OXFORD CONFIDENTIAL: Snake Brothers are Mysterious, Infuriating Animals(When You Don't Have a Penis...)

SNAKE BROTHER -- Slang. A term used to refer to the unique bond between two or more men who have had sexual intercourse with the same person at sometime in their lives, thus creating an overlap in sexual histories. Provenance of term unknown but may be indigenous to North America. However, the concept was understood by Ancient Mesopotamian, Asian, and European civilizations. For gay men the term also applies, but with more complications to the dynamic.

For female equivalent, see TRENCH SISTER.

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- I waited. The question was coming. I could feel it.

As pathetic as it is, I'm actually quite skilled at these sorts of things. I had a sneaking suspicion, too, that my sparring partner also had some experience in such verbal sport...

"So Jason, you and _____ went to school together in Greeley?"

Before I could answer her husband's question, the Diva intervened.

"Honey. I knew lots of guys in Colorado. We hung out. Jason was a reporter..."

I laughed, oh so slightly, nodded, took a sip of my iced tea.

"Oh. So you just hung out then?"

I took a bite of my salad and tried to not simply burst into all-out laughter, nodded with a full mouth in the direction of his loving wife. Lunch was her idea. She could answer the question.

Oh yeah. He knew. Or, at least, he suspected.

The game afoot! Time to cry Havoc!, let slip the dogs of war...

* * * *

Despite all the discomfort and uneasiness, I couldn't help but wonder, after all these years, if the Diva still got off on being handcuffed to bathroom sinks and spanked, or if she and the ol' hubby had ever, well...

Back in the day, she was such a fun little thing, all explosive darkness and piss and rage, domineering, driven by lust and hidden insecurity. I was, well, a lot more fun and free myself back in those days, too, cloaked in my own naivety and ignorance, pushing my boundaries with drugs and booze and sex...

Oh, trust me. I'm sure the Diva's husband was pondering similar things. I've been in his shoes before. And he'd, heh, probably been in mine. Dogs of war, since the time of Julius Caesar, typically hunt the same prey because such beasts are usually bred in the same pounds and kennels.

What husband wouldn't wonder, seriously, what his wife was like before he knew her, back when she was a Colorado Chicana! wild child, smack dab in the midst of her Oooh! This will piss off Mom and Dad! I'll fuck an Anglo! phase? He's undoubtedly heard stories, probably bits and fragments, here and there from friends of hers, relatives...

What husband wouldn't be at least curious about that past? And, frankly, what lover from the past wouldn't be intrigued by thoughts of how women of memory evolve and grow and mature into the present and future wives and lovers of such noble, intelligent men?

Snake brothers, of course, aren't supposed to ask such questions out loud. That'd be rude. And, well, quite possibly dangerous. The unwritten rule of the Cult of the Snake Brother is, well, that such things are best not discussed, left silent.

Hell, the snake brothers of Helen fought the Trojan War because they couldn't handle such knowledge. Mark Antony, Caesar, and Ptolemy destroyed much of the Ancient Western World because, well, they couldn't deal with the fact that Cleopatra initiated the dynasties of Rome and Egypt into the phallic serpentine brotherhood.

Why, now, would modern men ruin such a wonderful lunch with such stupidity? Life's too short these days, the social norms that once drove Primitive Man mad with jealousy now a curious antiquity for the educated and experienced.

* * * *

The Diva was not amused with the pissing contest, our testing of certain waters to see which Snake Brother would wince first.

"We were, you know, just ... friends..."

The Diva then went into a long, drawn-out explanation as to how she and I knew each other back in 1997, explained in twisting, prefabricated answers that almost made me wish that I was, indeed, the guy she was describing...

All she had to say, really, was that we were... just... friends. Pauses, like photographs, really are worth a thousand words.

The Husband smirked. I smirked. Nothing makes for a good meal like good dinner theater. He kept looking at me. I kept looking back at him, nodding and eating my salad.

Men really do bond over making women uncomfortable. Payback, yes, for infecting our gender with the cooties and wet dreams of youth...

At least she acknowledged that, well, both of her male dining companions had just...friended the shit out of her at some point in the last decade.

* * * *

A decade.

A whole fucking decade.

That's enough time to turn any snake brother into as docile a reptile as your average timber rattler in winter. A man's blood, at least the blood of seasoned, educated men, rarely boils at the mere hint of a partner's previous sexual history. Who a woman fucked in some long-forgotten house in Ratfuck Colorado is, to such men, as historically meaningless as Abe Lincoln's last shit in the White House.

