VIGNETTES FROM A NOWHERE COLLEGE TOWN: Graffiti as Information, Listless Tourists and Midnight Tour Guides, & How Hip-Hop Ain't Noise Pollution

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- He tags, therefore he is. It's a simple enough concept.

One has to respect the simplicity of the youthful anarchist creator and the often intentionally meaningless art he or she creates, the minimalist drive of the guerrilla artist, of his permanent markers and spray paint.

And sure, it's a criminal act in most parts of the world. Hell, if caught, the kid's going to end up either painting over his work per a judge's order or paying hefty fines to the building's owner. And, sure, if I were the owner of the building I'd be beyond pissed.

Actually, if I owned the building I'd give the guy the whole wall, give him a canvas and commission a mural. There's not enough public art in this town. What is available is the usual tepid Midwestern city sculpture or the sanitized public work designed to promote tourism more than conversation.

But he tags, therefore he is.

* * * *

He's got no money for prepped canvas or studio space, barely enough money for food and clothing and rent. And his work may not be protected speech, may not even be considered legal speech, but it is expression nonetheless, his voice in vivid pigment, amongst the white noise and red bricks.

And he's not tagging the town with the territorial pissings of wannabe gangsters and DVD rental hoodlums - those works of vandalism are mostly done by poor rural kids who listened to one too many songs about Detroit's Eight Mile, heard one too many stories from older siblings about how, sure, everybody in prison, like, adopts this symbol or that symbol as a benchmark of aggression.

If he's caught, yes, he knows he'll be blamed for those acts, too. He tags, therefore he is. But even the most simple of purposes can become a complex mess of legalese and regulation and investigation.

And quite frankly, as long as his work stays off of my property, doesn't damage the finishes of my library's facilities, well, I'm quite content to just let him write what he wants, paint what he wants, tag what he wants. Then, and only then, would his works be in direct conflict with my work.

I don't think he's the kinda guy who'd vandalize a library. Reads too much.

Where do ya think taggers get some of their ideas for designs, anyway? The goddamn post office? When was the last time you saw somebody at that newsstand or convenience store, studying someone's work in a magazine or book at leisure, without being pestered to buy shit?

The rebellious nature of the guerrilla artist has always held public temples of individual learning as sacred space, a different sort of vandalism of word and bibliometric organization amongst the billions of print and electronic systems.

Libraries tag the world in different ways, with data-fueled, web-based MARC record aggregators or with call numbers along book spines, with Due Date stamps and bar codes on patron I.D. cards.

Therefore they are, too. They just are. Simple as that.

- MORE -

UPTOWN OXFORD (ZP) -- This town is not what she expected.

Young women dress in cocktail dresses to binge drink in the most disgusting bars. The older, more experienced undergrads dress in jeans and ballet shoes and halter tops when they're out on the town. The bar scene here is almost completely devoid of grad students, locals, or even younger faculty as the clock ticks closer towards last call.

There's no good live music scene here in Oxford Fucking Ohio, no real sense of anything cutting-edge and modern coming from within any place with a stage. She's been to two coffee shops and has yet to see a kid pouring his heart out at a poetry reading, yet to hear even one sappy acoustic ballad about getting dumped in high school or about wanting fame or even about global warming.

No indie bookstores, no record stores, no used clothing stores. Mostly just sandwich shops, bars, tanning salons, and overpriced yuppie boutiques.

"You guys must have one hell of a suicide rate," she says in between sips of her beer. "I'd go fucking crazy if I went to school here. So...ugh... whitebread."

Actually, whitebread is an understatement, I explain. This here college town is home to one of the least diverse state-supported universities in the United States, a mere 35 miles northwest of Cincinnati, a city where almost half the population isn't anywhere near white, much less whitebread.

* * * *

She drove all the way up here to the Edge of Midwestern Academia's Nowhere to watch a woman she grew up with compete in her first game as a college athlete, her younger sister's best friend. Having friendly faces in the bleachers was supposed to help take the edge off.

And they were all supposed to hang out together after the action left the field, chill and goof off and have a blast in a college town that was once renowned for its nightlife, hang out like they did in high school.

Alas, the best laid plans of mice and college girls on road trips...

Sure, I tell her, Oxford was once sorta renowned as a hip college town, back in the 1970s and 1980s, back when the town was making cameos in Rain Man, its long-gone radio station playing tunes in the background as Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise bickered about K-Marts in Cincinnati.

But in the naked now of 2008...

I didn't have to finish my thought. The rolling of her eyes was enough to convince me that, yeah, she'd figured that part out. Instead of partying away a long holiday weekend, her kid sister and the childhood friend were back in a hotel room, playing cards, while she was sitting in a preppy undergrad dive chatting away with some strange guy who'd given her his number the day before.

A local. Someone not a student. Someone who's, well...

You know.

* * * *

"No shit? You're a librarian? My aunt's a librarian."

"Yup."

"But you're, what, 22? 23?"

"Um, little older."

"Nuh-uh. No way you're older than I am."

"Huh." I pull out the ol' driver's license, along with a business card, lean into her. "Look at that. A 30-year-old librarian. How'd THAT fucking happen?"

She laughs and grabs my arm, kills her shitty warm beer.

"NOW... you're gonna be MY librarian and give ME that tour of ____ University of... fucking Ohio, or what? Let's bail before I puke..."

Seriously. She dragged me out of a shitty bar at two in the morning on a Sunday to give a walking tour of this fine city. And a tour of Oxford Fucking Ohio, during the school year is better than any museum in town. Complete shitshow most weekends, an orgy of stupidity, a grindhouse version of every college experience cliche.

Think Wild Kingdom meets Girls Gone Wild, with the bad guys in the Revenge of the Nerds movies thrown in, just for shits and giggles.

* * * *

Apparently, I'm a fairly decent tour guide. She had no clue why she called me, why she suddenly had some burning desire to not drink by herself, why she suddenly wanted company and a tour.

At least, well, that's what she told me in the morning.

- MORE -

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- Biggie Smalls. The Notorious B.I.G. Also known as Christopher Wallace.

You know. The guy who used to love it when you called him Big Poppa, before he was assassinated (fuck that murder shit, the man, like Tupac Shakur in 1996, was ASSASSINATED) in Los Angeles a mere fifty yards from Petersen Automotive Museum back in March 1997.

And this kid, a self-described expert on Rock & Roll History at all of eighteen, doesn't get the reference. In fact, he's indignant about it - lots of rappers get shot, right? And he was only, like, seven when some drug dealer got shot.

I try explaining the rapper's unsolved death, the tragic feud between what was then known as East Coast and West Coast Hip-Hop, its place in Rock history, but he puts a palm in my face.

