OXFORD CONFIDENTIAL: Babysitting Drunk Heartbroken Blondes, "Bald-Lay the Sex Poet," & Demon-Killing Cheerleaders on an "Old School" TV

Image by Feuillu via Flickr

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- A quarter of a handle later, she says she's ready to talk about This Guy She Sorta Hooked Up With.

The sun's just beginning to sink down into the Indiana countryside to the west. After work, I'd put down four pints on an empty stomach, followed by a spinach salad. I don't need any hard liquor in my system, especially not 80-proof, kerosene-flavored booze from a plastic jug.

The vodka she's been drinking since Sunday night, in and of itself, would've turned most people's stomachs based on smell alone.

"So...okay... you 'sorta' hooked up with an asshole, chica... look, these things happen...don't beat yourself up like this..."

Silence. Homegirl stares up at the shitty, ancient tile work, head as if she's trying to stare down time itself as it crumbles the ceramic ashy grout to oblivion.

For the record, yes, Homegirl and I are sitting in her bathroom, in off-campus student flophouse, a rather run-down, tiny place. I'm sitting on the toilet, she's in the tub in her workout clothes.

(Welcome to the Local U. A girl'll blow off a week's worth of classes and showers on a bender but, hell, to not hit the Rec Center or skip the tanning bed? Please...)

It's not even eight at night, but she's three or four swigs away from beating the sunset to the blackout finish line.

All because, well, the only guy she's met since she's been at college who seemed to be one she could fall in love with, who seemed to tell her all the right things, who even seemed to understand her sometime insecurities and fears and social awkwardness...

... seemed to be, after the hook-up, just another douchebag who could seem just decent enough to play her like a game of Solitaire, just to get into her panties.

The silence continues.

We're waiting for her roommates to get home. Actually, they're the ones who called me to babysit while they went to class, to jobs. I'm not the best babysitter.

I'm looking for my out. I'm 31, it's a work night, and I'm not really in the mood to spend my whole evening with a drunk woman barely old enough to drink.

And I'm not sure if I'm just talking to fill the silence, rambling to stall until she realizes that I'm probably not the best person to talk to about why guys say what they say when they're trying to get in a girl's pants...

"You know, you're really suave for a library guy," she says. "You'reanokay...not bad looking... guy. You're, like, old, but you don't use women, an'...Hey I wanna go to the library!"

"Um, no."

"I want to go. Annnnn-da I wanna get some really sex...poet...poetry... Baudelaire... Or Bald-LAY...? I...uh..."

"Um, no."

Momentary silence again as she does the drunken internal debate thing, the mental catch-up all drunk people do.

Then the grin. Impish.

"WE SHOULD READ SEXY POETRY AND BECOME HIPPIES AND I'LL BE YOUR HOTYOUNG...Hot...Hot.. kid hippie girl..."

Fading, fading, fading fast. We need to get out and about. She needs to walk it off, move, do something other than mope and drink.

"Um, no. Hey, want me to make you some coffee?..."

* * * *

At this point, I decide to murder, in three breathlessly large gulps, the remainder of the 1.75 liter bottle of vodka, to keep her from drinking anymore while we wait.

In twenty minutes, it'll hit me. Ten minutes later, one of her roommates, one who's never met me, will open the bathroom door to find her youngest roommate & "You work at _____ Library, right?" Guy talking about oral sex, S&M, and College Republicans.

Approximately One-Point-Seven-Five hours after killing the 1.75 liter bottle of vodka, we're going for a long stroll around town, down to the basketball arena, down to the ROTC obstacle course.

I'll do 20 chin-ups on the bar, she'll do four half-ones, fake girly ones.

The feat will take about 15 minutes longer than sober.

A cop will roll by as we're walking back towards her place later on, he'll slow down, I'll wave. Being more drunk than I am, she'll swear at the passing cruiser as I remind her that, yeah, I work with those guys in those cruisers.

We end up back at my place. By mistake. Sorta. Her idea.

It will seem like hours have passed since I murdered that handle of cheap, charcoal-filtered booze.

* * * *

I'll make a pitcher of iced green tea. She'll suck down half a bag of baby carrots, stretch out on the floor, flip on my "old school," robust, tube-driven, round-screen television.

We'll watch reruns of Buffy the Vampire Slayer until about 10:30ish. By that time, she'll have sobered up enough to realize her new Blackberry's been going off with texts and calls and IMs for a few hours.

Roommates. Worried roommates. She'll run to my bathroom, I'll hear muffled voices and keystrokes through the partially closed door.

Right after wandering off, the other roommate I'd never met will have assumed I'm the fucking douchebag she hooked up with the previous weekend - short, cropped hair, hazel eyes, nice eyelashes and shoulders. Kinda chachball-looking, fratty, and "older" (i.e., 23 or 24 years-old, not 31). I

'll laugh as the description is being read to me from her phone.

"Oh God. They think you're T_____. Oh. Wait. Just _____ thinks you're T____. Oh God....They...Oh...My...Gosh...They think we're...oh..."

"Hahaha....Um, no."

Silence.

"Okay. I've gotta go. Awkward..."

I'll walk her to the door. We'll hug. She'll say thanks for talking, for listening, for hanging out.

I'll find out, wow, apparently, I'm good for something other than just being the Ex-Other Man in this town, that, hell, I'm not as big a douchebag as I think sometimes.

Within seconds of her leaving, I'll puke, barely having held the vodka-marinated spinach salad for as many hours as I will have done...

And I'll get electronic apologies for the next 24 hours. Apparently, well, for some reason, I'll be told that I'm even more intimidating in person for the thousandth time by a local undergrad.

Not one word about Baudelaire and his sexy poetry.

But, within that 24 hours, I'll make a note to include Baudelaire.

And the Hot Kid Fake Hippie sidekick offer.

Hmm? Maybe...?

Um, no.

- # # # -

OXFORD CONFIDENTIAL:On the Dangerous Situations Women Put Themselves Into at Colleges and Universities Every Weekend, Everywhere...

A RARE PROLOGUE

"So what you're saying..." said the drunk undergrad earlier in the night,"is tha...if... if I was completely naked and all over you right now, you wouldn't fuck me... because I'm wasted?"

"Exactly," I whispered back in her ear. "But you can call me when you're sober."

"That's fucked up."

"Well, maybe, but women usually appreciate that one fucked-up thing more than the others..."

And with that she wandered off, disgusted, and started grinding her very fine ass into the crotch of some other guy.

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) – So I found a drunk college girl passed out in the bed of my pickup last night.

Found is an understatement, actually - at a stoplight at three-thirty in the morning on a frigid Saturday, on my way home from the bars, I looked in my rear view mirror just as she knocked on the back glass of the cab from inside the camper shell.

So a zombie of drunk-ass, Oompa Loompa tan chick gave me a fucking horror-movie perfect scare, almost gave me a goddamn heart attack when she realized she'd passed out in a strange dude's truck WHILE the truck was moving...

That would be a way more appropriate way to start off this dispatch from the Rich White College Kid Holy Land.

You had to be there.

Better that you weren't, actually. I ended up gunning through the light by mistake, almost running into a government building in my rush to stop the truck.

* * * *

Poor kid was so wasted she could barely communicate anything beyond repeating that her friends had abandoned her and that she'd lost her purse.

Too drunk to explain coherently how she'd come to black out in my truck. Too drunk to provide me with any directions to get her home safely. Too drunk to give me any information beyond calling me Chad, apologizing for being too drunk, and telling me that she pissed herself.

So long story short...

I ended up adopting a petite, brunette, 19-year-old puppy for the night.

And no, not like that.

Please. For the last time now: I. DO. NOT. DO. BLACKOUT DRUNK GIRLS.

* * * *

Tough call, actually.

It was either give her a place to crash or drop her underage ass off with the Po-Po.

I chose the route that would get me in bed sooner rather than later, the route involving no paperwork, no questions about pressing charges or testifying-if-needed.

I helped homegirl to the passenger seat, drove home, and carried my impromptu boarder up a flight of stairs to my apartment. I laid her out on the kitchen table, positioned her head over the trashcan, gave her a blanket and a pillow.

