AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL CONVERSATION WITH AN EX-OTHER MAN'S EX: Of Breakfast Meetings at Dawn, Pointless Bickering, and Growing Apart with Age...

RICHMOND, Ind. (ZP) -- For a guy who's spent a good portion of his life as a professional night owl, I'm perpetually surprised at how much I actually enjoy breakfast dates.

Sitting in an ancient diner full of ancient Hoosiers, sipping weak Midwestern-strength coffee, watching the sun rise to the east. It's a thing of beauty, sure, watching shades of gray and indigo give way to reds and yellows and pinks across the lines in working people's faces...

Seriously, a few years ago, eating "breakfast" meant sucking down a greasy plate of eggs and bacon before hitting the sack, a quick, sloppy meal in preparation for a few hours of sleep - I used to be one of those guys who believed that starting the day early meant getting up before the ass-crack of noon. Now, well, sleeping in, for me, is being in bed at 9 a.m.

I've become, and without much regret, something of a morning person.

My dining companion is not. And this isn't exactly a breakfast meeting either of us what to have. But, through an odd quirk of life, we're obligated to hold nonetheless.

"Man, how the hell are you up this early? When I called you were going out drinking. That was, what? Midnight? I hit the road at two or so..."

"Got to bed by two-thirty, and, well, the alarm went off at seven."

"Um, most normal people turn their alarm clocks off on the weekends."

"Well, I'm not exactly the most normal guy."

Buttercup* swirled her coffee-flavored creamy sugar, nodded.

"You know, you're such a fucking Townie. You don't really change, your style doesn't change, and... well, in all honesty, dude, I'm not shocked you're in that fucking town. You're boring as hell..."

"Chica, I am a creature of habit. And what's wrong with Townies--"

Just then the waitress arrived with our food - huge plates of bacon and sausage and eggs, hash browns and biscuits. Buttercup immediately tore into her plate - she'd been on the road for a while after playing Designated Driver all night.

Apparently, she's doing better with the whole anorexia thing, I thought as I watched her eat.

* * * *

We were supposed to have breakfast in Oxford. Plans changed when I informed her that this was Parents Weekend at the ol' Local U, that we'd be waiting for hours just to cram into the few breakfast places Oxford has.

And, well, she'd have to make a detour on her trip from Cleveland to Indianapolis, a 60-mile detour back to a town she, in all honesty, has no desire whatsoever to ever step foot in again.

Hell, she'd never wanted to step foot in Cleveland again. But, well, a person she didn't even like had died, and, well, in true Roman Catholic fashion she'd driven back to her hometown to spend time mourning over that loss with people she can't fucking stand.

"... Oh, hey! Before I forget... Mom told me to tell you hi. Says I'm supposed to ask you about some black chick you're seeing."

"Oh, huh... well, I was seeing this multi-ethnic chick a while back, but we--"

"Heard she was a child, dude. A kid or something? Like, really, really too young for you. And what the fuck is 'multi-ethnic,' dude?"

Caught off guard. It's a trait of those with a vagina in her family.

"______ was 22, just so you know. Good kid. Just didn't work out. And we weren't dating or anything--"

Buttercup snickered.

"Oh, it was 'just a fling,' right? Like I said, you don't change."

This time, I'm the one snickering. More of a smirk, really. I've been told by Buttercup and God knows how many women I've slept with that this is one of my most condescending qualities.

* * * *

"Well, how old were you, Missy, when we were hooking up? About the same age, if I recall... but, well, refresh my old-ass memory here..."

The conversation ends for a second. We both killed off our breakfasts at the same time. And then, out of nowhere, in true Buttercup fashion, a melodramatic sigh and tossing of hair, a lesson in eye-rolling perfection.

As funny as it may seem, I once found these displays of hers to be quite the turn-on. But, well, as we sat there, I found it hard to believe that we'd ever slept together, that she'd been my first real local relationship attempt...

"Oh, well... since you didn't go all emo and blog about it - not that I read that fucking thing anymore - I guess the age thing didn't matter, huh?"

In hindsight, well, I'm thinking that was meant to cut deep.

As we talked, I just laughed.

Oh sure... it'd be kinda boring if I did put up every damned relationship, hook-up, and breakup online...

* * * *

As we were leaving, she bummed a smoke. Supposedly still a militant anti-smoker, well, she's always had this nasty habit of lecturing people about their vices while simultaneously asking to share in them - at no cost to her, of course.

I dropped the tailgate of my pick-up, and we sat there, in silence, for a long time listening to the buzzing, increasingly congested Interstate traffic in the distance.

"Ya know, don't take this the wrong way, but I can't believe we ever hooked up. I mean, EVER, dude. You're really not my type."

Buttercup crushed out her bummed smoke on the pickup bed, tossed the butt to the side, then, without asking, took another of my smokes from the pack.

"Meh... if I had a type, you'd probably not be mine, either," I said, lighting her cigarette. "I mean, maybe it's because we were just... lonely? Oxford's made people do strange things, chica."

Buttercup laughed and put her hand on my calf. As I turned my head, I noticed she had this impish look, those big brownish-green orbs on each side of her cute nose dancing with her eyelashes...

Okay, so maybe I do know why we hooked up in the first place, years ago... The eyes, well, and her Eggplant Parmesan...

I realized she was mockingly fluttering her eyelashes. Apparently, I'd stared a bit too long...

"Okay... dude... I think we hooked up because you're really smart and used to date a famous chick, and, well, let's be honest here, I'm smoking hot and kinda shallow, and we both fuck and fight like animals. But, yeah, it probably was the loneliness..."

"...And the boredom, hon," I added, lighting another cigarette. "God, I mean, we were only hanging out for, what, a few months, weeks? And how much of that was just arguing..."

Buttercup, again, does the fluttery eyelash thing. This time, her creepy, perfectly plucked eyebrows rise like the tide. She looked away, stood up suddenly. The eleven-year-old shocks barely moved with the loss of such light weight.

She had to hit the road to make it back to Indy in time to meet up with another, more recent, ex, to get the keys back to her apartment and to finalize what sounded to be a nasty break-up.

The guy in question, she said, reminded her of me. I took her statement as a compliment.

Without so much as a hug or goodbye, I watched as she sped off for the westward on-ramp...

