OXFORD CONFIDENTIAL: On Writing, Drinking, and Writing about Drinking with a Writer who Drinks PBR from an Ancient Plastic Pitcher...

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) – There he was, this marvelous young writer, this future ringmaster of the American Literary circus, sitting on the other side of the table, chatting away with his siblings about everything but his writing.

No writer, you see, wants to discuss writing or literature after a reading. Most of the time, readings leave writers on edge, or leave the writer contemplative and waiting, patiently, for some armchair critic to skewer his or her art.

Public readings of your work, of your poetry and prose before a group of mostly faculty and friends, can sure take the fun out of writing. And we'd come to the bar afterwards not to offer up critiques, not to celebrate, but to unwind. Poetry and prose readings, well, take an emotional toll on a writer's friends and family, too.

His father squinted in the bar's orange glow, reading the dedication in his son's masterpiece. His mother glanced around the bar in near silence, radiating her satisfaction at having raised such an asshole of a child. His girlfriend sat across from me, and we did the smalltalk thing, and she rolled her eyes when I rambled on about something she clearly wasn't interested in discussing.

Nobody else at our table was drinking, save for Fatsuit McUmmings, his parents, and myself. And while his parents drank their beers with the class and dignity that comes from having put a son successfully through college, the pair of us writers drank in that great Oxford Fucking Ohio tradition --

Cold cheap beer, straight from ancient plastic pitchers.

* * * *

You see, in the Land o' the Buckeye, from the banks of the Ohio River to the dirty waters of Lake Erie, from James Thurber to Rita Dove to Sherwood Anderson, poetry and prose readings are best followed up with Pabst Blue Ribbon and the best onion rings in town.

Places that serve nice sipping wine after a reading, complete with plates of expensive cheese and crackers and hors d'oeuvre platters, are reserved for literary critics, pompous novelists, and the young twinks and college girls they pay to suck them off in between lectures and workshops. Writers, artists, and scholars should, at all costs, avoid such high-and-mighty events. Blowjobs mean nothing anyway, other than an excuse to keep on a-pounding away on writing and drinking.

Why waste a good bottle of wine recovering from a reading anyway? Who wastes good booze on artists? A good Merlot is best held for private moments with lovers, for a rainy evening alone with just a copy of Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal or while dreaming about Chicanas, reading José Antonio Burciaga's essays aloud in the dark.

No, after a reading, after any performance, one should hit up a saloon and drink until the madness of literature is gone. Trust me. I'm a librarian. And librarians know (or should know) these things.

* * * *

Whitman never did this, here in Oxford Fucking Ohio. He died a century too early, without ever having -- GASP! -- heard of that academically-neutered beast we now call Comparative Literature. Ginsberg never sat in this tavern, never stared into the rafters filled with hockey sticks and old jerseys. Allen never howled in the men's room, never gargled semen in the dark corners of the alley outside.

...Well, dude, it's not hard to imagine either man drinking away a Wednesday night with us. And, well, they probably would've been awestruck by Fatsuit McUmmings' reading, too, would've been honored to drink cheap beer, to swap stories...

William Carlos Williams would've been content, to set his Modernist doctor's bag at the end of the peeling hardwood bar for a bourbon. Carl Sandburg would've felt at home singing folk songs, performing Good Morning America into the wee hours of the morning. The floorboards reek of Bukowski and Céline, Albert Camus prowls the shadows. I can smell Steinbeck in the hair of the women from the trailer parks and the flophouses, smell Mark Twain on the college girls and alumni...

When in bars, all men are writers and all writers end up drunk off realistic daydreams of the everyday world...

* * * *

I was, obviously, still lost in that madness of language, still trapped inside the insanity of wordsmithing, storytelling, and other everyday nonsense.

Thank you, cold cheap beer. Seven dollars and fifty cents for one whole pitcher of some bland ambrosia called Bud Light.

“Okay now,” the shift manager hollers at me from behind the bar, “You're drinking that pitcher way too fast. Don't make me cut you off...”