"Man, who cares about rap! I'm talking about Rock & Roll! Nobody'll remember that black shit in another 20 years."

Nobody will remember hip-hop in another two decades? That black shit?

* * * *

You know, rock snobs, mostly of the Caucasian Persuasion, have been claiming such things for three decades, since the days of DJ Kool Herc and Melle Mel and Grandmaster Flash and the Sugar Hill Gang.

When Blondie first introduced the hip-hop sound to a supposedly white rock world, with the rap-inspired "Rapture" in 1981, that wasn't important - just a phase, those critics said. And in 1984, when Afrika Bambaataa teamed up with legendary rock bassist Bill Laswell and former Sex Pistol Johnny "Rotten" Lydon, they said that wasn't rock & roll - it was, as the song suggested, World Destruction.

And in 1986, when Run-DMC's Jam Master Jay first dropped Aerosmith's "Walk This Way" onto a turntable, when the drum loops were added and the lyrics of a rock staple were rapped instead of howled, that wasn't rock, either. I mean, it's not like a bunch of, ugh, rappers saved Aerosmith's career or anything. A flash in the pan, those critics claimed.

When Anthrax and Public Enemy teamed up to Bring Tha Noize in the 1990s, when rapper Ice-T incited the wrath of the White Motherfucking House because of a heavy metal song, back when bands like 2 Live Crew won battles against artistic censorship in Florida that even the great Jim Morrison couldn't...

* * * *

Nope. Everybody's just going to forget about hip-hop. And that black shit.

I mean, it's not like anybody remembers Chuck Berry, James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, Bad Brains, the Motown Sound, Bootsy Collins, Marvin Gaye, Sam Cooke, Bo Diddley...

... Sly Stone, Michael Jackson, Lenny Kravitz, Ben Harper, OutKast, Gnarls Barkley...

I mean, nobody remembers those guys, either.

Right?

Oh.

And the 18-year-old rock critic? Dude was wearing a Bob Marley T-shirt.

Reggae? Nah, probably not Rock & Roll, either.

- # # #-

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 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN EX-OTHER MAN II: Tasting Kentucky, Payback as a Blogging Bitch, and Other Crazy Things

ACT I:
"DUDE. SHE TASTES LIKE KENTUCKY."

If this doesn't make your blog, I'm going to kick you in the fucking balls.

- Mister Chops

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- Hairdressers can be quite entertaining.

Especially in gangs of four, when they've all had way too much to drink, when you're the only relatively sober guy at the bar.

Quite entertaining. And rather good kissers, too. Even if they taste like Kentucky, smell like generic body spray, and manhandle your junk like a plumber working over a rusted valve.

* * * *

Mister Chops? The guy behind the bar?

Chops was molested by three of the four women, forced to bare his shoulder and chest tattoos for all the world to see, to strip down to his A-frame tee for tips and wages, forced to be told that, well, even married women to get off every once and a while, forced to witness flashes of ass tats and tits and...

Me? Lucky ol' me?

I went four-for-four on the night. And all four claimed that there was no way in hell I could be a librarian, that librarians can't kiss like that, that they'd all like to share me for a few minutes, to spank me, to do very naughty things to me in bar bathrooms and on books and...

* * * *

One woman, a recent divorcée, ended up getting a little too excited. I guess I stirred up some biochemical response, caused quite a bit of, er, moisture build-up, which ended up seeping through the back of her jeans and onto my hand...

Hell. I'd almost forgotten what it felt like to give a woman an orgasm, fully-clothed and without any sort of intention, in front of a live studio audience, with just a kiss and a few well-placed flicks of the tongue, a squeeze of a breast and stroke of the ass and...

I even earned a round of applause.

Hairdressers aren't the only ones who are good kissers.

* * * *

Actually, I went five-for-five if you count the blonde undergrad who'd witnessed the whole thing as her party entered the downstairs pub.

She followed me out to my truck and, right on High Street in Uptown Oxford, told me, exactly, just what she'd like to do to me.

Sounded like she had some fun things in mind.

Too bad she was 3,000 sheets to the wind and barely able to stand up straight.

She had to settle for, well, pushing me into my pick-up and shoving what felt like four inches of sorority girl down my throat. Tasted like Jägermeister and fifth-year desperation, like she hadn't had the guts to just walk up to a random guy and kiss him in years.

But still - not bad. For a 22-year-old from Dayton. She'd probably be a nice person to hang out with sometime - if she's ever sober.

But not as fun to make out with as the four 30-40ish hairdressers.

* * * *

I don't do drunk women.

Make out? Sure. But sex?

Honestly, it's not only dangerous; it's also boring and pointless.

Sure, I sometimes falter on that guiding principle. But, well, while I can no longer remember the number of women, total, that I've been involved with, I can count the number of drunken mistakes on my fingers.

Less than 10. And I'm proud of that. More important, I'm just glad I survived them.

I may fuck up, but, well, I prefer to fuck up almost completely sober. Blindfolds and cigarettes may provide the illusion of safety, but the firing squad will still pull their triggers the same, either way. Best to just face one's fate, sexual or otherwise, with both eyes square on the assassin.

* * * *

Who says Happy Hours aren't fun anymore?

Happy was me Thursday. But, by Saturday...

ACT II:
"YOU KNOW, I'M NOT AS DENSE AS YOU THINK..."

I knew exactly what I was doing.

Knew from the moment I paid for her late-night slice of pizza at Brunos. Knew as I suggested that, at 23 and 29, respectively, we were much too old, as working professionals, to be out past last call.

And, yep, I had a good idea what she was thinking when her heel snapped and she fell into me, commenting on the fact that I seem to have bulked up a bit since she last saw me. And I knew, exactly, what I was doing when she told me that she wanted to go back to my apartment, to just chill and catch up, as if we'd ever been friends.

And I knew she was married, too, married to a man who once got off on slipping an ex-girlfriend of his Special K during his Local U. undergrad days, married to a man whose ex-girlfriend ...

... ended up having a rather quick, torrid fling with a certain local blogger to get over the fact that, yeah, her best friend 4eva had been screwing her drug-slipping boyfriend for most of their relationship.

And I even had this lurking feeling I was being used to get back at that ex-fling of mine, for some unknown reason. Maybe, just maybe, it has something to do with the fact that my ex-fling dared to fall in love with this amazing man who doesn't slip her ketamine as an aphrodisiac, for leaving her best friend 4eva (and Mr. Big Man and yours truly, for that matter) behind.

* * * *

As I lay in bed Saturday morning, staring at the ceiling and listening to the sound of some not-so-random woman singing bad pop music in my shower, I tried to make myself feel guilty, tried to find it in my soul, somewhere, to reprimand myself.