It's not like her husband was getting ready to build a goddamn wooden horse to storm the table or anything. And it's not like I was gonna chew my breadsticks down into a dagger to stab him on the way to the Forum.

Jesus H. Christ. The rules of the Snake Brother Cult have, well, evolved since the days of spears, Greek fire, and spoken Latin...

* * * *

I kept grinning like a retarded clown, sipping on my iced tea and gnawing on my salad. The Diva's husband was half-grinning like a razor-scalped madman, drinking his wine and chewing up his vegan pasta.

And the Diva changed the subject. Quickly.

"So Jason... are you seeing anybody? Married?"

Well-played.

Check. But not checkmate. There was still game left...

* * * *

Some women just don't have the same sense of adventure they had when they were young, back when they wore no underwear, wore plaid miniskirts and purple lipstick and tight black Sonic Youth teeshirts, back when such women seduced and screwed like demons whilst certain former 19-year-old aspiring reporter's housemates watched through the living room window...

Rather than bring up the past decade, I simply explained that, well, I'd found religion and the Republican Party, had become a Born-Again Virgin, held hands with peroxide blondes at church potlucks...

The Diva nodded and went back to her lunch.

Wait. Does she really buy that horseshit? Is that believable after ten years?

Holy fuck, we were just talking about strip clubs and blowjobs ten minutes ago...

* * * *

The hubby leaned in, smiled.

"Heh. Sounds like Cincinnati. So you really are married then?"

We both snickered like 14-year-olds staring at our first glossy boobies in a copy of Hustler.

And as I explained, in between snickers, that, well, I've been engaged two-and-a-half times in the past 10 years, as I explained that, yeah, why the hell would I want to get married and ruin my peace and tranquility...

"Dude, you're a really cool guy."

"Yeah, man. I see how you got the hot goth girl here."

"Hey, do you like Tom Waits? You look like a Waits kinda guy..."

"Well, fuck yeah, dude."

"Baby, he likes Tom Waits! Did you know that? Hey, we caught that gig down in Louisville..."

The Diva was not amused.

What'd she expect? C'mon now.

Snake brothers usually have more in common than simple momentary spins on the ol' vagina rollercoaster. Hell, if there weren't similarities, we probably wouldn't have ever been attracted to the same woman, or once had the same woman attracted to us, in the first place...

I've been snake brothers with worse.

Being a Snake Brother is just one of those mysterious bonds between men that even some of the most modern, liberated women just aren't comfortable facing.

And, sometimes, that's just fucking hilarious.

- # # # -

DEEJAYS OF THE DEAD: Kick Out the Jams, Motherfucker... And Don't Touch the Casket...

After your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live.

- Hamlet, Act II, Sc. II, c. 1600 A.D. (Really Old School)

Hey deejay, just play that song. Keep me dancin', all night long.

- World's Famous Supreme Team, c. 1984 A.D. (Not-So-Old School)

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- The tale began as such...

Two men in suits walked into a local electronics store, asked the salesclerk for help locating a replacement P.A. system. Theirs, they claimed, had burned out and they were on a tight deadline. The clerk, in an effort to make a quick sale, proceeded to show off the electronic store's wares...

Sounds pretty, well, normal, right?

The storyteller, the salesclerk, stared down into his fresh drink as if waiting for that next word, for the bourbon to free his tongue. Suddenly, like the blowing of a fuse or the sputtering of an old engine, his tongue caught up to his brain.

Dude wait! he said. No, this is weird. Dude! Shut up for a minute. It gets better...

* * * *

The guys weren't Men in Black, weren't extras from some lost episode of the X-Files, or Mormon missionaries looking to start a rock band. No, the suits were from a local funeral home, and were on a deadline to get a memorial service set up in time...

The salesclerk notified the pair that, well, to get such a P.A. on such short notice would be highly expensive and, more than likely, pure overkill for the mundane task of amplifying eulogies and graveside sermons. Instead, he suggested, he could do them a favor, loan them his personal amplifier rather than sell them something they really didn't need.

In his spare time, you see, the clerk also deejays at various bars and house parties in and around Oxford Fucking Ohio. And, being that there really hasn't been much work for a deejay in recent weeks, and his equipment's just been sitting around...

Fuck it. Why the hell not?

It was, after all, somebody's funeral. And, well, if it were his relative lying in state, he'd have wanted his departed loved one to have the best audio equipment possible, to be able to go out in style, with every eulogy and tearful remembrance heard by all, loud and clear.

Wait! he exclaimed as he sipped on his bourbon. NOW it gets creepy, dude...

* * * *

After work, the suits picked him up in their corpsemobile, loaded his precious deejaying equipment up like some cold old widow from the nursing home.