"Wha...? Uh...why, hon?"

"Because you look seriously drunk."

She wouldn't have cut me off, of course. Though the sight of me, the Cuervo-guzzling librarian, drinking beer is about as rare as seeing the face of the Virgin Mary in a lump of dogshit.

* * * *

“Why the fuck do you drink so much in that place?” many folks have asked me here in Oxford.

“It's so... weird in there, the people are weird, they let in scary people...”

Well, maybe it has to do with the fact that some of those guys cooking in the kitchen sometimes graduate, sometimes write grand novellas and poetry and short stories, those guys who represent the best the ol' Local U has to offer, men who understand that art is made through the toils of the everyday and not through the whimsical nostalgia of the Academy.

Or maybe it's guys working at the door, spinning yarns about hot women and police raids, maybe it's the hot female bartenders who, well, tell stories about trips to China or about catfights in redneck saloons or who, well, occasionally play grab-ass with certain librarians of ill repute.

Hell, I could write a novel myself about last Saturday night alone, about being felt up by a gay man, about being told that, wow, I'm apparently pretty well-proportioned in certain places, about whispering into one sister's ear, half-joking, that I'd love to take her home and break her in half and whispering into the other sister's ear some drunken nonsense about taking her home, too...

Yes, I behaved very badly last Saturday. But it'd make a great story someday. Maybe I'll write about it...

Daydreams whilst drinking cold, cheap beer, straight from the goddamn pitcher. How sweet it is, sometimes, to be free to dream, to write, to think.

Shit, dude, you do get a lot of decent essays outta this fucking place, don't you?

* * * *

I stared down into my almost empty pitcher. Lost. My mind, lost.

I'd been hitting the Bud Light just a little too quick. For all the liquor I can drink, beer is my kryptonite.

“Hey! You're usually not this quiet!” Fatsuit McUmmings' girlfriend says. “So what did you think of ____'s reading?”

I really didn't know how to answer the question. My mind, lost...

I'd been thinking again, daydreaming within the madness. Singing the body electric within my own mind, absorbing both my song and my surroundings like a sponge.

And I was praying that, yes, by having helped Fatsuit McUmmings edit his work before its final presentation, by showing up to bear witness to his artistry, I'd helped keep the world from having to see another greatest mind of our generation destroyed by madness...

* * * *

“So how do you think your image around town as a 'playa'... not 'player' but 'playa' ... librarian,” a colleague recently asked, “...reflects upon your colleagues and this institution...?”

Well, somebody's gotta do it.

What do I think? Hey, don't hate the playa, hate the game. Blame Archibald MacLeish, too, for setting such a miserable example as to the risks librarians are supposed to take, the games they're supposed to play with writers, artists, researchers, and other madmen of knowledge.

He's the former Librarian of Congress, the one who cleaned up that bureaucratic clusterfuck back in the 1940s, the one who won all of those Pulitzer Prizes as a poet, the guy who hung out with the likes of Hemingway and FDR yet never went to Library School, the one who, well, tried to make modern librarianship a part of the modern literary establishment...

MacLeish wasn't much of a drinker. And, well, I do have an ALA-accredited master's degree, which makes me, technically, a librarian. MacLeish never bothered to waste thousands of bucks on the parchment...

MacLeish never lived in Oxford Fucking Ohio or worked with its hard-drinking patrons, either. He's also been dead since the 1980s...

And I don't see too many other librarians – we, the supposed gatekeepers of literature, of the various records of humanity and society – out at 11 o'clock on a Wednesday night, drinking with the folks who will one day produce our next great wave of great books.

All library usage is, at the end of the day, a local phenomenon. How better to understand the natives than to simply embrace them as friends, compatriots, even, at times, lovers? Why hide behind something as silly as a degree and a job title, when it's just as easy to wade into the jungle, to ravage the tender brains and bodies and souls of those asking to be played or who beg for the sweet, satisfying release of knowledge, accomplishment?

