and skate parks and brilliant graffiti murals, and you can buy beers for fifty cents.
But thar be monsters, and some of those monsters are scary orange meth-heads from Thailand who wink and raise their eyebrows at MoLinder, who is 5'10" and a curvy, brickhouse nightmare. Gyna is also a curvy brickhouse nightmare, but she wasn't there. Honestly, now that I think about it: we all have giant boobs. We could rest trophy collections on them, or encyclopedias. Plus, we've read encyclopedias. We are walking library shelves. The reference section.
(I've used my backspace key soooooooooooo many times)
"You are like mountain," the meth-head said to MoLinder, hourglassing his hands. He moved and wiggled like an amateur surfer, but since the ground was flat it was obvious he just had serious gravity problems. The open sores on his face pulsed.
I laughed and MoLinder ignored him. His friend dropped a boombox and hit play. "You dance? Me?"
"No thank you," MoLinder said, then ignored him properly.
I didn't. "You look like you're trying to balance on a rickety bus."
"Ah?" He smiled at me, gray-toothed and wobbly. "Dance? You dance? You think I funny?"
"No dance. Yes funny," I laughed again, and sipped my Christiania beer.
"He is a zombie," Katsisch whispered loudly, and a stray dog peed on my Pumas.
...
The thing about stories, I mean, the reason things can feel terribly exciting is unrelated to action and unrelated to meaning and completely related to truth.
The truth behind an action, the motivation for an action or inaction is the truth of a story. Doing something for the sake of telling other people about is a quest for fame, not life. Sometimes I need to remind myself of that when I get all weird. Why am I doing this? Oh yeah. For me. To prove to myself that I'm not a waste. Because honestly, this is about me.
...
(I wrote all of that earlier, and now it's four-thirty and I'm drunk, but not too drunk, so hopefully this makes sense)
We forced ourselves out of bed the next morning and Katsisch was still pretty drunk, but we stumbled to the train and onto a plane and I snored the entire flight like a jackass.
Snoring, by the way, is a relatively new thing for me, lifre-wise. I think it started about two years ago? People complain about being single because they're lonely, they want love, sex, passion, someone to make sure they get home okay, someone for all-bed-all-day Sunday, for speaking in codes, for adventuers, for no other security than wrapped arms, for boozing and lazing and facebook updating, for dirty guilt and thought dumps, for hate and shame and squishing and groping, for dreams and futures and memories and all of those things that romantifc comedies make us believe we want, because really, we fucking do...but as of this moment, right now, I really need a chronolurgical snoring timeline.
Then Copenhagen came along, looming like dappled Legos, the city equivalent of cool, but rude, and everything there felt broken somehow but proud and healing. There was mystery leaking out of the cobblestones, because people were elusive and because every night the Tivoli would gear up just slightly in preparation for opening day, and it was eerie and sinister and always afterhours, and I was always afraid bad little boys were being magicked into donkeys because that is the goddamn scariest shit I've ever seen in a Disney movie ever, other than puppies being skinned and sewn into haute couture, and WHO THE FUCK WRITES CHILDREN'S BOOKS?
Hans Christian Anderson does. I feel sorry for Copenhagen, wonderful wonderful Copenhagen, because their mascot is a stupid martyred mermaid bitch that gives up everything so she can walk on daggers and die for the love of a douchebag who was never really that into her anyway, god girls are dumb.
And the fucking cunning grandeur of it all is this: Copenhagen doesn't fucking want your pity. They want your money. They want to charge you eight dollars to ride the bus. They put holes in their money (how quaint!) so silly Americans say things like, Oh, this looks like a donut! I will spend this willy-nilly. Look at me, I am well-traveled! Did you know ketchup packets and butter pats cost extra? Hooray, I get to use my octagon coin!
I know this because every time I used a donut coin I felt validated as a human being who has experienced other cultures. It's a brilliant scheme.
But then! They have secret trampolines along the coast that you can just fall onto if you aren't paying attention, and it's not uncommon to accidentally wander into a palace or a fortress shaped like a star. And they have a land with zero rules and red wagons full of puppies that are NOT being made into fancy clothes for rich ladies, and there are so many drugs and skate parks and brilliant graffiti murals, and you can buy beers for fifty cents.
But thar be monsters, and some of those monsters are scary orange meth-heads from Thailand who wink and raise their eyebrows at MoLinder, who is 5'10" and a curvy, brickhouse nightmare. Gyna is also a curvy brickhouse nightmare, but she wasn't there. Honestly, now that I think about it: we all have giant boobs. We could rest trophy collections on them, or encyclopedias. Plus, we've read encyclopedias. We are walking library shelves. The reference section.
(I've used my backspace key soooooooooooo many times)
"You are like mountain," the meth-head said to MoLinder, hourglassing his hands. He moved and wiggled like an amateur surfer, but since the ground was flat it was obvious he just had serious gravity problems. The open sores on his face pulsed.
I laughed and MoLinder ignored him. His friend dropped a boombox and hit play. "You dance? Me?"
"No thank you," MoLinder said, then ignored him properly.
I didn't. "You look like you're trying to balance on a rickety bus."
"Ah?" He smiled at me, gray-toothed and wobbly. "Dance? You dance? You think I funny?"
"No dance. Yes funny," I laughed again, and sipped my Christiania beer.
"He is a zombie," Katsisch whispered loudly, and a stray dog peed on my Pumas.
...
Monday, June 18, 2012
After the Fox
This is Part 6 of the Wir Gehen Nach Deutschland series,
which is, apparently, a series now, because I just called it a series,
just now, and there are eleven of them, which is bonkers.
We left Dachau thirsty and depressed and in desperate need of ample beers, so luckily we were in the right land for that. Back in Munich we immediately booked it to the Hofbrauhaus and spent half an hour trying to (a) check in to Facebook, and (b) tell Gyna we were going to be late for dinner.
Checking into Facebook took up about a total of ten hours of our time throughout the whole trip - every arrival into every city was kicked off with a trip into a Starbucks for free wi-fi so we could check into Facebook, because it's not real if it's not on Facebook. This is something I don't understand, mostly because I don't have internet on my phone. I'm not anti-check-in or a hater or anything. I just don't get it.
By the way, if you leave me a comment about how touristy or overhyped the Hofbrauhaus is, you're a jerky elitist and you hate fun for no goddamn reason other than jerkiness and fun-hating elitism.
Poor Gyna waited to meet us for like half an hour, no doubt frazzled and frustrated at our complete disregard for her time. Sorry, Gyna.
There was wine and dinner, and everyone learned how Katsisch and I hold conversations, which is not so much of a back-and-forth as it is a breakneck foxhunt, and we weave and tangle and plummet and jolt in this excessively verbal, raucous harmony, but we're after the same damn fox. Philip wore red chinos and we got drunk.
Then there was a bar, and there was beer, and soon we were knee-deep in strange Germans who said wonderful things like, "So, you are the Americans? Yes, I know. You have been shouting to the bar. Yes, Chicago, your sister yelled that. She is the pretty blonde one?" Katsisch never learned about vocal resonance or volume, and the more alcohol she had the more obvious this became.
Eventually all things must end, good and bad, and we went back to Gyna's around two. Three? I have no idea, but we had to be up before 6am to catch a flight to Copenhagen.
...
We left Dachau thirsty and depressed and in desperate need of ample beers, so luckily we were in the right land for that. Back in Munich we immediately booked it to the Hofbrauhaus and spent half an hour trying to (a) check in to Facebook, and (b) tell Gyna we were going to be late for dinner.
Checking into Facebook took up about a total of ten hours of our time throughout the whole trip - every arrival into every city was kicked off with a trip into a Starbucks for free wi-fi so we could check into Facebook, because it's not real if it's not on Facebook. This is something I don't understand, mostly because I don't have internet on my phone. I'm not anti-check-in or a hater or anything. I just don't get it.
By the way, if you leave me a comment about how touristy or overhyped the Hofbrauhaus is, you're a jerky elitist and you hate fun for no goddamn reason other than jerkiness and fun-hating elitism.
Poor Gyna waited to meet us for like half an hour, no doubt frazzled and frustrated at our complete disregard for her time. Sorry, Gyna.
There was wine and dinner, and everyone learned how Katsisch and I hold conversations, which is not so much of a back-and-forth as it is a breakneck foxhunt, and we weave and tangle and plummet and jolt in this excessively verbal, raucous harmony, but we're after the same damn fox. Philip wore red chinos and we got drunk.
Then there was a bar, and there was beer, and soon we were knee-deep in strange Germans who said wonderful things like, "So, you are the Americans? Yes, I know. You have been shouting to the bar. Yes, Chicago, your sister yelled that. She is the pretty blonde one?" Katsisch never learned about vocal resonance or volume, and the more alcohol she had the more obvious this became.
Eventually all things must end, good and bad, and we went back to Gyna's around two. Three? I have no idea, but we had to be up before 6am to catch a flight to Copenhagen.
...
Thursday, May 24, 2012
Noishenvantengutencastlestein v. Hitler's Casino
This is Part 3 of the Wir Gehen Nach Deutschland series,
which is, apparently, a series now, because I just called it a series,
just now, and there are eleven of them, which is bonkers.
We snuck out of Gyna's apartment early Monday morning with gambling on the brain. The original plan was to make the arduous trip over to the famed Schloss Neuschwanstein so we could oggle the castle sham that triggered Disneyland. Because we love Disneyland. Disneyland is amazing. Got that, H8RZ?
Neuschwanstein was literally staged by a goddamn set designer and a mad king, basically guaranteeing a sort of crudely charming, slapdash fantasy riot, which pretty much describes like, my entire goddamn existence. How could I not belong there? But dze Germans gave Neuschwanstein a lackluster thumbs sideways, pushing us towards much more suitable and historically relevant castles in areas where there are more things to do, because if Germans are anything, they're practical. But MoLinder, Katsisch and I had already seen those kinds of castles. We wanted the daydream, not the reality.
Alas, we sought guidance from the oracles at Google, who imparted this knowledge: scaffolding. The treachery! The damn, dashing nerve of it all! Bunch of ruinous frogfuckers, that's what they are, going around ruining things, like Gilbert Grape's mom eating bolognese without a bib, just splattering sauce all over her pressed white shirt and beefy flapjack tits. Fucking scaffolding? On my castle?
"We could go to Salzburg," MoLinder suggested.
"I find it insane that a feasible option for tomorrow is a quick jaunt to Salzburg," Katsisch declared, which was bonkers because I thought she was completely zonked out in her very heavy-looking history book that had a title with a colon in it and a long, over explanatory subtitle, like History of Things: How The Fourth Great Awakening Launched a Resurgence of Religious Cultural Icons That Are Still Moderately Relevant Today In Certain Backwoods Areas of the Missouri Ozarks and One Small Corner of Arkansas, and Also Representations of Feminism, Oil, and the KKK.