- # # # -

* NOTE - Name changed to protect the guilty.

A COUNTRY BOY CAN SURVIVE...(Only to Grow Up, Move Off the Farm, Have Post Evil One-Eyed Pony Flashbacks While on Vacation, Etc.)

CENTRAL COAST, Calif. (ZP) -- Ten o'clock at night, sprawled out on my parents' California King mattress, jet-lagged like a motherfucker, even after a five-mile hike through wine country and a barbecue chicken fundraiser...

... And every time I shut my eyelids, visions of that damned one-eyed horse pop into my mind.

Fuck this. It's not like I have to get up and go to work tomorrow. And nobody else is in the house...

Eleven hours of flying, from Dayton, Ohio, into San Luis Obispo, California, via Charlotte, North Carolina, and Phoenix, Arizona. An afternoon with the sister and the boyfriend. With Mom, Dad, and their cocker spaniels stuck in New Mexico, it's just me and the cat house-sitting while they're gone.

And I can't sleep because I can't remember the name of that Connemara pony Mom and Dad bought for my sister and I when we were, oh, still old enough to get excited about having a pony.

I'm still awake because, well, I can't remember something completely insignificant that happened in my childhood, on the other side of the country, in rural Virginia back in the 1980s.

I haven't been back to the farm in five years. And that stupid pony's long dead by now...

After being up for, oh, 20 hours straight...

Oh, why the hell not? Just get back outta bed and solve the fucking mystery...

* * * *

What the fuck was that biting bastard's name? I tell myself as I dig through the umpteen million photo albums tucked away in my dad's office. That mean-ass walking bag of dog food motherfucker...

Hey, I grew up on a farm. My mom owned two or three horses before that one - she even used to train and board other people's horses when I was young. And yep, we had chickens (until I, um, forgot to lock the coop and the dogs killed our organic egg supply), cows (a Brahma-Angus mix herd), and kittens and puppies out the ass every spring (our male mutts were bitch magnets).

There were lots of animals that could've popped into my mind. There was the black bear that used to prowl our timber country, the tasty bass and bluegill and venison and squirrel, my grandmother's poodle, my first calf, named Peanut Butter...

What the fuck was that biting bastard's name? Know there's a picture somewhere...

* * * *

But no, I get a hair up my ass about --

Willy! Jesus fucking Christ, how could I have forgotten that?

How many times did ____ and I watch The Goonies when we were kids? One-Eyed Willy!

It's amazing what other sorts of things pop into the ol' melon when one has a few photo albums sprawled out over a desk, Almost as amazing as the sorts of childhood memories that just pop right up when one is trying to sleep.

And what strange photos one finds, too. Especially in old family albums that haven't been touched in about a decade.

Heh. Draw, pad'na. I be's makin' you wormfood with my authentic Lone Ranger toy six-shooter.

How the hell did he ever survive childhood, anyway?

I mean, the one-eyed ponies weren't the only things that bit him. There were ticks, fleas, lice, mosquitoes, leeches, dogs, wasps, mice, hornets, and snakes, too.

There were falls from barn windows, kicks to the head by livestock, a drug-induced coma, pellet gun accidents, falls into brush fires, almost losing a foot to a hay bailer, almost losing a finger to a hunting knife, a four-wheeler accident, all before that kid in the overalls turned ten.

And I'm thinking about... about that stupid fucking horse? Twenty years later, in California? And what the hell happened to my cap guns?

What a way to start a vacation.

- # # # -

OF PHOTOGRAPHS AND OTHER DEAD HISTORIES: How Memories Build Up Oceans Around Man's Worldless Islands

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

- H.P. Lovecraft,
"The Call of Cthulhu"
[Full text avail. here]

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- It fell out of a book, a paperback volume of the works of John Donne, the 17th century metaphysical poet.

The photograph, of this bloated, unkempt, drug-distorted 19-year-old, had probably been used as an impromptu bookmark years ago. I can't remember the last time I sat down and read Donne's "Meditation XVII," can't remember the last time I read the words No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main... or what inspired me to use such a foul image as a placeholder.

There is nothing quite like cleaning one's apartment and finding, buried within the bindings of a Cavalier religious writer, the graven image of oneself as a young addict. I sat on the corner of my bed and held the photograph in both hands, not as one cradles a child but as one would hold the putrid remnants of an aborted, rotten fetus.

1998* was such a rotten year, for both wine and life.

Memories, yes, memories can indeed flow like tears. It's why I've systematically destroyed most records of that infernal year, broken most of the ties that bind me to that time. Some things are best cast to the wind like dead leaves, left to fall where they may...

How I stared into the snide, fat face of the kid I used to be! That demonic child, framed in his own Victory-sign forming fists, did peyote with sorority girls on dares, bought intoxicating widgets off Aryan Brotherhood members and Mexican gangsters and sold, at profit, unspeakable products. That vile thing once got off on taking the virginity of Good Catholic illegal immigrant daughters without so much as a care about legality, or, well, whether or not Big Brothers Cholo would mark him for death.

That... person ... a marginal human being, with very little real conscience ... earned every bad thing that happened to him back then. The kid I was lived off of three things - pleasure, power, and the manipulation of everything in between.

And memories, yes, memories can swell in the brain like rivers when visual stimuli break the dams of time. Even good memories, funny stories, from 1998 somehow seem to be nothing more than tragic comedy...

* * * *

GREELEY, Colo. (ZP) -- Crackhead Jim wanted more tinfoil. He didn't knock. Just walked right in.

Basketcase junkies rarely knock, once you show them even the slightest courtesy, once they've been invited into a place. Like Hollywood vampires, crackheads generally wait for that first invitation into a dwelling, that first sign of human weakness, only to choose their comings and goings afterwards as if personal boundaries don't exist.

Crackhead Jim needed tinfoil to help him hide from his probation officer and the all-knowing, all-invasive Grov'ment Agents. They were always watching him, using their spy satellites to track him. Jim said that he'd stabbed a guy in a grocery store parking lot, some gangland Vato who'd called him a dirty nigger, a few days prior – he'd avoided them then, but, well, he'd used up all of his tinfoil wrapping his body in radar-jamming armor.