But I couldn't.

That best friend 4eva had just spent the night with a guy she'd once called the ugliest guy in Oxford, while her beloved cokehead of a hubby, the former Mr. Big Man on Campus, was spending the weekend drinking and clubbing back in the city Carl Sandburg once called the City of Big Shoulders.

* * * *

I knew why, exactly, she'd come back to Oxford Fucking Ohio - she wanted revenge on Mr. Big Man, a notoriously unfaithful guy who, from what she told me, spent more time groping interns than he did groping her. I knew from the first lie that she wasn't interested in planned giving to my library, knew she really didn't want my help researching something for work at 4 in the morning.

And, yes, I figured out quickly that she wasn't offering to rub my shoulders because I looked stressed, that she wasn't capable of sincere compassion. And, yes, I knew exactly what I was doing when she leaned against that door jamb and brought her knee up to her nose, when she insisted on demonstrating how flexible she'd become thanks to her yoga instructor.

I wasn't anywhere near drunk, yet, somehow, I tripped. Fell right up against her, catching that flexible thigh to mysteriously restore my balance. And when I smiled and raised my eyebrow, I lied and feigned innocence, just so she'd make the first move.

And she did. Even broke one of my favorite belts.

They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, Sandburg wrote, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.

Well, Mr. Sandburg. Some of us farm boys may be dense, may have no fucking clue how to flirt or date nice girls or even behave like rational adults, but those painted women from The City of Big Shoulders are sometimes easy to lure away from beneath those lamps.

Some of us were just born with big shoulders. It's a curse.

* * * *

Spite is a curious bedfellow.

When I'd left the bar scene behind Friday night, I was annoyed, angry.

A female friend of mine, well past intoxicated, was literally throwing herself at a male friend of mine, whispering all sorts of drunken things into his ear. The female friend has been in a bad way for months, since she went through a nasty break-up with a guy. And the male friend, recently relocated back to Oxford, seemed to be deep in the kind of buzzed enlightenment that comes with having to choose between getting laid and being a good friend.

And, no, it wasn't jealousy. Not even close.

It was memories, memories of some of my own experiences with the self-destructive chaos that fuels all drunken hook-ups and one-night stands, the sort of forewarned regret and friendship - altering choices that, in general, rarely lead to anything productive.

Just hate to see people having to wade through shit. It's really, really painful for me to watch.

I used to be good at those sorts of things, a virtual maestro of drunken hook-ups, seductive womanizing and manwhoredom. But as I've gotten older...

And I thought about "Tonya," too, about how that friends - and - lovers choice had ended. Two weeks earlier, she'd FedExed me my lucky ring - I told her to ship the thing back if she felt that we couldn't salvage the friendship out of the clusterfuck it'd become. When I opened the parcel, my heart imploded; it was the first time in months that I'd been forced to admit that, yes, I had been falling hard for her when things went sour.

And I thought about other drama, too, with other former lovers and flings and girlfriends...

My cell vibrated in my pocket, snapped me out of my deep brooding and self-reflection.

DUDE! Hey! It's me, went the voicemail. You're not going to believe this, but _____ just tried to kiss me. Apparently Mrs. Perfect is down in fucking Oxford and he really thinks I'm going to get back together with him! Seriously. Fuck em! And watch out, dude. She reads your web site, so if you go home with anybody, that bitch is gonna tell everybody up here in Chi-Town.

I laughed. As if I was planning to go home with anybody.

And then, less than five minutes later, I'm standing at the door of my pickup, turning the key in the lock.

I feel a pair of woman's hands on my back, the sound of that high-pitched, stereotypical sorority alum voice, that Heeyyy Jay-sin!!! Loong Tiiime no seeeee!

Some women are as transparent as Waterford Crystal.

* * * *

Yes, spite is indeed a curious bedfellow. But, then again, so is fate. Makes for one hell of an orgy.

And, trust me, there are now quite a few folks up in the City of Big Shoulders who now know who I hooked up with last night.

Tell your husband I said hello.

I'm dense, but I'm not naive. I read your mind, hon.

You figured that you could get back at your husband by going home with the one guy he hates, that you could play me like a fiddle because, well, you'd been reading about my problems and relationship woes, and that you could just waltz right in, use me, and gloat.

And too bad you were singing in the shower. You would've realized that I rarely, if ever, walk into an ambush - I called your former best friend 4eva and told her everything.

She's now in a healthy relationship, doesn't care about who you, your hubby, or even I fuck. But she did think it was funny that you really thought you were getting away with anything.

And, actually, I'm not that easy to seduce. Bit of an urban legend, actually. Think you had it backwards, there, hon.

Can't really play the guy who just served you with the rule book.

* * * *

Oh, and by the way...

No worries about returning the tee shirt. Looked great on you as you went through security at the Cincinnati airport this morning.

It belonged to your former BFF. Butt-ugly thing, that shirt. She always looked horrible in yellow.

I am curious about one thing, however.

How did your husband react when he read Librarians Do It By the Book printed across your chest when he picked you up at O'Hare this morning?

Just curious.

And thanks for reaffirming my enduring belief that, no matter how physically attractive, sex with dumb women is just about as exciting as staring at my bedroom ceiling, waiting for somebody else to finish...

- # # # -

SO IT GOES: The Deeper One Digs into the Local Higher Education Underground, The More Dirt One Exposes to the Sky

We're terrible animals. I think that the Earth's immune system is trying to get rid of us, as well it should.

- KURT VONNEGUT (1922-2007),
From his appearance on The Daily Show, 2005

This should come as a shock no one, especially people who frequent this site, but Oxford Fucking Ohio has more than just a few problems when it comes to Local U. student behavior.

People throughout the region, those familiar with this area, know the reputation, or have heard tales from others about some of the downright nucking futs insanity this community experiences from, oh, late August through May each year.

I'm always fascinated when random strangers feel the need to walk up to me in a bar or at work, just to let me know how bad I apparently make Local U. students look, or how I should be ashamed to post what I do about my experiences in Oxford. It's happened twice in the past week.

Sure, the Local U.'s a Public Ivy, with several nationally recognized academic programs. It even produced a U.S. president - albeit one that only History teachers and Jeopardy! junkies seem to be able to remember.

And sure, the student body supposedly represents the best and brightest in the region. Local U. students often pride themselves in their work ethic. The rural environs surrounding the campus, its virtual isolation from the hustle and bustle of 21st century life, offers wonderful opportunities for dedicated students to concentrate on their studies with minimal disruption.

But in terms of behavior outside of the classroom? Off-campus?