"But I wanna see the pretty pretty castle," I whined.
"But you won't be able to see it. Scaffolding. And it sounds so hard to get to. It's a lot of travel time."
"Well yeah, but I wanna goooooo."
"And I've never been Austria."
Katsisch piped in. "Me neither!"
"And it's supposed to be awesome."
"Okay," I start doing business. "If you can convince me that Salzburg is more awesome than Neuschwanstein, I will gladly go without complaint."
"Done." MoLinder sniffed closely at the guidebook in her hand. "Mozart was from Salzburg."
"Duh."
"They have a castle fortress there. On a hill. Oh! And it's white."
"Mur."
"Sound of Music tour..."
"Meh."
"Excellent shopping, no...BEER, right? Scenery, mountains....oh, oh OH! They have a casino."
Katsisch perked from her book. "Casino?"
"Oh yes."
"I do always enjoy a good casino," I said.
MoLinder holds up her guidebook and reads triumphantly. "Schloss Klessheim is a baroque palace four kilometers west of--"
"A palace!" Kat squealed and clutched her book to her chest.
"-- the city. A former summer residence of the Archbishops of Salzburg, and used by Adolf Hitler--"
"HITLER!" She crumpled with giggles.
"--to host special guests and conferences, it is now a year-round Casino."
"CRAPS! WE ARE GOING. Screw Noishenvantengutencastlestein! We have to do this. Rass? WE HAVE GOT TO DO THIS!" She clamped onto her book, wrapping herself around it with delight. "Aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh!"
We have this thing, you see. It's a Rossi sister trait to roll up into a ball when (a) we are holding a book and (b) we find something incredibly exciting. Like most of you, I'm sure, my sisters and I were big heavy readers as kids. And it wasn't uncommon to have the three of us sitting together on the couch just reading and being still when our parents would announce something that would thrill us to the fucking core -- "We're getting a puppy!" -- "Let's go to the park!" -- "Who wants Burger King?" -- and we would fucking lose it and flail about, beating each other with our books in a frenzy and yelling words that aren't real.
So my parents realized they raised three girls with mild control issues. They trained us to fold around our books when exciting shit was going down just to keep us from clunking each other on the head. We still do this, but only when we are physically holding a book.
"Fucking. Yeah. Okay. Let's do Salzburg. But ONLY if we can go to Hitler's Casino. Because that sounds legit."
"HOORAY!" MoLinder shouted, and Katsisch rolled around Gyna's couch like the top of a bobblehead, squealing profusely and holding onto that book for dear life and jabbering on about updating her Facebook status.
But I think MoLinder put it best:
MoLinder
April 1 near Giesing, Bayern via mobile
So like I said, we snuck out of Gyna's apartment early Monday morning with gambling on the brain, and started to make our way to Salzburg.
...
We snuck out of Gyna's apartment early Monday morning with gambling on the brain. The original plan was to make the arduous trip over to the famed Schloss Neuschwanstein so we could oggle the castle sham that triggered Disneyland. Because we love Disneyland. Disneyland is amazing. Got that, H8RZ?
Neuschwanstein was literally staged by a goddamn set designer and a mad king, basically guaranteeing a sort of crudely charming, slapdash fantasy riot, which pretty much describes like, my entire goddamn existence. How could I not belong there? But dze Germans gave Neuschwanstein a lackluster thumbs sideways, pushing us towards much more suitable and historically relevant castles in areas where there are more things to do, because if Germans are anything, they're practical. But MoLinder, Katsisch and I had already seen those kinds of castles. We wanted the daydream, not the reality.
Alas, we sought guidance from the oracles at Google, who imparted this knowledge: scaffolding. The treachery! The damn, dashing nerve of it all! Bunch of ruinous frogfuckers, that's what they are, going around ruining things, like Gilbert Grape's mom eating bolognese without a bib, just splattering sauce all over her pressed white shirt and beefy flapjack tits. Fucking scaffolding? On my castle?
"We could go to Salzburg," MoLinder suggested.
"I find it insane that a feasible option for tomorrow is a quick jaunt to Salzburg," Katsisch declared, which was bonkers because I thought she was completely zonked out in her very heavy-looking history book that had a title with a colon in it and a long, over explanatory subtitle, like History of Things: How The Fourth Great Awakening Launched a Resurgence of Religious Cultural Icons That Are Still Moderately Relevant Today In Certain Backwoods Areas of the Missouri Ozarks and One Small Corner of Arkansas, and Also Representations of Feminism, Oil, and the KKK.
"But I wanna see the pretty pretty castle," I whined.
"But you won't be able to see it. Scaffolding. And it sounds so hard to get to. It's a lot of travel time."
"Well yeah, but I wanna goooooo."
"And I've never been Austria."
Katsisch piped in. "Me neither!"
"And it's supposed to be awesome."
"Okay," I start doing business. "If you can convince me that Salzburg is more awesome than Neuschwanstein, I will gladly go without complaint."
"Done." MoLinder sniffed closely at the guidebook in her hand. "Mozart was from Salzburg."
"Duh."
"They have a castle fortress there. On a hill. Oh! And it's white."
"Mur."
"Sound of Music tour..."
"Meh."
"Excellent shopping, no...BEER, right? Scenery, mountains....oh, oh OH! They have a casino."
Katsisch perked from her book. "Casino?"
"Oh yes."
"I do always enjoy a good casino," I said.
MoLinder holds up her guidebook and reads triumphantly. "Schloss Klessheim is a baroque palace four kilometers west of--"
"A palace!" Kat squealed and clutched her book to her chest.
"-- the city. A former summer residence of the Archbishops of Salzburg, and used by Adolf Hitler--"
"HITLER!" She crumpled with giggles.
"--to host special guests and conferences, it is now a year-round Casino."
"CRAPS! WE ARE GOING. Screw Noishenvantengutencastlestein! We have to do this. Rass? WE HAVE GOT TO DO THIS!" She clamped onto her book, wrapping herself around it with delight. "Aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh!"
We have this thing, you see. It's a Rossi sister trait to roll up into a ball when (a) we are holding a book and (b) we find something incredibly exciting. Like most of you, I'm sure, my sisters and I were big heavy readers as kids. And it wasn't uncommon to have the three of us sitting together on the couch just reading and being still when our parents would announce something that would thrill us to the fucking core -- "We're getting a puppy!" -- "Let's go to the park!" -- "Who wants Burger King?" -- and we would fucking lose it and flail about, beating each other with our books in a frenzy and yelling words that aren't real.
So my parents realized they raised three girls with mild control issues. They trained us to fold around our books when exciting shit was going down just to keep us from clunking each other on the head. We still do this, but only when we are physically holding a book.
"Fucking. Yeah. Okay. Let's do Salzburg. But ONLY if we can go to Hitler's Casino. Because that sounds legit."
"HOORAY!" MoLinder shouted, and Katsisch rolled around Gyna's couch like the top of a bobblehead, squealing profusely and holding onto that book for dear life and jabbering on about updating her Facebook status.
But I think MoLinder put it best:
MoLinder
April 1 near Giesing, Bayern via mobile
Disney
inspired castle trip tomorrow has been scrapped due to logistics and
scaffolding. Looks like Salzburg instead! (the sisters Rossi are excited
to gamble in a casino in one of Hitler's former residences)
So like I said, we snuck out of Gyna's apartment early Monday morning with gambling on the brain, and started to make our way to Salzburg.
...
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Debates for the Universe
Is there a God? Why is it that when you slice a seashell in half, you find math inside? Why can't I start working at noon as I am not a farmer? Does a man really want a woman with a sense of humor, or does he just want a woman who laughs at his jokes? Who is the sadist that keeps on airing those ASPCA commercials?
When did irony stop functioning as a rhetorical device and become a cultural slogan for sloppy contrast? Who steals my pens when I'm not at my desk? Are dragons real? Chickens and eggs, which came first? Who is the most important musical figure since the inception of Rock and Roll: Elvis, Les Paul, or the Beatles as a cheeky whole? Why does everyone buy Puffs and still call it Kleenex?
Who coined the phrase "throw you under the bus"? Where do they live? Is it near a bus stop? Why do people repeat that phrase when it makes no sense and sounds fucking idiotic? Why are potato stems useless? How many apple seeds can you eat before you feel the effects of the cyanide? How is it statistically possible that I am undefeated in air hockey (Holla)?
Does anyone ever enjoy a Hollywood reboot? When did rope become irrelevant? How did Mrs. Grass chicken noodle soup become a proven placebo cure-all for everything bad ever ever? How did I get so close to one set of grandparents and retain such antipathy for the other? Fucking magnets, how do they work? Which is better: quality or nostalgia; sub-question: So which is the best Weezer album?
My grandpa died last night. This one. I am sad. My grandmother, from the other side of the family, passed away about a month and a half ago. I was not nearly as sad. Oh, I really want to get drunk.
...
When did irony stop functioning as a rhetorical device and become a cultural slogan for sloppy contrast? Who steals my pens when I'm not at my desk? Are dragons real? Chickens and eggs, which came first? Who is the most important musical figure since the inception of Rock and Roll: Elvis, Les Paul, or the Beatles as a cheeky whole? Why does everyone buy Puffs and still call it Kleenex?
Who coined the phrase "throw you under the bus"? Where do they live? Is it near a bus stop? Why do people repeat that phrase when it makes no sense and sounds fucking idiotic? Why are potato stems useless? How many apple seeds can you eat before you feel the effects of the cyanide? How is it statistically possible that I am undefeated in air hockey (Holla)?
Does anyone ever enjoy a Hollywood reboot? When did rope become irrelevant? How did Mrs. Grass chicken noodle soup become a proven placebo cure-all for everything bad ever ever? How did I get so close to one set of grandparents and retain such antipathy for the other? Fucking magnets, how do they work? Which is better: quality or nostalgia; sub-question: So which is the best Weezer album?
My grandpa died last night. This one. I am sad. My grandmother, from the other side of the family, passed away about a month and a half ago. I was not nearly as sad. Oh, I really want to get drunk.
...
Thursday, June 2, 2011
I can't take hand-me-down destiny
day 23 - a song that you want to play at your wedding
I didn't know people thought about things like this. Picking a song to play at your "wedding" like I'm going to have one or something? That's like naming your children or your dog before you meet them. Makes no sense to me.
Sure, when I was little I imagined I had a giant red dog named Ox who had absolutely nothing to do with the giant red dog named Clifford. Ox was more feral and hyena-y and ate chipmunks and lilacs, because those were the two things that were most prominent in my parents' backyard. He was extremely protective of me. Oh, and I had an imaginary mustang named Astronaut who lived under the apple tree and I was the only one who could ride him because I was patient and kind and could totally speak horse. But I don't ever plan on owning a horse or a dog with those names.