And then I went to bed. Alone.

* * * *

When I got up at 11 o'clock, she was still there, snoring. She'd puked, missed the trashcan almost completely. Rather than wake her up - or eat my breakfast surrounded by the smell of vodka-tinted vomit - I went back to my bedroom, hopped on my new Ubuntu OS netbook, and surfed the web.

Eventually, I heard a thud in the kitchen, followed by a string of profanity and a call of Um...hello?

That, yes, was my cue to walk out and make an introduction to someone who, hopefully, got the shit scared out of her.

She was so embarrassed that she pretty much cleaned my apartment while waiting for her boyfriend to come fetch her.

Waiting for her boyfriend. In a strange older dude's apartment. After a night of drinking that she can't remember.

How'd ya like to be a fly on the wall in the ol' Fortress of Motherfucking Solitude for that knock at my door this morning...

* * * *

Like I said, long story. You just had to be there. And it's better that you weren't, really.

But the story probably wouldn't have ended as well had she passed out in some less honorable guy's pickup.

Oxford Fucking Ohio is, after all, a college town. And not everyone here is as honorable or ethical as certain sorta local blogebrity types...

- # # # -

OXFORD CONFIDENTIAL - BLACKOUT 2008 EDITION: Of Protest Stupidity, Libraries as Community Relief, & Other Electricity-Free Tales

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- He fidgets with the brim of his ball cap. He's already readjusted his oversize basketball shorts four times in just over five minutes.

Homeboy finally settles into his carefully maintained slovenly student image after staring at his reflection in the storefront, adjusting his shirt one final time.

It's Thursday night, after all, and he's just explained that this is his regular Young Honey night - a weekly occurrence where he and his friends prowl the Uptown Oxford bars in search of something underage and naive, some poor, dumb, first- or second-year girl to buy drinks for and go home with.

Only after he looks perfect does he continue his drunken explanation of the Great Local U. Blackout Riot of 2008, quite possibly one of the dumbest student protests to ever grace a college campus.

"Fuck the police! They weren't gonna use fucking tear gas. This is ____ University we're talking about. It's not like we were blocking an interstate or anything."

Well, actually, the protesters managed to block off U.S. 27, the only major highway into or out of Oxford, smack dab in the middle of cleanup and relief efforts for a storm-ravaged area. And those cops homeboy's so adamant about fucking? Six agencies responded, all from areas equally impacted by a blackout that encompassed, at one point, more than one million people in Ohio alone.

All because anywhere from 2,000 to 3,000 Local U. students decided Monday night to protest the university's decision to reopen campus after it became apparent that Duke Energy would be able to restore power to most buildings by early Tuesday morning.

The protest was held in front of the university president's house. Funny thing. The president wasn't home at the time. The protesters spent more than five hours chanting in front of an empty house.

And according to various sources, at one point, those police officers had canisters out and ready to go. Thankfully, things were mostly controllable, and only a few folks had to be maced or arrested.

"So what do you think the protest accomplished? Obviously, the university still held classes. Do you think this was something meaningful, or just what the local media's been calling it - spoiled rich kids whining while others are suffering in the Gulf?"

He tugs at his crumpled shirt once more and nods his chin towards a very pretty, yet not-too-intelligent looking blonde girl in a black cocktail dress. He changes the subject for a moment. The blonde, he says, gives amazing blowjobs. And she likes being fucked without a condom.

"Look, man, I've gotta go. Pussy calls. But, yeah, it was fucking stupid. We were bored. I just went because I wanted classes canceled so we could have another Blackout party..."

And with that, Homeboy wanders off into the night. I click my recorder off. It's been a while since I've tried to write as a reporter. Forgot how hard good quotes are to get. This is the umpteeth We were bored excuse for attending Monday night's protest I've heard in four days.

Yep. Some college students stage protests over things like war, poverty, and other human woes. Here? Off-campus students protest having to go to class. Because they're bored.

It's only nine o'clock at night, and, suddenly, I need a drink. It's been a while, too, since I've been so ashamed to have wasted a perfectly good interview on a completely worthless human being.

* * * *

Last weekend, the remnants of Hurricane Ike blew through the Miami Valley like the wake of an atomic bomb, with wind gusts nearing 75 miles per hour shredding trees, ripping apart roofs, and turning the Tri-State's power grid into an electric version of Swiss cheese.

It's taken the better part of the week to get power back to most of the region. As I write, there are still several thousand homes still without electricity. The grocery stores and restaurants are still restocking, still reeling from having to pitch millions in spoiled food. At one point, too, the major outlets had employees stand guard over dumpsters full of rotten meat to prevent the panicked from diving for a nauseating, bacteria-ridden dinner.

The Cincinnati metro area, Hamilton and Butler counties, were hit the hardest. Fortunately for most folks, the various municipal water supplies remained mostly intact and unpolluted. The ability to shit, shower, and shave, even in pitch black darkness, was still available to most.

* * * *

My power went out Sunday afternoon, at just past two o'clock. The lights flickered back to life sometime late Thursday afternoon. My only storm damage was to a window in my living room - a gust literally pushed in a 20-pound sliding section, right over the flashing. Luckily, it didn't break when it collapsed - a pile of laundry broke the fall.

In all, I ended up pitching approximately $200 in food from my fridge. I was fortunate, as a bachelor. I know families, poor families, that had to pitch thousands in deep-freezer stock, people who are having to figure out how to suddenly feed children with what's left of increasingly devalued paychecks.

While it wasn't what I'd call luxurious to spend five days without electricity, without the ability to cook my own food or take a hot bath on demand, it wasn't all that bad. With natural disasters, well, basic things, matters of survival, tend to trump one's often petty desires for life's creature comforts.

Hell, I was just grateful for the ability to take a shit and to still have the toilet flush. And the fact that I'd, for some reason, happened to restring the ol' acoustic guitar last month. Amazing the things one appreciates at trying times.

Sure, I'll probably not want to eat another handful of trail mix or cold can of beans for a while, but, well, I was able (actually, required, as per my job function) to make it into work, to help keep my library's physical plant running with minimal resources and, at times, minimal staffing.

At one point, we were the only facility within 30 miles with working Internet access, live electrical outlets, and enough generator-heated water in the tanks to allow for thousands of hot shaves and sink-basin baths. We had thousands of community members spread out over four very packed levels. With only a handful of staff able to help them all out.

Hell, I managed to stop a major structural fire in my system's main library (a faulty emergency generator burned up), inspect all other facilities for storm damage, and, yes, even answer in excess of 250 reference questions over the course of one twelve-hour shift.

Fun week. I managed to rack up 60 hours on the job. If I were hourly, wow, that's be enough overtime to pay off a couple of credit cards...

* * * *

Actually, now that I think about it, I worked my way through that nasty-ass blackout. Most people in this town did. Including, yes, those fucking cops who worked right through that stupid protest in front of an empty university president's house.

A couple of those officers were the first on the scene of my generator fire and are currently on my I'm So Fucking Picking Up This Round list.

And that university president, too. He was doing his job during the storm's aftermath. I've seen that guy around town at more random hours of the day than I think I've ever seen any university administrator, ever. He's been talking to students and faculty, meeting with officials, shaking hands and patting shoulders and listening to complaints.

Right now, as people in Texas clean up from Ike, as other communities clean up from their hurricanes and natural disasters this summer, there's literally hundreds of thousands of folks who've been taking cold showers in the morning, dressing in last week's dirty laundry, and praying to all that is holy that they have enough gas to get to work and to provide needed services in an emergency.

But I guess that was too hard for some people. You know. Guys like Homeboy. While others are rebuilding, recovering, and getting by, he's still upset that he couldn't get in one more Blackout Party in an attempt to get his pecker wet.

And the gall of Homeboy's university, HIS future alma mater, asking someone of his obvious importance to actually do his job, to cowboy the fuck up and roll with the challenges life and Mother Nature sometimes throw our way.