* * * *

Just imagine taking some of the wealthiest 18-22 year-olds in the Midwest, the majority of whom seem to come from extremely sheltered backgrounds, and then setting them loose on a college town that offers very few extracurricular activities beyond binge drinking and substance abuse.

Now subtract several key factors that normally help regulate student behavior in most college towns. Outside of the town's full-time, non-student population, socioeconomic diversity is virtually nonexistent. The once healthy campus/community relationship has cooled to the point of almost outright animosity, thanks in part to a growing disparity between "Townie" living standards (where nearly one in five children and nearly one in 10 seniors live at or below the poverty line) and that of the students.

The once vibrant local music scene has only recently begun to show signs of resurrection, after almost a decades' worth of third-rate frat rock, shitty cover bands, and preppy gated- community- friendly folk performers. Major acts stop by maybe a handful of times year, the Local U.'s attempt to expose students to spoken word, hip-hop, musical theatre, and other performing arts. Many of the normal "College Radio," avant-garde types, the kinds of acts that filled the bars and clubs here throughout the 70s and 80s, no longer play this town because of its reputation as a potential career-killer.

And more and more faculty and staff are choosing to endure commutes from larger metropolitan areas. After-hours class meetings at local pubs and coffee shops, cookouts at faculty residences, and even the occasional impromptu late-night chat over grades, what many Higher Ed analysts call informal learning opportunities, have virtually ceased to exist in some academic disciplines.

Issues? Yeah, Oxford has issues with a capital I. A bloated cost of living, a shrinking middle-class population base, and the lack of sustainable cultural outlets are just the tip of the iceberg.

* * * *

We're not talking Animal House. We're talking Lord of the Flies here. Imagine 15,000 college kids roaming the streets, with only a handful of professional, mature adults to serve as role models.

The fact that I'm considered by some folks locally, because of this blog, to be a community leader scares the living shit out of me. Being the Dangerous Librarian? No problem. But to be considered one of the Old Farts because I have a friggin' blog and I'm old enough to legally drink? Now that's frightening.

The Local U. student culture seems to be moving closer to the day when its poor Piggys get brained with a rock, a frightening future where the idea of College Life becomes more akin to a Hitler Youth rally than the typical American undergrad experience, where conformity becomes the only fashion accessory legally allowed.

Imagine a college town where nights are ruled by a Gen Y version of Jack and the Choirboys, one where Oxford residents over the age of 30 generally lock themselves in their own homes after ten on the weekends, surrendering their community to the popped-collar J. Crew U. hordes bound for evenings filled with unreported sexual assaults and vomited wastes of perfectly good beer.

* * * *

Last week, a colleague made an interesting comment about this ol' blog. He jokingly expressed concern that I may one day have an Imus Moment. We had a good laugh over it, actually.

Anyone who works here long enough, who lives here long enough, knows that there's no need to wait for me to put something completely insane online for public consumption.

Why bother? The local web is already filled with Local U. versions of The Imus Moment.

I found an ex's blog a few months ago, while randomly Googling names out of boredom. On her blog, she discusses things such as her current drug-consumption habits, break-ups and fights that involve real names, and other things. I hit up MySpace and found that there are numerous students who feel the need to share tips on how to sneak into bars, which sororities are the sluttiest, and who document various criminal activities.

I've even been experimenting with FaceBook. You wouldn't believe how many folks post completely inappropriate images in public profiles, for the world to access. I found out that a woman who hit on me a few months back, a woman who claimed to be a 23-year-old grad student, was actually a 19-year-old with a great fake I.D.

Stephan!e? One of my fellow OxBloggers? Free Rad!cal Rightings is by far the best student Blogger site out there. She deals with socially conscious activism, her quest to graduate, and her inability to remember to do her taxes.

See, she's responsible with her online content. But there are others... dear lord, the others...

* * * *

And then, of course, there's the electronic Pandora's Box, that pesky YouTube/Google Video monster.

Ever wondered what life in Oxford actually looks like? Or what kinds of things go on here that I only skim over in posts, the kinds of worship found only in the Cathedral of the Local Higher Education Underground?

Take a look at what I found, what anybody can find, when looking for information on the local college scene:


THE UN-RECRUITMENT VIDEO:

TheU.Com, a company that specializes in producing videos that explore campus life, managed to capture just about negative stereotype associated with the Local U.

I should mention that this video has spawned several dorm room drinking games, including "Spot the Minority" and "Count the Pastel Polos."


GREEN BEER DAY AND STUPIDITY:

I probably get more negative feedback for calling Green Beer Day America's Dumbest College Tradition than I do from almost any other post.

My favorite IM this year? "Fukin faggot liberal. go eat you fukin tofu hippy . ill be fukin hotties at lotties on GBD."

I feel sorry for whatever hotties that guy was supposedly fukin. Wonder if he's one of the guys fighting at the end of this clip?


NANCY PELOSI & THE FIGHTIN' POLITICOS:

What happens when a Left-leaning student and a Right-leaning student have a disagreement while in Uptown Oxford after dark?

The answer has now been captured on film.

I have yet, however, to witness two students actually sustain an intellectual debate over just a few drinks in Uptown Oxford.

And who the hell yells Fuck Nancy Pelosi as a rallying cry, anyway?

* * * *

Welcome to Oxford Fucking Ohio, population 21,000, 15,000 of which are Local U. undergrads, bored shitless and prone to some of the strangest behaviors known to Man.

It's not their fault, really. Idle hands are indeed the tools of the Devil.

Actually, I think Beelzebub lives down the street. He's egging on a group of guys in an attempt to turn a friendly game of Edward Forty-Hands into the first-ever game of Double SoCo Hands. And I've heard Mephistopheles just applied for a liquor license, as he's planning on opening a college bar called Roofies Pub - it'd be a big hit with certain groups of guys.

Satan? He just started his first-ever Religious Right- influenced, emo/punk record label in some dorm room, signing bands with names like Jesus Built my Fauxhawk, The Falwell Five, and Sad Puppies Get the Girl to, like, Make Out with You.

And I'm pretty sure the Antichrist spends his days hanging out at the ZenFo Library, teaching courses on the Art of Facebook Stalking.

Dear God.

I'm actually starting to sound like a responsible, rational community leader.

I think I need a drink. And a cigarette. Maybe cyanide.

# # #

HEY, UM, DIDN'T JOANIE LOVE CHACHES?: Notes From Conversations About Jack and Shit, Chin-Up Bars, and Sexual Cockroaches

CHACH (alt. sp. CHATCH) - n. A younger American male who overly relies on shallow and often superficial things to compensate for intellectual deficiencies, sexual inadequacies, basic dignity, socially acceptable etiquette, and/or understanding of human interpersonal relationships.