“Jada” was in the shower, the tiny studio's bathroom door wide open, her wet ebony nakedness barely a feminine contrast against the whitewashed walls. I was contently reading old Justice League comics on the toilet, shitting away three or four forty-once bottles of Olde English 800 and probably a good two or three grams of pristine Mexican blow.

I hollered back at Jim, told him that we were out of foil. He asked if he could take some wire coat hangers, our bags of garbage. He'd dig through them, sell back the recyclables, and have enough money for more tinfoil of his own – and enough money to score one or two tiny viles of rock to get him through the day.

Jim lived in 4B, two apartments down from the pre-op transsexual from Denver, across the hall from the skanky waitress from Omaha, Nebraska, the one who constantly inquired as to whether or not Jada and I were interested in a threesome. She'd already pulled a train with the two frat boys across from me...

And Jim, well, never robbed us. We were the only ones he never seemed to steal from. Jada and I, being junkies ourselves, were nice to him. Because of that common bond, and the steady supply of tinfoil and old aluminum cans and malt liquor bottles, we were probably the only tenants who actually got along in that run-down former sorority house.

From the toilet I carefully watched the junkie through the open door. Jada's tips from dancing were in her purse, right on the tiny table we used for meals. I watched and reached for the heaviest thing I could find – a shaving mug. I'd hate to think I'd have been forced to kill ol' Jim but, well, cold cash is worth more than a warm corpse to a junkie.

Jada'd picked up two private parties in a VIP room that weekend, Mormon businessmen who'd paid for all-nude lap dances, tipped well, and only tried to fingerbang her twice. Being good LDS boys, she'd racked up close to two grand – shamed at violating their faith by staring at a naked black woman, they'd dared not waste their sinning money on equally forbidden booze or soft drinks.

Jim, thankfully, ignored Jada's purse and her housegirl earnings. He was too immersed in gathering up all of the empty booze bottles we'd left lying around on the floor the previous night. He cleaned every scrap of trash up off that studio apartment's floor. He moved fast and furious and, without so much as a thank you, he waved and headed back to his apartment, back to feed his pet rat and to continue trying to remember way back, way back to when he was that young rhythm guitarist out of Washington, D.C.

Jada heard the door shut as Jim left. With one quick jerk, the kind of awkward motion that coke addicts make when they're still high, she pulled the shower curtain open, popping one corner of the plastic loose. Tiny black pearls rolled off her breasts, down onto her still soapy belly and crotch, down towards the fiberglass below her, down into a cold Colorado drainpipe. She yelled something incoherent, some fake hootchie squeal, feigned disgust at how one day Jim would OD and we'd be the first to smell his rotting corpse.

I put down my comic book, wiped my ass, flushed, and hopped into the shower with her. I reached for the tiny plastic bag on the back of the toilet. Jada squealed again, begged me not to drop the precious powdered elixir, to not let half of her Mormon tips wash down the drain.

In one night, we'd already moved into our stash of sacred, emergencies-only Angel Dust. I put a pinch on the tip of my tongue, pulled her into me, and let her tongue work loose the dust's sacred, hypnotic magic. I almost dropped the baggie, almost let that most precious earning wash away as that rush of invulnerability hit...

Crackhead Jim, at least, was smart enough to not fall in love with another junkie. He had his tinfoil and conspiracy theories and memories of those performances with Sam Cooke and Sammy Davis, with Sinatra and Aretha and Marvin...

That crackhead, at least, played music with legends. I only ended up getting played - and then stabbed - by my cokehead stripper fiancée.

And, as strange as it may sound, that's one of the most normal stories I can tell from that period in my life. For some reason, that one moment is burned into my mind like a brand, every detail as vivid as a Polaroid snapshot.

It only took looking at that old photograph of myself to resurrect that moment like Lazarus from the crypt. Needless to say, it wasn't all that pleasurable of a resurrection...

1998 was a rotten year, for both wine and life.

* * * *

BACK IN OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- I crumpled up the photograph, tossed it like a baseball towards the trash bag by the bedroom door. The past is, well, the past; there's no sense in dwelling on that which one cannot change.

I was in the middle of cleaning my apartment, in the middle of throwing out all sorts of things and dusting and vacuuming and making the bed - life waits for no photograph, no dream or nightmare from the past, cares not for tragic comedy or pointless wallowing.

No man is an island - of course, Mr. Donne. If we were, we'd all sink like Atlantis under the weight of our own memories.

I clicked on the sweeper and watched as the past's dust disappeared from the carpet.

- # # # -

* - Heh. Even in flashbacks, I can get the year wrong. The first draft of this post listed 1997. My ten-year clean date, by the way, is Aug. 1.

OXFORD CONFIDENTIAL: Shocking Tales From Dreamland! Murder! Drugs! Anal Sex! Librarian Attacks Hair Care Product!

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- The walls melted away as the sky outside turned dark purple, the sunlight replaced with the gloom of an afternoon thunderstorm.

And then the breeze kicked up, pushing through the windows, scattering everything in its path.

I was standing at the bathroom door, somewhere, in some strange old house.

As I stared from my omnipotent vantage point, the toilet came right up off of the mounting, the wooden seat and the porcelain flapping in the breeze like a wet shirt on a clothesline, laughing.

I heard her voice behind me, the sound of someone familiar, someone long gone from my life and almost forgotten.

Last I'd heard, she was wanted for all sorts of things out in Colorado, warrants issued and probation violated. I guess I'd heard wrong, since I could hear her voice behind me, garbled and soft.

I turned just as her knife dug a hole in my chest, down between the ribs, right into my beating heart. I waited for her to say something, anything, but she quit speaking as soon as she put the knife through me.

Instead, as I watched, helpless and at the moment of death, she pulled the blade from my chest and cut out her own eyes.

I used to stare into those brown Cherokee-Creole eyes at night, used to run my hands up from her cafe au lait skin... DON'T DO IT!

Terror.

Pure terror as I collapsed to the floor, blood squirting from my chest and blood shooting from her eye sockets, the toilet still flapping in the breeze.

Death had caught me. A creepy, floating toilet laughed at me as the world ended, pitch-black and whimpering nothing.

* * * *

The alarm clock went off just as I hit the floor, just as I was murdered.

Dream. Another stupid, goddamn nightmare.

Got up, went to the kitchen, and put on the coffee. Powered up the laptop and turned on the television. Adjusted the rabbit ears, compensated for the various atmospheric phenomena that usually interfere with good ol' airwave broadcasts.

