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.

ON THE ROAD 2008: Welcome Back to Caliporn...Er...California! May I Crush You with my Boobs?

PASO ROBLES, Calif. (ZP) -- I didn't think anything of it at first.

A group of very drunk women in the midst of a pub crawl, eight in all, with one hollering something about knowing me from somewhere, staggered past me as I pulled cash from an ATM.

These things happen. Particularly when there's drunk women involved.

I look like a lot of people. Sometimes famous, sometimes high school boyfriends, and once - from the mouth of an ex - I was told that I resembled a favorite coach at a Catholic school at the worst possible time a woman could bring such a thing up.

Rarely does anybody ever tell me that I look like, well, me.

I laughed as the women passed. One woman - the one who claimed to her friends that she knew me - reached out and grabbed my shoulder.

"YOU! I knew it!" the strange creepy gal yelled. "Oh Gosh... did you used to date _____?"

Her English was accented, northern European. An appropriate voice, too, given the fact the woman slurring into my face looked like Thor and Barbie's lovechild - luscious blond hair, full red lips, fair and spotless complexion, and enough surgically enhanced boobage to keep custom bra manufacturers in business for years to come.

Funny thing. Though a few years older, she looked familiar to me, too. I must've stared for a good twenty seconds, without blinking and head cocked to the side, like some Cocker Spaniel watching its master shit for the first time.

And, well, I did once date somebody with the name she'd given me...

* * * *

Wait! I think I know this drunk chick! my neurons screamed. Hmmm... ____'s friend? Name?

Think! DAMMIT!

Okay... breathe... I'm thinking Vegas... 2005... The Venetian's pool ... Don Julio shots... jumping jacks...

Yeah, now that was a fun morning swim.

...Got IT!

* * * *

I shoved my forty bucks in my pocket and smiled back. I had a name, dammit. Even if, well, I couldn't figure out why a SoCal-based actress just happened to be in Paso Fucking Robles, California, two days into the New Year.

"Well, look at this shit! _____ ______, in the motherfucking flesh! How are the fuck are ya, honey?"

The tall blonde not-so-stranger shimmied towards me, skirt riding up her thighs, an army of latex marching across battlefields of porcelain leg. A quick hug and a peck on the cheek, artificial double-Ds crushing my ribcage, holiday greetings exchanged with all the honesty and sincerity of a faked orgasm on a junior high prom night.

Seriously.

Few things outside of organized religion are as plastic and ritualistic as the Los Angeles Hug-Kiss-Kiss.

* * * *

"Wow! I almost didn't recognize you! Cheri, hey, this guy used to date ______. And he lives in Cleveland..."

"Um, well, Cleveland's on the far side of the Ohi-"

"Oh gosh, you just look AMAZING! How ARE YOU? I heard you were, like, dead or something."

"Gee, thanks, chica. Looking pretty hot yourself. So you're still in the adult busin-"

"Oh my God! You remember? Wow! Gosh, like, you probably don't know this but..."

She went on for twenty minutes without pausing for a breath, oblivious to the fact that we only hung out one night, years ago, in Las Vegas. I now know more about her career, sex life, her dogs and cats, and her ex-boyfriend's little premature ejaculation/fidelity problem than I ever wanted to know, really.

In the one place in the world I generally expect to NOT run into THAT ex's friends...

Wow, I thought as she pecked my other cheek, The Central Coast really is looking a lot more like the San Fernando Valley every fucking year.

* * * *

I'd been on my way out for the night; the group of women were done for the night, headed back to their hotel. And they were all pretty much too drunk, by their own admission, to head back out to the few bars Paso Robles has to offer.

Thank God. No offense, ladies.

Last time I hung out with Ms. Double-D, I woke up in bed next to four women, complete with a Nordic-pale leg wrapped around my neck, somebody's ass beneath my head, and the then-girlfriend's passing out with her twat in my slumbering face.

Long night. And equally long story. These things happen. Especially when there's drunk women involved.

But, well, there's a reason I have no desire to ever return to Las Vegas.

- # # # -

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Me.

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

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

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

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

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

It's a hard life, really.

* * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

...since we, ya know...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There's something dangerous in such thoughts.

* * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- # # # -

SEX, LIES, & MISTAKEN TATTOOS: Waking Up (Next to the Wrong Person) is So Hard to Do...

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- So... ahem.

Where do I even begin?

When I fuck up, I fuck up.

* * * *

Last Saturday, I awoke to my first weekend sunrise back in Oxford Fucking Ohio.

Fresh from vacation, rested, feeling like my old, youthful self - cockhard reckless, in fact - the way I used to feel before the librarian days.

The first thing I noticed, opening my eyes, was the four-alarm hangover. And then came the fuzzy memory, the conscious awareness of cottonmouth and the lingering taste of jello shots 'til Last Call.

It's been a while since I just let loose on the ol' college town, in any one-horse town for that matter, east of the Mississippi. Out west, despite ending a relationship, I realized that, well, I'm still under 30, still in my prime, and, well, I really need to just let work stay at work, chill out a bit.