In all fairness, there really weren't thousands of rioters blocking traffic and causing mayhem in this town Monday night, during the largest blackout in Ohio history. There were a few hundred actual, mostly intoxicated, agitators.

The rest were just observers, with nothing else to do. They stopped by to watch the freaks make idiots of themselves. There have only been a handful of such large protests in the university's two-hundred year history. Protesting anything is as foreign to Oxford Fucking Ohio as a burning candle at the bottom of the ocean.

Hell, I stopped by after work for a few moments myself, just to watch the shitshow.

I would've stuck around longer, but, well, I'd been actually helping to get this town back on its feet again and was fucking exhausted.

Forgive me for being to fucking tired to stick around, kids.

* * * *

So it's 9:30 Thursday night. I've just killed off two shots of Jack Daniels in a bar I normally avoid like the Plague.

It's been of fucking horrendous week, my friends, if I'm drinking straight Jack. By that point, I'd made up my mind that I was going to attend a local open mic night later in the evening and attempt to black myself out, for a change.

Rather than go home to finish disinfecting the old freezer and add another layer of caulk to my contractor-perfect window repair, I decide to walk off the sudden rush of booze, prep myself psychologically for the sweet relief that is to come when I return home to take my first near-scalding hot shower in five days.

I'm half an hour removed from trying my hand as an actual serious, topical writer. It's been years since I've whipped out the ol' Sony recorder, shoved it into random people's faces, gone hunting for soundbites and insights. I toss the damned thing into the cab of my truck, pissed that, well, I've only managed to document every negative stereotype of Local U. students, in their own words.

Trust me. There are thousands of stories like Homeboy's in this town.

Tales of spoiled girls who flooded the town's hotel rooms the moment their power was restored because, ugh, they couldn't do their hair in the dark and, OMG, who threw tantrums that the cable, yes, was still out in suites paid for with Daddy's credit card. Stories of undergrads in expensive cocktail dresses walking down the middle of black streets, drunk and blocking traffic.

One kid told me he was looking into filing lawsuits because he was unable to watch the Bengals game on TV Sunday night; another guy shared a supposedly heartbreaking experience - he had to forfeit money on an online gambling site because the power went out in the middle of a poker hand.

Tragic, isn't it?

* * * *

So I walked the streets and avenues of this town, the undergrad neighborhoods, trying to forget the whole thing. Why beat a dead, preppy, spoiled horse?

And then, at one house, a group of young women - library regulars - waved and hollered my way. I'd seen the trio numerous times over the course of the week, probably logged more than a few hours helping them individually answer reference questions.

They'd logged almost as many hours in my library as I had, charging laptops and cell phones and iPods, surfing the web for outage updates and news headlines. From the looks of it, the porch lights and all, their power had just been restored, too.

The group sat in folding chairs, a case of beer between them. An acoustic guitar rested against the porch railing. Each had a can of beer tucked in her crotch and a book - library books - laid across her knees.

I walk up to the porch just as one of the girls blurted out something like

"Bet you're gonna write about how FUCKED UP this week's been, huh?"

All three grinned. One girl handed me a beer. Natty Light. Shittiest beer known to man. But, well, it was cold.

Blog readers. Not once, all week, had a single one of them mentioned why they'd actually sought me out for my help with various projects. Hell, I'm not a reference librarian. It never occured to me that, well...

Sneaky devils, sometimes, these sorority girls.

I asked the group, as nonchalantly as I could, as if, yeah, I'm really some blogebrity or something, if they had any ideas on where to start documenting the Great Blackout of 2008.

We chatted for a bit and, well, they readily admitted that they had no idea where to start.

But they did, however, know how whatever I wrote should end.

* * * *

"Look, we're not all as stupid and bratty as those rioters. Fuck those bitches. A lot of people work really hard to make college what it is for all of us...."

"I mean, we're still here, right? And we're still sexy, smart, and sure look good for surviving a hurricane in Ohio...I mean, c'mon, we're hot and we survived the blackout, right...?"

"... And make sure you put in something about how all these whiny babies, like, need to grow the fuck up..."

"...And, oooh! Make sure you say how lucky we are to, like, still have places to live, you know? And, like, feel blessed because we're still alive to actually drink beer and still have a school to go to..."

Reminded me of my reporter days, actually. Back in the newspaper business. Fuck voice recorders. Always ended up with better source material writing things out, using things like cardboard from cases of beer...

- # # # -

OXFORD CONFIDENTIAL: "If a Punk Redneck Peter Pan Carjacked Rehab Hippies" Does Describe my Personal Style Quite Well, Actually...

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- I'm a loner, a solitary man, a veritable 21st Century Libertine.

Beyond that, well, I'm just one mean-ass nonconformist motherfucker, I do my own thing, and I'm little too out there, in my own special way, for most people.

I make no bones about it, really. Life's meant to be filled with strange people and mysterious freethinkers - hey, somebody's gotta do it.

In public, I try to put up a front of being an extrovert, of being good-natured and humorous, and, of being, occasionally, talkative and a good listener, friendly and self-absorbed, all simultaneously...

But at home? In the ol' Bachelor Pad of Mystery and Mirth? My Fortress of my Motherfucking Solitude?

Why the fuck would any sane person think my personal sanctuary would be any less strange than I am, on or offline? I live like a mad monk. Or maybe a curio shop owner. Or, possibly, one of those people destined to become a crazed old man who scares small children on Halloween.

Regardless, well, wherever I've hung my hat in this world, through the three residences here in Oxford where I've rested my boots, through the seven different dwellings over the past ten years across three states, there's one constant:

My "home life" is almost always a thousand times weirder than most "normal" folks expect.

Even from me.

* * * * *

If you can't take the heat, stay the fuck out of my apartment.

Seriously.

According to my lease, that energy-guzzling box near the living room window is an air-conditioning unit. I've never used it, never even tested to see if it works. I don't use A/C because, well, it's a waste of energy, a waste of the human body's own climate control system - the good ol' sweat glands and skin.

Man was meant to sweat. Women, well, were meant to glow. Especially during the dog days of summer. And, yep, it gets pretty toasty in there at times, especially during the hottest months, when the air heaves with bone-soaking humidity and the mercury floats up towards one hundred degrees, Fahrenheit.

I usually advise female friends who stop by for the first time to wear a sports bra - I make no exceptions for the dainty, the pretty, or even the damned-too-cute . If it gets too hot, well, feel free to strip off as much clothing as you wish. Or sit in front of the numerous energy-efficient fans.

Hell, I'm probably half-naked... don't be modest. By giving up the A/C, we're helping save electricity -- as well as the friggin' planet.

* * * * *

I smoke. And I smoke in my own home. Cigarette (and occasionally cigar or pipe) smoke permeates every corner, every nook and cranny.

Asthmatics and those with allergies are welcome to ask, politely, that I not smoke whilst they're visiting - I'm generally a decent host. People who give me the second-hand smoke lecture? Well, there's the door. Leave anytime you wish or shut the fuck up.

And I smoke tobacco. And tobacco only. Other substances are never welcome.

If I know you're holding, well, it's out the door with it and possibly with you, too. We can still be friends, but, well, I've been clean for almost a fucking decade, dammit. Show some respect.

It always blows my mind when some poor stoner swings by and thinks that, well, because I'm puffing away, they can puff away on anything they so choose. In the homes of others, well, I'm fine with it and could care less. But in my place, you'll end up getting yelled at, verbally humiliated, and, possibly, assaulted.

No joke. Ten years clean. Assaulted, as in knock the damn taste out'cho mouth.

Once, a fling's cousin lit up and laughed in my face when I told him to remove his kind herbal product from my home. When I insisted, he stood there and kept puffing away, giving me the Legalization lecture. He really thought I was kidding -- Who doesn't, in this modern era, partake of such a plant, silly librarian who's fucking my uncle's daughter?

I broke his little finger with a crescent wrench and left a forearm imprint in his throat.

People, like all animals, sometimes need to be conditioned to respect the master of a given domain. And if one acts like an obstinate, unlearned animal in my domain, well, I will break that animal. Almost felt bad, but, well, rules exist only so long as they are enforceable - and I am more than capable of enforcing my rules with all of the gusto of an Old Testament legend.