"... A robbery turns deadly in Over-the-Rhine ..."

Great. Fucking great.

I have a nightmare about my ex-fiancee cutting out her own eyes after murdering my sorry ass, and the first thing I hear on the morning news is something about another murder down in Cincinnati.

At least there wasn't a floating toilet involved, I tell myself.

And I think the house in the dream was that old abandoned place out in Ault, Colorado, the one "Jada" and I once broke into during that hail storm, on the way back from Cheyenne...

I hop in the shower. The water's lukewarm, the building's boiler tapped out by my neighbors and still reheating. I debate hopping back out, letting the shower run empty for a few more minutes, to allow the old furnace time to recuperate.

Instead, I lather up quickly, wash my hair, and put in some conditioner....

Suddenly, I realize why I'd had the nightmare in the first place. And it wasn't the butternut squash ravioli or the cup of yogurt I'd had for dinner the previous night, either.

* * * *

The conditioner was the same brand that "Jada" used to use. The same kind we used, back when I was strung out, back when we lived in that renovated former sorority house, back on 8th Avenue in 1997.

By accident, I'd picked it up from the grocery store. I saw a sale tag and grabbed the sucker without looking, in the here and now, 2007.

Ten years ago. Ten years? I've been drug-free for ten years?

And ten fucking years ago, my fiancee tried to kill me, tried to stab me in the heart with a very real steak knife. And back then, the toilet bowl didn't come up off its pedestal, and the wind didn't blow through that stagnant apartment, either.

But that smell was there, the smell of honey extract fragrance. Unmistakable. And that smell had filled my apartment as I'd slept.

I literally jumped out of the shower, ran to the window, pulled open the screen, and flung the whole bottle out onto the street below. I hung out the window, naked and gloating, as the plastic container exploded on impact.

A college kid, in flip-flops, preppy white shorts and Green Beer Day tee shirt, looked up and yelled something profane, something about the bottle almost ruining his pristine Rich Kid outfit.

"Kid," I yelled back. "Ask me if I give a shit!"

* * * *

We used to shower together, every morning, after that first taste of angel dust pulled us out of our hangovers, at the asscrack of noon.

And sometimes we'd get caught up, white dicks slapping against black asses in that shower, reaching for that conditioner...

Every time I smell that smell, that honey-flowery smell, I think of two things: fucking my ex-fiancee in the ass (she hated vaginal sex in the shower and liked the "feel" of the conditioner inside her), and the fact that the only things we had in common were sex, drugs, and malt liquor.

Both thoughts are but two sides of the same coin, different versions of the same memory. I was, yes, a junkie ten years ago, a reporter by night and a dope fiend college student by day. I did more blow than half of Colombia, smoked more PCP-laced weed than half of San Francisco.

Who you were in 1997 almost got you killed, you ugly sonofabitch! I told the mirror as I shaved that morning. Next time, read the fuckin' labels on the Suave bottles.

I don't need the perfume from some haircare product taking me back to that place, or filling my nostrils as I sleep.

* * * *

A friend of a different ex called last night from Los Angeles.

Some former boyfriend of hers was stalking her. He'd sent her flowers, despite a warning that she'd file a restraining order against him if he ever made contact again, ever so much as sent her a text message.

Her manager had called the cops on the guy a while back, after an altercation at a nightclub, after he'd left bruises on her arm and shoulders because he loved her. Her publicist had told her to just slap him with the order anyway.

She resisted, because, well, part of her liked the attention, the excitement.

When the flowers showed up, she freaked. The guy wasn't just love-sick. All of those nights when he'd stagger with her into clubs drunk, those nights after she'd gone to rehab, when he'd literally squatted in her house, all of those times when he'd just wanted her to go back to being a cokehead ...

He never hit me until I went clean. Fuck! I can't believe I just said that...

She's been holed up in her house for two weeks, sleeping on her couch, watching old movies that I'd recommended, her registered 10 millimeter next to the stacks of books and copies of various fashion magazines.

And last night, she just called to talk. She was lonely. She wanted to hear a bedtime story.

Against better judgment, I told her about my nightmare, about the ten-year anniversary of my attempted murder, about the bottle of conditioner I'd sent rocketing, accidentally, towards a preppy undergrad.

I expected my tale to go over badly. It was a horrible story to tell, a horrible PTSD flashback to share with someone coming to grips with their own domestic violence issues.

Los Angeles Girl just went quiet. And then she laughed.

Dude, right now, I just want to kiss you, just want you here. You or Lee Blanchard. I think you may be the only guys who get where I'm comin' from...

It took me a while to figure out who Lee Blanchard is - had to actually look the guy up on Google. Should've figured he'd be a character from James Ellroy's novels.

She's a huge Ellroy fan, loves noir literature and film. And she has a similar, sordid past to mine, too. I think that's why she likes to call when she's lonely - nice just to have somebody to talk to, somebody who gets the references to L.A. Confidential and Shaun of the Dead.

I figured I'd give her something else to read, a more print-ready version of the story I told her last night. It'll give her something to do, keep her off the streets.

Nothing like two former addicts swapping stories to make for one hell of a conversation.

This is the sanitized version.

Yep.

Ripped out eyeballs and anal sex. Cocaine. Even me describing my actual, almost murder at the hands of my ex.

Sanitized version.

- # # # -

* For those who've been there.
And for those trying to go clean.
Don't try. Just do. It's worth it.

THE LUNENBURG COUNTY HOODOO HUNT OF '92: A Southern Tale of Witchcraft, Ghosts, and Other Human Terrors

"Pete" and I rode out into the dusk on our bicycles. It was the summer of 1992, along the Lunenburg/Prince Edward county line, a few miles east of the Green Bay, Virginia, post office.

We'd heard the stories for years, the tall tales of old white women, the legendary yarns of tobacco farmers and soybean sages. And we'd been warned by our elders, too, to never look for that old shack, because anyone who trespassed there would be doomed.

According to Pete's grandmother, the shack, whatever remained of it, was cursed - decent white folk, as she put it, never went a-looking for that nig'ra witch's place.

Despite the warnings, Pete and I had decided, in the midst of one of the hottest summers of our lives, to find out the truth. We sat out to locate the mythical witch's cabin, to investigate the rumors and legends for ourselves.