No, not a hearse. A corpsemobile.

Corpsemobiles are basically modified cargo vans, used by funeral homes to retrieve bodies from homes and morgues. Hearses are generally used for ceremony, limousines of the Dead built for those one-way trips to the graveyard. Corpsemobiles, on the other hand, do most of the day-to-day work, veritable garbage trucks built plain and rugged, built solely to move our Mortal Remains out of the way as quickly as possible.

Corpsemobiles are for pick-ups. Hearses are for deliveries. The Death Business is more complicated that it seems.

Dying's easy for those doing the dying. For all of the tragedy and sadness, well, death really does equate more with eternal rest. Actually working with the dead, however, is the responsibility of the living. It requires a dedicated efficiency, meticulous timing, an understanding that corpses, at the end of the day, are nothing more than the scraps left over from life's assembly line.

Once, I myself hitched a ride in the back of a corpsemobile, sharing space with the paid passenger, a teenager who'd been killed by a drunk driver. Her beer-swilling friend, the driver told me, had promised to get her home safe. Instead, she'd ended her prom night as nothing more than coroner-released cargo in a bloody prom dress...

Quite comfortable. Good suspension on those corpsemobiles. Almost overkill, really. It's not like most of the cargo will ever complain. But, well, deejaying equipment is, sadly, lmore fragile than your average dead body -- sometimes, those marvelous shocks and struts come in handy.

* * * *

Dude, that fucking stretcher was creepy! the clerk continued. Just thinking about dead people makes me... you know...

...Fucking weird shit, dude...

He shuddered, sipped his bourbon, ended his story.

At the funeral home, he sat up his loaned equipment in silence, with no audience other than the body of his benefactor. He didn't even do a proper sound check - none of the music he normally queued up in his sets seemed appropriate for the stage the mortuary staff had set...

He tossed back the last of his whiskey and ordered another.

There's something disturbing about, you know, being the Deejay of the Dead, dude.

I doubt any deejay would disagree with that assessment, actually.

- # # # -

OF LIBRARIANS, WRITERS, & HOTTIES, NUDE GODDESSES & WHORISH FOLLIES: Sometimes, My Dear Bukowski, The Muses Actually Bet on Mere Mortals...

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- He slid down the stairwell and into the basement, a veritable black-and-denim shadow against the wood paneling and red-painted cinderblock, swaying as he crossed ancient, chipped vinyl tiles.

The raven-coiffed jaguar was grinning one of those devilish grins, the sort of mysterious smile that probably lured a thousand warriors to their doom back when real jaguars prowled the jungles.

"Mmm...hmm... now what are you two hotties doing down here all alone, besides being hot?"

"Heh, well, she's the hottie. But she's twice as hot, enough for the both of us."

"Oh trust me. If you were a gay man, you'd know how much of a hottie you really are."

I sat up as straight as I could, sucked in my gut and suddenly felt, for some reason, like Rock Fucking Hudson. Mr. Jaguar's compliment yanked me up by my emotional bootstraps.

"Man, that's the nicest compliment anybody's given me in a long time. Thanks, dude."

I have no clue why, exactly, I felt so down on myself. No fucking clue. But, sometimes, well, it's better to not dwell on such things, to just appreciate a gay man calling you a hottie.

I was clutching a cold Red Needle, that favorite tequila - and - cranberry elixir that I sometimes use to keep up my will to live on long Mondays and extended weekend hangovers.

Yes, I was working, at eight at night on a Monday, off-the-clock, boozy condensation oozing from between my fingers, helping a friend come up with plot elements and character sketches for her children's book.

Me.

The absolute last person anyone would ever trust with the literary well-being or educational development of middle school children.

But, well, part of being a librarian, the most important part, is to play the role of Muse, to simply be a flashlight in the intellectual dark - even if he's the least-qualified flashlight for the job.

And sometimes, being a good librarian means that one is forced - FORCED - to sit in a cold basement on a Monday night, all alone, with quite possibly the hottest schoolteacher in the history of Ohio, drinking good booze and waiting for the read-back as that teacher scribbles away a draft onto old-school looseleaf.

Oh, how I suffer some days here in Oxford Fucking Ohio for my profession.

How Melvil Fucking Racist Misogynist Dewey must weep at my suffering, from his fiery director's desk in Hell's library.

It's a hard life, really.

* * * *

"My God, those girls! They really do dress like whores these days, don't they?"

Mrs. Thang sipped her wine and held out her cigarette. Out came my ol' Zippo and, within mere seconds, I had flame in her face, beneath that Virginia Slim.