He never lit up in my apartment after that. Even apologized. Kid lived like a fucking Mormon the rest of his visit. And, well, he wasn't really able to speak for the last few days at my place, so I was able to get quite a bit of reading done...

He did, however, manage to crank out a few pages of his doctoral dissertation with nine working digits and to drive his stick-shift sedan back to his Kentucky university.

Needless to say, the fling ended shortly thereafter.

* * * * *

"Jesus Fucking Christ, Jason! You really eat this shit?"

It's a common refrain, when people look into my refrigerator or peek into my kitchen cabinets.

Organic crunchy soynut butter and fruit-only preserves. Flax-and-psyllium-husk cereals and whole-grain, no-sugar-added instant oatmeal. Pork shoulder, cans of smoked oysters and sardines and anchovies, baby spinach, gravadlax and Middle-eastern lavash, thinly sliced turkey pastrami and hummus and at least three varieties of olives.

No junk food. No processed sugar or corn syrup. Not a candy bar or potato chip to be found.

And I'm from Virginia, too, a Southerner who grew up eating all sorts of cute, furry and feathered critters. I have a hearty respect for those who harvest nature's edible wildlife. When time provides, I've been known to barter with local hunters for organic, free-range vittles.

Finished off the last of my squirrel stockpile last month. Made a wonderful soup, actually, with leeks, red onions, and plenty of cilantro and thyme, dill and rosemary. If that grosses you out then you'd probably, well, starve to death in many of the poorer parts of rural North America.

And Berberé, that marvelous Ethiopian and Eritrean spice mixture? Goes great on a veggie pizza, venison or with beans and rice.

This is how I eat. It can be quite nauseating for the weak of stomach to witness, especially those who find it appalling that an educated man would gnaw the flesh from Bambi's carcass.

Yeah, I cook and consume some pretty strange things. Every damned day, save for the occasional workday lunches or whilst on vacation.

And there's no booze in the cabinets, beer rarely in the icebox.

Seriously? Seriously.

For as much as I supposedly drink, for all the perceptions that I'm a raging alcoholic because I write so much about bars and booze and the fucktardish lifestyles of the binge-drinking collegiate masses, I don't as a rule keep any sort of alcohol on hand for guests.

It's a BYOB sorta deal. I rarely drink at home, actually. Most of the time, my dwellings tend to be only slightly less dry than a West Texas creek bed.

* * * * *

Yes, it's true, whatever you've heard or read over the years -

I do have a chin-up bar installed in my living room, so I can watch Star Trek reruns, cartoons or ThinkTV while I work out. I don't have a couch, because, well, I would rather stretch out on the floor.

...And I'm rather well-known for my repetitive, downright predictable eating habits - there are people reading this right now, in fact, who don't even need to guess what sandwich I will order at a restaurant at least twice next week...

...And there's weird music almost always playing, downright bizarre occult trinkets and paintings and sculpture hanging from the walls, obscure books packed into the bookshelves...

... And there's no proper bedspread on the mattress, just an assortment of hand-me-down sheets and thrift-store clearance items and, yes, even the horse blanket that I was conceived upon in a Colorado trailer park three decades ago...

... And I still haven't felt the need to replace the headboard, either. Women just seem to break the damned thing...

But it's home.

* EPILOGUE *

"You know what I miss about fucking Oxford?"

"I dunno. What?"

A random phone call from a former friend of an ex-fling who, well, turned out to be a lot cooler to hang out with after the pair had graduated from the Local U. and the fling ended (as they all do).

She dialed the wrong Jason by mistake. We ended up chatting for a few minutes. Strangely enough, she'd been planning on calling me anyway, to invite me to dinner when she was back int town for Alumni Weekend.

"Your place, the one you used to have on High Street, above the beauty shop..."

"Yeah, that was a cool place, huh?"

"Not really, but it was so... you... ya know?"

"Heh, yeah. The Bat Cave thing?"

"Hahaha! ... You really are a fucking mystery, you know that...? "

I closed the cell at the end of the call, ate a can of smoked oysters for lunch, and did some chin-ups while Mr. Spock and Captain Kirk duked it out with some alien menace on television.

- # # # -

OXFORD CONFIDENTIAL: Vignettes from a Nowhere College Village:Of Townies, Students, and Cultural Divides

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- The small cafe fills with undergrads and grad students, visiting scholars and faculty. I'm gnawing, slowly, on a soft, chewy brownie, sipping cool coffee.

There's a younger woman staring at me. The cowboy hat. Must be the hat. Or maybe the swollen face. Or the strange pile of books. She's wearing a gray sweatshirt and those painted-on black workout pants undergraduate females seem to wear like a uniform.

I try not to notice, try to ignore it. But, well, she looks like Audrey Hepburn, circa 1967's Two for the Road. And I see no boyfriend built like Albert Finney, no guy who may or may not get upset at me for, well, checking out my watcher.

And then I give up, quit everything I'd planned on doing that Saturday night.

I push the books piled up on the cafe table aside, push aside the brownie and the mug of Java, and open up the laptop case.

There are stories to tell, fragments of legends and folktales, things I've witnessed in this town worth writing about. There are vignettes of beauty and mystery along the spine of every small college town's Book of Life.

And if I'm being watched in a one-horse Midwestern town, by a woman who looks like Audrey Hepburn, from across a crowded coffee shop at five o'clock on an overcast Saturday, I should at least try to document some of the paradoxical dynamic that makes Oxford Fucking Ohio an interesting place to call home...

* * * *

Off came the wifebeater.

And then another tee-shirt hit the breeze, adrift and ripe, like a wet fart through cheap underwear.

Two drunken men, covered in jailhouse ink, were ready to man dance in the middle of the goddamn alley over something imbecilic and petty.

Both twenty somethings had been scorned by the same 16-year-old trailer park Lolita. And both men forgot all about the statutory rape and disturbing the peace raps that often follow fights over underage sex partners.

Cheap ink, tattoos meant to convey toughness in a small town where hard is defined by the ability to survive a few months locked up on a drug charge. Necks aflame with gothic fonts, shoulders sprouting naked women, lost girlfriends' names scarring flesh like bullets.

One man took a swing. His scrawny tat-covered arm shot through the night like a wingless lawn dart. The other cat took it in the jaw, then lurched forward, an attack more akin to a fat man at a buffet than a street brawl. More broken lawn darts flew through the twilight, the shadows cast by sodium vapor streetlights distorted and mean.

College girls, all dressed up and pretending to be urban sophisticates, watched and crowed and whispered and gasped, unaware that, should the cops arrive, they could be detained as witnesses, could be carded for underage drinking.

In the Hamptons, or out on the Cape, or on the banks of Lakes Michigan and Erie, in gated communities and other picture-perfect suburban brainfucks, Daddy's little princesses aren't exposed to this sort of skulduggery – they treat the fight as something for their entertainment, some freakshow put on by Townies for their amusement alone.

Both fighters were skinny and drunk. Fortunately, nobody expected a title fight. With all the grace and delicacy of an exploding car bomb, the whole physical outburst was reduced to smoldering screams from opposite ends of an alley in under a minute.

And the college girls blinked behind their out-of-place cocktail dresses and expensive high heels and designer handbags. There was, good Lord, blood coming from gaping head wounds and busted lips! The wifebeaters and tee-shirts were streaked with crimson as their owners pulled their clothing back on afterwards.

Must be nice to be shocked at the sight of two rednecks fighting over a trailer park Lolita.

* * * *

They tell me he overdosed, years ago. Heavy drug use turned a once gifted local child, a certifiable genius, into a cocaine-retarded blight upon the face of Oxford Fucking Ohio.

Instead of curing diseases or writing manifestos or building the damned world a better fucking mousetrap, he now wanders the streets as a zombified simpleton. He picks up work wherever he can find it, manual labor his destiny until death brings sweet liberation.

They tell me he's tried to kill himself, too, but the good people of Oxford Fucking Ohio just keep saving him.