Quaint little child, eh?
So I need to come up with a song to play at my wedding. Since I have no boyfriend, fiance, or possible marriage in sight, this seems pointless. But a meme is a meme, and memes are unstoppable.
Traditionally at weddings, the bride dances with her dad, correct? Because my dad and I have an anthem, and this is it.
Sure, it's not exactly appropriate for a father/daughter dance, but fuck that, right? That's what makes the song perfect. People will probably scoff and wonder why we aren't playing "Butterfly Kisses" or "Wonderful Tonight" or some other fucking nancypants song, and them I will REFER TO THE LYRICS.
Although apparently now it's all hip to start dancing with your dad and then bust out Soulja Boy choreography halfway through the song to show that you're his special little girl, but ya'll can pal around be goofy cuz u don't take sh*t 2 srsly.
(Sorry, I have this weird obsession right now with sporadic, mean-tempered textspeak)
On another note: My boss (I have two) and her wife got their civil union license yesterday. Hooray for separate but equal! You lesbians have to use the lesbian bathroom, but at least we let you go inside now.
...
Friday, January 14, 2011
Luckery and Astrology
In the midst of all the excitement of being thirty years old I've been researching my "novel," and by "novel" I mean "newest unreachable goal." Technically I reached my last two unreachable goals, so that's awesome, and I got them by juuuust half a foot or so, and now I have new ones to make even though I'm pretty sure those were the first goals I've ever reached in my life and I may never reach another. No, I will reach another goal, because that falls under my goals for this year.
Whatever, so I read every book on my shelves and I win at year 29. I make Age Resolutions.
For a decade I was one of those people who would hoard used books with the intention of intending to read them eventually, but I can't even pretend I always had the intention in the first place. Some books I just picked up because I heard someone once say it was good, some I picked up because hipsters referenced them and I wanted to sneer at their pretentiousness, those shifty little fuckers, and some I picked up because they were Classics that Everyone Should Read. Most of them just sat around on my bookshelves, always the neglected topic of conversation.
Last year I read all of them.
This year I have a two new goals in mind:
(1) From now on I will be Lucky.
I spent 29 years believing I was unlucky. Rossi Curse and all. Because, oh, my family has a curse. Haven't I mentioned it?
Unto each Rossi generation there will be an Unluckiest.
It's not an official curse, it's just a fun little game that my bastard Poppy invented to explain why he won at everything and his brother Joe always lost, and the tradition carried down to my dad, John The Unluckiest, and now to me: Rassles The Unluckiest.
It's been accepted throughout the extended family that I am The Unluckiest, and I'm used to being berated for it. Of course you got robbed, you're Unlucky. Of course you're not married, you're Unlucky. Of course you deliver pizzas, you're Unlucky. Of course your job is a dead end, you're Unlucky. Of course you got pulled over on a day-old expired driver's license, you're Unlucky.
Of course comparatively worldwide, I'm extraordinarily lucky. And I actually consider myself lucky to be unwed because marriage is a sham.
So fuck it. I didn't get along with Poppy anyway. I refuse to be The Unluckiest Rossi, and I refuse to believe that my refusal of unluckiness will result in that unluckiness being passed on to another family member with an overabundance of luck to restore the balance of luckery. I've decided that instead, my unluckiness will pass on to some dickweed I don't like who's been lucky his/her entire life. Because fuck that guy.
So what I'm saying is this: I decide to be lucky, because luck and its adversary do not need capitalization because they are in the mind and not decided by someone who isn't me, and now I'm not a Capricorn anymore. I fucking win. Being a Capricorn sucked. Honestly, if I identified with those horoscopic descriptions in the slightest I probably would have grown up to be a fucking gastronomical astrological nightmare, like how I am with the animal test. Do I whip out this shit at parties? Yes, I do. It's a huge annoyance until someone takes the test and flips at its accuracy, and I'm like "bitch I told you" and they're all "yeah you did" and I'm all "fuckin worldshaker and heartbreaker" and then I point to myself with my thumb while they awkwardly laugh and slyly curse my always-right-edness and innate ability to fucking work it.
Then again, I don't think an astrologer named Kunkle should be trusted at all. Kunkle sounds like a Harry Potter character. Plus, astrology is fucking stupid and rooted in absolutely nothing logical. And all you believers shout, "Stars!" and I say, "No, you fools! It's about interpreting the symbolic nature of the position of celestial bodies. Fantasy."
Now that we're clear on my position, and now that we all know I am a Sagittarius (I still don't really identify with any of it, it just sounds more pleasant than a rigid, organized, ambitiously serious Capricorn), I think it's time to move on.
(2) I have a list of about sixteen books to research and master. For the "novel." Which I am "writing." "Hypothetically."
What books they are you'll never know, not until I'm giving interviews and TED speeches about my genius and someone asks for my greatest influence and I'll say, "Honestly? There are so many, but I've always been partial to Winnie-the-Pooh."
...
Whatever, so I read every book on my shelves and I win at year 29. I make Age Resolutions.
For a decade I was one of those people who would hoard used books with the intention of intending to read them eventually, but I can't even pretend I always had the intention in the first place. Some books I just picked up because I heard someone once say it was good, some I picked up because hipsters referenced them and I wanted to sneer at their pretentiousness, those shifty little fuckers, and some I picked up because they were Classics that Everyone Should Read. Most of them just sat around on my bookshelves, always the neglected topic of conversation.
Last year I read all of them.
This year I have a two new goals in mind:
(1) From now on I will be Lucky.
I spent 29 years believing I was unlucky. Rossi Curse and all. Because, oh, my family has a curse. Haven't I mentioned it?
Unto each Rossi generation there will be an Unluckiest.
It's not an official curse, it's just a fun little game that my bastard Poppy invented to explain why he won at everything and his brother Joe always lost, and the tradition carried down to my dad, John The Unluckiest, and now to me: Rassles The Unluckiest.
It's been accepted throughout the extended family that I am The Unluckiest, and I'm used to being berated for it. Of course you got robbed, you're Unlucky. Of course you're not married, you're Unlucky. Of course you deliver pizzas, you're Unlucky. Of course your job is a dead end, you're Unlucky. Of course you got pulled over on a day-old expired driver's license, you're Unlucky.
Of course comparatively worldwide, I'm extraordinarily lucky. And I actually consider myself lucky to be unwed because marriage is a sham.
So fuck it. I didn't get along with Poppy anyway. I refuse to be The Unluckiest Rossi, and I refuse to believe that my refusal of unluckiness will result in that unluckiness being passed on to another family member with an overabundance of luck to restore the balance of luckery. I've decided that instead, my unluckiness will pass on to some dickweed I don't like who's been lucky his/her entire life. Because fuck that guy.
So what I'm saying is this: I decide to be lucky, because luck and its adversary do not need capitalization because they are in the mind and not decided by someone who isn't me, and now I'm not a Capricorn anymore. I fucking win. Being a Capricorn sucked. Honestly, if I identified with those horoscopic descriptions in the slightest I probably would have grown up to be a fucking gastronomical astrological nightmare, like how I am with the animal test. Do I whip out this shit at parties? Yes, I do. It's a huge annoyance until someone takes the test and flips at its accuracy, and I'm like "bitch I told you" and they're all "yeah you did" and I'm all "fuckin worldshaker and heartbreaker" and then I point to myself with my thumb while they awkwardly laugh and slyly curse my always-right-edness and innate ability to fucking work it.
Then again, I don't think an astrologer named Kunkle should be trusted at all. Kunkle sounds like a Harry Potter character. Plus, astrology is fucking stupid and rooted in absolutely nothing logical. And all you believers shout, "Stars!" and I say, "No, you fools! It's about interpreting the symbolic nature of the position of celestial bodies. Fantasy."
Now that we're clear on my position, and now that we all know I am a Sagittarius (I still don't really identify with any of it, it just sounds more pleasant than a rigid, organized, ambitiously serious Capricorn), I think it's time to move on.
(2) I have a list of about sixteen books to research and master. For the "novel." Which I am "writing." "Hypothetically."
What books they are you'll never know, not until I'm giving interviews and TED speeches about my genius and someone asks for my greatest influence and I'll say, "Honestly? There are so many, but I've always been partial to Winnie-the-Pooh."
...
Monday, November 8, 2010
A Sunday at the Empress, Fyra, Attica
Okay, I rushed. Fuck. All of a sudden I feel pressure to be good at this, and inventive or something, like I'm taking a creative writing class. I don't like it.
Part the First
Part Deux, Harlot
Part Tres, Notion
The door slams behind me and I'm pissed. "Why is this necessary?"
"We're trying to avoid making a scene out on the floor."
I understand. Rassles would definitely make scene. Or make fun of me. I'm hungry. This would be far more enjoyable if they took me to the buffet. I follow the guard into a small gray room with two benches and a long metal table, and she sits me down. "Someone will be with you in a minute."
As the door closes behind her, I check my phone. No service, of course. Ludicrous. They could give me something to read, just to be polite. I decide that I will not cooperate. Especially if they make me wait more than ten minutes.
Ten minutes later, another woman with a clipboard enters the room and sits down.
"Hi, I'm Samantha."
"Hello."
"I'm with the gaming board. I'm just going to ask you a few questions, if that's okay." She has one of those metal clipboard boxes that has secrets inside. If I had a clipboard like that, it would be full of candy. "Name?"
"It's not okay, and I don't have to tell you anything."
"Well, yes. You do."
"Am I being arrested?"
"No--"
I shake my head. "Then I definitely do not. Why am I here?"
"We just need to ask a few questions."
"You've been asking questions. Do you keep anything inside that clipboard?"
"Why are you here?"
"I have no idea. If I had that clipboard, it would be full of candy."
"I mean, why are you here at the casino?"
"Because you refuse to let me go home and eat dinner. Could you please tell me why I'm being held here?"
"We just need to investigate a few things."
"Like what?"
"Please, could you cooperate?"
"Fine."
"Thank you. What's your name?"
"Yellavitch Rossi."
"Social Security number?"
"I will not give that to you, and you have absolutely no right to ask for it."
"It's just protocol."
"And it's within my rights to refuse your request."
Samantha glares at me, visibly exhausted. How many hours a week does she deal with this? "Fine. What brought you to the casino?"
"My uncle is in town. We like gambling."
"Is your uncle a gambler?"
"He's a pit boss in Vegas."
Samantha perks up. "He is?"
"Yes."
She writes down something that I don't care about. I fold my arms. "Your last name is Rossi?"
"Yes."
"Is that Italian?"
"Yes."
"Is your uncle a Rossi?"
"No, he's a FitzPatrick."
"Oh. And he lives in Las Vegas."
"Yes."
"Did your uncle teach you how to play craps?"
"Yes."
"He did a good job. I heard you won a bit of money early on."