For better, more creative definitions, check out the various entries at Urban Dictionary or this stellar commentary from an Ohio campus newspaper, The Independent Collegian.

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- I'm not a college student anymore. I haven't been one for many years. And I never attended the Local U., never experienced many of the things students here experience as part of their development from children into men and women.

I moved to Oxford Fucking Ohio not from my parents' house or some boarding school but from a tiny little apartment in Baton Rouge, one with a stellar view of both Tiger Stadium and the State Capitol Building.

I left behind the last of my college years back in the Pelican State. The days of tailgating, of running over to Ichabods for shots after - and often immediately before - Thursday evening classes. I experienced the crawfish boils, the pink flamingos of the Spanish Town Mardi Gras.

I left behind those downtown trips to Tabby's Blues Box (No. 2) and Red Star to drink cheap beer and party 'til Last Call, the ones made while everyone else was cramming for their comprehensive exams, pretending like those silly reference and cataloging classes were actually challenging.

And there was this one very hot waitress from Lake Charles at that sports bar across the street from my apartment, the one with the shirts cut so low you could see her...

Er....yeah.

And that was graduate school. There are days I'm grateful that I didn't start blogging in college.

Needless to say, I have really no idea about what it feels like to be a student here in Oxford, beyond what I've witnessed or what I've been told.

Hell, I just work here, folks. No ties whatsoever, other than the ol' job. I'm a transcontinental foreigner, a single guy who, through some quirk of fate, ended up accepting a position in this little town.

It's not a bad little town, really. Never once worried about getting mugged, never once have I worried about rush hour traffic, and I really enjoy the nice, peaceful summers.

But I've never given a shit about Green Beer Day, a once-a-year annoyance that leaves my facility's plumbing fixtures clogged with vomit and beer shits. I've never celebrated Ghetto Fest, never experienced one of the famed Toasted Rolls in a dining hall, never had to suffer through perhaps one of the most tedious general education schemes known to Man.

I've never even thrown up in The Alley, never worn a Muck Farshall tee to the football stadium, and I've yet to log a single hour passed out on the couches in the ZenFo Pro Library - all seen as benchmarks of the Local U. Experience. I've never cried over rotting water towers or whined to city council about outdoor drinking game bans, either.

Without having been a student here, well, there are several local phenomena for which I have no frame of reference. There are concepts that I can't seem to grasp, no matter how hard I try.

Sadly, the chach concept isn't one of them.

* * * *

The first time I heard the term chach, "Britney" and I were sitting in my new apartment, back in late November (when I began writing this damned post), chatting away about her experiences transitioning from undergraduate to alumna.

She'd come back to visit Oxford for the same reason many recent alumni return to visit their alma maters post-graduation. While out in the working world, adjusting to a 40-hour work schedule, the decreased socialization, an the inability to sleep past the asscrack of dawn, she'd grown a bit nostalgic. Sadly, coming back reminded her of why she'd said she never wanted to return in the first place. Too much drama, bad memories overwhelming the nostalgia.

Over dinner, she even told me that seeing all of the drunk students staggering down High Street, from bar to bar, made her new boring life - up at 5 to go spinning at her gym, in the office by 8, and hanging out at a Barnes & Noble drinking coffee and reading away her evenings - seem like a vacation from the reality she'd once known as a student.

One of her former roommates called while we were sitting at the kitchen table. I laughed as "Britney" made faces and obligatory obscene hand job gestures while she talked, occasionally kicking my leg to remind me that she'd much rather be talking to me.

The two didn't really like each other; they kept in contact, it seemed, primarily out of a sense of obligation. I guess they missed arguing over unpaid utilities and, er, certain former flings who'd once, er, accidentally removed a showerhead with a pair of handcuffs.

Long story.

Yeah, I don't think I'm going out tonight. I'm over at J's apartment right now. No, we're just talking. No, I've got a hotel room....I don't think that's any of your business really anyway. Later babe!

"Britney" hung up her cell and flung it down onto the table.

Can you believe her? She wanted me to come down to Brick Street because she's not sure if she should hook up with some guy. Un-FUCKING-believable. She's 23 and hitting on fucking chaches and thinks YOU were a bad influence on ME!

Having never heard the term Chach before, I asked "Britney" what the term meant. I thought she was talking about Scott Baio's character from Happy Days.

It's one thing when someone laughs with you. It's another thing completely when a former "fruitcake sex" partner laughs at you for being so ignorant of local slang, points and giggles at you like you're the dumbest guy on the planet.

And she absolutely refused to define the term beyond never mind...this is too fucking funny.

"Britney" explained, through the snorts and tears, that, well, the idea of the oh-so-smartypants librarian not knowing the meaning of Chach was one of the funniest things she'd ever seen or heard - especially since I'd been suckered by something called chachbait quite a few times since she'd last seen me (see this post for one example).

Very humbling experience.

We ended up hanging out in my apartment all night, drinking my last very good bottle of Tobin James, a 2004 Estate Private Stash (a $50 bottle of reserve-bottled Bordeaux. I'm not a wine drinker, but, well, I know how to buy the stuff. Great flavor on this one.) and watching Justice League Unlimited on my laptop.

At one point, she excused herself to use my john. Five minutes later, I heard more hysterical laughter from my bathroom. Apparently, the chin-up bar I'd recently installed in the bathroom door frame was chachish - "Britney" even asked if I secretly pop the collars on my polo shirts and flex in the mirror when nobody was looking, a closet chach.

At one point in the evening, she popped her own shirt collar, put on my Stetson, and did her damnedest to convince me that her impression of the Chachformation Professional was as funny as she thought it was.

I walked her back to her hotel at well past three in the morning, unable to pick a meaningful definition of Chach from her oh-so-smartass brain.

As I walked back to my apartment, the only thing I could think of was Charles in Charge, Fonzie jumping the Shark, and Joanie Friggin' Cunningham.

* * * *

I tried researching the origins of this particular, uniquely Midwestern term in a more scholarly fashion. I tried finding an answer in various slang and contemporary language dictionaries during my lunch breaks.

I finally called a language expert, a buddy of mine, who responded by laughing hysterically, questioning my sanity, and suggesting that I ask the locals - something that, well, someone studying regional dialects and its unique identifiers would do.

She did, however, put me on hold while she asked her teaching assistant - an apparently charming 26-year-old who my friend has suggested, in less-than-scholarly IMs, represents the kind of woman I should be dating, should I continue my professional career here in Oxford Fucking Ohio.

The language expert's probably right. I really do prefer educated women who listen to the Clash and the Dropkick Murphys, have a particular fondness for industrial techno but no longer enjoy going to clubs, enjoy hiking and target shooting, and who sport nose rings.