I watch from a park bench as he lumbers by, quietly, his face obscured by an oversize hoodie.

And the Campus Crusaders and Soccer Moms, the men in white khakis and leather penny loafers, all seem to ignore him, an unfortunate blight on a college town Robert Frost once called one of the most beautiful college towns in the world.

The preppy students ignore him, as do the campus radicals who're busy preparing their latest bullshit protest. The campus liberals are all fired up about poverty, about wars on terror and crimes against the working class; the campus conservatives are demanding concealed weapons and curriculum oversight.

But everybody just forgets about the local kid in the hoodie, as soon as he moves out of sight. Just like the liberals ignore the poverty in this community, just like the conservatives blame locals for their need to carry weapons, he's just Static in the way of The Message, another local to call irrelevant for the sake of that grad school application.

He moves like a phantom, a tragic ghost that everybody secretly wishes would disappear, a brain-damaged Druid who scares the college kids and makes the alumni uneasy and who doesn't fit into an imaginary world based on a quotation by a dead New England poet.

In all honesty, I can see why the good people of Oxford Fucking Ohio want to keep him around, bum him cigarettes and give him the occasional free beer or sandwich.

The illusion of a perfect little college town, where the red-brick nostalgia of university recruitment often drowns out the harshness of reality, needs to be kept in check by somebody.

Robert Frost loved small town life too much to be just another bullshit quotation in a rich university's handouts.

Does anybody really think that ol' Yankee wordsmith, if he were still alive today, would've given a flying ratfuck about a college town where students are taught to ignore the people in front of their very eyes?

* * * *

She punches buttons on the cash register as she tells me about her one day off this week, about how she plans to spend the day with her son, to go catch a movie in nearby Hamilton.

As the cashier talks, I can feel the pair of sorority girls behind me, staring daggers through the back of my Stetson. It was my fault, obviously, for asking the middle-aged woman how life was treating her and her son, my fault for supposedly slowing down their quest to purchase a shopping cart full of Michelob Ultra – that lime-flavored shit that seems to be perpetually on sale and ripe for the undergrad consumer's picking.

The cashier and I are chatting, sure, but she's moving as fast as she can, running items over the scanner as she talks. And I'm a-swiping my debit card through the reader, answering omnipotent survey questions and navigating past the Cash Back? prompts and requests for a PIN number as efficiently as possible.

The stares seem to intensify when I respond to the cashier's plans, when I wish her well and express my hope that her son enjoys the day with ol' Mom. I can hear the sighs behind me, feel the daggers roll inside their eyesocket scabbards.

Never mind that the cashier is still ringing up my purchases, that my debit purchase is still processing across the untold millions of miles of Big Box retailer fiber-optic cable.

Simply being friendly is not something one does when other people are in a hurry to binge drink away a weekend. There are, after all, wealthy trustafarian boys to seduce, popped-collar poppycocks and pastel-colored preppy nincompoops to impress with tales of wild ski trips to exotic New Hampshire and Aspen, tales of daddy's time as member of some Ivy League crew team.

I listened, over my shoulder, as the two debutantes vented their frustrations over being forced to wait in line while their very important lives passed them by – mumbled and whispered and sighed, as if protecting their sheltered upbringing meant more to me than my bags full of smoked oysters, potato salad, and free-range eggs.

And to think, yes, there are single moms who work two jobs, who get only one full day off, once in a blue moon, who dare disrupt their precious routine with smalltalk about their children and kids' movies.

The audacity of some people.

Those women shouldn't have to wait in line, anyway.

After all, Daddy rowed a motherfucking boat all through college.

* * * *

I finish writing. Look up from the laptop, only to discover that Audrey Hepburn has left the building. I stand up, stretch, hit the head for a quick, caffeine-filled piss.

Wandering outside, I light cigarette and look off into space. Having stared at a laptop screen for hours, my eyes were having trouble adjusting to the dim light of early evening.

Two walk by on the sidewalk - more female undergrads. Undergrads, even in college towns, are easy to distinguish from full-time residents. Townie women stand out a bit more, carry themselves with more confidence and comfort, the streets of Oxford more of a childhood playground than some mythical Public Ivy holding tank.

One of the women exclaims that she wants to do some work in the coffee shop. The other states that she'll finish her cigarette, come in for a few minutes to warm up, and then head towards the bars.

Soon, I'm standing on a lonely sidewalk and staring off into space, in front of a crowded cafe, with a woman who looks like Sophie Marceau puffing away and staring, five feet away.

She didn't say a word. Just stood there, smoking, until I finished my cigarette. Maybe Sophie just wanted some company. Or maybe it was the cowboy hat. A lot of undergrads see the hat and think that, somehow, that automatically makes me one of those no-good, unsophisticated Townies. In a way, they're right - I grew up in a tiny college town, like Oxford Fucking Ohio, where undergrads thought we were all ig'nant hicks.

Yup.

Oxford really is full of interesting stories. And sometimes, it's good to be an ig'nant hick storyteller.

- # # # -

OXFORD CONFIDENTIAL: I Never Learned to Play Lead as a Kid, But I Sure Figured Out How to Destroy Guitars

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- As a guitarist, I readily admit that I suck serious ass.

Always have. Always will.

I've sucked serious ass, proudly, since my first band, since the Unus Marx (short for Unusual Marxist - I was 15) days, since I figured out that I really have no need for that bottom E string, gave up on trying to play glam rock, and learned to love the good ol' Power Chord.

* * * *

I was 14 when I tore apart my old starter electric, one of those suckers with a cheap, flat tremolo bar and an amplified speaker built right into the body. My parents paid a whopping $50 for a guitar with one working pickup and rust on the tuning pins.

First, I pitched the goddamn whammy bar, gutted that three-inch speaker and replaced it with the severed head of a teddy bear.

Yes, a teddy bear head was my first guitar accessory. It seemed logical at the time, almost abstract art.

And then came the ritualistic mutilation, the tagging. I stripped off the shiny black finish with a belt sander, painted the thing primer gray. With a blank canvas, I used industrial spray paint and black lacquer to add texture.

A skull and crossbones carved here and there, with a dull chisel. BLACK FLAG and SOCIAL DISTORTION and NIRVANA and MELVINS written on with Sharpies, a huge anarchy symbol carved into the neck with a pocket knife.

That guitar even survived this one night in high school when my friends and I, in our infinite need to prove our machismo, decided to hang the damned thing from a tree, use it for target practice.

I played my first gig ever, in front of an audience of three girls and a Dead Head stoner, with that Chinese-made Silvertone, the .22 rounds still buried in the plywood body. The sound was horrible and self-loathing and implosive, a barbaric YAWP! for the waning years of my teens.

I realized, a while back, that I was never asked to join bands because some group of guys need a rhythm guitarist or bassist anyway. I was asked, usually, because, well, I used to be a big dude and I liked to drink, do all sorts of nasty drugs, and fight.

But how I loved that damned, piece o' shit guitar. Bullet holes and all.

* * * *

Some guitarists are all about the finesse, about the rhythm and meter and form. Even the best solos are, to some degree, nothing more than formulaic and repetitive exercises in scale. I've never bothered to learn a lead or solo part in my life - that's for musicians.

Me? I maul at the fretboard like a retarded orangutan, with just about as much charisma and skill as one would find in your average drive-by shooting. Strictly a chord strummer, a rhythm hunter in the darkness, tone-deaf and uncoordinated.

That original electric is long gone, the teddy bear head and neck and body and pickups carried to Heaven, as smoke from a burn barrel. And the drugs are gone, the unchecked juvenile rage subsided.

Despite my ass-sucking levels of musicianship, I still enjoy playing every once and a while.

* * * *

As the rain came down a few nights ago, as it poured off the roof and the box fans rattled in the window sills, I picked up my old acoustic, this shitty Korean 3/4 size I've owned for more than a decade.

When that old Silvertone died, the Korean acoustic became the eldest son, left the farm with me, transversed the United States. Given what the acoustic's been through, I'd have to say that Koreans make some pretty durable cheap guitars.