"I lost a bit of money too. You don't think I cheated, do you?"
"I'm just investigating something while they review the tapes."
"You guys are idiots."
The vagueness circles around for a little longer. She asks me if I have a job, if I went to college, if my family is heavily involved in the casino world, how often we gamble. If there was a clock, the hands would be moving backwards. Wasting my time. I look at my phone; I've been here nearly half an hour.
"I do not see how any of this is relevant."
"Honestly, we're just--"
"I will not answer any more questions. You obviously think I'm a member of some Italian gambling racket or something, like my family is the mob. We're just trying to have a nice little Sunday at the Empress. As a family."
Samantha gives me the "oh girl" head tilt, and there's a knock at the door. A tiny man peeks his head inside. "All clear. I'm sorry young lady, we've been keeping you here too long."
"So she's clean?"
"As a whistle."
"I can go?" I stand up. "Thank god. What were you going to wrongly accuse me of doing?"
"The fella next to you thought you stole his chips while he went to the bathroom."
"The haphazard chip guy? Jerk. He couldn't just do it to my face?"
"It's a pretty common scam, actually. Accuse someone of taking advantage of you, make a scene, we offer a free buffet to calm them down--"
"You gave him a free buffet?"
"Yeah."
"What are you going to give me for being cooperative and law-abiding?"
The tiny little man grins in snarky surprise. "What would you like?"
"Five free buffets."
"Five?"
"One for me, one for my sister, one for each of my cousins."
His grin widens. "I think we can do that for you." He and Samantha escort me out of the room and back onto the casino floor where my sister and cousins are having a sit-in in front of the penny slots. So melodramatic. They trip over each other to stand as I walk over there.
"Well?" David asks.
"I got us five free buffets, bitches."
...
"Did they play Good Cop Bad Cop?" Rassles slams her car door shut and looks over at me with that mischievous, overly-enthusiastic face she reserves for when people get into trouble or mom bakes cookies.
I lean back in shotgun and close my eyes. "I don't know what that means."
"You know, it's like one of them is all, 'where are the other drugs going?' and you're all, 'I don't know man, I got a family' and then he grabs your collar and jams a Desert Eagle in your face and the other cop grabs his fist and is all, 'O'Malley! You're outta control, man, she's just a kid, this isn't fucking Saigon!' and then they hand you a Kleenex and give you delicious cake."
My sister is a fucking idiot. "I definitely did not get cake."
"Man, that's bullshit."
"They don't give you cake," David chirps from the backseat. Snidely. "And that's the most back-ass, convoluted description of Good Cop Bad Cop I've ever heard."
"Fuck you, and yes they do."
"Cops never give you cake."
"Every time I've been in an interrogation room I was offered fucking cake." She turns on the car and revs it a bit, like that's going to make her bullshit more plausible.
"You have never been in an interrogation room!" Sometimes I think Rassles is completely delusional.
"Irrelevant," she brushes it off, as if it's completely acceptable to tell blatant lies.
"Is this like that thing with CrazyLiz's cat?" I wonder, "Where you're all, he's got a half-eaten ear and one eye and the other eye's like THIS," I cross my fingers in an X over my eye, "and he's all mangled and limping and eats pureed fish out of a tiny feline syringe."
"I am somewhat prone to hyperbole," Rassles giggles to herself.
"I don't know how you have friends."
"I tell good stories sometimes."
"Are you going to fucking blog about this?"
"Ummm, duh. And I'm going to do it from your point of view." We pull out of the parking lot, headed towards the highway. And dinner.
My pocket is full of buffet coupons. So many coupons. I pull them out to look at them and silently gloat. "Just make sure you mention the part about keeping candy in the clipboard, because I would totally do that. Because then whenever I carried it anywhere it would make super-satisfying clinky candy sounds."
...
Part the First
Part Deux, Harlot
Part Tres, Notion
The door slams behind me and I'm pissed. "Why is this necessary?"
"We're trying to avoid making a scene out on the floor."
I understand. Rassles would definitely make scene. Or make fun of me. I'm hungry. This would be far more enjoyable if they took me to the buffet. I follow the guard into a small gray room with two benches and a long metal table, and she sits me down. "Someone will be with you in a minute."
As the door closes behind her, I check my phone. No service, of course. Ludicrous. They could give me something to read, just to be polite. I decide that I will not cooperate. Especially if they make me wait more than ten minutes.
Ten minutes later, another woman with a clipboard enters the room and sits down.
"Hi, I'm Samantha."
"Hello."
"I'm with the gaming board. I'm just going to ask you a few questions, if that's okay." She has one of those metal clipboard boxes that has secrets inside. If I had a clipboard like that, it would be full of candy. "Name?"
"It's not okay, and I don't have to tell you anything."
"Well, yes. You do."
"Am I being arrested?"
"No--"
I shake my head. "Then I definitely do not. Why am I here?"
"We just need to ask a few questions."
"You've been asking questions. Do you keep anything inside that clipboard?"
"Why are you here?"
"I have no idea. If I had that clipboard, it would be full of candy."
"I mean, why are you here at the casino?"
"Because you refuse to let me go home and eat dinner. Could you please tell me why I'm being held here?"
"We just need to investigate a few things."
"Like what?"
"Please, could you cooperate?"
"Fine."
"Thank you. What's your name?"
"Yellavitch Rossi."
"Social Security number?"
"I will not give that to you, and you have absolutely no right to ask for it."
"It's just protocol."
"And it's within my rights to refuse your request."
Samantha glares at me, visibly exhausted. How many hours a week does she deal with this? "Fine. What brought you to the casino?"
"My uncle is in town. We like gambling."
"Is your uncle a gambler?"
"He's a pit boss in Vegas."
Samantha perks up. "He is?"
"Yes."
She writes down something that I don't care about. I fold my arms. "Your last name is Rossi?"
"Yes."
"Is that Italian?"
"Yes."
"Is your uncle a Rossi?"
"No, he's a FitzPatrick."
"Oh. And he lives in Las Vegas."
"Yes."
"Did your uncle teach you how to play craps?"
"Yes."
"He did a good job. I heard you won a bit of money early on."
"I lost a bit of money too. You don't think I cheated, do you?"
"I'm just investigating something while they review the tapes."
"You guys are idiots."
The vagueness circles around for a little longer. She asks me if I have a job, if I went to college, if my family is heavily involved in the casino world, how often we gamble. If there was a clock, the hands would be moving backwards. Wasting my time. I look at my phone; I've been here nearly half an hour.
"I do not see how any of this is relevant."
"Honestly, we're just--"
"I will not answer any more questions. You obviously think I'm a member of some Italian gambling racket or something, like my family is the mob. We're just trying to have a nice little Sunday at the Empress. As a family."
Samantha gives me the "oh girl" head tilt, and there's a knock at the door. A tiny man peeks his head inside. "All clear. I'm sorry young lady, we've been keeping you here too long."
"So she's clean?"
"As a whistle."
"I can go?" I stand up. "Thank god. What were you going to wrongly accuse me of doing?"
"The fella next to you thought you stole his chips while he went to the bathroom."
"The haphazard chip guy? Jerk. He couldn't just do it to my face?"
"It's a pretty common scam, actually. Accuse someone of taking advantage of you, make a scene, we offer a free buffet to calm them down--"
"You gave him a free buffet?"
"Yeah."
"What are you going to give me for being cooperative and law-abiding?"
The tiny little man grins in snarky surprise. "What would you like?"
"Five free buffets."
"Five?"
"One for me, one for my sister, one for each of my cousins."
His grin widens. "I think we can do that for you." He and Samantha escort me out of the room and back onto the casino floor where my sister and cousins are having a sit-in in front of the penny slots. So melodramatic. They trip over each other to stand as I walk over there.
"Well?" David asks.
"I got us five free buffets, bitches."
...
"Did they play Good Cop Bad Cop?" Rassles slams her car door shut and looks over at me with that mischievous, overly-enthusiastic face she reserves for when people get into trouble or mom bakes cookies.
I lean back in shotgun and close my eyes. "I don't know what that means."
"You know, it's like one of them is all, 'where are the other drugs going?' and you're all, 'I don't know man, I got a family' and then he grabs your collar and jams a Desert Eagle in your face and the other cop grabs his fist and is all, 'O'Malley! You're outta control, man, she's just a kid, this isn't fucking Saigon!' and then they hand you a Kleenex and give you delicious cake."
My sister is a fucking idiot. "I definitely did not get cake."
"Man, that's bullshit."
"They don't give you cake," David chirps from the backseat. Snidely. "And that's the most back-ass, convoluted description of Good Cop Bad Cop I've ever heard."
"Fuck you, and yes they do."
"Cops never give you cake."
"Every time I've been in an interrogation room I was offered fucking cake." She turns on the car and revs it a bit, like that's going to make her bullshit more plausible.
"You have never been in an interrogation room!" Sometimes I think Rassles is completely delusional.
"Irrelevant," she brushes it off, as if it's completely acceptable to tell blatant lies.
"Is this like that thing with CrazyLiz's cat?" I wonder, "Where you're all, he's got a half-eaten ear and one eye and the other eye's like THIS," I cross my fingers in an X over my eye, "and he's all mangled and limping and eats pureed fish out of a tiny feline syringe."
"I am somewhat prone to hyperbole," Rassles giggles to herself.
"I don't know how you have friends."
"I tell good stories sometimes."
"Are you going to fucking blog about this?"
"Ummm, duh. And I'm going to do it from your point of view." We pull out of the parking lot, headed towards the highway. And dinner.
My pocket is full of buffet coupons. So many coupons. I pull them out to look at them and silently gloat. "Just make sure you mention the part about keeping candy in the clipboard, because I would totally do that. Because then whenever I carried it anywhere it would make super-satisfying clinky candy sounds."
...
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
A Sunday at the Empress, Tres, Notion
Oh, this is going to be a multi-parter. I started writing it, you know, and thought, 'there ain't no way people will pay attention to one giant post like that. You should create suspense. The kind of suspense that lasts months, like Paranormal Activity but with gambling and a realistic storyline.
Part the First
Part Deux, Harlot
Security escorts Yell back into a stark hallway and I am pissed. Don't you take my sister, you sonsabitches. She is the bravest, smartest person in the world. She's going to be President some day, I fucking swear it. We're going to be like the Emanuel family: Yell's gonna be President after revolutionizing public policy, I'm going to be a super savvy author that writes brilliant, mind-blowing bullshit prose, in like iambic pentameter and stuff, and Katsisch is going to be angry and jealous about it. We're going to give TED speeches and go on Letterman just like all the other white liberals who fantasize about changing the world, I mean, there's a goddamn fantasy all planned out and the security guard at the Empress is fucking it all up because she's a stupid bitch with stupid hair who waddles like ET. Ho-lee fuck, what if she's an alien, and they recognized Yell as the strongest example of our species in the room with their brain scanners and this isn't a casino at all, what better way to disguise your fucking space ship with it's blinky twirly lights and oddly shaped exterior than by pretending it's a casino? Fuck, they're going to probe the bejeezus out of her.