Almost all of my furniture shipped off to the new apartment, everything save for the bed and a lamp and a desk, the lack of any kind of window covering lit up my bedroom like a thousand fireworks. The room glowed yellow and hot, the sounds of High Street traffic and bustling car show attendees echoing off the bare walls and the freshly puttied nail holes.

Despite the slight headache, there seemed to be no harm done. The world had still spun on its axis, the sun still ready and willing to bitchslap the drunkenness right out of me.

And then I stretched.

As soon as I felt the naked body in bed next to me, I knew I'd done something very, very stupid.

A quick lift of a sheet, a hand slid carefully along the mattress, confirmed the sex part.

That, and the three polyurethane condoms hanging off the lamp.

* * * *

A quick pick of the alcohol-impaired brain revealed that there were four possible suspects.

No. 1 , a woman I'd been sorta seeing before I'd gotten ill, a woman who'd just broken up with the guy she'd been seeing after I went AWOL. I remembered that I'd spent four or five hours hanging out with her, taking shots, and chatting it up.

But she probably knows better. And, nope, no latex allergy.

Suspect No. 2, a waitress from a restaurant I frequent for lunch. I'd run into her on my way to a bar, gave her my number. Once, she and I almost had an oops experience, the time I gave her a ride back to her apartment and we sorta started slow dancing. Every time she went through a nasty break-up, she turned extra flirty, laid it on so thick that Ray Charles could spot her interest from outer space.

Checked the cell phone. No random text messages, no Dayton area code in the recent calls list. So... No. 2 became a long shot.

No. 3? A recent high school graduate who, while taking a smoke break from the non-smoking pubs, gave me a hug, one of those drunken gropes that many younger women think conveys some sort of sexuality. I used to tutor her best friend, and she, like so many 18-year-olds right before college, was both heavily intoxicated and overly flirtatious.

Hell, there's not enough booze in the world for me to accidentally go home with someone that young and inexperienced. I may be a bastard, at times, but I'm not a total fucking bastard. Seriously. I'm too old to fake an orgasm while worrying about permanently scarring some fragile, naive ego.

The fourth candidate, a dead-ringer for Suspect No. 1, physically, was a stretch. I almost laughed out loud for even considering it. At some point, well past legal and physical sobriety limits, I thought I'd run into a sorta ex of mine from nearby Hamilton, a woman with a kid, an ex-con boyfriend, and more than a few problems with Adderall and... er ... sanity.

"Pfft. Nah. I'm not that stupid."

My imagination had gone apeshit, too, because I remembered talking to her, outside of my apartment, inviting her in to keep her histrionics out of plain view of the old neighbors and...

"Tequila's playing tricks on ya, Dude. "Chase" lives in Kentucky. It's been more than a year.

"And she's, like, married now."

I finally gave up on the guessing game, rolled over, gingerly, to try to find some answers. I carefully lifted the arm draped across me, untangled my legs from hers, eased my thigh from beneath her hips.

* * * *

Mystery Woman had scored both pillows, thus explaining at least the physical pain in my neck. Her face was partially wedged between the two, raven hair obscuring the remainder of her exposed face.

The list of suspects was, however, cut in half.

No teenagers and no waitress. A wonderful relief.

Gingerly, I parted the hair on the woman's face, hoping that I'd find some unknown variable, some fifth candidate.

Nope.

I checked for ink. Both remaining suspects sport visible tattoos of the same type of reptile, but only one has matching artwork, by the same skin artist, on her lower back.

"Oh fuck. I know that tramp stamp."

With one peak beneath the sheets, my heart collapsed, an emotional aneurysm tearing through my gut, drunken one-night shame making the whole thing a ménage à trois.

"Aw, goddammit."

Nothing screams a Grade-A Fuck-Up quite like waking up next to a psychotic (meds and all) woman, almost two years between conversations, recently married to the ex-con father of her child.

The only relief?

As I slowly pieced together the remnants of the previous night, I remembered a conversation about their open marriage, the fact that their relationship was Jerry Springer perfect in its layers of all sorts of deviancy.

At least I won't have to worry about going toe-to-toe with a guy with five years of prison under his belt.

* * * *

I knew returning to Ohio would be difficult. I knew I'd be depressed for a week or so, bummed out by the fact that my family's on the other side of the country, the whole "Tonya" thing ending, even the lack of, well, diversified scenery.

I even knew getting back into the grind at work would help feed into my self-wallowing, the lingering demons that haunt the back of my brain, voices that whisper sweet nothings about my need to, possibly, get the fuck out of Oxford Fucking Ohio.

I knew I'd, sure, go on a bender, drink a bit more than usual, enjoy the last vestiges of undergrad-free summer in this college town. I figured I'd slip up, maybe end up accidentally going home with a female friend one night, figured the sense of loneliness and isolation would drive me, momentarily, into the arms of some local 20-something, home for the summer, or some grad student, or possibly even some female faculty member.

But I never, ever thought I'd fuck up like this.

I haven't done something this damned stupid in at least 10 years, since I proposed to my ex-fiancee, the cokehead stripper, while on a bender in 1997.