* * * *

The party broke up with a whimper and a few hugs. Fatsuit McUmmings and I were the only two left, so we moved our discussion to the bar. The shift manager had just punched out for the night, was just beginning to nurse her first drink.

She joined us, stirred her cocktail, and, as usual, giggled for no reason whatsoever.

I wonder if she was thinking about how much of a fucktard some librarians can be sometimes, especially when drunk on beer? Or if she was thinking about Fatsuit McUmmings, how unliterary he can be when he's got a few pitchers in him, about how, well, he never seems to forget that writing's his real job and that working his way through college as a cook is just, well, a research grant with a bit of beer money thrown in for good measure...

She does this often, just gets these sparkles in her eyes and laughs at the strangest things. Her full-time job, besides working at a bar to pay for school, is as a visual artist.

Pfft. Artists. And their sparkling giggles, their whiskey-cokes, their smiles and their art.

Madness. Sheer madness, built upon the insane foundations of knowledge...

* * * *

“So what'd you think? Holy shit, dude, you wouldn't believe how nervous I fucking was...”

“You did great, man! Now, it's smooth sailing until graduation. And I loved how the e.e. cummings - influenced poem turned out...”

“Fuck! I'm just glad it's over. Man, I'm so ready to graduate it's not even funny.”

And then, after the booze kicked in, after our egos had been greased down to an honest purr, then could we discuss writing and literature. And, yes, it was intermixed with crude comments about women's breasts, with references to the overrated genius of guys like Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot, critiqued some of the mixed-media, post-modernist absurdism that's blanketed the literary landscape for the last few years...

Mostly, however, we talked tits.

Tits are wondrous things. There isn't a straight man in the world who doesn't marvel at both their purpose and their aesthetics.

Yes, motherfucker, yes! We can, yes, still write about tits in this grand Information Age! We can sculpt them from paper and clay, from stone and atop a laptop keyboard! We can drink and be merry and puke in the alleys, be failures and martyrs and cocksuckers. We can do lines off our cable modems, carve sonnets and sestinas and novels into the backs of the spiders of our World Wide Web...

What good is information technology, after all, if we forget that knowledge itself is the key to our own madness, to building our beautiful creations of song and word, that all else is gimmickry and whiz-bang farts into the bedsheets of humanity?

"Hah. Uh, yeah. The librarian's fucking wasted!"

Goddamn writers, librarians, and their swinging cocks full of jism, knowledge, Carl Sandburg's “The Fog,” and jokes about fucking your mother in the ass. Just keep the pitcher's flowing, and neither will have anything to bitch about...

Hey, don't hate the playa. Hate the game, baby, THE GAME!

- # # # -

ONLY WOMEN BLEED (AND OTHER LIES ALICE COOPER TOLD ME):Sometimes, Image is, Indeed, Everything. But What's Really Being Communicated, Well...

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson,
from Self-Reliance, 1841

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- He told her, bluntly, that he'd slept with her first-year roommate as well as her best friend, two women mere days apart back in November, because she'd got kind of fat. He didn't care what she thought, didn't care that she loved him, he was going to spend his last semester in college sowing his oats and seeing women who wouldn't damage his rep.

I read the email, aloud, and tell her that, yes, obviously, her ex-boyfriend is one of those goddamn collar-popping, limp-dicked, pieces of motherfucking catshit chachballs I've often written about here in Oxford Fucking Ohio.

I declined her offer to show me his picture. Frankly, the guy's email turned my stomach to the point where I was ready to quite literally beat the living shit out of him.

I hand the very pretty, healthy-looking sophomore another wad of toilet tissue. She points out that she did, in fact, gain eight and a half pounds during a rather rough Fall Semester. When he quit calling her at home over Winter Break, she knew their relationship was in trouble. The strain of it all pushed her weight up a bit farther - she gained another ghastly, obscene pound and a quarter.

The poor woman's been sobbing for a week, off and on, depressed not only over a failed relationship, but over the fact that she'd ballooned to a beastly 126 pounds.