But then, it's Yell. She'll escape through a complicated series of slight-of-hand shit, and like disable all the cameras with her withering gaze and forceful self-righteous speeches, and they'll take her to their leader and she'll just smart-ass her way into their hearts and minds, and then she'll be the new alien leader and they'll end pollution by altering the basic make-up of their advanced weaponry.
"I am thinking some heavy shit right now, guys."
We wait. We wait for a good twenty minutes. Shit. We're late for dinner. I make the call.
"Mom?"
"Hi hon, you guys on your way back?"
"Um. We've been delayed."
"Everything okay?"
"Yeah, everything's fine. Yell's been detained. They've got her in like a holding cell or something and they won't tell me what's going on. I might break something."
"You're kidding me."
"Never."
"Oh my god. She is going rip into them."
"I know, right?" Pause. "You think they think she's underage or something?"
"I have no idea, but I know that--hold on."
I wait. "I asked if they thought she was cheating--"
"Yell would never cheat."
"I know that, but--"
"Hold on." She starts jabbering with family in the background. I hear my dad laughing hysterically and saying something like, 'they took Yell? HAHAHAHA. She's going to get herself arrested for verbal assault. I am woman, hear me roar, right?'
"Okay. Uncle Dave and I are coming back there."
I tried to imagine slim, soft-spoken Uncle Dave standing up to casino thugs. "Is that really necessary?"
"He'll know what questions to ask, it's his job."
"How about he just tells me the questions to ask?"
"Honey, no. We're coming. Call us if something happens."
"Lame."
"It's our decision. Wait - Katsisch says you called to gloat - sorry - rebelliously gloat over being victimized by the man," she laughs.
"Tell her to sit on it. And make the Fonzie sound."
"Goodbye, honey."
"Peace out, Mums." I turn off my phone and turn to the entourage. "Yeah, the grown-ups are coming."
"Fuck, I'm gonna go have a cigarette." David storms off.
We slink down to the floor of the casino, guarding the doors all stern and depressed. My dad calls back. Twice. Basically, he just wanted to remind me that Yell is probably back there defending her rights and being brilliant and strong, and that if it were me I would be cracking jokes like I "do on Facebook" because "everyone thinks" I'm "goddamn hilarious." Duh.
"Oh sure, Dad, nice. They take Yell and we're all, poor Yell! She'll give them a piece of her mind! They take me and it's funny."
"If they took you, you probably deserved it. We'd just leave you there."
...
Part the First
Part Deux, Harlot
Security escorts Yell back into a stark hallway and I am pissed. Don't you take my sister, you sonsabitches. She is the bravest, smartest person in the world. She's going to be President some day, I fucking swear it. We're going to be like the Emanuel family: Yell's gonna be President after revolutionizing public policy, I'm going to be a super savvy author that writes brilliant, mind-blowing bullshit prose, in like iambic pentameter and stuff, and Katsisch is going to be angry and jealous about it. We're going to give TED speeches and go on Letterman just like all the other white liberals who fantasize about changing the world, I mean, there's a goddamn fantasy all planned out and the security guard at the Empress is fucking it all up because she's a stupid bitch with stupid hair who waddles like ET. Ho-lee fuck, what if she's an alien, and they recognized Yell as the strongest example of our species in the room with their brain scanners and this isn't a casino at all, what better way to disguise your fucking space ship with it's blinky twirly lights and oddly shaped exterior than by pretending it's a casino? Fuck, they're going to probe the bejeezus out of her.
But then, it's Yell. She'll escape through a complicated series of slight-of-hand shit, and like disable all the cameras with her withering gaze and forceful self-righteous speeches, and they'll take her to their leader and she'll just smart-ass her way into their hearts and minds, and then she'll be the new alien leader and they'll end pollution by altering the basic make-up of their advanced weaponry.
"I am thinking some heavy shit right now, guys."
We wait. We wait for a good twenty minutes. Shit. We're late for dinner. I make the call.
"Mom?"
"Hi hon, you guys on your way back?"
"Um. We've been delayed."
"Everything okay?"
"Yeah, everything's fine. Yell's been detained. They've got her in like a holding cell or something and they won't tell me what's going on. I might break something."
"You're kidding me."
"Never."
"Oh my god. She is going rip into them."
"I know, right?" Pause. "You think they think she's underage or something?"
"I have no idea, but I know that--hold on."
I wait. "I asked if they thought she was cheating--"
"Yell would never cheat."
"I know that, but--"
"Hold on." She starts jabbering with family in the background. I hear my dad laughing hysterically and saying something like, 'they took Yell? HAHAHAHA. She's going to get herself arrested for verbal assault. I am woman, hear me roar, right?'
"Okay. Uncle Dave and I are coming back there."
I tried to imagine slim, soft-spoken Uncle Dave standing up to casino thugs. "Is that really necessary?"
"He'll know what questions to ask, it's his job."
"How about he just tells me the questions to ask?"
"Honey, no. We're coming. Call us if something happens."
"Lame."
"It's our decision. Wait - Katsisch says you called to gloat - sorry - rebelliously gloat over being victimized by the man," she laughs.
"Tell her to sit on it. And make the Fonzie sound."
"Goodbye, honey."
"Peace out, Mums." I turn off my phone and turn to the entourage. "Yeah, the grown-ups are coming."
"Fuck, I'm gonna go have a cigarette." David storms off.
We slink down to the floor of the casino, guarding the doors all stern and depressed. My dad calls back. Twice. Basically, he just wanted to remind me that Yell is probably back there defending her rights and being brilliant and strong, and that if it were me I would be cracking jokes like I "do on Facebook" because "everyone thinks" I'm "goddamn hilarious." Duh.
"Oh sure, Dad, nice. They take Yell and we're all, poor Yell! She'll give them a piece of her mind! They take me and it's funny."
"If they took you, you probably deserved it. We'd just leave you there."
...
Monday, November 1, 2010
A Sunday at the Empress, Deux, Harlot
Earlier that Sunday that I wrote about awhile ago and never finished writing about out of laziness:
Me, Leeska, and her silent boyfriend (when boyfriends are silent, I don't know if it's because they truly do not speak often, or it's because I never shut up) arrived at the river casino an hour later than everyone else since we have to drive from Chicago instead of the suburbs. Also because we are just plain late.
As we stroll over to the tables (slots are for sallies) looking haughty as fuck, we see Yell and David doing shots out of mini snifters at the bar.
"You, madame," David declares, clinking and swilling his snifter, "are the source of all that is good in the world."
"Yes I am," Yell proudly agrees, "I am the best shooter this town's ever seen."
"Shots?" I snort, grinning. "It's fucking Sunday afternoon. Grampa's here, for crissake."
"Your sister just made me $300 at the craps table."
"What the fuck? In the past like half hour?" I punch her lightly in the shoulder and she feigns chuckled pain. "You couldn't wait for us? I got bills, you know. Shylocks and goons. You need to spread that love to yer effing sister."
"I can't help being awesome, okay?" Yell yells, and smacks her hand on the bartop. "BARKEEP. Gimme a water. Double."
"Water and--"
She winks, pointing a long white finger at him. "ICE." She swivels on her barstool to face us, opening and closing her fist with a cracking finger arpeggio. "I need to keep my mind clear and my reflexes speedy for the next round. And look!" She jams her fist into her pocket and retrieves a stack of chips. "There are so many black ones. Look at all the black ones! LOOK AT THEM."
"What's up with the black ones?" Leeska walks into it.
"Those are the hundreds."
"Holy fucking hell."
"Seriously?"
"I am awesome at everything!"
After greeting the rest of the family and properly expressing our jealousy at Yell's gambling prowess, we prowl.
Prowling drive-bys are the best way to feel the energy of a table. Integral to amateur gambling. Prowling jazzes and sponges up luck and energy, it gives you that confidence required to go and lay your car payments on the line, because you're a hunter and the chips are your prey. We watch some ruddy red man yell at a dealer about the Sox game while a woman waves her nails and cackles, "shuddup, Frank!" in his face.
We exchange silent nods and David slides onto a stool at the Blackjack table neighboring Angry Frank, followed by Leeska, her boyfriend, and me. Yell leaves to get herself a giant pretzel or something.
I'm awful at Blackjack because I believe in luck, but most importantly I believe I don't have it. Still, I got me a system: I play until I lose once. It's never, "Okay, one more time," because you can't beat that shit, and next thing you know you're out $400 and you're struggling down the strip clutching a forty of Old English at four in the afternoon, which happened to me before and that shit's rent. After two hands I tap out to whole mess of heckling from the gambling peers.
But I'm not that stupid.
I rejoin Yell, who is still prowling and clicking her chips in her pocket. "I'm ready."
She narrows her eyes and puts on her game face. "Let's do this."
People over at Angry Frank's table are cheering now, so we decide to slip in. The cackling woman welcomes Yell back into the game.
"Good shooter, good shooter," she approves, clapping Yell on the shoulder.
"Hi again."
"You back for more?"
"Of course."
I put five on the Pass Line just as Yell lays down twenty. As much shit as I talk about how I'm all awesome at craps and gambling, I can be a real wuss. Then again, she's playing with eight times as much money as me and I kick ass at math and percentages, so who's the fucking sally now?
It's a pleasant run, money's flowing back and forth. Angry Frank swells up in a rage about the Sox game and there's some good-natured mockery. Some dude at the table has his chips all bonky, haphazardly plopped in the groves of the table instead of neat, horizontal stacks like sliced cucumbers. Plus, they're all $1 chips. Who the hell only collects $1 chips, and chooses to prepare them so cluttery?
"I'm trying to decide how I feel about that guy's chips," I whisper to Leeska, who squeezes in between me and Yell.
"Oh, I don't trust that," she says. "No way."
"Dude, how much would that inflame Katsisch'seses OCD?" Snicker.
"His chips are in disarray! Cease your hasty lack of organization! I will react shrilly and violently in displeasure!" Yell does a perfect imitation of our missing sister.
"Why must you corrupt my vision with such asymmetry?" I add.
"What?" (This is the only word Leeska's boyfriend says all day.)
"Our sister talks like a villian," Yell explains.
"All the time."
"Plus she uses our parents' basement as an evil lair."
"That bitch crazy."
Boyfriend turns to Leeska for justification, who nods. "They aren't joking."
"THIS IS THE WORST DAY OF MY FUCKING LIFE." Seriously, someone shouts that shit from across the felt. Angry Frank. "Just turn it on! Your TV is fucking off! Turn it on."