As soon as I realized who I was sleeping beside me, I quietly slipped out of my own bed, tip-toed across my near-empty bedroom, and puked into a landlord-ready sink.

And jello shots ain't pretty at nine in the morning. There was some hint of Jager in there, too.

* * * *

Rather than link to the half-dozen or so posts I wrote in 2005 and 2006 about my experiences with one of Hamilton Fucking Ohio's Finest, I figure I'll just sum my previous experiences with "Chase" in a few lines:

I hung out with Chase's brother a while back, my last attempt to regain my punker chops, to form a hardcore band. I liked Chase. Chase liked me.

Chase neglected to tell me, well, that she sorta had a kid and the baby's daddy (her new groom) was in jail. She also sorta, kinda forgot to tell me that her Suicide Girl thing wasn't an act (she's on five doctor-prescribed medications) or that she had just a tiny substance abuse problem (Speed and Pot. Great combo.)

Boy tries breaking it off gently. Boy gets blamed for girl's problems by mutual friends. Boy remembers why he quit playing in hardcore bands. Girl then, well, quasi-stalks boy, because boy used to date adult video performer and girl wants to jump her. Boy dodges girl for more than a year, even quits shopping in Hamilton when girl follows boy into store, forgetting her toddler in her car in the middle of summer...

Dear Lord.

Honestly, I don't know what else to write. I could go on, but I'd probably just have to puke again...

* * * *

After vomiting, I cooked up my first post-hookup escape in almost a decade, an escape from my own apartment, the librarian on the run from the psychotic aspiring writer/part-time college student/full-time stripper from Kentucky.

My plan was simple. Keep on moving out of the old apartment, and pray that she'd leave before while I was over at the new place unpacking. Simple, clean, efficient.

I don't think I've loaded so many boxes of clothes, dishes, toiletries, or anything else, so quickly and quietly in my entire life. Almost every remaining box in my old apartment's living room was out the door and into the back of the truck in under an hour.

I left a note on the bed, right next to her, explaining that I had to be out of my apartment by the end of the day (a lie), would be back late that night, (a bold-faced lie) and that I enjoyed seeing her again (holy hell, I used to be so good at this when I was 19.)

Unloaded the boxes slowly, went for coffee, even checked out every vegetable stand alongside every road in Oxford.

Two hours. In two hours' time, she should've been gone, out the door, back towards the ex-con hubby and the Kentucky border.

* * * *

I waited an extra hour.

As opened the door to my apartment, I caught the silhouette of a woman, pulling on her tight skinny jeans.

Aw, Goddammit.

"Chase" had waited. She wanted to talk.

She wanted me to know that the night before had been a huge mistake.

That was true.

She also claimed that, somehow, my lifeforce had drawn her up to a friend's bachelorette party, that I seduced her at the Circle K with black magic, and that I'd taken advantage of her accidental Xanax overdose, told her how much like Winona Ryder she looked to get in her pants, and that I'd somehow used tarot cards to bewitch her.

Aside from the fact that, well, she's addicted to Xanax and does, indeed, look exactly like Beetle Juice era Winona, the rest is completely batshit.

She even pointed out how disgusted she was with herself, not for going home with an almost-blacked-out drunk dude who'd once threatened her with a restraining order, but for having sex with a guy who has also slept with fuckin' Mexicans and black bitches.

Let me say, for the record, that I plan on shooting myself in the face if I ever get so drunk, so stupid, as to go home with a psychotic White Supremacist Wiccan Winona Clone ever again.

Ironically, the numerous jello shots that led to such a revelation were made by a Mexican-American bartender buddy of mine.

* * * *

Despite my supposed unwanted seduction, my alluring chi or whatever else she could could pin on me, "Chase" wanted to go to breakfast. More accurately, she wanted me to take her to breakfast, to pick up the tab, payment for my sins.

And we talked about all sorts of things, important things, like the latest issue of Cosmo and her breast implants, how her husband was almost off the probationary phase of his sentence, how her mother was nailed for dealing meth, how she didn't regret having sex with me because I've had sex with famous people before and...

Did I mention that I plan to go all Ernest Hemingway, plan to suck on buckshot, should I ever, ever do something this stupid again???

... And she even mentioned that we wouldn't be able to hang out anymore once she moved to Nevada to become a famous showgirl.

As "Chase" chattered away on the benches outside Bagel and Deli, knee tucked under her chin, staring off into space, I only paid attention to one phrase.

Moving to Nevada.

Thank you, all that is Holy in the Goddamn Universe.

- # # # -

NOTE - For some reason, I missed an edit earlier. "Chase" is moving to Nevada, not Florida. Male library colleagues in the Sunshine State can breathe easy. Clark County? Sorry. You're fucked.

SHORT TAKES AND SUCH: On Being Mean and Green, Dinners with Cougars, and Other Pointless Things

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- Saving the planet isn't rocket science.

It's not something that other people need to do, not something any activist is going to accomplish with anything even remotely resembling a protest. Activism requires action, actual measurable movement.