She goes on to explain that she hasn't been able to eat, sleep, or think clearly for seven days - she's terrified that, well, maybe every guy's noticed how much weight she's gained. She's been taking so much Adderall that one of her professors actually pulled her aside after class to inquire about her emotional and physical well-being.

She took her first shower in more than three days moments after I'd confirmed our "appointment" an hour earlier. She apologized profusely for not shaving her legs, for not drying her hair, or for putting on much makeup. She barely remembered to pull on her lucky track pants and Uggs boots when she exited her room for the first time all day, just long enough to sneak me into her residence hall.

For ten minutes, she tells me about all about how she managed her weight like a sadistic nutritional accountant, how she'd counted every single gram of fat and every single calorie for most of her high school career. But no matter how hard she tried...

* * * *

She jumped up off of the corner of her bottom bunk, bent over, and pointed at why, exactly, she thought she'd been dumped by a rather-worthless sounding prick.

"Look. My ass is fucking HUGE! I got cellulite every-WHERE! Who would want that?"

I looked. I saw nothing but a very nice ass attached to rather attractive girl, a very pretty face staring back at me from over a shoulder. She tugged down one side of her track pants, pulled up the leg of her boxers, showed me the four dimples at the crease between her ass and thigh.

Here is this emotionally wrecked, tired, angry woman, with quite possibly one of the greatest asses in the history of college sophomoredom here in Oxford Fucking Ohio, and she's telling a 29-year-old single librarian about how gaining less than ten pounds has ruined her, driven her rather wretched-sounding boyfriend into the arms of other women, and how this one electronic voice in the wilderness just must agree with her thigh-cheese-equals-troll assessment.

"Chica, I probably shouldn't say this, but I think you know you're not fat, know this cat was a cocksucker, and that this Ms. Perfect shit just makes you look like a dumbass."

There is no way to describe the looks some very pretty sophomores can give a guy when they know, deep down, that that guy may have a point.

"Huh?"

"Well... this ain't really about getting dumped by a douche. Sounds to me like this is about how you see yourself as a person..."

It's amazing, sometimes, the sheer maturity and wisdom I'm able to demonstrate, even with a nice ass in my face.

* * * *

She sat back down on the bed.

I waited for her to call me what blog readers who've mistaken me for some College Girl Crusader or Small Town Defamer often call me - a fraud, a huckster, or, usually, a fucking creepy asshole. Worse, there are some folks who are just appalled - downright DISGUSTED - to learn that, well, being a blogger makes one more of a village idiot than any sort of role model.

When I display the same sort of honesty offline as I often display online, many folks are taken aback, shocked. Yes, I swear like a drunken sailor, say completely inappropriate, insensitive, very un-PC things.

What one reads is what one gets - and if a reader asks a certain blogger to make a housecall to talk, that reader isn't in for any sort of bullshit Blogebrity routine. In all honesty, I don't have time for that ego-stroking, narcissistic horseshit - I work too hard at my day job and know too many good people in this town to behave so, well, stupidly.

She didn't say a word.

Instead, she sat cross-legged, picked at the lint and blackened dust bunnies that had defiled the fur tops of her Uggs. She stared down towards the hornet's nest of sports bras, crumpled jeans, coats, comforters, and sheets that we were both sitting on - she mumbled an apology for not tidying up before I'd stopped by.

I figured that was my cue. I said I'd leave her alone, thanked her for, well, keeping me entertained via her intoxicated late-night instant messages, and reminded her that, well, my office door at the library, is almost always open.

Without looking up, she reached up and grabbed my arm, squeezed. I sat back down, put my hand on her shoulder. She asked me to stay. So I did.

And, once the emotional hysterics that go along with being jilted were well out of sight, we had a nice, brutally honest conversation about why one doesn't take time off from college because of a douchebag, how one sucks up that rage and turns it into scholarly fuel, and the importance of never, ever letting something as trivial as a temporary low self-image get in the way of making good, emotion-free decisions.