"I'm sorry Frank, but I have no control over--"
"Just put the fucking Sox game on, God Almighty, this casino is full of retards."
"Frank, cap it or you're gone."
This continues for a while and the man with haphazard chippery excuses himself to go to the bathroom, asking a dealer to watch his winnings. The dealer pulls out a pale blue cloth and covers the freakshow arrangement just before David rolls up and Yell slides her chips to make room for him at the table, grazing the blue cloth.
It's Yell's turn to shoot, and Angry Frank's attention targets her dice. "Don't you let me down, little lady," he says. "I'm having the worst fucking day of my life."
"If this is the worst day of your life because you aren't watching that game, I'd say you're the one with the luck. Don't let me down. I want a free buffet." Yell laughs and tosses the dice down the tablestretch of felt.
...
Me, Leeska, and her silent boyfriend (when boyfriends are silent, I don't know if it's because they truly do not speak often, or it's because I never shut up) arrived at the river casino an hour later than everyone else since we have to drive from Chicago instead of the suburbs. Also because we are just plain late.
As we stroll over to the tables (slots are for sallies) looking haughty as fuck, we see Yell and David doing shots out of mini snifters at the bar.
"You, madame," David declares, clinking and swilling his snifter, "are the source of all that is good in the world."
"Yes I am," Yell proudly agrees, "I am the best shooter this town's ever seen."
"Shots?" I snort, grinning. "It's fucking Sunday afternoon. Grampa's here, for crissake."
"Your sister just made me $300 at the craps table."
"What the fuck? In the past like half hour?" I punch her lightly in the shoulder and she feigns chuckled pain. "You couldn't wait for us? I got bills, you know. Shylocks and goons. You need to spread that love to yer effing sister."
"I can't help being awesome, okay?" Yell yells, and smacks her hand on the bartop. "BARKEEP. Gimme a water. Double."
"Water and--"
She winks, pointing a long white finger at him. "ICE." She swivels on her barstool to face us, opening and closing her fist with a cracking finger arpeggio. "I need to keep my mind clear and my reflexes speedy for the next round. And look!" She jams her fist into her pocket and retrieves a stack of chips. "There are so many black ones. Look at all the black ones! LOOK AT THEM."
"What's up with the black ones?" Leeska walks into it.
"Those are the hundreds."
"Holy fucking hell."
"Seriously?"
"I am awesome at everything!"
After greeting the rest of the family and properly expressing our jealousy at Yell's gambling prowess, we prowl.
Prowling drive-bys are the best way to feel the energy of a table. Integral to amateur gambling. Prowling jazzes and sponges up luck and energy, it gives you that confidence required to go and lay your car payments on the line, because you're a hunter and the chips are your prey. We watch some ruddy red man yell at a dealer about the Sox game while a woman waves her nails and cackles, "shuddup, Frank!" in his face.
We exchange silent nods and David slides onto a stool at the Blackjack table neighboring Angry Frank, followed by Leeska, her boyfriend, and me. Yell leaves to get herself a giant pretzel or something.
I'm awful at Blackjack because I believe in luck, but most importantly I believe I don't have it. Still, I got me a system: I play until I lose once. It's never, "Okay, one more time," because you can't beat that shit, and next thing you know you're out $400 and you're struggling down the strip clutching a forty of Old English at four in the afternoon, which happened to me before and that shit's rent. After two hands I tap out to whole mess of heckling from the gambling peers.
But I'm not that stupid.
I rejoin Yell, who is still prowling and clicking her chips in her pocket. "I'm ready."
She narrows her eyes and puts on her game face. "Let's do this."
People over at Angry Frank's table are cheering now, so we decide to slip in. The cackling woman welcomes Yell back into the game.
"Good shooter, good shooter," she approves, clapping Yell on the shoulder.
"Hi again."
"You back for more?"
"Of course."
I put five on the Pass Line just as Yell lays down twenty. As much shit as I talk about how I'm all awesome at craps and gambling, I can be a real wuss. Then again, she's playing with eight times as much money as me and I kick ass at math and percentages, so who's the fucking sally now?
It's a pleasant run, money's flowing back and forth. Angry Frank swells up in a rage about the Sox game and there's some good-natured mockery. Some dude at the table has his chips all bonky, haphazardly plopped in the groves of the table instead of neat, horizontal stacks like sliced cucumbers. Plus, they're all $1 chips. Who the hell only collects $1 chips, and chooses to prepare them so cluttery?
"I'm trying to decide how I feel about that guy's chips," I whisper to Leeska, who squeezes in between me and Yell.
"Oh, I don't trust that," she says. "No way."
"Dude, how much would that inflame Katsisch'seses OCD?" Snicker.
"His chips are in disarray! Cease your hasty lack of organization! I will react shrilly and violently in displeasure!" Yell does a perfect imitation of our missing sister.
"Why must you corrupt my vision with such asymmetry?" I add.
"What?" (This is the only word Leeska's boyfriend says all day.)
"Our sister talks like a villian," Yell explains.
"All the time."
"Plus she uses our parents' basement as an evil lair."
"That bitch crazy."
Boyfriend turns to Leeska for justification, who nods. "They aren't joking."
"THIS IS THE WORST DAY OF MY FUCKING LIFE." Seriously, someone shouts that shit from across the felt. Angry Frank. "Just turn it on! Your TV is fucking off! Turn it on."
"I'm sorry Frank, but I have no control over--"
"Just put the fucking Sox game on, God Almighty, this casino is full of retards."
"Frank, cap it or you're gone."
This continues for a while and the man with haphazard chippery excuses himself to go to the bathroom, asking a dealer to watch his winnings. The dealer pulls out a pale blue cloth and covers the freakshow arrangement just before David rolls up and Yell slides her chips to make room for him at the table, grazing the blue cloth.
It's Yell's turn to shoot, and Angry Frank's attention targets her dice. "Don't you let me down, little lady," he says. "I'm having the worst fucking day of my life."
"If this is the worst day of your life because you aren't watching that game, I'd say you're the one with the luck. Don't let me down. I want a free buffet." Yell laughs and tosses the dice down the tablestretch of felt.
...
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Boy, It Sure Is Fun Painting This Here Fence
By the way, you people are fucking useless. Everyone exctept for Mae, who totally gave me a sweet picture to use that inspired me to create similar ones and I've gotten incredibly lazy about the whole thing, because I am very good at starting things and not very good at finishing them. Grinding ideas into irrelevant jokes is one of my superpowers (along with being the boss and blockin' cock (lame)), but a deprecating, esoteric superpower that really only exists in my mind.
Katsisch, the middle sister, is moving into an apartment from the depths of my parents' basement, and I helped paint her new place on Sunday because I love painting walls and changing things that I find boring. I've never been a visibly flashy person, and I never will be (it would make me insufferable) but boring is boring is boring is boring, you know?
Of course, Katsisch is a horrible painter but a master project evader, and after a few hours she'd unevenly smeared lavender paint all over the walls and I told her to go back to my parents' so I could stay and clean up her bullshit job.
So as I was wiping up the purple paint water I sprayed all over her new kitchen during "clean up," the oven started beeping. Stupid oven. I beat it and kicked it a few times, pressed every button with force and malice, and ripped the oven door right off the damn thing.
It wasn't even hard. I lifted the door and sighed at it as the oven blared away. There weren't even any fucking lights on, the clock wasn't set, I don't even think it was fucking plugged in.
Oven doors really aren't as heavy as you'd expect. Out of shock, I carried it around the apartment with me while I looked for more paper towels and cleaning products, getting chips of oven soot and grease all over Katsisch's three-day-old apartment carpet, waving my arms in frustration. I went out on her balcony and considered throwing it into traffic just to be a bitch, because fuck you, oven door.
Back inside the oven was still going off like a fucking smoke alarm (maybe it's the smoke alarm?) so I called my sister and told her I fucked up. She was all, "Talk to mom" and then I panicked, rambling on about beeping oven alarms and flapping around the oven door like a fucking lunatic Icarus, and my mom was all, "why don't you just turn the oven off?" and bam, beeping stopped. I did nothing.
"Okay, so it just stopped."
"See?"
"I didn't do anything."
"Don't worry about it, everything's fine."
"What do I do about the door?"
"Put it back on or leave it there. Get some sleep." Just like that. Like it's no big deal. She did the same thing when I set the basement on fire, like, "I thought I smelled something. Get some sleep." But when I wore a t-shirt to school or pierced my nose it was all, "WHAT ARE YOU WEARING? TAKE IT OFF. NOW. Go put something else on. Something appropriate. When you're supporting yourself you can wear whatever you want, but right now blah blah bliggity blonk you'll thank me." To her it was all about accident versus intent. I get that.
I do not thank her for those clothes, by the way. I'm still angry that I had to wear button up shirts and sweaters throughout high school. No sweatshirts unless I wore a collar underneath them, nothing with a hood, no ripped jeans, and all this because I got a scholarship to Bennett Academy and I didn't want to go because private schoolers were jerks, so what did she do? Turned me into a fucking jerk.
Whatever.
Not that you care, but I can't find an appropriate fall jacket anywhere. I wore the same jacket for eight years, and some asshole stole it off the back of my chair at a bar. Probably because the whole faux military/motorcycle jacket thing is all trendy right now. Whatever. I bought it at Old Navy, it's not like it's anything special to anyone but me. Now they're walking around wearing my well-worn coat, with my grandmother's buttons and the lining I added, and I never realized how attached I was to it, and everything's upside down because I miss my bike and my jacket and it's cold outside, and I feel incomplete.
If this were a movie, I would get everything back. Fuckers stealing my shit.
...
Katsisch, the middle sister, is moving into an apartment from the depths of my parents' basement, and I helped paint her new place on Sunday because I love painting walls and changing things that I find boring. I've never been a visibly flashy person, and I never will be (it would make me insufferable) but boring is boring is boring is boring, you know?
Of course, Katsisch is a horrible painter but a master project evader, and after a few hours she'd unevenly smeared lavender paint all over the walls and I told her to go back to my parents' so I could stay and clean up her bullshit job.
So as I was wiping up the purple paint water I sprayed all over her new kitchen during "clean up," the oven started beeping. Stupid oven. I beat it and kicked it a few times, pressed every button with force and malice, and ripped the oven door right off the damn thing.
It wasn't even hard. I lifted the door and sighed at it as the oven blared away. There weren't even any fucking lights on, the clock wasn't set, I don't even think it was fucking plugged in.
Oven doors really aren't as heavy as you'd expect. Out of shock, I carried it around the apartment with me while I looked for more paper towels and cleaning products, getting chips of oven soot and grease all over Katsisch's three-day-old apartment carpet, waving my arms in frustration. I went out on her balcony and considered throwing it into traffic just to be a bitch, because fuck you, oven door.