Quite a few folks understand that concept. Every day, more and more Americans - the single group that wastes more of the world's resources than it actually produces - are switching to alternative energy sources to heat their homes, to run their vehicles, and to, well, try to save the world.

So why aren't more people, well, taking the next step, simply changing how they actually live on a day-to-day basis? Really changing how they live, redefining their levels of comfort and lifestyle?

It's called Global Climate Change, people. And if we all don't really change how we live, we're all gonna be in some seriously deep shit. It's time to just, well, cowboy the fuck up.

Last year, I decided to quit being one of those stereotypical, organic-food eating, tofu loving hypocrites and to turn myself into a bit of an environmental science project.

And the result? After one whole year?

According to my calculations, I cut my annual energy costs by almost 70 percent.

That's right. Seventy fucking percent.

And it wasn't rocket science. It wasn't even information science. Sadly, no hippies were killed in the process.

I gave up a three-bedroom, two-bath townhouse and moved into a more bachelor-friendly loft apartment near work. I sacrificed the peace and tranquility offered by a more family-friendly neighborhood to live in the belly of the Local U. Beast.

And I intentionally moved into a place with no central air. The cost of running five old-fashioned box fans, year-round, has proven to be the equivalent of running the AC in my old place for two weeks.

During the winter, my new apartment is heated by a communal radiated steam system, fed by a primary boiler that also heats the building's water supply - still one of the most efficient means of warming a home. The result? My winter heating expenses were cut in half.

I leave my truck parked at work, only operating the rather fuel-efficient Ford Ranger approx. three to four times a week, an average of about 50 miles monthly usage. I hump 12 blocks a day to work, round trip, at my normal brisk pace, rain or shine.

And back in 1999, during California's rolling blackouts, my immediate family started to adopt compact fluorescent bulbs to help conserve energy. I completed the switch first. I light my entire apartment with the roughly the same amount of juice used by one 100-watt incandescent bulb.

Hmmm.

I wonder how I managed to put a dent into my student debt last year? Or how I was able to up my charitable donations?

I mean, where did that extra money come from? It's not like I'm rolling in the dough here...

Could it be... ?

Pfft. Nah. It couldn't be that simple.

Saving the environment couldn't really be tied to saving money, could it?

- MORE -

CINCINNATI (ZP) -- I sat in the hotel lobby, staring like an idiot, just like every other guy with a pulse, as a lone woman crossed the floor towards me.

Her cowboy boots clicked against the tile as she walked. Her jeans were just about as tight as humanly possible, every inch of Texas Chicana protruding from beneath the dark denim, in all the right places.

I almost laughed out loud as two guys admired her ass, staring at the damned-near-perfect thing with glares that could cut through steel.

Well, there are worse women to spend an evening with, I guess.

Her death-black hair hung over her shoulders and down over her breasts, her western blouse unbuttoned below her bra line, well outside the bounds of what's considered proper Sunday dress in the Queen City.

I stood so she'd recognize me. The last time she'd seen me in person, I was sporting a shaved head, a long goatee, and nine earrings, not to mention the additional 75 pounds of flesh. I'd sent her a photo to help her pick me out, but, well, part of the reason she wanted to have dinner in the first place was she was worried I wasn't eating right, like a man, and that she was afraid that I'd become unrecognizable.

Still babying me, treating me like a stupid 19-year-old. But as we embraced, I could've cared less; I put my hands on her hips, kissed her right on the mouth, suggested we just go right back up to her room and make love like animals.

She giggled like a high school kid, winked, and slapped me (gently) for still being so fresh, so downright wetto vulgar in public. She reminded me that if her husband had been there, he would've beaten me to a pulp for even touching her hips.

Ten years, I said to myself. In ten fucking years, I've aged more than she has.

One of the most sensual women in the world got off a 757 at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky airport last week, instantly improving the scenery for at least a thousand miles.

Texican women from the Rio Grande Badlands tend to do that.

You are simply ravishing, lady. Muy, muy, caliente. I just couldn't control myself.

You know, I still can't think of a better compliment to give a 64-year-old grandmother of five, a woman for whom the biological clock seems to have stopped somewhere in the 1970s.

And my advances? Dear lord, I was only half-joking. They just don't build women like that east of the Mississippi or north of Tennessee. Here in Ohio, I think women like her are actually banned by some ancient and antiquated state law.

In the sea of Germanic-looking sameness, her flawless, ageless Mestizo features simply fractured reality in that pricey hotel lobby. It reminded me of a theory of mine, that there are American women who secretly want to lock down the Mexican border not to save jobs but to keep women like her, women born somewhere between Texas and Chihuahua, from ever being allowed to become sex symbols.

M____, at one time, was a candidate to be my mother-in-law. Her daughter, an ex of mine, has the same blessed genetics, that damned curse of the women from northern Old Mexico. I call it a curse, of course, because to look that good from cradle to grave must hurt like hell.

Over dinner, in between her virtually demanding that I give up on this silly librarian foolishness and discussing my seemingly perpetual ability to make some women laugh, when she wasn't nagging me about my still being single (she tried to set me up with our waitress) or trying to get me to take her out dancing, I realized why I quit taking relationships seriously.