* * * *

Older people in that area knew the legend, but all of those who told it to me are now dead. I don't know if the story is still told in the 2000s, in this modern era, around campfires and at family cookouts. I suspect that those who are now the age I was in 1992 probably have never heard the tale.

This may well be the only written account of the legend of the Washerwoman Shack.

According to the versions I remember, the shack once belonged to a black laundress, a former slave. Her name has been lost to history, but she was said to have been a witch, a practitioner of the lost arcane art known throughout the South as Hoodoo. Rumor had it that her death was the result of arson, that several white teenagers had trapped her in her own home and then set the place ablaze - punishment for being an uppity nig'ra.

No historical record exists of the old midwife, or of the fire that supposedly killed her. That should shock no one reading this; the barbaric history of the Jim Crow South is full of convenient disappearances. Black people who were different from or educated beyond their white counterparts, especially in a region once known for its Klan-dominated government, tended to disappear, and people often left it at that.

To this day, in fact, there are still old white men alive throughout Dixie, family barbers and nice country doctors, kindly police officers and polite retired shopkeepers, who helped make people like the midwife disappear. And they will take their secrets to their graves as surely as they smile at church suppers and play poker down at the VFW, the face of one man or woman's unsung butcher simultaneously the face of someone's cherished grandfather or favorite teacher or beloved community leader.

With such hidden horrors of this mortal coil, throughout Virginia and the rest of the South, why would anyone be afraid of a dead woman's curse, a woman for whom there may be no record of her having ever lived in the first place?

* * * *

Pete and I didn't believe in witches, of course.

Sure, "Sara," Pete's neighbor, claimed to be a witch, a follower of something called Wicca. But she simply smoked a lot of pot, burned incense, and liked to dance around her mobile home naked, calling her acts sabbats. To us, witchcraft, at least the Caucasian version, was nothing more than a stoned redneck girl who collected dragon sculptures.

And curses? I believed in them, but, well, I'm part Cajun, with a great - grandmother who used to read my tea leaves on a regular basis. I still cross myself every time I pass a cemetery. Pete, however, did not. He was a Good Ol' Boy. He believed in the Holy Trinity of the Peckerwood - God, Guns, and the Rebel flag.

Pete and I had just celebrated our fourteenth birthdays. We were almost men at the dawn of the 21st century. We'd grown up with things like television, FM radio and VHS machines. We'd watched the Challenger explode a few years earlier, listened to Def Leppard and Winger and Warrant, and frequently shoplifted softcore porn from the local video store ...

* * * *

The Virginia dusk soaked us in sweat a few miles into our journey, so we stopped alongside Molasses Hill Road for a quick break. After carefully hiding our bikes in a patch of pokeberry, we did what many rural Southern teenagers do when there's a lack of adult supervision during the summer.

We had a pint of moonshine liberated from a local farmer's private stash. We had an ounce and a half of a certain illegal plant, rolled up in fresh cured tobacco leaves. And we had a backpack full of pimiento cheese sandwiches.

No great adventure, as a teenager, is ever devoid of a ceremonial meal. And witch hunting, in Southside Virgina, is hard work.

* * * *

We knew the legendary haunted ruins lay just off a timber road, somewhere along the county line. And by sundown, we'd found it.

The pine log structure was charred, held up only by the crumbling red clay that filled its joints. Inside, those same logs were found to be half-consumed by whatever fire had once raged through it. In what was left of the kitchen, a rusted iron kettle still hung in the back of a river stone fireplace - the walls around the hearth had collapsed long before we arrived. The remnants of two chairs and a table rested on the ground, partially buried in leaves. Firs and maples grew up from what had once been someone's well-worn dirt floor.

Pete and I decided to make camp for the night, right in the middle of our Virginia version of El Dorado, our great archaeological find in the Lunenburg wilderness. In the morning, we'd return home to tell of our expedition, to boast to friends on the phone, and to, well, begin planning new ways to use the site as a party spot for our forthcoming high school careers.

The way I remember it, I built the fire, using some of the chimney's collapsed stones to build a decent pit. We needed light to explore by, and, like the young juvenile delinquents we were, we'd forgotten to bring more than one flashlight. For some reason, the air inside seemed cold and damp despite the lack of a roof, as if the southern summer stopped at the walls.

Pete had brought his father's .45 and a box of shells; he spent most of the time killing off the blunt we'd started earlier and shooting at what had once been the outhouse a few yards past the "back door." I tossed him the old kettle at one point, figuring he could at least practice his aim on something smaller than an outdoor shitbox.

* * * *

Shadows cast by fires can play tricks on a person, especially at night. Moonshine, of course, doesn't help matters much.

Pete and I explored the ruins carefully. There were only three rooms to the place - a front room, the kitchen in the back, and what we guessed had at one time served as a bedroom. In every room, there were remnants of life buried in the leaves underfoot. Old tin cans, broken lanterns, and even what looked to the remains of a bed frame. Everything bore the signs of one hell of a house fire.

And then we found the door.

* * * *

There were no interior doors in the ruins. And the back door into the kitchen was long gone. The four windows, which probably hadn't held glass anyway, were nothing more than gaping holes into the darkness.

But ten feet away from the front room entrance, just past the charred remains of what had once been a porch, we found a z-frame door, propped against an old walnut tree. The hinges looked as if they'd been blown apart at the pin, as if the pin itself had exploded. The door looked as if it had been carefully placed there, like a tombstone in some old cemetery.

Pete, in his eagerness, wanted to drag the door inside, near the fire, so it could be inspected. He grabbed both sides and lifted the sucker while I held the flashlight. When he turned around, the backside was exposed for probably the first time since it had been placed...

I remember the chill that shot up my spine, the numbness of shock and childish fear that enveloped my body. There were bones on the back of the door. Not human bones but animal, firmly attached with wires, dangling in the light. There were whitetail antlers and groundhog skulls, petrified bird feet bound together. There were strings of bottle tops, too, interlaced into long bead ropes with animal teeth.

Pete dropped the door, its rotten timber splitting in half at the cross brace. We ran back into the house, swearing as we ran, huddled with our backs to the fire. Suddenly, the typical nighttime noise of the woods, the crickets and owls and whippoorwills, was amplified against the night.