It's been spit on by two fiancees, puked on and threatened by numerous women, borrowed by skinhead drug dealers and black strippers and roommates and recovering addicts, fondled by poets and former prostitutes and soldiers and migrant laborers, dropped in the Pacific from a fishing trawler.

I like durable guitars. They live forever and, well, tell better stories than I do.

* * * *

I sat on a stool in my apartment, that folding two-foot ladder I call a stool, and I played classic punk songs, rebellious American folk songs, outlaw country - unplugged and barely in tune.

The Misfits' Bullet. Social D.'s Bad Luck and Story of My Life. John Anderson's Seminole Wind. Hank Williams' Angel of Death and Lefty Frizzell's Long Black Veil. Even Tom Waits' Jockey Full of Bourbon.

Not exactly covers. More like abstract, interpretive art. The kind of art one makes in spite of their humanity, when they're all alone and can get away with it.

Spontaneous and humorous and askew and downright perverse. Like taking a shit and seeing the face of the Virgin Mary in a turd.

And I played like I always have, like a retarded orangutan, with just about as much charisma and skill as one would find in your average drive-by shooting. I tried to sing, in that old gravelly baritone, the one I used to use when, well, I thought I could actually sing like a rock star.

And the neighbors above me stomped on the floor. And someone yelled from outside in the rain.

And I just wished I still had that old bullet-ridden carcass of a guitar, just to plug it in, to just bang away with blunt force, just to piss off the neighbors.

- # # # -

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.

OXFORD CONFIDENTIAL: On Being One of Those Guys

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- I'm one of those guys. I readily admit it.

Not that I really give a shit. Hell, it's my life and, well, I'll do with it what I please. I'm not much for doing things the proper way, anyway.

It's much more entertaining, actually, to be a complete and utter fuck-up.

* * * *

I fall in and out of love six or seven times a day, 365 days a year, seven days a week.

I can pass a woman on the sidewalk and fall madly for her in under 10 seconds, breaking myself free in under five. I can make eye contact, debate asking someone out, plan a seduction in my head, and then call the whole thing off without ever saying a single friggin' word.

There's that cashier at the Wally World, the one with the nice smile. She's probably no older than 22, probably a completely shallow girl with a mean-ass boyfriend, a closet full of skeletons and assault weapons under the bed.

But, well, she has this enchanting smile, this slightly asymmetrical way of acknowledging a man - her subtlety could melt the Devil's pitchfork.

I'll think about her as I drive home, wonder what's behind that smile, what's really underneath that blue department store apron, and... completely forget about her by the time I'm putting the frozen veggie burritos and the sugar-free cranberry juice cocktail into the fridge.

And then there's that skinny little thing I seem to always pass on the sidewalk as I stroll home after work.

It's the green eyes and the way her eyeshadow glistens in the sunlight, the way her bangs just cover that left eye slightly. She looks down every time I make eye contact, and, instantly, I begin wondering what her bedroom smells like, what kinds of things we may have in common, whether or not she could tolerate my obscure musical tastes.

And then I pass her, get to the door of my apartment, and forget the whole thing, only to be reminded of it the following workday.

And those are just the ones I remember.

Yup.

I'm one of those guys.

And it's not pretty.

* * * *

A server down at one of the ol' local watering holes grinned this impish grin as I closed out my tab.

She'd been observing my behavior as I sat at this table, surrounded by a group of unemployed aspiring high school teachers, all heavily intoxicated women, in Oxford Fucking Ohio for a statewide job fair at the Local U.

Every time she'd pass by, the server would shoot me the most curious looks as I tried to be polite to this one woman, a short brunette from Akron, who'd asked me to join the post-interview party.

At one point, the server even came over, bumped my shoulder with her hip, and made some reference to the fact that I'm often seen around Oxford in a cowboy hat. The intoxicated brunette then proceeded to ask me if this was true, if I was an actual cowboy, if I owned a horse, or if I'd ever been to a rodeo.

Annoying to no fucking end.

After the group left, I sat back down at the bar, went back to watching Jeopardy! and chatting away with some of the other regulars. When I got up to pay, my Cuervo - to - blood ratio thoroughly satisfied for the evening, I asked the server why she'd been shooting me the bizarre looks all night.

"I just dig your style. Very smooth."

"I have a style?"

"C'mon. Every guy has a style. Yours is just more entertaining. And that chick was totally into you."

I remember wandering down the alley, towards High Street, smiling probably the dumbest smile imaginable, my mind full of such strange, stupid thoughts.

"I have a style! And it's smooth! Holy fucking shit, dude!"

It's amazing how one remembers such things, even after several shots and about a half-dozen mixed drinks. And it hadn't even occurred to me to get that aspiring teacher's phone number, much less ask her name.

Yup. One of those guys.

Dense as a brick on the surface of Jupiter, as clueless and mysterious as the Bermuda Fucking Triangle.

* * * *

The Italian backpacker and I were sitting upright, naked and cross-legged, in the middle of the bed.

As she flipped through old copies of Esquire, asking me questions about George Clooney's personal life, about my opinion of America's Oxycontin epidemic and the Iraq War, I studied the mechanical and architectural renderings of my library renovation project, scribbling notes about camera placement, smoke detectors, and anticipated shelving problems.

Despite the lust and raw passion, I still had meetings to attend and deadlines to meet that week. My ultimate employer, the Ohio Taxpayer, wouldn't accept well, gee, I was in the middle of a damned tryst as an excuse for further delays, and my immediate supervisors probably wouldn't, either.

I was trying to balance way too many things at one time, on very little sleep. I had no desire to quit my job or give up on playing that Ugly American fling. Every afternoon I brought my work home with me, had sex with a wonderful woman, studied blueprints, and then fell asleep in between Southern European flesh and rolls of cold, heartless paper. My work - play - work routine apparently annoyed my free-spirited house guest.

Rather than just say something, she stretched out across the blueprints, back arched and yawning, and sprawled her nude body across my paperwork like some spoiled house cat.

In six hours, I was to attend an important meeting, to use those same blueprints, to pitch a security plan, one to help insure that my institution's patrons and collections would have some level of systematic protection.

And there was a naked body crinkling the broadsheets, covering the new private research rooms with breasts, scrunching up the main corridors with elbows and ribs.

She was, in the end, just being a 19-year-old on holiday, in some strange guy's house in some strange country, looking for attention. And I was just being, well, a guy.

At first, I protested. And then she did that swirling finger thing on my cheek. I tried to resist, to be serious, to be professional and responsible...

Quite embarrassing. And even then, well, I was too old for that shit.

Oh, for fuck's sake.

Who am I kidding?

You know, I still don't care that there's some guy in Europe, some race car jockey, who may read this one day, put a "nice librarian I met in Ohio" story together with a relationship's ending a few months later, and want to blow my damned head off.

Hell, if he'd known how to read blueprints, had suffered through grad school, and had really neat old black-and-white movies in his villa, they may very well have stayed together...

* * * *

Yep.

I'm one of those guys.

And from what I've been told, only an idiot would ever expect me to grow out of it.

Any idiot, of course, includes myself.

- # # # -

OXFORD CONFIDENTIAL: Of Dogshit-Covered Money, Summers in College Towns, and the Nicer Side of Life in Oxford Fucking Ohio

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- I should know better than to fall for the ol' dollar - glued - to - the sidewalk trick.

Yet I still squatted to pick up the extra bit for laundry money. With more than $300 in insurance copays spread amongst three different doctors (still no answers, other than just finish the meds prescribed for the swollen nut, stay off my feet as much as possible, apply ice for the swelling ... and wait - probably injury-related), money's a bit tight this month.

I stopped just short of falling for it. I noticed the brown/black smear around the bill, the smell of fresh, mashed dogshit filling the night air.

Creative.

We used to use already-been-chewed Big League Chew, especially on hot days, back in Virginia. Adhered to the paper better, plus it proved much more entertaining to watch some random stranger struggle with sticky mess afterwards.

I glanced up and down High Street. I hadn't even noticed the group of smirking middle-schoolers camped out on the picnic table ten feet away. One lanky kid, greasy blond hair covering a acne-filled face, whispered to one of the giggling girls in the group, sure I'd be a sucker.