Holy hell, this woman has me pegged. She knows every damned stupid thing I'm doing with my life, every mistake I've made in ten years. And she's just so damned chill about it.

Fucking creepy. Like ... oh God ... like my mother.

At one point she asked me about this slang term she'd heard recently, somewhere along her multi-state business trip.

"Honey, I keep hearing people talk about these cougars running around, eating up men. You know slang - is this something new? J____ [the woman's 40ish second hubby] won't tell me, and the kids all think its just funny."

It was three in the afternoon.

I flagged down the waiter, ordered a second bottle of wine. M_____, still treating me like one of hers, didn't want me to pay for anything, so I slipped the woman a pair of 20s to bring the second bottle out as quickly as possible.

And a double of whatever Scotch she could find, no water or ice.

Something, anything, to kill the pain.

- MORE -

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- The words just came out. From where, I'm not sure, just random unsolicited commentary offered to a complete stranger on a balmy afternoon.

Yup. There's not much to do in this town besides drink and fuck. Only college town I've ever lived in where the two have become the only sports anybody seems to wanna play.

Standing on the concrete stairs outside of a watering hole, just smoking away in the heat, I felt as if my sense of basic decency had suddenly flown out of the window.

I don't know what inspired the phrasing. I wasn't trying to shock the woman I was talking to, wasn't even trying to suggest that there was anything wrong with that sort of thing.

The words just came out. And it caught the poor woman, who'd been scratching at her probation-mandated anklet contently, by complete surprise.

The sad part is the fact that there's too much truth in that statement about everyday life in Oxford Fucking Ohio, the unspoken horror that goes along with being lost between 20 and 30, without the excuse that you're just here to earn a damned degree, here instead to live like an adult and find adult things to do.

Drink and fuck. Go camping, read a book, attend a Bible Study, watch a movie, or... drink and fuck. That, well, just about sums up Oxford Fucking Ohio nightlife.

Could be worse. I've heard stories about places like Casper Fucking Wyoming, seen the reckless tedium that is Green River Fucking Utah. In places out west, like Green River, some towns have only a Watermelon Festival and a prayer to keep their single 20-somethings from screwing and boozing away a summer.

At least Keysville, Virginia, had its annual Dixie Days festival, and in Plaquemine, Lousiana, they hop the ferry to cross the Mississippi, bound for Baton Rouge or Gonzales or New Orleans, or stand out in front of the Dollar General and drink cheap wine.

Oxford? We get tons of artsy-fartsy shit, but nothing, nothing, that would appeal to anyone who thinks classical music boring or folk art shows repetitive. There's only so many times one can stare at the same faces at the farmer's market, or listen to jam bands in the city parks.

The blonde, instead of being shocked and dismayed by my vulgarity, simply shrugged.

Yup. This town sucks. Fucking, drinking... fuck it, dude. I'm getting the fuck outta here as soon as I can.

What the hell am I still doing here, anyway?

- # # # -

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.

- # # # -

HAUNTED THINGS AND EX-FLINGS: Of Scenester Exes, Interior Decorating, and Pissing in the Bathtub

NOTE -- This post may seem a bit out-of-sorts, but, heh, cut me some slack. I've got Mono. I'm kinda out-of-sorts, myself. And thanks, Steph, for calling me a hot librarian. Not feeling too hot, but, well, I'll be back, hotter than ever. Promise.

- JASON

"Here you are, with a handful of holes, a thumb up your ass, and a big grin to pass the time of day with. "

- SYKES, (EDMOND O'BRIEN)
From Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch [1969]

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- There's nothing in the world like someone calling simply to say hi. I rarely get phone calls like that.

No, I get the I just had a nightmare about Sharky phone calls from exes at 4:30 in the morning.

The ex in question, for some reason, remembered Sharky, remembered the story behind it. In her dream, Sharky had come alive, transmuted into some evil demon, had slit my throat as I slept.

Er. Yeah.

There's a reason I'm no longer involved with this woman.

Her unhealthy obsession with death and demons turned out to be a little bit more intense than her skull tats and love of Joy Division had led me to believe.

After reassuring her that everything was okay here in Oxford Fucking Ohio, she hung up without so much as a goodbye. It's been four years.

I don't know how she got my phone number. Hers, of course, is now blocked. C'est la vie.

There are exes I still think about, and there are exes I wish I could forget.

* * * *

Sharky (right) is an heirloom, a knife that has been in my family for generations.

According to legend, the bayonet blade was used in combat during the First World War. It came into my family's possession shortly after being removed from some Prussian soldier's corpse.

In the 1940s, relatives of mine, somewhere out in the Great Basin badlands, commissioned a Native American craftsman to fashion a new, ornate handle. Where once there was nothing but military-issue wood, the old American Indian created a new handle out of pieces of glass and scrap metal salvaged from the desert.

The name Sharky appeared on the leather sheath sometime long before I was born; it's been known by that name ever since.