As illogical, as irrational, as it sounds to write now, in the 21st century, I'm quite sure there was something out there watching us, something that we'd disturbed. And I remember feeling as if we were squatting in that something's ruined house.

* * * *

Pete and I sat in silence for almost four hours, afraid of the dark for the first time since we'd been little kids, terrified to make a sound without so much as a blanket to cover our faces.

And then, without warning, Pete reached into the backpack, withdrew his dad's pistol, and started firing wildly into the night. I tried to stop him, but the weed-induced paranoia had gotten the best of his fears. Ghosts, even if they do really exist, have never been known to be afraid of a gunshot.

Pete kept pulling the trigger until he'd emptied the clip. And I started to yell, to scream. I felt it in my throat, working its way up from my lungs. But my scream died somewhere between my teeth and my ribcage, died mute and still in captivity.

There was nothing but silence. Not a sound coming from the darkness.

Suddenly, from above us, from the back of the chimney, came a shrill scream like none I've ever heard. A large black bird, probably a buzzard, tore off into the night sky. I saw nothing but a looming silhouette against the light from the fire, felt nothing but the breeze of its wings.

At least, as an adult, I've convinced myself that it was simply a buzzard.

* * * *

The South is full of stories about black people who mysteriously disappeared, of old Hoodoo women who may or may not have met their ends at the hands of a lynch mob or group of white supremacists. While I'm convinced that whoever lived in that house probably practiced some sort of folk medicine, there will never be a way to prove or disprove the tall tales I'd heard.

Every once and a while, I'll have a nightmare about that ruined house, about that door. In the parts that I remember from those dreams, the door is almost always somehow alive, possessed by demons, the animal skulls and bird claws dancing with the strings of fangs and bottle caps.

And there's an old black woman there, too, my mind's interpretation of what she may have looked like, her white hair made of clouds and her body aflame, cursing those who killed her and crying out for justice.

And when I do dream those little dreams, I find myself hoping that I'm not cursed myself. I know, it's a silly thought. But one never knows what sinister powers exist in the World of the Supernatural.

A few days ago, I caught the smell of burnt pine drifting through my apartment windows here in Oxford Fucking Ohio, the same scent I smelled back in those Lunenburg ruins almost two decades ago. I flashed back to that night as I lay in bed. And I felt that strange chill upon me once more, that terrifying cold of the unknown.

I wonder now, as I did a few nights ago, what it would feel like to simply disappear, to become nothing more than a phantom in a tall tale?

I wonder what those surviving old white men dream about, the ones who will go to their graves knowing the true fate of African-Americans like that phantom hoodoo woman? What haunts them as they lay in bed? If there is indeed a Devil, the Judeo-Christian fallen angel of lore, I wonder what flesh-tearing things he has in store for them in his infernal pits of brimstone?

I wonder what terrifies those men? What torments those still alive who lynched innocent men across America, or burned them alive in their homes? Did their victims forgive from their disappearing graves? Or do the Undead rise like a mojo hand, returning to this world to serve as brown-skinned swords of a vengeful God?

Maybe, just maybe, that property really was cursed. And maybe we disturbed the restless spirit of a murdered black woman that night. And maybe, just maybe, Pete's gunshots were merely a reminder to her that the time had come for her to depart this world for a better, more Hoodoo-friendly afterlife.

Maybe we were spared that night because we were simply drunk, stoned children in search of adventure, not the old white men who once roamed Virginia nights in pointed white hoods?

The realm of the supernatural, if it does exist, is one a 13 year-old Virginia boy couldn't explain in 1992. And that kid, as a man, years removed, can't explain it, either.

Some of the things that haunt the sons and daughters of the American South, as real and as vivid as Emmett Till's bloated corpse, as haunting as Medgar Evers and the other ghosts of Mississippi, are much more terrifying than a simple ghost story could ever be.

- # # # -

THE ZENFORMATION WIRE: Random Web Reviews for Random People

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BOHEMIANS 2, PROSTITUTES 0:

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WHORES & WHOREHOUSES...
[YOUTUBE VIDEO]

Miz BoheMia's Rhapsody

The Bay Area's most famous homesick Spain Dweller Goes Gonzo on European Sex Trade as only she can.

SPAIN (ZP) -- There are very few bloggers out there that can leave me speechless.

Homegirl MizzyB does it constantly.

I've been trying to leave a comment for days regarding this video, but I almost piss myself every time she says the word whores.

A few months ago, she began including video content on her blog, documenting her day-to-day life as a mother and wife to her very chill husband, known only as Loverboy.

The video clips, which Miz Bohemia hosts through YouTube, provide a unique, truly original look at the life of an ex-pat struggling to find a way back home to California, come to grips with various family issues, and, well, even exploring the world of dental repair and chickenpox in ways only a former Bay Area resident can.

Every once and a while, MizB posts a vid to her YouTube account that explores the cultural differences between her more progressive, multinational background and typical life in the small Spanish city she and her husband have been trying to escape for several months.

In her latest installment, she and Loverboy hit the streets of her city's industrial areas, seeking to document the region's legal, working class prostitutes. One part Blair Witch Project and part in-the-moment gonzo journalism, MizB and Loverboy cruise around town, camera in tow, capturing stark images of streetwalkers, brothels, and other elements of the Spanish sex trade.

The conversation between a husband and wife, impishly discussing ways to capture better angles and swapping dialog off-camera, is amazingly comical, pure improvisational genius.

It's actually one of the best reality vlog projects I've seen all year, and Miz Bohemia holds true to her blog reputation as one of the most brutally honest and open bloggers out there.

If Hunter S. Thompson hadn't sucked down live ammunition back in 2005, and happened to be a sexy free-spirited yoga instructor with an equally devilish husband, I'm sure this is the kind of stuff he'd define as true Gonzo.

---

FINE ARTS...THAT YOU SHOULDN'T VIEW AT WORK:

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GWAR! :: THE OFFICIAL CYBER-FORTRESS OF YOUR LORDS AND MASTERS

Virginia's Legendary Demonic Spawn and How The Wisdom of Oderus Urungus Built One Sick and Twisted Librarian

RICHMOND, Va. (ZP) -- Okay. Cool story.