I waved at the kids and smiled. One of the girls waved back, before one of their party sucker-punched her in the kidneys.

The greasy kid looked pissed, his attempt to relieve his peers' boredom and to earn coolness points with the pubescent ladies foiled for the night.

In return for his gift of rolling eyes and mouthed "pick it up, fucker!," I gave him the finger.

God, I love summer in a college town.

* * * *

I took a moment to appreciate the emerging summer nightlife, here in Oxford Fucking Ohio.

The vast majority of undergrads, who normally would be littering the sidewalks with vomit, their drunken bodies and foul behaviors ruining family outings past sundown, are gone home to the gated communities that spawned them.

It has been more than a week since I saw my last Hummer, since I last overheard my last Daddy just has to pay for me to go to Italy... or I was so fucking wasted I think I fucked that chick from my Accounting class... conversation.

Instead, at nine o'clock on a Saturday night, the streets are now full of parents pushing strollers home from Uptown dinners at restaurants. Parents are playing catch with their children in the parks beneath the city's streetlights. The locally-produced college students are home for the summer, sitting outside of bars, smoking cigarettes and swapping war stories from places like Columbus, Muncie, Athens, Ohio, Lexington, Kentucky, and Bloomington.

And, of course, there are the teenagers, making out behind the burnt-out shell of the former Wendy's, skateboarding down sidewalks and grinding down curbs, and making the town theirs again. Teen-aged girls fill one street corner in their respective cliques; the boys conglomerate across the street.

Several alumni, frustrated by what they see as the decline of the Local U.'s positive contributions to Oxford's culture, have told me that this is how Oxford was once, year-round, with student behavior held in check by the presence of the "townies."

Townies notice it, too, often citing the almost murderous hatred many full-time residents now feel towards the stereotypical Local U. undergrads as an example. As one long-time Oxford resident puts it, Local U. students, for him, are nothing more than "the occasional piece of dumb rich girl ass ... cockroaches with Mommy and Daddy's money who pay my fucking bills."

Trust me. If you're single, make less than $50,000 a year, and over 22 in this town, you've had similar thoughts. And if you say you haven't, well, you're a better liar than I am.

During the Academic Year, at night, one would think that Oxford's entire population is made up of nothing more than drunken privileged 18-22 year-olds, overworked police officers, and under-tipped bar staff. But during the summer, Oxford Fucking Ohio becomes, for all intents and purposes, a real college town.

* * * *

It feels real, honest, almost cliche - the All-American campus village that surrounds the ol' Public Ivy, the place American poet Robert Frost, according to rumor, once called one of the most beautiful communities he'd ever visited.

According to some versions of the legend, the poet was only talking about the Local U. campus. But according to at at least some of the older Oxford townies, there's always been speculation that Frost was actually talking about the perfect blend between campus and community that once existed.

Yes, THE Robert Frost, the Road Not Taken guy.

I sometimes wonder what ol' Bobby would say now, in 2007, if he walked around town during the school year.

What would Frost say, for instance, if he spent an evening sometime between August and April, tripping over Natty Light cans and listening to sophomore girls debate the merits of Botox? What would his reaction be, say, if he spent a night in an overcrowded bar, listening to the spawn of the Wealthiest One-Percent - the popular campaign target of just about every election - bemoaning the fact that, yes, they do have to leave a tip and, no, those dirty "townies" just won't move somewhere else?

What would Frost say about the faculty, had he seen some of the things I've seen in the past three years? I once watched a group of professors at a restaurant as they trashed a union groundskeeper, someone that I work with on a regular basis, for being a "lazy redneck." A group of regional campus students at another table, one of whom was the daughter of said redneck, got up and left.

I've always figured he'd probably say what many visiting artists say upon seeing the zoo that is the local Higher Education Underground:

"Hey, as long as you're paying me and I can get outta this dump quickly, I'll entertain your sorry ass..."

But if he showed up during the summer, well, his opinion of the Local U. and surrounding community probably wouldn't change one bit.

* * * *

As I walked home for lunch Tuesday, enjoying the ability to walk without groin pain on a balmy May afternoon, I overheard a fascinating conversation between a pair of summer session undergraduates in front of me.

"I wish I could just take classes during the summer. Everything's so chill and there's nobody here."

"Oh yeah. I even like the summer professors better. And you graduate so much quicker."

See.

I'm not the only one who notices it.

- # # # -

OXFORD CONFIDENTIAL: ...And then One Sunny Day in the Park, I Dreamt of Ex-Cons, Cheap Beer, and Life's Hard Lessons

"I wear my trousers rolled. Karma is a word. There goes Madrid."

- William S. Burroughs,
The Retreat Diaries, 1976.

"Me carrying a briefcase is like a hot dog wearing earrings."

- George "Sparky" Anderson,
legendary baseball manager, date unknown.

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- She just stood there, staring.

Do you like Fox and the Hound 2? I like it.

I thought she was talking to someone else, so I ignored the disruption.

And then I felt a tiny, sandaled foot kick my shoulder. There would be no ignoring this little girl of maybe six or seven years old.

Hey mister, do you like Fox and the Hound 2? I watched it. My mom said I can watch it after church tomorrow. Do you like it?

I'd just finished lunch. I was sprawled out in the middle of Oxford's Martin Luther King Park, soaking up the April sun like some rodent-stuffed copperhead along a North Carolina highway, reading through the first few chapters of Edward Bunker's The Animal Factory.

Why, I've never seen it, chica. Saw the first one when I was your age, though.

You'd like it.

I probably would.

Whatcha reading?

A book.

Does it have horses in it? I like horses. Princesses? Whatcha reading? Is it good?

I looked up at the child. She stood there, tugging at her dress, waiting for an answer.

* * * *

The book had been recommended to me years ago, by the father of one of the kids I used to mentor back in California.

"Jack" was an ex-con who'd done hard time in places like San Quentin and Soledad. Hardened by more than three decades of life in and out of correctional facilities, Jack lived the life of a retired biker outlaw and every inch of his burly frame showed it.

"Jack's" body was covered with the indigo-and-black artwork of his criminal past. Iron crosses and skeletons were intermingled amongst the names of his former biker buddies and ex-girlfriends, the names of dead Chicanos and other murdered friends. He had an image of the mother of his youngest children tattooed across his chest - a large-breasted, devil-horned caricature of the only "Old Lady" he claimed to have ever loved.

He had his share of unintentional scars, too. Ones earned in prison yard wars and in countless bar fights. He lost his hearing to a gunshot, almost lost a lung to a knife fight.

"Jack" was, and still is, one of the most interesting ex-cons I've ever met. And I've met a lot of ex-cons.

Hell, I've even dated a few female ones, myself.

* * * *

I remember sitting in his half-rotten trailer, at the end of a Central Coast box canyon in the middle of fucking nowhere, drinking way too much warm beer and discussing his youngest son's potential.

Every once and a while, the fifty-ish ex-con's 19-year-old girlfriend, some runaway from some affluent Sacramento neighborhood, would walk into the room, topless, and sit on "Jack's" lap. She'd play with his beard and he'd play with her nipple rings. "Jack," however, remained completely focused on the conversation at hand.

Me? In all honesty, I was fascinated by the fact that this old man, built like a tanned Okie Buddha, teeth missing and scarred, had no problem whatsoever with his rather large-breasted girlfriend dancing around the house topless, with a stranger present.

I was pressing for him to talk his son into entering an alternative high school program, to get an education beyond tenth grade. "Joe" was bright, an avid reader of books, a kid who read the newspaper daily. He wrote beautiful poetry on just about anything that would hold ink.

But I'd hit a dead end. The kid had caught a case for shoplifting, made bail, and then disappeared. "Joe" was facing the possibility of returning to California's notorious juvenile corrections system for a fourth time. He'd quit writing because of his girlfriend, a meth addict. He'd quit reading, even quit joining me for weekly games of chess.

Jack was my last hope.

* * * *

"Joe" was running with a few of his former gang colleagues again, too.