* * * *

Every woman I've ever been involved with seems to believe that the damned thing is somehow cursed. The fact that the blade has been a constant on my nightstand since I was a teenager, an ever-present fixture in my bedroom, probably doesn't help things much.

Makes for a great conversation piece.

And it goes well with the ever-present copy of Whitman's Leaves of Grass.

* * * *

There are times I think some of my personal effects cause more relationship problems than I do.

There's at least three decks of tarot cards floating around my living room, in plain sight, at any given time. There's the pseudo-Voudun saint candles (right) near the front door, the gris-gris hanging from the wall, and an ornate Ethiopian crucifix above the bed.

I've got a Seventeenth Century soapstone pipe fragment in my change jar, for chrissakes.

You know... the one next to the cassette copy of Ice-T's Original Gangster, beside the uncut pieces of turquoise, on top of the copy of The Book of Abramelin...

What bachelor pad would be complete without a Fifteenth Century grimoire, a colonial-era souvenir from an archaeological dig in Virginia, or a copy of one of the greatest rap albums of all time?

And who needs those silly posters of Playboy Playmates, anyway? I learned a long time ago that live, three-dimensional women make better playmates. Posters don't talk, think, or taste good.

Yup. Just a normal, single guy. With normal, single guy stuff.

Right?

Right???

* * * *

There are women who find this sort of decorating eccentricity attractive, at least at first. And then they realize that, well, it's not an act. I'm really a strange dude.

I've been involved with women who, for some reason, felt the need, early on, to compare my lifestyle to that of guys like Hunter S. Thompson, even Jack friggin' Nicholson. Those are the nice comparisons.

In the end, illusions of who I am, their image of me, often fall well short of the reality. While I may fit a particular lifestyle, as an eccentric lover, women who are attracted to me simply because of that soon realize that, well, I'm just being myself. And that's a scary thing for lifestyle-conscious women.

I could give a flying fuck about what parents might think about a guitar amp three feet from the bed, how embarrassing it could be to some folks that I read comic books in the john. Yes, I recycle pickle jars into drinking glasses and, no, I don't care what so-and-so said about it in her magazine column.

And I really don't give a shit if the seat's up or down; if you're a woman and you're using my john, I'm stepping over you and pissing in my goddamned bathtub.

The only image I have has been created by others. And I don't play that game. Not my bag.

There's a reason I've sworn off Scenester Women. I just don't do trendy. I do not change with whatever scene may be popular, or counterculture, or indie. I just live my life how I want to live it. And I own some very weird things because, well, I just naturally a weird guy, from a long line of weird people.

If you want to date Dr. Gonzo, well, go ahead. Feel free to fuck his ashes.

* * * *

After the phone call, I couldn't sleep.

Pfft. Crazy goth chicks. Nowhere near as worthless as Emo Girls, but almost as creepy as Born-Again Virgins.

I reached over the nightstand, flipped on the lamp. There, beside the piles of books, sat ol' Sharky. I picked up the knife, withdrew the nightmare-inspiring blade from its sheath.

And I laughed.

Jesus Christ. It's just a knife.

I don't even believe the Dead Prussian story my great - grandmother used to tell. Makes for great pillow-talk, but Grammy also claimed The Rougarou would come get me if I were a bad little boy. I didn't believe that, either.

And who the hell calls an ex at 4:30 in the morning? After four fucking years? Last I heard, she was married with a kid, living out in Oregon...

Now that's fucking creepy.

I wonder how many other exes still have nightmares about this damned thing?

- # # # -

BLOGS DON'T BET ON PEOPLE & NEITHER DO I: Playing the Odds, Early Morning Phone Calls, and Other Lustful Things

MOOD MUSIC:

Halloween (Cousin Cole v. Flufftronix Remix 2007) [MP3]
- The Misfits
[Original Artist, 1981 Plan 9 Records]

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- It took me a few minutes to figure out who was on the other end of the phone call. Not many folks call me so early in the morning, not unless the caller just happens to know that I'm usually up by five Eastern.

The sound of the cell vibrating across the kitchen table scared the shit out of me. I was barely through my first cup of coffee, barely finished eating my first Lean Pocket.

Though I'm sure the caller knew I answered, the other end fell silent, a disconnect. I wrote it off as a dropped call or, probably, a wrong number. I looked at the caller ID - didn't even recognize the area code.

Two minutes later, the phone went off again, and this time I caught it on the first ring.

"This is Jason."

"Hey, Fucknut."

"Uh, hey yourself."

"It's just me. _______ gave me your new number."

* * * *

Given the fact that, well, I'd never expected to hear "Tonya's" voice ever again, I sank to the floor, cigarette and cup o' joe in hand. I don't know if I was excited or shocked or upset or merely caught up in some early morning daydream. The room was spinning.

The only thing I could muster after an awkward pause was an exaggerated Oh, hey chica!, as if I were talking to some colleague about space planning or some female friend locally about plans for the weekend.

Deep down, I guess I knew that the phone call wasn't exactly one of those simple, friendly calls.