It was sometime back in high school, probably 1995 or 1996. Three friends and I, having decided that beautiful spring days in Virginia were meant for things more important than stupid AP History courses, ditched class to spend a few days hanging out in Richmond's Shockoe Slip and Shockoe Bottom districts with these girls we'd met at a music store.

We were, in all honesty, heavily intoxicated most of the time. We slept in my friend's rusted-out '77 Buick at night, spending a good portion of our time drinking way too much MD 20/20 and Colt 45 malt liquor. During the day, we'd wander the streets aimlessly. We spent a great deal of time hanging out on Monument Avenue, back before that butt-ugly Arthur Ashe sculpture was erected, the one where the tennis great seems to be beating a group of schoolchildren.

At one point, while grabbing some grub at one of Richmond's awesome greasy spoons (the place is probably a Starbucks or Blockbuster now, thanks to the recent infestation of Yuppie Scum), one of my buddies spotted this very un-GWAR-looking dude sitting at a table near ours.

Oh dude! Dude dude DUDE! I think that's Dave Brockie!

Oderus Urungus?

Naw, the guy from Death Piggy!

Oh shit! My cousin hooked me up with a mixtape with their shit. They were like the greatest Richmond Hardcore band ever!

And being young, stoned, and, well, stupid kids, we didn't realize that GWAR's lead vocalist and Death Piggy's lead vocalist were actually the same person. Before adopting the gruesome makeup and shocking stage antics, Brockie was already a local music legend.

The guy at the table was indeed the Legend himself, the No. 1 Scumdog of the Universe, in the flesh and sans gigantic rubber penis or other prosthetics. Oderus/Dave turned out to be one of the coolest cats, more than willing to discuss everything from GWAR's artistry to his being shocked that a bunch of high school kids from rural Southside Virgina actually knew about the Death Piggy days.

Didn't ask for an autograph. Figured the twenty minutes of conversation was worth much more than any signature. Still one of the coolest days of my life.

I've been a very bad librarian here in Oxford, in the very naked now, utilizing WorldCat's advanced search options to assist the youth of America in locating GWAR-related materials.

Not much out there, actually. Who'd a thunk it?

But check out GWAR's awesome web portal, one of the most creative (and nauseatingly original) band sites out there. Very interactive and fun.

And who doesn't love having to scroll over the fingers of a severed arm (image above) to access a web site's navigation controls?

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MUSIC: KEEP ON RAPPING FOR THE FREE WORLD...

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RAMALLAH UNDERGROUND
ARTIST COLLECTIVE

[RU MySpace Music Link]
Bringing the Palestinian Visual Arts and Urban Music Experience from the West Bank to the Western World

RAMALLAH, PALESTINE (ZP) -- I discovered this site a while back, through a friend. For those unaware, I'm a huge supporter of the global hip-hop phenomenon, as the medium serves as a positive, artistic outlet for many folks in impoverished and/or oppressive societies.

One song currently in heavy rotation in the ZenFo Pro apartment, for example, is the R.U.-produced Amputate [MP3], a rocksteady-driven collaboration between Palestinian emcee Boikutt and London-based hip-hop activists, The Unpeople.

And check out the stellar photography of collective member Mohanad. This photograph alone is worth a view or three thousand, capturing life in a region of the world that's been a war zone for almost a century. Or how about this photograph by Collective member Jana, depicting a grinning child in front of graffiti that reads Palestine = One Giant Concentration Camp?

Like the work of their American hip-hop forebears, The Ramallah Underground takes a simple formula and recreates it in their own image, the image of their culture and issues important to their community.

Now that's power. And that's the real spirit of hip-hop, too.

* * * *

Rap music was birthed in the ghettos and inner-cities of America's poorest communities and, like jazz in the 1960s, has become the beacon of hope and musical medium of choice for protest and expression worldwide.

Who needs the worthless mass-marketed, overpriced shit the American major labels are pushing in Moscow when there's the lyrical mastery of guys like Seryoga, who bumps out out the Post-Soviet beats? And Big Black Boots [check out the video for Opasno at YouTube] gets Slavic asses a-grindin' from Kiev to St. Petersburg.

Africa?

Tanzania still mourns the loss of the late Faza Nelly, a founding member of the legendary X Plastaz. Faza's last music video, completed right before he died in 2006, is probably one of the best examples of how rap music has evolved on the continent, a native-language testimonial on the true face of global poverty.

Or how about Ugandan emcee Tshila? Uganda needs strong, empowered women - all of Africa does. And if there's any one female emcee who embodies this, it'd probably be this Kampala native. If you are brave enough, feel free to watch this video clip.

I couldn't through it without tearing up. Tshila's brand of hope isn't the kind mass-marketed here in the States.

Honestly, listening to the ever-expanding world of hip-hop makes my own country's hip-hop scene look bad. Talk about a collapse of conscience. In 20 years' time, we've seen the mainstream subculture "evolve" from the message of acts like Public Enemy to the almost Amos 'n' Andy aesthetics of Crunk.

While American emcees spent much of last year trying to prove

their worth in Bling, stapling platinum fronts to their grills, and gloating over homes and cars worth more than the GDPs of some nations, Turkish emcee Jonturk was putting together one of the most powerful anti-war protest songs of all time (screenshot, right), an international collaboration that included everyone from Germany's Albino, Irish alt-rockers Cyclefly, Turkish compatriots Sirhot and Elnino, and Greek/Albanian rap act, the Microphone Snipers.

Jonturk and Co. had the downright cajones to create a video detailing just about every major human rights atrocity of the 20th and 21st century. Think Diddy would bother to put forth that kind of global effort, would risk pissing off those affluent neighbors in the Hamptons, the ones who own stock in the very companies that make the war profitable?

In many ways, the parent has become the child. And like many children in the Developed World, it chooses to stay blind to the bigger world around itself, enveloped in a world of self-absorption, too much comfort, and very little acceptance of responsibility.

That may be the enduring legacy of American hip-hop as a mainstream medium. Thank goodness for the rest of the world.

- REVISED April 3, 2007

(Left Sirhot, one of Turkey's big cheese emcees and producers,
out of the graph discussing Jonturk's Refuse, Resist, Say No clip.
Sorry about that.)
~ Jason

# # #

JUST ADD SOAP AND WATER: Of Lucky Shaving Brushes and Being a 21st Century Drifter

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- It first hit me, right between the eyes, while shaving one night.