Despite being a nonsmoking room, her room, well, she wasn't about to let the Goddamn State of Ohio tell her where we were allowed and not allowed to smoke. I lit up my Marlboro, flipped the lighter shut, and poured myself another glass of wine. We were on our second bottle.

I joined her in staring out of the hotel window, down onto the street. For some reason, I failed to see the supposed whoredom of undergraduate females. Just a normal night in Oxford, in a college town full of brave little girls who dress in Manolo heels to go drink Natural Light.

I did, however, notice her daughter crossing the street below us, towards a black SUV filled with other undergraduates. Mrs. Thang's daughter had claimed she'd wanted to stay and chat with ol' Mom, but, well...

C'mon. What college first-year has ever wanted to hang out with parents when there's a party to be had?

"My God, my daughter looks like a whore! She's starting to act that way, too. [Paris] was like that, wasn't she? You know, I'm afraid all my children will grow up shallow-"

Mrs. Thang hiccuped and almost fell forward into the glass. She grabbed the industrial-strength drapes for balance. She was drunk as a skunk.

"Nah, she seems like a good kid. This really is normal for a freshman in this town these days."

Mrs. Thang, relieved, slid down into a chair and handed me her glass. As I was pouring her the last of the bottle, she explained that in her day, when she was a spry Local U. student, no woman would be caught dead after dark in such skimpy outfits. According to her, well, how I dress these days is how she used to dress - jeans and a teeshirt. The old American standby is, and shall forever remain, the penultimate in laissez-faire chic.

And how the men just loved her in this town, way back then, in Oxford Fucking Ohio. She didn't date the fashionable, the trendy, fake-ass, jet-setter boys, either. She dated men, professors - yes, even faculty! - when she was her middle child's age. She wrote poetry in my library, danced naked in living rooms, and rode old men and artists and musicians like camels through the Sinai for four wondrous years.

Well, chica, I said, times change. Hell, Higher Ed's changed so much since even I was in college - and back then, heh, [Paris] and I...

I couldn't bring myself to say ... were together. We were never really together. We fucked. We didn't talk, didn't socialize, or, well, even get along outside of sweating, panting, and screwing. I hated her friends, actually, and would rather shove live scorpions up my ass than ever, ever be in such a soul-sucking situation ever again.

...since we, ya know...

Mrs. Thang scrunched up her face for a moment, then giggled. For the record, most mothers really do get a kick out of making their eldest child's exes suffer, even momentarily.

I handed back her glass and proposed a toast, an obscenity-laced, marginally intoxicated curse upon all of the shallow-ass bitches and their sexy-ass mothers in this town tonight. Mrs. Thang laughed as we clinked our glasses together.

It may have been the wine talking, the warm glow of the room's lights, or merely the evening's rather burlesque conversation topics, but, suddenly, Mrs. Thang ceased to be an merely an old acquaintance in town visiting her alma mater and her daughter.

She was, well, looking kinda hot. A woman my own mother's age was... wow. Those Pilates course were... wow. I sat down on the edge of the bed and tried my damnedest to visualize something other than what Mrs. Thang's rather flattering, tight, black sweater would feel like in my hands, what was beneath that all of that restrictive cotton...

"Are you really Jason _______? Noooo. Wow. You really grew up to be a smart sexy thing. Whew."

She reached over as if, well, as if she were reaching for my arm. She stopped and mumbled something about how that gay dude's hottie assessment, the same Mr. Jaguar I'd told her about from the previous night, was right.

"Jason, dear, you keep doing those chin-ups... Wow... Those arms are getting..."

She scrunched up her face again. The wine, yes, it was the wine that made me notice, for the first time all evening, that she was wearing a thong beneath her slacks...

"...If you fuck another daughter of mine, I'll tear your balls off."

She smiled. It was another one of those jaguar smiles.

After we'd said goodbye and had gingerly exchanged a rather quick, awkward hug, I left for those same streets below, the ones filled with normal Local U. women who are, sometimes, accused of dressing like whores by their own mothers.

I realized, walking back to my apartment, that I'm a lot like the old men some of those same mothers used to ride like camels in this town when they were but youthful undergrads, after poetry readings and folk concerts.

There's something dangerous in such thoughts.

* * * *

Early Saturday morning, hours before sunrise, I found myself taking a stroll through Oxford, alone and blissfully chilled like a pint of beer. Alone with my thoughts, my brain setting its own rhyme and meter to the rise and fall of the lungs in my chest, I could've walked to Cincinnati and back, a good 30 miles, without even being conscious of such a feat.