Back inside the oven was still going off like a fucking smoke alarm (maybe it's the smoke alarm?) so I called my sister and told her I fucked up. She was all, "Talk to mom" and then I panicked, rambling on about beeping oven alarms and flapping around the oven door like a fucking lunatic Icarus, and my mom was all, "why don't you just turn the oven off?" and bam, beeping stopped. I did nothing.
"Okay, so it just stopped."
"See?"
"I didn't do anything."
"Don't worry about it, everything's fine."
"What do I do about the door?"
"Put it back on or leave it there. Get some sleep." Just like that. Like it's no big deal. She did the same thing when I set the basement on fire, like, "I thought I smelled something. Get some sleep." But when I wore a t-shirt to school or pierced my nose it was all, "WHAT ARE YOU WEARING? TAKE IT OFF. NOW. Go put something else on. Something appropriate. When you're supporting yourself you can wear whatever you want, but right now blah blah bliggity blonk you'll thank me." To her it was all about accident versus intent. I get that.
I do not thank her for those clothes, by the way. I'm still angry that I had to wear button up shirts and sweaters throughout high school. No sweatshirts unless I wore a collar underneath them, nothing with a hood, no ripped jeans, and all this because I got a scholarship to Bennett Academy and I didn't want to go because private schoolers were jerks, so what did she do? Turned me into a fucking jerk.
Whatever.
Not that you care, but I can't find an appropriate fall jacket anywhere. I wore the same jacket for eight years, and some asshole stole it off the back of my chair at a bar. Probably because the whole faux military/motorcycle jacket thing is all trendy right now. Whatever. I bought it at Old Navy, it's not like it's anything special to anyone but me. Now they're walking around wearing my well-worn coat, with my grandmother's buttons and the lining I added, and I never realized how attached I was to it, and everything's upside down because I miss my bike and my jacket and it's cold outside, and I feel incomplete.
If this were a movie, I would get everything back. Fuckers stealing my shit.
...
Thursday, August 26, 2010
A Sunday at the Empress, Part the First
"Sure," I hear my sister answer a muffled question, and she calls up the escalator, "I'll catch up in a minute."
"What?" I am totally distracted and counting a wad of cash.
"She'll catch up in a minute," my cousin answers on behalf of Yellavitch.
"Whatever." I lost track of the bills on purpose and smiled as I started counting again, tripping off the escalator with my cousins in tow. David and Leeska. Not real names. We're standing there in the lobby of the Empress Casino, and I am awesome at craps again.
My Uncle Dave is in town from Vegas. He's a Pit Boss at the Stratosphere. Logically, when he comes to Chicago the whole clan goes to the casino as if he doesn't spend enough time at the tables already. Although I don't think he knows how to do anything but gamble. And watch people gamble. He can probably shoot things too, since he's some level of sergeant, which covers a broad spectrum of enlisted ranks, I understand, but I can never remember his official rank. He's a runner, very slim, soft-spoken, patient, gay. His house has only white walls and metal shelves housing four different sets of encyclopedias, with no other ornaments except a family photo above his desk and fridgeful of postcards. I would say he's the black sheep since he's quiet and blends into backgrounds, but I kind of feel like that side of my family consists of only black sheep.
So we're waiting in the lobby.
"Fuck is taking so long?" I glance down the escalator after a minute or two of waiting. Yellavich is speaking, folded arms, combative and sure, while the head of casino security scribbles on a yellow notebook.
"No idea," David says. "I'm having a cigarette. Be right back."
He ambles off and Leeska crosses her arms, sighing. "How long do you think this is going to take?"
"Don't know. Do they think she's not twenty-one or something?" Yellavitch, as I've mentioned before, looks like a pretty little fourteen-year old boy.
"Probably," she answers. "No, no fucking way, they scanned our IDs like seventeen times. They know she's legal."
"Hope so." I shift my weight and stretch, rubbing my stomach. I am hungry. "I'm getting hungry."
"Me too. Fucking hurry up, Yell."
"Screw it. I'm going down there." I pound my way down the stairs and stroll up to my sister and the security lady, who is very round.
I smile up at her. "Hi," I interrupt, and stick out my hand. The security guards stares at it for a second before gripping it, and I hold on. "I'm Rassles. Yell is my younger sister. Is there a problem or anything I can help you with?"
"We're just investigating something."
"What are you investigating? We actually have somewhere to be."
"It'll be just a minute," she nods, a little condescending, and yanks her hand away. Bitch. I'm braver around my siblings compared to the company of everyone else; more confrontational and self-assured, with a greater capacity to threaten.
"Are you afraid she's underage?" I duck my chin and crack my jaw, narrowing my eyes on the woman's face. "Because I'll verify everything in her damn wallet."
"I really can't say."
"Well, if I can help, let me know."
"I will, thanks. Yell, could you come with me please?"
"Sure," the Yellavitch sneers, arms crossed like a coat of bloody daggers, and the waddling Head of Security escorts my little sister through those key-coded doors that lead into the stark hallways behind the glittery casino floor.
...
"What?" I am totally distracted and counting a wad of cash.
"She'll catch up in a minute," my cousin answers on behalf of Yellavitch.
"Whatever." I lost track of the bills on purpose and smiled as I started counting again, tripping off the escalator with my cousins in tow. David and Leeska. Not real names. We're standing there in the lobby of the Empress Casino, and I am awesome at craps again.
My Uncle Dave is in town from Vegas. He's a Pit Boss at the Stratosphere. Logically, when he comes to Chicago the whole clan goes to the casino as if he doesn't spend enough time at the tables already. Although I don't think he knows how to do anything but gamble. And watch people gamble. He can probably shoot things too, since he's some level of sergeant, which covers a broad spectrum of enlisted ranks, I understand, but I can never remember his official rank. He's a runner, very slim, soft-spoken, patient, gay. His house has only white walls and metal shelves housing four different sets of encyclopedias, with no other ornaments except a family photo above his desk and fridgeful of postcards. I would say he's the black sheep since he's quiet and blends into backgrounds, but I kind of feel like that side of my family consists of only black sheep.
So we're waiting in the lobby.
"Fuck is taking so long?" I glance down the escalator after a minute or two of waiting. Yellavich is speaking, folded arms, combative and sure, while the head of casino security scribbles on a yellow notebook.
"No idea," David says. "I'm having a cigarette. Be right back."
He ambles off and Leeska crosses her arms, sighing. "How long do you think this is going to take?"
"Don't know. Do they think she's not twenty-one or something?" Yellavitch, as I've mentioned before, looks like a pretty little fourteen-year old boy.
"Probably," she answers. "No, no fucking way, they scanned our IDs like seventeen times. They know she's legal."
"Hope so." I shift my weight and stretch, rubbing my stomach. I am hungry. "I'm getting hungry."
"Me too. Fucking hurry up, Yell."
"Screw it. I'm going down there." I pound my way down the stairs and stroll up to my sister and the security lady, who is very round.
I smile up at her. "Hi," I interrupt, and stick out my hand. The security guards stares at it for a second before gripping it, and I hold on. "I'm Rassles. Yell is my younger sister. Is there a problem or anything I can help you with?"
"We're just investigating something."
"What are you investigating? We actually have somewhere to be."
"It'll be just a minute," she nods, a little condescending, and yanks her hand away. Bitch. I'm braver around my siblings compared to the company of everyone else; more confrontational and self-assured, with a greater capacity to threaten.
"Are you afraid she's underage?" I duck my chin and crack my jaw, narrowing my eyes on the woman's face. "Because I'll verify everything in her damn wallet."
"I really can't say."
"Well, if I can help, let me know."
"I will, thanks. Yell, could you come with me please?"
"Sure," the Yellavitch sneers, arms crossed like a coat of bloody daggers, and the waddling Head of Security escorts my little sister through those key-coded doors that lead into the stark hallways behind the glittery casino floor.
...
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
In Which I am a Super Brat
The first time I went to Ireland, it was an adventure. I met up with a friend from college who'd been playing rugby in Newcastle all summer (I love saying that. It makes me feel bastardly urbane). We went to the pony races and drank and gambled, we tried to hitchhike across the countryside in Kerry (we failed). We stripped while running into the ocean on the Dingle peninsula and fought a group of raging Irishmen at a bar in Dublin because they called me a "feisty filly" and basically had a brilliant, drunken time. It was very tense and masculine and obnoxious. Very Hemingway.
Okay, I didn't strip running into the ocean, because apparently my recklessness chokes on puritanical horseshit. But he did, my friend. I rolled up my pants like a fucking champ and took pictures.
This time around I was with my family instead of friends. First vacation the Rossi Family has taken, just the five of us, in ten years. Sure, we did Vegas when the Yellavitch turned 21, but that was like this big fat extended family thing, and the grandkids all split from the older generations for most of the trip.
So when my parents decided that they wanted to take us to Ireland, we were excited because you know, fucking Ireland. I felt spoiled at first, being 29 and having my parents take me Europe, but I justified it eventually with a thick list of trembling excuses that basically added up to one thing: who cares, you're going to fucking Ireland.
Okay, so I'm still a little uncomfortable with the fact that my parents took me on vacation. I offered to pay my way. They refused.
Last year, my parents left the US for the first time in their lives and took a tour around Italy. It stirred this deep, tour-obsessed Goliath within The Dad, who declared he would never travel without a tour ever again. I spent weeks explaining that Ireland was different from Italy, Dad, you don't want to be constrained on a tour there...it's an exploring kind of place, not a museums-and-monuments-and-art kind of place.
But being the adamant financial backer, The Dad insisted that I did not know what I was talking about. A tour, he said, would be easier. We wouldn't be responsible for blah and blah and blah, he said, it would all be decided for us.
I accepted. Because fuck yeah, Ireland.
Previously within my family, I was the one who calmed people down with a lame joke or something, because I'm as close as a Rossi gets to the soothing waters of lazy, pastoral relaxation nation. This of course sounds ridiculous to my friends, who all know that I'm neurotic and insecure about everything.
For the first several days I was okay. Even though I was slightly annoyed at being held inside when I wanted to explore, we were let out periodically to stretch our legs and spend money at pre-arranged restaurants and touristy stores. Granted, we probably would have ended up at some of those places whether or not we were on a tour, but that doesn't change the fact that I had a burning, itching yen to pluck my own destinations on whim.
For awhile, I distracted myself by counting cows and befriending some of the senior citizen stocked on the tour bus, but they were only chatty for so long. Eventually all conversations meandered towards my fidgetty eyes, and they would mention offhand that I seemed anxious. As politely as possible, I'd tell them that I wanted to stop in places the bus was tearing through, and they would nod. I'd change the subject. We passed through towns and ruins of towns, and all I wanted to do was jump the hell off that fucking bus and get lost out there.