I even recommended that she start a blog about her experiences under a pseudonym, document her struggles so that maybe, sometime in the future, some other sophomore in her position might find it and go, Holy fucking shit! This girl really knows what I'm feeling!

Hell, blogging has done wonders for my own concept of self-worth and self-esteem issues - why not pass on that experience to others? College women need to get online, need to share not just their musical tastes or fashion tips or bullshit political ideologies but personal experiences as well. Venting does a body good - and sometimes it's equally rewarding to simply read about an experience that let's a random stranger know that they're not alone in this world.

As we talked, she held onto my arm for dear life. I was the first person not a mutual friend or family member she'd spilled her guts to in a long, long time. She told me why she reads this silly web site has more to do with how I handle certain information more like a priest taking confession than a blogger - I don't use names and carefully conceal identities, so, therefore, spilling one's guts is less of a risk than, say, posting something to a MySpace or Facebook account.

That's why she asked me to stop by, made an afternoon appointment. She needed to confess her sins - and my openness about my own, batshit insane personal life made me sound like the perfect holy man.

In all honesty, I showed up only because I was terrified that I may be asked to administer Last Rites.

* * * *

Suddenly, mid-sentence, she asked me if I was hungry. I lied and said that, well, a nice hot toasted roll - one of the Local U.'s signature culinary treats - sounded abso-fucking-lutely scrumptious. Actually, the very smell of those things makes me nauseous, but, well, I was just on my game enough to realize the question about hunger was more self-directed.

Getting a Local U. girl who's been starving herself for a week may, in fact, be the single-most important contribution I've made to the Oxford community, professionally or as an everyday citizen, in more than a year.

As we hiked down towards the student union - she was craving a slice of pizza - she stopped me with an Ugh! Hold on. That's so annoying..., turned me on my heels like a wayward toddler, and started adjusting my cockeyed stocking cap and tangled mess the hood on my sweatshirt had become. She went so maternal on me, this woman barely out of her teens, that she even licked her thumb before she slicked down my disheveled eyebrows.

"You know, you have gorgeous eyelashes. There was this girl in my history class last semester who told me that she had a crush on this guy who worked at King..."

Suddenly, she stopped cold, pulled herself into me. The first-year roommate, one of the two boyfriend-fucking Jezebels, was on her cell phone, pacing, right in front of the student union doors, a mere thirty feet away. I started to turn and look, but, well, serving as a human shield left me with only the risk of sweatshirt strangulation as the very pretty, image-conscious sophomore clung onto my collar for dear life.

"Ohmygodohmygod... if she sees us together she's gonna think... she's gonna tell everybody... fucking whore!...God, she's s'posed to be in Cincinnati ... don't DON'T look... she's looking... FUCK!"

It took me, in my so not an undergrad mindset, a good thirty seconds to figure out what, exactly, that ferret-faced Ms. Thang, clad in her trendy North Face jacket and skintight black pants, guarding the entrance to a student union food court could possibly assume, or who the everybody was she'd possibly tell.

I laughed. Hard.

You know, the sight of a cute girl ducking into the chest of a 29-year-old librarian with supposedly gorgeous eyelashes probably is something to gossip about - if you're a catty, rodent-looking Cincinnati rich girl with nothing better to do than to fuck my blog readers' boyfriends because you were, like, soooooo wasted at beer pong parties, like, two or three times, accidentally.

I thought about it for a moment, pondered and weighed the potential risks to both my professional credibility and, well, my fine, upstanding reputation (go ahead and laugh, dammit!) as an online writer. I then strategically twisted in such a way as to position my mouth at the ear of the very pretty, way-too-young sophomore, twisted in such a way that Ms. Rodent Face would have a clear view of both her former roommate's face and my constantly graying stubble.

I whispered, slowly, into my chestwarmer's ear that she had nothing to worry about, said sweet nothings about how learning to tune out gossip comes with maturity, and told her, well, that she shouldn't give a flying fuck what others may think.