* * * *

It was clear, within five minutes of talking, that "Tonya" was drunk as a skunk. She slurred her words and apologized numerous times for being a little wasted.

Upon realizing that she'd miscalculated the time difference, she abruptly hung up, called back, hung up again, and finally, after one more call, believed me when I told her that I was already awake and that I was, indeed, alone and woman-free.

She was calling from a motel room somewhere out in Vegas and had just gotten in from a night on the town. Two of her friends had talked her into finally using up her Frequent Flier Miles on a Girls' Only vacation- they were still out on the Strip, enjoying the trip. And drunk "Tonya" was alone in the hotel room, talking on the phone to yours truly.

Her husband had moved out of the house back in January. The divorce was to be finalized as soon as the attorneys negotiated a fair division of assets.

Tonya's daughter was staying with her brother and his wife. Apparently, the split had gotten so bad that the only thing she and her soon-to-be ex could agree on without attorneys present was the importance of keeping the kid out of it...

As Tonya explained her situation, I couldn't help but feel guilty. But I didn't feel guilty because of what happened back in December. I felt guilty because I didn't feel one ounce of sincere remorse.

I felt guilty because, well, when one plays a part in another's train wreck of a life, that's how one should feel.

But, at the end of the day, passion, to me, is passion. People lose control when sexual attraction is combined with the momentary alignment of body, soul, and a deep-rooted past - happens all the time.

Of course, being single, I have the luxury of believing such things.

* * * *

"Tonya" started to nod off midway through the conversation. She did explain that her guilt, too, was more akin to mine; she'd called not because she was looking for some scapegoat but because she just thought I'd like to know that it wasn't my fault, just in case I heard it from someone else.

We finished our conversation as the sun rose and my tiny apartment filled with gray light. She asked if she could ever call me again, if I hated her, and if I thought she was somehow an evil person for giving up on her "perfect" marriage in order to finally live life again.

I told her that she was always welcome to call.

But I couldn't answer her other questions. I just couldn't find the words. I wasn't sure if she was looking for affirmation, for strength, or for condemnation. So I chose the straight and narrow path instead.

"Fuck it, chica. What are ya gonna do?"

* * * *

That was four weeks ago.

Since that morning, I've talked to "Tonya" a few more times on the phone and a couple of times online. She even sent me a picture, courtesy of her nifty camera phone.

Honestly, in hindsight, it's not too difficult to figure out why I was so damned willing to simply ignore the fact that, well, she was married at the time of our romp in a cheap motel.

Looking at the pic, I can actually remember the taste of her skin, can smell what she calls her "Born on the Rez" scent floating through my apartment.

[NOTE - That's about the only hint towards "Tonya's" actual ethnicity that I'm going to post online. I guess I need to clarify that only about a third of the women I've posted about on this damn thing would fit the WASPish stereotype associated with this region. Many Ohio readers naturally assume I'm discussing affluent "white" women, based on Oxford Fucking Ohio being known, nationwide, as being one of the least diverse campus communities in the America. ]

Online, we spent more time swapping mp3s (we share a favorite Misfits song [Mp3] and she recently discovered that, yes, GWAR makes great Soccer Mom Repellent at the gym) and arguing about how much growing up sucks than discussing her divorce or my "settling" for being a "pussy-ass librarian" instead of going back into media and image consulting.

And, well, it's been a while since I've had a conversation with a woman who's just as comfortable using words like cunt, twat, and hella in casual conversation as she is discussing her militant political libertarianism or her newfound love for Glock collecting / shooting (her Glock 20 weighs almost as much as she does; she could probably get by with a much lighter G26 - a great lil sidearm).

Nothing in the world like a woman who rides a skateboard to work, packs heat, and who, like yours truly, loves munching on soy chips while watching the original Dawn of the Dead.

* * * *

Faced with that kind of attraction, well, hell...

Give a shit about the whole adultery thing? Please. If I'd known how truly fucked up her marriage was, well, I would've suggested that we videotape the whole thing and send it to Sally Suckyfucky and her soon-to-be ex.

If you're gonna sleep with someone's spouse, it better be a goddamned marathon, especially if you're friends with the spouse in question.

Dislocated shoulders. Destroyed hotel room. Bottle of peroxide to clean the fingernail and teeth marks. Hell, I had finger imprints on my lower back for two weeks, a bruised pelvic bone, and...

Not that I'm bragging or anything.

Err...yeah.

I'm bragging. Who am I kidding?

* * * *

The last phone conversation lasted close to five hours.

It really is amazing what two people can find to talk about when, thanks to unlimited mobile-to-mobile minutes, even the cost of a transcontinental phone call becomes a non-issue.

It's equally amazing what two people can manage to not talk about in five hours, too.

For weeks, we'd both been skirting certain issues, certain Where is this going? and What the hell are we doing? discussions.

We spent more time discussing her Warped Tour plans (her daughter earns the honor of being Most Badass Preschool Kid, since she's excited that her mother will, against Stepdad's wishes, take her to see her favorite band, Bad Religion, this summer) and my work problems than anything involving our continued interaction.

* * * *

I flinched first.