By the fourth day, when I discovered that we were not going to Skellig (which is on my list) but in fact watching a video at the Skellig museum, I had a minor breakdown. With quiet tears. I tried to keep it in, I really, really did, but holding me captive on a tour bus in a land of cool green hills and beer is like building a cage of lambchops for a muzzled terrier, with a whole lot of whimpering and growling and general pathetic impotence.
So I was on the bus, staring out the window, sniffing.
Katsisch started without looking up. "You okay?"
"I'll be fine." Sniff.
"Obviously you're not fine."
I didn't want her to see my eyes. "I do not want to talk about it."
"You're being a brat, you know," she stated calmly, flipping a page of her book.
"Which is why I shouldn't talk about it."
"Why can't you just enjoy yourself?"
"I am not going to be able to if you don't drop it."
"Why are you acting like such a fucking baby?"
"I'm sorry." I turned and started counting cows out the window. Counting cows was calming, distracting. It kept my brain busy and focused on observation. To properly count cows, you must be moving constantly, scanning the fields. This was the positive side of riding the bus: better for cow counting. Landscape, animals, and math always lead to daydreams. It was a releasing distraction.
Twenty seconds later, Katsisch interrupted my counting. "You know, it's not that big of a deal. So we don't get to go to a stupid monastic island. World's still here."
"Please, I'm embarrassed enough right now." I wiped under my eyes with my sleeve.
"Do you realize how much you are insulting Mom and Dad?"
I snapped. "Do you fucking realize that I am trying to get over this as quickly as fucking possible, and you are not diffusing the fucking situation?"
"Okay, you need to stop being a fucking brat right now. You are completely overreacting, and this is totally inappropriate."
"Maybe if we were actually doing stuff instead of watching the world go by, I could enjoy myself."
"See, this is what I'm talking about," Katsisch hissed, finally glaring up from her book, "you think you're superior because the rest of us don't mind just riding to the next destination that has been chosen for us. Because we do not care. We all know that by complacently sitting on this bus we are not relinquishing our control over destiny. This is a vacation. This is not a metaphor for life."
Awestruck. I opened my mouth, cracking my jaw sideways. "What the fuck are you talking about?"
"I know that you think you're too 'free-spirited' and 'different' to be willing to just do something so 'mainstream' but you need to get over that insecurity. No one cares except for you."
So apparently the issue at hand, always, in every disagreement I have with anyone, is my distaste for all things 'mainstream.' Do I really come across like that? I tried to explain myself. "I am upset because I've dreamed of Skellig for seven years, and I've been imagining it in my brain and looking forward to this trip for fucking months."
"I've always wanted to go to Greece, and we're not going there."
"But you didn't have it dangling in front of you. I thought that I was finally going to get to go to one of the impossible places that I never expected I would actually be able to see. And then the day I've been waiting for gets here and I find out that it was never on the itinerary in the first place, but here's a fucking video. We are twenty miles away. I am twenty miles away and I can't get there." This was killing me.
"Yeah, well, this isn't about you."
"You made it about me. I was trying to count cows."
"You were feeling sorry for yourself, because you think you're entitled and oppressed."
Arguing was pointless, and I was too shocked to respond. What the fuck? I felt snotty and unappreciative, and have I always been such a fucking gremlin without realizing it? I had no idea that people had such a negative impression of me. Does everyone really feel that way about me? Or is it just my sister?
I decided my behavior must change. I reminded myself that I was being horrible and ridiculous and batshit crazy, and no one likes self-loathing. But when the time comes to prove to myself that I've grown, I will probably revert back to being a whiny, frustrated bitch.
Didn't talk for a long while. Counted cows again.
The tour ended the next day and we spent a couple days in Dublin on our own, and that was excellent. The Dad and I went to about seven million bookstores and had a couple beers while my mom and sisters went to the Guinness Brewery (I'd already been there, and Dad said, "You've seen one brewery, you've seen them all."). We all fell in love with the long room library at Trinity College and I added "bind a book by hand" to my list of things to do before I die. I convinced the family to see the dead zoo at the Natural History Museum. Mom wouldn't go inside, the sisters did a quick walk through, called me a "creeper" and got the hell out of there, and Dad thought it was awesome. It's still one of my favorite museums of all time, because it's rugged and packed with insanity.
So...that's how Ireland was.
...
Okay, I didn't strip running into the ocean, because apparently my recklessness chokes on puritanical horseshit. But he did, my friend. I rolled up my pants like a fucking champ and took pictures.
This time around I was with my family instead of friends. First vacation the Rossi Family has taken, just the five of us, in ten years. Sure, we did Vegas when the Yellavitch turned 21, but that was like this big fat extended family thing, and the grandkids all split from the older generations for most of the trip.
So when my parents decided that they wanted to take us to Ireland, we were excited because you know, fucking Ireland. I felt spoiled at first, being 29 and having my parents take me Europe, but I justified it eventually with a thick list of trembling excuses that basically added up to one thing: who cares, you're going to fucking Ireland.
Okay, so I'm still a little uncomfortable with the fact that my parents took me on vacation. I offered to pay my way. They refused.
Last year, my parents left the US for the first time in their lives and took a tour around Italy. It stirred this deep, tour-obsessed Goliath within The Dad, who declared he would never travel without a tour ever again. I spent weeks explaining that Ireland was different from Italy, Dad, you don't want to be constrained on a tour there...it's an exploring kind of place, not a museums-and-monuments-and-art kind of place.
But being the adamant financial backer, The Dad insisted that I did not know what I was talking about. A tour, he said, would be easier. We wouldn't be responsible for blah and blah and blah, he said, it would all be decided for us.
I accepted. Because fuck yeah, Ireland.
Previously within my family, I was the one who calmed people down with a lame joke or something, because I'm as close as a Rossi gets to the soothing waters of lazy, pastoral relaxation nation. This of course sounds ridiculous to my friends, who all know that I'm neurotic and insecure about everything.
For the first several days I was okay. Even though I was slightly annoyed at being held inside when I wanted to explore, we were let out periodically to stretch our legs and spend money at pre-arranged restaurants and touristy stores. Granted, we probably would have ended up at some of those places whether or not we were on a tour, but that doesn't change the fact that I had a burning, itching yen to pluck my own destinations on whim.
For awhile, I distracted myself by counting cows and befriending some of the senior citizen stocked on the tour bus, but they were only chatty for so long. Eventually all conversations meandered towards my fidgetty eyes, and they would mention offhand that I seemed anxious. As politely as possible, I'd tell them that I wanted to stop in places the bus was tearing through, and they would nod. I'd change the subject. We passed through towns and ruins of towns, and all I wanted to do was jump the hell off that fucking bus and get lost out there.
By the fourth day, when I discovered that we were not going to Skellig (which is on my list) but in fact watching a video at the Skellig museum, I had a minor breakdown. With quiet tears. I tried to keep it in, I really, really did, but holding me captive on a tour bus in a land of cool green hills and beer is like building a cage of lambchops for a muzzled terrier, with a whole lot of whimpering and growling and general pathetic impotence.
So I was on the bus, staring out the window, sniffing.
Katsisch started without looking up. "You okay?"
"I'll be fine." Sniff.
"Obviously you're not fine."
I didn't want her to see my eyes. "I do not want to talk about it."
"You're being a brat, you know," she stated calmly, flipping a page of her book.
"Which is why I shouldn't talk about it."
"Why can't you just enjoy yourself?"
"I am not going to be able to if you don't drop it."
"Why are you acting like such a fucking baby?"
"I'm sorry." I turned and started counting cows out the window. Counting cows was calming, distracting. It kept my brain busy and focused on observation. To properly count cows, you must be moving constantly, scanning the fields. This was the positive side of riding the bus: better for cow counting. Landscape, animals, and math always lead to daydreams. It was a releasing distraction.
Twenty seconds later, Katsisch interrupted my counting. "You know, it's not that big of a deal. So we don't get to go to a stupid monastic island. World's still here."
"Please, I'm embarrassed enough right now." I wiped under my eyes with my sleeve.
"Do you realize how much you are insulting Mom and Dad?"
I snapped. "Do you fucking realize that I am trying to get over this as quickly as fucking possible, and you are not diffusing the fucking situation?"
"Okay, you need to stop being a fucking brat right now. You are completely overreacting, and this is totally inappropriate."
"Maybe if we were actually doing stuff instead of watching the world go by, I could enjoy myself."
"See, this is what I'm talking about," Katsisch hissed, finally glaring up from her book, "you think you're superior because the rest of us don't mind just riding to the next destination that has been chosen for us. Because we do not care. We all know that by complacently sitting on this bus we are not relinquishing our control over destiny. This is a vacation. This is not a metaphor for life."
Awestruck. I opened my mouth, cracking my jaw sideways. "What the fuck are you talking about?"
"I know that you think you're too 'free-spirited' and 'different' to be willing to just do something so 'mainstream' but you need to get over that insecurity. No one cares except for you."
So apparently the issue at hand, always, in every disagreement I have with anyone, is my distaste for all things 'mainstream.' Do I really come across like that? I tried to explain myself. "I am upset because I've dreamed of Skellig for seven years, and I've been imagining it in my brain and looking forward to this trip for fucking months."
"I've always wanted to go to Greece, and we're not going there."
"But you didn't have it dangling in front of you. I thought that I was finally going to get to go to one of the impossible places that I never expected I would actually be able to see. And then the day I've been waiting for gets here and I find out that it was never on the itinerary in the first place, but here's a fucking video. We are twenty miles away. I am twenty miles away and I can't get there." This was killing me.
"Yeah, well, this isn't about you."
"You made it about me. I was trying to count cows."
"You were feeling sorry for yourself, because you think you're entitled and oppressed."
Arguing was pointless, and I was too shocked to respond. What the fuck? I felt snotty and unappreciative, and have I always been such a fucking gremlin without realizing it? I had no idea that people had such a negative impression of me. Does everyone really feel that way about me? Or is it just my sister?
I decided my behavior must change. I reminded myself that I was being horrible and ridiculous and batshit crazy, and no one likes self-loathing. But when the time comes to prove to myself that I've grown, I will probably revert back to being a whiny, frustrated bitch.
Didn't talk for a long while. Counted cows again.
The tour ended the next day and we spent a couple days in Dublin on our own, and that was excellent. The Dad and I went to about seven million bookstores and had a couple beers while my mom and sisters went to the Guinness Brewery (I'd already been there, and Dad said, "You've seen one brewery, you've seen them all."). We all fell in love with the long room library at Trinity College and I added "bind a book by hand" to my list of things to do before I die. I convinced the family to see the dead zoo at the Natural History Museum. Mom wouldn't go inside, the sisters did a quick walk through, called me a "creeper" and got the hell out of there, and Dad thought it was awesome. It's still one of my favorite museums of all time, because it's rugged and packed with insanity.
So...that's how Ireland was.
...
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