But I digress...

The TA, a Hoosier State native who attended an Ohio university as an undergrad, thought it was, well, fucking hysterical that that blog guy was calling from across the country to learn about Chaches.

After some delay, the faculty finally put her protege on the phone.

According to the Indianan, roughly 60-70 percent of Ohio male college students fall into the chach category - at least the ones she knew when she was an undergrad at her Ohio university.

Here in Oxford Fucking Ohio, at the Local U., she estimated that as many as 90 percent of the male students fit the bill, based on her experiences partying with and dating several Local U. students.

...Basically, chaches are guys women go home with in college because they're cute, frigging adorable, on the outside... Women wake up and literally feel like their IQs have dropped because they've just hooked up with a Metro version of a Neanderthal... Chaches are like the sexual cockroaches of college, they're everywhere and don't ever seem to go away.

Wait...

So I have metrosexual sexual cockroach caveman tendencies?

I explained to the TA how, exactly, I'd become obsessed with the Chach. That only led to more laughter.

Dude, if you have a chin-up bar in your bathroom...yeah, that's kinda chachish. But you don't seem like a Stadium Toad, at least online.

Wait...

Stadium Toad?

* * * *

I finally admitted that I needed, well, a Local U. perspective, a perspective that I could trust to cure my obsession.

So one night, while bar-hopping at way past my normal bedtime, I asked a few male friends - none of whom seemed to be the type to have chin-up bars installed in their bathrooms - for a better explanation.

One guy, a larger guy who I'll call Mr. Molson, laughed as we stood out on the balcony of this one particular bar. Mr. Molson, I knew, used the term frequently.

I'm pretty sure you're not a chach, Mr. Molson said, pointing towards a group of younger bar patrons.

Now that, my friend, is a chachfest.

A group of guys, all dressed in matching neon polos and overpriced jeans, staggered out of the bar, drunk girls in tow. Their hair hardly moved, gelled like mine but...not. Their faces seemed almost waxed, nary an ingrown hair in sight, eyebrows plucked and perfect. The whole group reeked of expensive cologne and Natty Light. The air was filled with the sounds of hey-bras and what sounded like rich white kids who'd heard one too many Dem Franchize Boyz tracks.

And, yes, they looked like the kind of guys who would have chin-up bars installed in their bathrooms.

But unlike the ol' ZenFo Pro, they didn't seem to be the kind of guys who kept Whitman's Leaves of Grass on the nightstand or who'd list The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari as one of their favorite films, or would, well, think twice about whether or not being called a chach was a bad thing.

Oh, so a chach is basically a preppy douchebag? Wow.

Mr. Molson looked up from beneath his ball cap. We were both drunk as skunks, standing in the cold, smoking cigarettes and watching as the chachefest migrated back to whatever horrid, vile place chaches take their chachebait.

Yup.

I guess being a college student in Oxford Fucking Ohio is no different that being a college student anywhere else.

* * * *

While the slang may change, there have always been chaches. We had them at LSU when I was a grad student, at Cal Poly and Northern Colorado when I was an undergrad - we just had different names for them.

Yeah. Chach works. And they really are like sexual cockroaches.

One day, maybe, I'll unearth a good definition for Stadium Toad.

I'll save that one, however, for another post.

- # # # -

OXFORD CONFIDENTIAL:How To (Intentionally) Avoid Sex in a Land of the Oversexed and Undersatisfied

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- So I'm standing outside of one of my favorite watering holes last night, smoking a cigarette in single-digit weather.

It was a friend of mine's last bar shift at this particular establishment, her last hurrah before getting the fuck outta Dodge for a much-needed change of scenery. Several of her friends had gathered to pull a drunken "all-nighter" at the bar, to commemorate her special evening, to keep her company and provide mischievous entertainment, and to, well, make sure she tipped out for the night a wealthier woman.

My intention was to just hang out and to have a good time with a few friends. I don't go to bars for any other reason - not to seek female bedwarmers, not to check out the usual meat market, not to find true love in some drunken haze.

As I'm standing out in front of this bar, out on the steps in the freezing cold, chatting away with one of the cooks, an attractive younger woman walks up and asks for a light. The cook goes back inside, leaving me alone, on the steps, with an intoxicated marketing major.

Per the typical Local U. male undergrad standard, the woman would probably qualify as fucking hot.

Artificially tanned, well-built brunette - the kind of girl who has probably spent more of her collegiate career in the gym doing cardio than actually learning anything.

If I were a typical Local U. undergrad, I might've been interested. But I haven't been an undergrad in six years. Hell, I haven't been any type of college student in more than three.

I figured out said woman was hitting on me pretty quick into our brief conversation. The signals were pretty straight forward, almost exaggerated for comical purposes - the leaning against the wall, the downright silly As Seen on the WB eye contact and lip chewing, the rubbing my bare arms to "get rid of the goosebumps." Her speech, slurred by obviously too much alcohol (and the white powder on her nostrils explained her linguistic speed), was loaded with less-than-subtle innuendo and rather blunt flirting.

Examples of her side of the conversation somehow managed to stick in my mind, despite my own intoxication...

You know, I've always wanted to fuck a guy in the library...

...You're sweet. Can I take you home?

Sometimes a girl just needs an older guy...

Aww. It's Valentine's Day weekend. You need a sweetie...

I'll bet you read lots of girls bedtime stories...

Wow.

Original.

* * * *

I think she thought I was smiling and looking away rather impishly because I was somehow planning how to get this fucking hot girl home for a night of drunken, pointless, sneak-out-before-dawn sex.

Actually, I think I remember laughing to myself about how I'd wished I'd told her I was a mechanic, just to hear her inanely chatter on about lube jobs, tune-ups, and body work.

The whole "conversation" lasted maybe ten minutes, the time it took me to smoke my first Marlboro and to get two-thirds of the way through the second. Aside from answering her questions, I didn't get in more than maybe 20 words.

I made a polite exit while she answered her cellphone.

* * * *

Back inside, I returned to my seat at the bar.

One friend of mine, who I'll call Lao Tse, stirred his umpteenth cocktail slowly.

He seemed annoyed that the bar was packed, filled with what seemed to be the most preppy of the preppy J. Crew U. crowd.

"I guess its good _____ gets a busy last shift," Lao Tse said. "But I really wish there weren't so many fucking annoying people."

I looked around the bar. The place was packed with groups of girls, whole tables' full of single fucking hot girls like my intoxicated marketing major.

Yup.

The weekend before fucking Valentine's Day in Oxford Fucking Ohio.