Earlier, one of those gang members had tried to jump me as I left a bar one night. Thinking himself some pubescent assassin, the kid had followed me down a dark side street. He made the mistake of trying to rush me from behind - Helen Keller would've heard the sound of his baggy jeans flopping in the breeze.

That kid ended up with my boot dug into the back of his skull and with a "gat" (an empty beer bottle, improvised) pushed against his spine. The poor bastard wept into the asphalt, caught off-guard by the fact that, well, I wasn't the schoolboy nerd motherfucker he'd thought, that I wasn't going to tolerate a 16-year-old waving a knife at me in the parking lot of my own radio station.

When I smelled shit, indicating that I'd, well, made my point, I let the kid go. Didn't bother calling the cops.

The motivation behind the attempted assault?

Well, some folks just don't like people who try to keep good kids - kids who didn't catch the same breaks they did when they were little hoodlums - from becoming just another statistic in some state agency database.

* * * *

So I tracked down "Jack." "Joe" loved his father more than anything, more than life itself. And, from what I knew, he was the only person Joe looked up to, not only as a father, but as a bona fide badass - he had more than just the mere influence of a parent.

After "Joe's" mother died, the System, in its infinitely fucked-up bureaucratic wisdom, made "Jack's" children wards of the state. He wasn't in any position, as an ex-con on Disability and welfare, to raise his own children, according to that System.

Jack readily admitted that he couldn't raise them and, well, the life of a biker ain't pretty. But he did love his children - loved them more than life itself. He'd do whatever it took to insure that they lived a better life than he had.

Jack's influence over Joe's life was tremendous. He wrote numerous poems about the times his mom would drive him up to prison to visit "Pops," about watching his dad hunt for work after getting paroled, about seeing his dad cry when the social worker shipped the kids off to foster care and group homes, tearing a family apart for "their own good."

"Jack" and I sat in the kitchenette of his mobile home, talking for hours about everything under the sun. He was a good-natured man, highly intelligent, just like his son. And he himself had once thought about becoming a poet and, off and on, had even tried his hand at writing country music akin to that of his hero, Merle Haggard.

At one point, as we nursed our sixer of cheap beer, Jack decided he wanted to show me his most prized possession. He walked me out to a small shed behind the trailer.

The shed was padlocked, to keep his "outlaw buddies" from vandalizing his treasures during their occasional visits and subsequent drinking binges. Inside, rows of books lined the walls of "Jack's" own personal, makeshift library. A comfortable, half-busted couch and an old wire spool were the only other treasures "Jack" kept locked up in his vault.

While in prison, the ex-con explained, he'd learned to appreciate a good book. They kept him out of trouble, just like the pictures his kids drew for him helped him stay sane while in prison.

On the ceiling, stapled to the particle board, were all of his children's crayon drawings, the letters sent to him by relatives, and a picture of actor Danny Trejo.

Jack claimed to have met Trejo while the two of them were incarcerated together. The legendary Mexican-American thespian was another one of Jack's heroes, his muse for living a fairly straight edge life.

Trejo, a man who I've also met briefly, happens to be one of my favorite character actors.

Jack had built his library as a result of his having done so much hard time over the course of his adult life. Each time he'd complete a sentence or get early release, he'd leave with dozens of books. And each time, he'd return home, shove them under the bed, and forget about them. He'd screw up again, end up back doing more time. And then he'd remember his favorite reads and restart the twisted cycle, collecting whatever books he could find.

The last time Jack finished a sentence, he came home and didn't shove the books under the bed. Instead, he turned an old tool shed into his own personal monument to lifelong learning.

He'd hoped to leave the books to his children one day. Jack built his "library" as a way to encourage them to read, as a way to encourage himself to read, to make time for something so basic as the freedom to learn independently in a world without razor wire and armed guards.

* * * *

All of his children were avid readers, a thousand times more literate than I'll ever be. But "Joe" was Jack's pride and joy, his gifted one.

I could tell from his face, as I explained his son's return to the bad side of life, that each word out of my mouth caused him great pain.

There was, sadly, nothing Jack could do to help his own son. The two of them had gotten into a fistfight the last time they'd seen each other. Jack, drug-free for more than a decade, wouldn't let Joe's girlfriend smoke pot in the house nor let them fuck like rabbits in the guest room. Joe, who I learned was also using again, apparently swung first, only to have his father knock him out cold.

Jack told me, as we sat on his couch, not to worry about any further risk of gang retaliation. He gave me the number of some guy named Reggie, some really bad motherfucker I was supposed to call should I ever have another encounter. Fortunately, I never had a reason to call that number.

He also advised me to give up on his son. I'd done my best, he told me, but some kids just need to learn for themselves. Maybe going to jail, maybe doing some hard time of his own, would help him. One could only do so much.

We sat on that busted old couch for another couple of hours, talking. His girlfriend, still topless, kept bringing us more beer and, for some reason, giggling at the sight of two men getting drunk in a shed/library, discussing Walt Whitman, Alex Haley, and Sophocles' motherfuckin' Oedipus plays.

Fun night.

* * * *

So I gave up, walked away from a kid I'd spent so much time and energy trying to help.

I never saw "Joe" or "Jack" ever again.

But, according to rumor, "Joe" ended up going back into the juvenile system, ended up continuing his criminal career as an adult, working his way through the dozen or so correctional facilities that his father had done time in before him.

I sometimes wonder if Jack, the Prodigal Father, ever sends his son any good books to read.

* * * *

For some reason, I remembered "Jack's" book recommendation last week. Just popped into my head during a meeting at work, pulled from the asscrack of my memory like a cheap pair of underwear.

So I walked to work Saturday morning, located a copy of The Animal Factory in my library's collections, and set about finding a nice, quiet place to begin reading. I grabbed a bite to eat and headed to the nearest park.

Reading the first few chapters, I realized instantly why "Jack" had recommended it. Not only does Bunker do an amazing job of painting a vivid portrait of life in a hardcore California prison; he also uses fictionalized narrative to paint a portrait of life in the Q.

I guess having a former San Quentin inmate recommend a book by another former Q. inmate isn't necessarily a bad thing, really.

I can't help but wonder if "Jack's" son had read the book, if he would even be allowed to read such a book, while doing time...

* * * *

The little girl waited for my answers to her questions.

I didn't really have any to give. I stumbled over my words, not wanting to be accused of exposing some stranger's kid to vile sorts of things.

If I told her the title of the book, she'd have no frame of reference - that would lead to a child's questions about the subject matter, the reason I was reading such a book, and the like. She'd think of farm animals, of cute little piggies and books like Charlotte's Web.

And I don't do cop-out answers, either, those "you're too young to understand" kinds of answers to children's questions.

Once, a friend's teenage daughter asked me about why he and his girlfriend, one of her teachers, locked the door to the bedroom at night. Without thinking, I blurted out a rather haphazard explanation of the Art of Fucking Your Girlfriend - when you have a boisterous little girl who has no problem walking into, say, a bedroom without knocking.

The friend understood, even thought it was funny, especially given the fact that his daughter doesn't let him use the word "fuck" in the house. His girlfriend, however, was not amused.

No need for a repeat performance of that, especially here in Busted Ass Buckle of the Bible Belt, Ohio.

No matter how I dodged the question, the young child in the park asked more questions - harder questions. Like an angel of mercy, the girl's mother came for the child.

She apologized, said she hoped her daughter hadn't been too much of a pain in my You-Know-What. As the woman walked away with her daughter, I pondered the innocence behind the use of the phrase You-Know-What in polite conversation.

I wondered how an Ohio child would interpret my reading a book about life in one of the world's most violent prisons, how someone who knew a world where parents took them to church and let them watch movies like The Fox and the Hound 2 would comprehend such an act of literacy, right here in Oxford Fucking Ohio.

It's almost obscenity.

Hopefully, the girl will never have such a desire to read such a book for such a personal reason. The world needs more inquisitive children wandering through parks and asking questions, children who grow up innocent and intelligent, and fewer children who grow up to be hardened criminals.

It seems so simple, doesn't it?

- # # # -