The sound of my cowboy boots clicking off the wet asphalt served as twilight's only soundtrack. An omnipotent fog stood in as the town's watchman, guarding every inch of every corner and crevice, from the ground all the way up to the bottom branches of the maples and sycamores and oak trees that line the streets.

I stopped at a nondescript intersection, in one of the more modern parts of town - apartment buildings outnumbered the houses, the houses themselves more one-story ranchers than 19th century Victorian in design. I was fumbling through my pockets, hoping beyond all hope that I hadn't lost my Zippo...

I don't know why I looked up. Maybe some glare from her wine bottle, or maybe the faint sound of someone singing - wailing like a banshee in heat, actually - a Melissa Etheridge tune into the night.

But there she was, naked up there in the window, a nude Athena, a fleshy statue of stripped feminine artwork framed in Plexiglas and vinyl siding.

Oblivious to what the world below would think of her naked flesh, white and yet strangely glowing in silhouette, backlit by unseen flickering candles, she just stood there singing into that empty wine bottle.

I almost felt ashamed for staring, even for a minute, until I reminded myself that anyone who strips and shimmies and shakes in front of a bay window is obviously hoping for some sort of audience. I've dated enough strippers in my life to recognize an exhibitionist when I see one...

Such a wondrous thing, the body of woman. How hips and lips and other parts just seem to flow together like strokes from a paintbrush. Things like weight and height, body proportions and breast sizes and the flatnesses of asses, cease to hold any meaning when the clothes are stripped away in the middle of the night. Men, alas, just aren't built that way - at least, well, from my perspective.

Athena noticed, yes, that she had an audience, that the performance of mysterious goddess in the sky had earned her the attention of a mere mortal below.

She stopped for a moment, pressed her face and breasts to the glass, squinted.

And then she smiled, waved, and went right back to singing along to her Melissa Etheridge recordings, as if every woman in the world were as comfortable with their own nudity as she obviously was with hers.

The best performance art pieces are always the ones where the artist cares not what the audience thinks, where the artist is driven by madness and the quaking, shaking passions of their own invisible Muse.

Critics be damned. And so, too, the audience.

- # # # -

THE OXFORD (FUCKING OHIO) DICTIONARY OF QUOTATIONS: Of One-legged Vampire Hunters, Sexless Restlessness, and "Vag Badger" Parents

So... Your New Year's resolution was to... swear off sex? Like all sex? Or just sex with crazy women? Oh my gosh...why?

- One very shocked blog reader,
Over coffee, in the ZenFo Pro Library's cafe.

Yup. There is nothing quite like a workplace conversation with a reader over my lack of, er, entertaining posts lately.

Actually, for the record, I've sworn off random, pointless sex - in Oxford, well, one often falls into the trap of simply hooking up to kill boredom. And no offense to certain local blog readers, but, well, I've sworn off going home with ya'll - and I swore off anything younger than 22 a long time ago.

Though I'm flattered by some of the rather forward offers...

Not very healthy and, well, there are better things I could be doing with my time. Do you know how much reading I've done since Jan. 1? How productive I've been without unnecessary drama in my life? Hell, even I've been awestruck by my surge in energy, thought, and creativity.

Sex? Pfft. I've been passed around like a Megachurch collection plate. I'd kinda like to, well, one day, remember what it's like to be able to care enough to remember a woman's last name or enjoy her scent on my pillow for more than a few days at a time...

Ya know. Like a normal guy.

* * * *

She's NOT a cougar. Cougars aren't WHORES! She's a Vag Badger. Cougars eat you; Vag Badgers take you home, molest you, and steal your fucking money!

Vag. [Points to crotch.] Badger. [Hands raised like claws.] Grrrr. Quote me on that, dude.

- Slightly intoxicated young woman,
Describing how she really feels about her stepmom

Your wish, madam, is my command. And, having been mauled by drunken Local U. moms and stepmoms myself on certain sorority mother weekends, yeah...

One should always be on the lookout for Vag Badgers. Worse than Cunt Kittens, Cock Knockers, or even, yes, regular old-fashioned Golddiggers.

This may be one of the wittiest things to come out of a nineteen-year-old Local U. student's mouth at two in the morning, ever. Proof, once again, that some of those stereotypical-looking sorority gals do indeed have more to them than meets the eye.

* * * *

"Why do dead men rise up to torment the living?" Captain Henry Baltimore asks the malevolent winged creature.

The vampire shakes its head. "It was you called us. All of you, with your war. The roar of your cannons shook us from our quiet graves . . . You killers. You berserkers . . . You will never be rid of us now."