At one point, we were discussing her having to fire one of her store managers - this metrosexual kid who was spending more time trying to get women's phone numbers than actually doing his job.

It started as a joke. I suggested that she make me an offer - I'd love a chance to actually get back into the private sector, where taking a user-centered approach to day-to-day client relations is given more than the often silly lip-service found in public sector librarianship.

She made me an offer, all right. Six grand more than my current salary, with benefits - including some other, more intimate perks. We talked about how cool it'd be to work together. That became a discussion about me possibly moving in with her, dumping everything I own and moving back west to be her partner.

I thought we were still having a lighthearted, in-a-perfect-world type discussion. "Tonya," however, was completely serious.

Whoa, chica.

I stopped her mid-sentence and indicated that I was uncomfortable planning out some imaginary future based on our past together and one quick - but meaningful - fling.

I also pointed out that, well, in the real world, it'd look absolutely horrible for the two of us to, well, jump right back into bed together at the same time her marriage was ending - public image aside, the impact such an act would have on her daughter could be devastating long term.

And how would her friends react? She has people in her life who think she's crazy for leaving her perfect, upwardly-mobile overgrown fratboy of a husband - I doubt they would exactly welcome me into her social circle.

And what about our families? My parents barely survived my engagement to a stripper and were devastated when they learned that, well, I've been involved with several women who work in the hardcore adult industry. I don't know what kind of reaction I'd get if I showed up for family get-togethers with a girlfriend who a)I used to tutor when she was 16, b) who I'd slept with before she'd even decided to leave her husband, and c) who also used to be a fellow coke addict.

Her family? It'd take a miracle for her father not to put a bullet between my eyes.

And I'm sure her ex-hubby would just love the idea of his ex-wife shacking with the guy she'd had an affair with - talk about a juicy piece of information for any potential custody battle.

Besides, I reminded her, what are the odds that this would work, anyway? We'd probably break up or kill each other in a year, tops.

* * * *

Silence.

She didn't say anything for more than two minutes, just made these oh-so-cute sounding noises she makes when she's thinking - or when she's seriously pissed - about something.

Yup. Pissed. She hung up without saying a word - no goodbye, no nothing.

* * * *

I didn't hear from her for more than a week after that. She calmed down and, well, finally came to the same conclusion I did.

Some things are not worth the gamble. And she'd be gambling a lot more than I would. I don't have a daughter, a soon-to-be ex who may or may not end up owning half of my business interests, a house that may end up being sold off as part of a divorce agreement, or friends I'm worried about losing.

Quitting my job and moving across country? Hell, wouldn't be the first time for me. But doing so for someone else, just because I could potentially, one day, fall in love enough to - Gasp! - move beyond being the Ex-Other Man wouldn't be the wisest move on my part.

There's no such thing as a movie ending in the real world. Maybe for some annoying suburbanite emo kid or Trustafarian, but not for anybody whose ever spent any amount of time studying at the esteemed School of Hard Fucking Knocks.

* * * *

We agreed to take some time away from communicating for a bit, to let whatever this lustful silliness is just die. The potential danger is, indeed, greater than either of us can really afford in our lives, at this point.

We do, however, have an agreement. A Fruitcake Sex Agreement, similar to this one.

If both of us are single next December, and if both of us just happen to be back in California after Christmas...

We're getting a room in the same motel. And we're not leaving until we're good and ready to leave. I'm thinking it could take days, maybe even a week.

* * * *

Goddamnit, dude. Wouldn't it be nice to just get involved with women who're single and uncomplicated?

You know, just once, to do the whole boyfriend/girlfriend thing, without having to worry about getting a motel room or husbands or ex-husbands or potential stepchildren or ... ?

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AT HOME WITH THE ZENFO PRO: A Photographic Journey into Madness

The ZenFo Pro tests out his new used digital camera (left).

Note the gray tee shirt, as this indicates that the day this photo was taken was not a regular work day. The ZenFo Pro wears black tee shirts to work.

Just another guy, really.

* * * *

The paintings (above, right) are works done by the ZenFo Pro.

Live Oak, at far right, was painted using only fingers, cigarette butts, automotive primer, and the breasts of two former lovers, including the Italian Backpacker Fling last year. (Feel free to read Part 1 and Part 2 of that sordid affair.)

Err...

You know, turning a piece of plywood into a work of art using women's breasts does sound kinda hot, now that I think about it...

* * * *

The guitar, a 3/4 size acoustic (center, bottom), has been in my grubby little hands since my punk days. Paid $50 for the sucker in a pawn shop.

I've been picking on it quite a bit lately, channeling my inner Patrik Fitzgerald (samples at artist MySpace page) and butchering numerous classic punk songs.

What can I say?

I'm one strange dude.

* * * *

NOTE - Post partly inspired by the much missed Mizzy B and her groovy Bohemian influences on this blog, memories of Shayna's Half-Nekkid contributions prior to pregnancy, the Well-Dressed Librarian's classy at-home interview, and, of course, poor Steph taking one for the Swingin' Friends team in terms of free expression of sexual faux-pas.

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