She giggled at my use of the phrase flying fuck (she didn't believe anybody actually spoke such things so casually) and whispered something back about not wanting people to ask questions. Again, she played right into my not-so-sinister plan of attack.

I could feel the stare. Just the type of stare I'd counted on, one of those soul-rupturing glares that catty gossipwhores tend to give people when they think certain things, when they assume that they are now entitled to do whatever they want with certain information, regardless of courtesy or consequences.

So, like clockwork, I pushed the very pretty sophomore back into an upright, chin-up position, told her that the time had come to say Fuck it and to march right past Jezebel No. 1. She sighed, agreed, and we double-timed it past the loose-lipped (in more ways than one, apparently) sentry. My blog reader, the trooper that she was, shoved her hands into her pockets and stared at the ground.

I just grinned a very stupid-looking grin. My plan was working.

I stood as straight as I could, puffed out my chest, and did my best Dirty Old Man impression, acknowledged the gawker with a well-timed, jaw-shattering S'up.

And how that other woman stared. She even had the beady little brown eyes of a ferret.

* * * *

Over a quick bite, I let my very pretty, supposedly hefty, 126-pound dinner date in on the intricacies of my, well, strategically placed movements, mannerisms, and whispers, on the use of a quick and controlled burn to manage someone else's need to perpetuate rumor and disinformation.

It took her a bit of time to grasp the concept. After she'd pondered it over the remainder of her very bad cappuccino...

* * * *

"So what you're saying is that she's gonna tell him and his ego's gonna be smashed?"

"Yup."

"That's weird."

"Okay, lemme put it this way: how do you think most guys react when they're hearing rumors that their ex is potentially fucking an older guy?"

"I'd be fucking pissed."

"How would you feel, in his shoes, if one of your gossipy mutual acquaintances was spreading rumors ..."

Silence. And then, the wondrous Eureka! moment.

"Oh shit. So he's gonna look like a total ass and I'm the mature one, right?"

"Yup."

"Really?"

As I walked her back to her dorm, we discussed all sorts of things, ranging from other forms of data manipulation in interpersonal relationships to her new-found obsession with G.I. Joe comic books and online poker.

A guy she knew, too, grad student, had invited her over to hang out, watch a couple of old 1980s movies. She wasn't sure about his motives, but, well... she wasn't ready ... she didn't really like him that way...

"Well, sounds like you're getting ready to upgrade to business-class there, chica."

She didn't seem to get what I was getting at. I let it drop, wished her a great weekend, and promised I'd have something new for her to read sometime Saturday afternoon.

She reminded me that I don't use real names and that she'd be really mad if I slipped up. I reminded her that, well, I really didn't need to be reminded of anything.

* * * *

I'm supposed to mention, somewhere, that Mr. Super-Prep was born blessed - I am sorta like a priest, after all - with a really, really tiny...

Er.

Would anybody believe me if I swore she asked me to include something about how his imagination resembles a Vienna Sausage?

Length and width, apparently. That's a serious lack of imagination.

And to think...

There are people who ask me how, exactly, my not-so-secret life as a blogger has helped build up my own self-confidence and sense of personal image.

I'm completely comfortable with my imagination, actually. Way overactive at times, but, well, I'm working on that...

Seriously.

- # # # -

MORE DISPATCHES FROM THE ROAD: On the Central Coast, The Shit Always Hits The Fan After the Wine...

SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (ZP) -- It started out as a hug, innocent and casual, two friends greeting each other outside of an upscale cafe.

And then I felt my arms around her close a bit tighter, felt her hands run up my spine. My left cheek slid down her right, my lips down to the nape of her neck as she buried her face into shoulder.

It was the sheer black sundress that did me in, that allowed old passions to flare back up, cinders for the forest fire. I'd seen her in skater garb, in stereotypical punker gear, even completely nude on top of me. But I'd never seen her in a dress.

Ravishing. Simply ravishing.

She mumbled into my shirt collar, mumbled in that innocent, almost childlike voice so many women are able to harness during times of heightened emotion.