- From Baltimore, or, The Steadfast
Tin Soldier and the Vampire,
Mike Mignola & Christopher Golden
(Spectra, August 2007, 304 p.)

Imagine a nightmarish reality where, towards the end of the First World War, a British captain accidentally awakens a silent, unknown enemy to both human sides of that conflict, an ancient evil that no longer preyed upon the virgin necks of chicks named Harker because, well, Mankind's mechanized warfare had turned battlefields into all-you-can-eat diners for vampires...

What if, in a steampunk gothic reality, our warfare's bloodshed actually fed into the deepest, shadowy caverns where our forgotten, mythological demons rest? What if, well, someone noticed those demons for the first time upon a trench-marred battlefield, angered one of those carrion monsters, inadvertently started a very different War on Terror?

I finished reading this masterpiece, quite possibly the best horror novel written yet in this new century, in just under two and a half days. And for three nights, I was afraid of the dark for the first time in ages...

* * * *

Hey, don't feel bad about the deaf girl, dude. The last thing I usually hear before sex is 'Do you ever just shut up and fuck?'

- Yours Truly, Feb. 28,
Business lunch conversation

* * * *

...I taste like Texas, with a twist of Boston...

- A very interesting message,
Feb. 22, via Facebook

I'm fairly certain that the Legend of the Librarian and the Kentucky-Tasting Hairdressers is once again making the rounds.

C'mon now. Lots of 29-year-olds tell stories about making out with middle-aged women with breast implants...

Err... yeah. Huh. Great.

I feel like an Oxford Fucking Ohio version of Ashton Kutcher.

* * * *

That is all I have to say tonight. Oh, also, would someone call a priest? I think this sweater is possessed. Okay. THAT is all I have to say tonight...

- Max Adams, "Damnable Laundry,"
Celluloid Blonde, March 7

* * * *

Don’t they have any curiosity about anything outside of their little Facebook circle? Aren’t they interested in . . . well, anything? I can’t imagine a life where I can’t look beyond Myspace. It’s almost enough to make me want to get out of teaching.

- Coyote Mike, "Students Give Me Gas,"
Drowning on the Prairie, March 4

Trust me. Every last single human being older than 25 who works in, lives around, or tries to wade through the Higher Education Underground understands this frustration. Like Mike, I've tried to be gentle, accepting of some of the cultural and intellectual decay social networking technologies have inadvertently caused in the 18-22 year-old academic demographic.

Just last week, I had a girl almost break down in tears outside of my office because, well, in order to look for a job, she needed my help locking down her Facebook account - literally torn, emotionally, between her inner-exhibitionist, her desire to maintain spectral Facebook Friendships, and her very real need to maintain some online privacy.

Yeah, there's a whole hell of a lot more to the world than social networking tools - things of beauty and artistic merit and scholarship, as well as things so horrendous that the soul chills at their very mention.

* * * *

Rachael Ray. Oh my God, that's so your type! I've never been able to put my finger on your type of girl, but the moment I saw pictures of who you've dated in the past, and when you mentioned that you had the hots for Rachael Ray at Christmas, I just knew. Just learn to date like a normal guy, will ya?

- The ZenFo Sister, 27, March 8,
Via Electronic Sibling Bitchfest

As much as I'd hate to admit it... and an older brother never, ever admits these sorts of things... I think my sister's right.

In the past two years, only 1.4 percent of the women I've been involved with physically or romantically were blondes, a whopping 91 percent were chipper morning people who, well, enjoyed cooking American and Mediterranean cuisine, and an astounding 84 percent bear at least some minor physical resemblance to the television Food Goddess...

Dammit. Stupid little sisters.

I knew there was a reason we don't fight as much as we used to - she's, ugh, maturing faster than I am.

Dammit. Stupid little sisters.

- # # # -

INTIMATE EVENINGS ALONE WITH THE ZENFO PRO: Some of Ohio's Most Fashionable College Women Think I'm the Cat's Meow. What the Fuck?!?

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- I waited patiently for some sort of explanation, part of me insulted and the rest in awe of the strangeness of the compliment.

I was, in her assessment, hip and with a style all my own, classy and sophisticated and, well, cool as shit to hang out with. And she laughed, yes, laughed when I asked for an apology, when I asked if she was deranged or insane or had spent her college years living in some other college town...

If I'm the heppest of the hepcats here in trendy Oxford Fucking Ohio, well, for fuck's sakes, some Scenester version of the Apocalypse must indeed be upon us.

Her roommate, this quiet little thing with a pixie cut, clad in skinny jeans and those ballerina shoes that tend to make women's feet look enormously long and narrow, a self-described fashionista, concurred.