* * * *

I don't do drunk girls. I don't do stupid women. And I don't tend to go for the same fucking hot girl personality types that many male bar patrons typically seek out around these here parts.

If one were to hunt through the Zenfo Pro archives, one will find numerous references to these concepts in numerous blog posts. Offline, I've had numerous conversations about these concepts with close friends for more than a decade. These personal rules of sexual engagement have been carefully crafted over years' worth of bad relationships and one-night mistakes, through way too many trials and excessive numbers of errors.

So it shouldn't shock anyone who reads this, anyone who's known me for some time, that the revelation I had last night, while doing shots of Johnny Walker, has been a long time in the making.

I'm finally comfortable admitting that I've become a Woman Snob.

And I'm damned proud of it, too.

Wow, I thought, sitting there at the bar, just admitting that makes me feel so much more at peace with the world.

Or maybe it was that Long Island Iced Tea I put down before the Johnny Walker.

It's amazing the types of revelations one can have while completely blitzed, sitting on a bar stool and staring into a room full of female bar patrons that one wouldn't even consider going home with unless they could prove they weren't just another fucking hot girl.

I felt like naked ol' Archimedes, ready to streak across the countryside, screaming Eureka! at the heavens.

* * * *

Another friend, this one I'll call Zhuang Tse, had told me a story about a woman earlier in the evening, a tale about woman he'd finally decided to cut out of his social life. The woman in question, over the course of their friendship, had been willing to basically use him to get whatever she wanted without giving anything of any substance in return.

While in the midst of my revelation, while staring into the mirror behind the bar, I noticed for the first time that my intoxicated marketing major was sitting at a table behind me.

The fucking hot girl had gotten over my abandonment. I watched, in drunken amazement, as she snuggled close to another guy, a guy who looked like just another typical male undergrad, fresh from a weeks' worth of classes as the Local U.

Well, somebody was getting laid, I guess. And somebody else was getting what they wanted out of another guy.

Not only is it amazing the types of revelations one can have while intoxicated, but it's also amazing the profound parables a 21st century Zhuang Tse can tell without even knowing it.

I don't think I've ever been so excited to watch somebody else stagger out of a bar with some fucking hot girl instead of me.

Let that guy develop his own rules of sexual engagement, figure out for himself that dumb women are just about as worthless as lead shoes in quicksand, that drunk women are just as likely to puke on or piss in the bed as be memorable, that all of those pointless one-night things tend to lead to more questions than boastful exclamations.

Somebody else can catch the Clap for a change. I gave that up when I was an undergrad myself.

* * * *

I looked over at Mr. Zhuang and Mr. Lao. They were both chatting away with our female bartender friend, cracking jokes and bemoaning the fact that she still had a few hours left until she could count out her drawer, could call it a night here in Oxford Fucking Ohio for the last time.

The woman behind the bar looked at me and smiled, her silver necklace swimming across her Hustler tank top as she laughed, her cheeks glowing and bright and...

For fuck's sake, dude, you're not checking ______ out, are you?

Whoa dude. You really are fucking drunk. Better slow the fuck down, chief.

Remember that time back in college, that time when you accidentally hit on that riot grrl deejay friend of yours by mistake? Remember how you woke up in her apartment, only to find out that she and a few other female friends decided to get their revenge by letting your drunk ass strip naked and pass out drunk in a pink Hello Kitty bathrobe? Dude, ya gotta focus and remember how ugly you look in an avocado mud mask...

Women can be merciless when their guy friends get a little, er, confused.

I laughed out loud at the memory, hoping to God that ______ didn't notice, that my twin philosopher drinking buddies hadn't noticed, either.

Life's not too shabby, dude. Just think... if you hadn't had a revelation tonight, you might've ended up like that fucking preppy dude who left with the fucking hot chick.

Drunk girls. Dumb...drunk...girls.

There's nothing empowering, nothing invigorating, nothing that screams out for the lust of life in the temporary embrace of skanky women.

And man, you're just smart enough to realize that Empowered, independent, confident women just ooze with the lust of life, nothing more invigorating than waking up next to someone you can talk to, someone you can learn from and can share in the exploration of the universe.

Err...

Dude, you're really, really drunk.

* * * *

After last call, after wishing one of the few Fucking Hot Women (yes, there are WOMEN here) in Oxford Fucking Ohio a good night and reminders to call when she gets a chance, Mr. Zhuang, Mr. Lao, and I made our way to Zhuang Tse's condo.

We kept drinking and philosophizing until the wee hours of the morning as we watched reruns of Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, ate pizza, and drank tequila.

I made my way home just before sunrise. My apartment was cold but welcoming, quiet and, most importantly, fucking hot girl - free.

* * * *

I stretched out on my bed, enjoying the peace offered by its emptiness, its lack of baggage and drama. I thought about the various women who've spent the night here with me, the ones since I adopted my steadfast rules.

I've had some of the best sex in the history of this goddamned town with some of the most intelligent women I've ever known. Call me a bastard if you must, but I'm damned proud of that.

I've had debates about evolutionary theory naked. I've listened as a nude pixie compared the stories I tell to Frank Miller and Mike Mignola graphic novels. I've argued against the historical importance of the Beatles, read Walt Whitman aloud, and gotten lessons in the influence of French designers on American women's fashion.

Once, I had an Italian woman wrestle me to this very bed because I refused to accept her theory that Americans were more responsible for the plight of Sub-Saharan Africa than the continent's former European would-be conquerors. I've lost shirts to women who claimed they couldn't kiss me hard enough, simply because I told them that watching them think was sexy.

Sure, there have been a few mistakes. But, well, thanks to having even the simplest of standards, those mistakes are getting fewer and farther between as time progresses.

Dude, you really are a hot fucking guy sometimes. Downright sexy. Way too sexy to waste any time with fucking hot girls, the young, horny, drunk, and stupid.

Okay, so sue me.

I realize that's a rather arrogant statement coming from me, something that - trust me - feels much more unbelievable writing out than could ever feel reading.

What can I say? I really am a Woman Snob.

# # #

DISCERE FACIENDO*: Why I Don't Do Stupid Women 101

ATASCADERO, Calif. (ZP) -- "Paris" (definitely not her real name) picked apart her caprese like a buzzard on a diet. I watched in amazement as she surgically extracted the buffalo mozzarella and a few grape tomatoes, completely removing the basil to the edge of her plate.

Somehow, through some act of cruel fate, "Paris" had gotten bored at work a few weeks ago.

She'd started emailing friends and ex-flings from college to find out if anyone was going to be in the vicinity of the ol' alma mater after Christmas, people she'd lost contact with in the five years since her undergrad years.

Guess which category I fall into.

And guess who was dumb enough to answer one of those emails?