I was standing over the sink, staring blankly into the steam-covered mirror in my tiny bathroom. It was early evening, and the sunset painted my entire apartment different shades of orange, violet, and auburn.

I stood there, rolling the tips of the boar's hair bristles across the handmade herbal soap, the sounds of the brush handle gently tapping the sides of the mug.

Lightnin' Hopkins' voice bellowed from the stereo in the bedroom.

Man, I said to myself, you're as old-fashioned as rye whiskey and water.

For some odd reason, that made me laugh. I went right back to singing along to the stereo, snickering as the water in the sink steamed and the soap bubbles tickled my chin.

Yes you know my mama told me, the day that I left the door/ She says you gonna have bad luck son, and I don't are where you go / I said just bring me my shotgun, boy you can bring just one or two shells / Yes if I don't get some competition, you know there's go to be trouble here...

* * * *

Yes, I shave with a brush and soap. I've tried using the fancy stuff, and I'll even use that canned crap if I'm forced. For years, I've come up with all sorts of justifications and excuses for it - it's better for the environment, it's more manly, it's a lost art...

Look, I just really enjoy a good shave. And I've never understood why other people find that so damned fascinating, particularly women.

One ex used to make a point of telling everyone she knew about it, almost boasting to her friends that I was some sort of Marlboro Man. When she finally told her boyfriend about who'd really been sleeping over during their (what did she call it?) rough patch, she even used my shaving habits as a rather batshit reason for her slip-up.

Another used to insist on watching from the toilet, fascinated that an Anglo guy groomed his face like her Mexican grandmother groomed her legs. She'd finish peeing, then sit there, elbows on her knees, chin resting in her palms, staring.

Like my grandfather had taught me years ago, I worked the lather up on my skin, not in the mug, twirling the bristles like a ballroom dancer.

I stared down into the sink, running blistering hot water over the brush, rewetting the bristles...

The brush...

* * * *

I realized that I was using my grandfather's brush, the one he received from one of his old Navy buddies back in '38, the gift from the guy who, according to legend, would later lose his life on a December morning on the island of Oahu, that date which has lived in infamy since 1941.

You know, there's a reason I consider that shaving brush my lucky brush. Through some act of fate, my grandfather died quietly in his sleep in a Virginia hospital in 1987 instead of 1941, one reassignment and decades away from his fallen comrades.

Because of its metaphysical associations, I usually only use it on special days. No one else is even allowed to touch the sucker. For some reason, however, on just another afternoon in Oxford Fucking Ohio, I'd chosen to wield the magical grooming tool.

Hmmm. Must be my lucky night.

The baked enamel finish keeps crumbling off the handle, the boar's hair thinning like an old man's, blonded and frail from nearly seven decades of service.

It has lathered soap on destroyers and at port, in places like Guam and Cairo and Norfolk, Virginia. The brush has foamed up mugs beside the Red Sea, in backwoods Louisiana and Arkansas, in Mojave Desert mobile homes and five-star hotels in Naples, Florence, and Rome.

It served my grandfather well, through his Navy and diplomatic days, through countless meetings with world leaders and other diplomats, monarchs and ministers, ambassadors and soldiers.

My grandfather taught me how to shave using this brush and a bladeless safety razor when I was five or six, back on the farm in Virginia. Since then, the brush has accompanied me on my own adventures in life.

I met my first Academy Award winner after a good, old-fashioned shave with the thing, my first Playboy Playmate (hint - she's funnier and much more savvy in person than you ever saw on MTV), first professional ballplayer, first governor, and my own first world leader.

That old shaving brush has camped with me in the Rockies, traveled across the I-10 Badlands of New Mexico and West Texas, prepared me for Mardi Gras revelry, and even cleaned me up for my interview for my first-ever job as a bonafide librarian.

* * * *

And that rather lurid, funny tale I once guest-posted over at Courting Destiny, the one about that oh-so-romantic conversation between me and an ex of mine while we lay naked in the back of a pick-up beneath the Wyoming sky?

The ex in that post often accused me of shaving with that lucky brush as a way of ensuring that I'd get lucky. And, in all honesty, she was probably right. Hell, she was the woman who used to insist on sitting on the toilet and staring every time I shaved, after all.

More often than not, I was almost 100 percent sure that I'd indeed get lucky if she heard the clank-clank of that brush in the mug and if I heard her scurrying out of bed for the bathroom, to go pee.

Err...I don't want to even think about the psychology involved.

The adult entertainer ex did the same thing. And so did...

Wait...

Err...

Would that be considered a slick move on my part?

Pffft....nah.

* * * *

I finished shaving that evening, just as the dusk stole away the sun's beautiful art. I carefully cleaned the lucky brush, changed CDs in the changer, putting on some Etta James to re-read Siegfried Sassoon poems and to thumb through the latest issue of Rolling Stone.

While I was shaving, I'd realized something about myself, something fascinating and mysterious. For some reason, though, I couldn't seem to put it into words. And that bugged me to no end.

And then it finally clicked like an empty revolver in some James Cagney flick.

What makes a man is not any one experience but the understanding that those experiences carry with them a certain appreciation of time, the finite nature of the often petty world Mankind has built for itself.

The whole of existence can be measured against something as simple as a good, slow shave. And something as simple as an old shaving brush can hold just as much sway over the course of generations as a thousand neutron bombs.

* * * *

Since I've lived in Oxford, I've often been asked why I choose to live by myself, why I never seem to be in a hurry to date anyone, why I don't seriously worry much about rushing to marriage or commitment or any of that shit, why I don't seem to ever feel truly alone in this world.

Why would I fret about any of that? Life's way too fucking short. That's why I take time to savor each and every moment alone, even when I'm staring into a steamy mirror at an increasingly battered-looking face, laughing to myself and listening to the blues.

Besides, I really am a bit of a drifter, one of those loner types who can, honestly, drop out of people's lives for years at a time, then show up at the most random times.

Man, I said to myself, you're as old-fashioned as rye whiskey and water.

There's always another shave around the corner. And even if that mystic shaving brush were to disintegrate tomorrow, I'd still have a million long, hot shaves' worth of memories.

Er...

Yeah...

I'd probably regret losing the ability to attract women with bladders tied to the damned thing, though.

- # # # -

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.

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