The evidence, Miss Pixie claimed, was the originality of my rather talentless paintings, my collection of strange and curious DVDs and books, and, well, the fact that my apartment is apparently decorated in a postindustrial minimalist fashion...

Part of me was insulted and, yes, part of me was dreadfully awestruck. To be talked about like some sort of online sex symbol in one's own apartment, by two very fashionable women, is abso-fucking-lutely disturbing.

Me.

Now that fucking creeps me out.

* * * *

I sat on my living room floor late Tuesday night, dealt out the cards, and listened as two college seniors, two women who were in the know about the latest Panic! at the Disco albums and the latest Rufus Wainwright tracks, called me, quite possibly, the hippest, suavest motherfucker in all of Ohio.

After dealing out the last card, a King of Coins that followed The Devil, I grunted something about the girls both being full of shit, that I needed to concentrate to do the reading.

I proceeded to explain to my lovely young reader that she may want to indeed reevaluate her current relationship with the cat from Dayton - the cards revealed an unhealthy, codependent pattern and a lust more about maintaining image than actual love.

Little Miss Pixie grabbed her arm as I spoke, gasped about how, yes, that guy was indeed a cocky jock chump, and that, yes, the cards were indeed tapping into some esoteric medium...

* * * *

"This is so weird. I feel like I know you, but I don't. So you let random people who IM you...?"

"Naw. Figured ya'll were safe. Hell, we've spent two years IMing back and forth about all sorts of shit - this town's small enough that I figure you'd have stabbed me by now if you were one of the crazy ones..."

"So you've really had blog stalkers?"

"Let's put it this way - I'm getting fucking tired of cleaning lipstick off of my fucking truck and replacing the fucking mirrors..."

The reader seemed shocked. I explained that, well, there are prices to pay when one writes about things that involve somebody else's potential scandal or excuse for histrionic melodrama.

Writing, after all, ain't easy - or necessarily hip, suave, or sexy. Actually, writing online nonfiction is probably one of the most dangerous hobbies in all of Oxford Fucking Ohio.

* * * *

Miss Pixie was staring me down for some reason, eyebrows scrunched up, forehead crinkled like a tossed-off dress shirt.

"Are you sure we haven't met before?"

"Pretty sure. You've prob'ly seen me at work."

"Wait. Didn't I interview you once...?"

"Maybe. If it dealt with library renovation or some event or -"

The reader interrupted the exchange, hushed the roommate with a friendly Shut the fuck up! He's reading my cards!

The two women, the savvy, hip chicks who'd shown up late and were disappointed in the fact that the hardest booze I keep in my apartment is herbal tea, listened contently as I finished reading the spread.

I'd have made a fairly decent fortuneteller in another life, believe it or not...

* * * *

Through tiny desktop speakers, the Mp3 player let loose a fierce, full-bend acoustic guitar riff - French songstress SoKo's "I'll Kill Her."

Both women seemed fascinated by the worldliness of the songs on my playlist - everything from South American baile funk to French pop, from Palestinian hip-hop to Ratatat's latest remixes, from, yes, American bands like the Meat Puppets and the Melvins to Australian and European downbeat music...

Hey, who is this? seemed to be a common refrain voiced over nearly every song. In Oxford Fucking Ohio and in many American college towns, popular music is often defined by what's played in iTunes commercials, what's peddled by television execs on network dramas and comedies.

Even the highly fashionable, I explained, even young women who think they're pushing boundaries in terms of art and music, are usually just regurgitating somebody else's marketing. If one's sense of style can be boiled down into a bumper sticker or some quirky image on a retro teeshirt, well, one's style is nothing more than hollow capitalistic vanity masked as a creative, independent statement.

The fact that being true to one's artistic tastes and pleasures, true to oneself, has become nothing more than selective corporate branding supports the theory that, yes, we are at the end of that era that held 20th Century Western Pop Culture up as one of history's great creative benchmarks.

There will never be, ladies, I stated, another Great American Novel, another Great British Romantic Comedy, another French Literary Renaissance ... The Developing World has been out-imagining us whilst we play Guitar Fucking Hero and fiddle with our DVRs...

... Being sexy or fashionable is about giving meaning to insignificance and irrelevance ...

As I finished reading Miss Pixie's cards, continued intermingling my cartomantic interpretations with my pop culture rantings, I felt like my words were being interpreted as some sort of stupid Hipster version of the Sermon on the Mount. To say it was an awkward, downright uncomfortable feeling would be an understatement.