* * * *

Once upon a time, I was Paris's journalist friend who became the Oh my God! You're a talk radio personality! fuck buddy.

I was the D. doesn't understand me and I think one day you'll be on ESP Fucking N escape hatch for this woman, the guy who knowingly went home from the bars with a buddy's girlfriend while he was taking a quarter off from college.

I remember the first time vividly, in the same men's restroom where Weird Al recorded his first hit. It was a Thursday, about three in the morning. We'd been working on a group project for a class together, had gotten into an argument, and she followed me into the john to continue the fight.

And, well, shit happened. Shit happened several times before I ended the whole thing. Once in a dark corner of a now defunct nightclub. Once down by the creek across from the San Luis Obispo Mission. A few times in her apartment, a few times a various house parties, and once ... in her boyfriend's apartment.

And now, six years later, we're sitting in a fancy restaurant, discussing her recent breakup from some Los Angeleno trustfunder, my not keeping in touch with her, her change in hair color, her new Chocolate mobile phone, her personal trainer's affair with some television actor, her...

Her...

It took ten minutes for her to even ask what I now did for a living or how I was doing.

Some things never change.

* * * *

I tried to play the role of the attentive listener, as I had done years ago at parties and in overcrowded college bars, but for some reason my mind kept wandering, kept trying to answer questions like "why the fuck am I eating lunch at the Carlton Hotel with a woman I don't like?" or "why the hell did she only eat two bucks' worth of food out of a $10 salad?"

I readily admit my personal dislike of "Paris." Of the women I've been involved with, she is, by far, the most self-absorbed, the most vain, materialistic to the point of being downright ignorant. I only agreed to have lunch with her as a courtesy.

As I was driving from my parents' house to meet her for lunch, I tried to remember one redeeming quality, one conversation about something other than what she'd read in Vogue or why I never had the money to shop in those boutiques she liked down in Santa Barbara.

The only thing I could remember, of all the pointless conversations about nothing, was an argument over shoes.

* * * *

A classmate in one of her major classes had dropped a Sharpie on one of her pairs of Bruno Frisonis during a group presentation; the marker left a tiny (approx. one millimeter in diameter) black dot on the toe of one of her black shoes.

As we lay in bed, she informed me that, well, she loved the shoes but they just had to be tossed in the trash. When I pointed out that there were a lot of working class women who'd kill for a pair of $700 shoes to wear to job interviews and that the least she could do would be to consider giving them to a local women's shelter or a clothing bank, she told me that her "dedication to fashion" prevented her from "punishing" another woman with "dirty" shoes.

Jason, you're so fucking redneck sometimes. Those people would just sell them for drugs or something.

It's amazing what parts of conversations become ingrained in one's memory.

* * * *

I also remember waking up the next morning and realizing that I completely hated the person I'd just spent the night with, a woman who I'd willingly allowed to use me for months.

At the time, I was in the worst shape of my young life, 250 pounds and living off a diet of fast food, beer, and a two-packs-a-day habit. On top of that, I was an aspiring journalist at a small AM radio station in a mid-sized market, working my way through college with two other part-time jobs and student loans to pay for it all.

My friend D., her boyfriend, was a handsome guy; every time he and I would go out drinking with friends, his grey-blue eyes and just-damned-genetically-fortunate good looks drove sorority girls wild. He came from an upper-middle class family and worked odd jobs here and there to earn beer money, because that was the only part of his college experience not paid for by his parents.

D. was a party guy, a stereotypical male college student. By my last two years of college, I was as serious as cancer, overworked, and full of enough piss and vinegar to make one nasty badass salad.

He had the looks, the designer duds, and the popularity. I had the brains, the maturity, and the 15 minutes of fame.

In the end, it was "Paris" who won out, as I once found out she bragged to her friends, because she had her "hot boyfriend" who looked good and bought her things, and the "nerd fuck buddy," the guy who wasn't hot but was enough of a minor local media personality to know "like, famous people."

When we'd all go out together for lunch, nobody save our fellow students would come up to talk to either of them. But everyone from little old ladies from SLO to attorneys, dot-commers to doctors to professors, would stop by the table to say that the recognized my voice from the radio, to inquire about the Dodgers' chances in the N.L. West, to ask about some crack I'd made about some local high school basketball player's nickname.

For some reason, I'd been content to let "Paris" use me back then. She loved hanging out with somebody with a little bit of fame; I'm could barely stand the lack of privacy sometimes, but she ate it up.

It probably has something to do with the fact that I could, I guess. In all honesty, based on physical beauty alone, she is by far one of the hottest women I've ever slept with. I'm pretty sure my attraction to her was equally driven by the rather shallow, immature desire to be able to say "look at me, folks! The fat, dorky, funny radio guy is fucking the hot fitness model!"

Errr... yeah.

I wasn't much of a saint when I was a reporter or an undergrad.

I'd like to think I'm a little wiser now...

I hope.

* * * *

While I was in the midst of my internalized trip down Amnesia Lane, "Paris" noticed that I wasn't paying attention to her.

Apparently, I hadn't responded when she'd asked if I could tell that she hadn't gained a pound since we were in college (Pilates four times a week, and, well, I'm pretty sure she's still living off not more than 1000 calories a day.)

Yet, in 30 minutes on non-stop talking about her woes, she'd not once asked me anything about my life beyond the initial five minutes of "So what are you up to these days?" questions.

Not one question about whether or not I was married, no questions about my health, what I do for a living, or what, exactly, I'd been doing for the last half-decade.

I was there to listen to yet another spoiled rich girl rant about how trying life in the real world can be, how hard it is to understand why spoiled rich guys treat her like a possession the dump her, how she can't understand why her coworkers compare her to Jessica Simpson and Paris Hilton (hence the alias).

As things had been in the past, so too do they continue into the present. I wasn't invited to lunch as a former fling or former friend or even as a long-lost former classmate.

I was nothing more than a prop, a stand-in for a real, honest-to-God human being. That is how she lived her life in the past, how she's apparently still living it in the present, and probably how she'll die one day.

And that, for some reason, pissed me off.

* * * *

As the lunch ended, she mentioned that, well, she'd like to hang out some more, to go catch a movie, to go out to Morro Bay and make fun of the tourists, to...

I told her I was in a hurry and that I'd already made other plans.

Okay, so I lied.

She asked when I was flying back to Ohio and suggested that we hang out some other time before I returned. I told her I was leaving the next morning.

Okay, so... I lied again. Still here, in California.

I figure it's easier this way, more polite.

Hell, what the fuck am I supposed to say?

Chica, email me again in five years. Or better yet, don't.

- # # # -

* "Learn By Doing." My college alma mater's motto.