At least, well, SoKo now has two new fans here in Oxford Fucking Ohio. Baile funk? Not so much.

The American Millennials Rising Generation, that fantastic illusion of a perfect generation that's been pitched by academic hucksters and public radio poseurs for almost a decade now, just isn't ready for Brazilian women singing songs in Portuguese about fucking random guys on the dance floor.

One day, maybe. But only after those same young liberated Americans realize that nobody gives a shit about our reality television, our celebutante cuntflashing, or our steroid-filled athletes anymore...

Until that shit's well behind us all, ain't nobody bringing sexy back to this continent.

* * * *

Miss Pixie suddenly remembered how she knew me. The sounds of music so, well, foreign, freed up a bit of memory.

"Hey, this is kinda weird, but did you have an Italian girl living with you, like, two years ago? Like Italian Italian? Like not American? Like my age?"

"Um... yeah.... for 'bout a week..."

"Oh shit! You're that guy! I guess I have read your blog before. For a class, dude! Yeah, we were supposed to do a blog and...yeah... that was fucking hot!"

"Well shit, chica..."

You know, everybody still asks where I got the Liverpool jersey...

- EPILOGUE -

The agreement at the end of Tuesday night was, well, that I was to write something about spending yet another pleasant evening alone with two very attractive young Local U. women, reading tarot cards, discussing pop culture, and drinking herbal tea.

I told them that, yes, as always, no names would be used and that, yes, I would include something, somewhere, about how both women have boyfriends and that it was - in case anybody asks or it turns out we know some of the same people - completely platonic and innocent.

And, for the record, this has been one of the hardest posts I've felt obligated to write in a long fucking time. Obligated, because, well, I was asked to document something that's really quite a normal evening alone for me - save for the sexy/suave/cool talk.

I'm not hip, nowhere near being suave or as sophisticated, and, well, the sexy ship left my port a long time ago. I am, however, comfortable enough with who I am not to give a flying monkeyfuck about any of it.

To write about certain normal things, it turns out, is sometimes a lot harder than simply making a promise. By Saturday afternoon, I'd cranked out four very different drafts, the ZenFo Pro / Real World Jason personae painfully clipped and chopped down to tepid puddings full of random fragments thoughts.

I just don't handle being called a sex symbol well. If I've become a sex symbol because of a stupid blog, some fashionable demigod of Ohioana Web lore, then I can't help but think the whole world's gone fucking insane.

Saturday night, frustrated, I hit up my favorite watering hole to help cure me of my tragically un-hip writer's block. A good, peaceful night surrounded by the drunken chest-beating chatter of fratboy cliches and shallow College Girl stereotypes was just what the doctor ordered...

I knew that, yes, the mental blockage was about melt away like dirty snow the moment I ran into a cheerily intoxicated, newly mustachioed Mr. Chops.

Discussions about exes and anal sex and bawdy texts in the middle of the night were amongst the first signs that, yes, there may still be some writing left in me after all, that I'm just a normal, rather boring dude pushing 30 who writes as a fucking hobby.

Look... I have no fucking desire to bring sexy back. Hell, I think it's high time mainstream culture took that puppy out back and shot it, point-blank, in its pampered, Let Them Eat Tabloids face...

And I'm certainly no sex symbol. I'm a librarian.

* * * *

It was at the downstairs bar, huddled in a corner and after my first Long Island and my second pint of beer, that my Fuck that Shit! confidence was restored.

An aspiring novelist buddy and I sparked up a very manly, borderline shitshow conversation about the trueness of writing about truth and beauty, that wondrously sexy ideal pitched by the poet John Keats...

... You know, one of those I would so fuck the shit outta that... conversations that drunk writers have at times, those sophisticated I dunno, something about the way her shirt just clings... sorts of oh-so-sexy, intellectual debates only fucking writers and sex symbols have in crowded college bars...

Both of us, well, had hit some serious roadblocks in our extracurricular creative endeavors - and we were both trying to drink and think our way back into that groove, that splendid amalgam of imagination and invention. We both tried, in vain, to maintain some level of academic critique, to commiserate, but, well, too many cute girls kept flowing through the door, kept pushing their breasts together and out of their too-tight tops...

And for some reason, over the course of way-too-many drinks, over a night's worth of intoxicated promises of dinner-and-a-movie dates with a sorta shy, Girl Next Door bartender, after being briefly molested by a marvelously intoxicated gay man who just loves him some Britney and Xtina...

... My writer's block, thank the gods, cured itself! Go figure.

A normal, boring Saturday night out on the town was all it took!

Now that's fucking sexy and suave and cool as shit.

- # # # -