"I hope you don't hate me. I didn't know if I could do this. I know you don't drink wine, but I wanted a place we could, like, just talk in private."

"Chica, I didn't know if you'd show up. I lied to my dad, told him I was going to Pismo Beach."

"Tonya" laughed.

She'd lied to her parents, too. Her father's still planning on putting me six feet in the ground, still blames me for ruining his daughter and granddaughter's financial security. Never mind that his daughter wasn't happy with her ex-husband, or that the ex-husband was really in love with someone else...

* * * *

By the time she looked up, my hand was on the back of her neck, fingers electric and fluid along the back of her skull.

"It's been hella evil, dude. Everybody knows. I so fucking sorry."

"S'okay, hon. It took two to tango, and we tangoed ourselves into a fucking mess."

Though "Tonya" and her ex-husband are on decent terms following their divorce, the upheaval - the failure of a supposedly perfect marriage - has led certain gossipy elements to conclude that, well, Tonya really is the trailer trash her ex mother-in-law always said she was, behind her back, and that I really was the cold, manipulating, womanizing bastard many of my former radio listeners thought I was.

Fucking each other's brains out back in December, back when she was still married, probably didn't help much. Cost me quite a few California friends, including almost all of the college friends I'd made while a student at Cal Poly back in the late 1990s. Cost her a whole hell of a lot more.

The last thing in the world either of us needed - she needed - was a very public kiss on a very public street, in broad daylight.

A peck on the cheek would have to do.

No need to give anybody anything else to gossip about.

* * * *

There would be no trip to a cheap motel this time. No six male orgasms, 12 female orgasms, no torn clothes, no dislocated shoulders or wedding bands on the nightstand.

The kid stuff was over. Fun, but reckless. Things could've gone much worse. Reality, sadly, creates its own rules, dictating things like maturity and decency like overpaid company presidents dictate cold memos to underpaid secretaries.

Six months removed from our fling, the time had come for the two of us to behave, at least for an afternoon, like stereotypical Central Coast 20-somethings - to take in a late lunch at a trendy bistro and split bottles of good Edna Valley chardonnay, cell phones laid out on the white tablecloth like gunslingers at a card game.

We racked up a $136 tab in just under two hours. I winced as I signed the credit card receipt, winced as I realized that I'm no longer in a position, as a librarian, to blow such fundage on a simple lunch. "Tonya" offered to go dutch, but I wouldn't go for it.

She'd bought the sheer, overpriced sundress - the second one she's ever owned, the other being her wedding dress - simply to hang out before she flew back to her home in the American Southwest. It was also an excuse to spend a bit of money, to go all girlie-girl and relieve stress through shopping.

When she again protested, I reminded her that, no, this wasn't a date, and, well, she'd invited me out for lunch - the guest always gets to choose who pays. Besides...

Wow.

That dress.

She just looked so, well, damned perfect in that damned Vera Wang getup (correction: I guess it's called a Mini Tank Dress, not a true sundress), and I looked so schmuckish in the first wrinkled polo I could dig out of my travel bag...

* * * *

"Goddamn it, dude. I'm walking in the water. Quit being such a fucking pussy. Cops don't care."

You know, women wearing $500 dresses tend to go diva after stereotypical Central Coast lunches, especially after sucking down $60 worth of chardonnay.

"Tonya" slipped off her heels and, as nimbly as a former skateboarding goddess can be, slid her feet beneath the bronze, grizzly-shaped fountain.

She once told me she used to rack up citations for riding her board through the park, that one of her old boyfriends had been nailed for meth back in 2002, right beside the fountain. For me, Mission Plaza brings back nothing but drunken undergrad memories - of puking on Higuera Street and pissing in the long-gone parking lot across from Woodstock's Pizza, of sleeping off Irish Car Bombs and Kamikazes and Gin and Tonics.

For both of us, the plaza represents a lot of juvenile things, California war stories. A beautiful city park, beneath a gorgeous Spanish Mission, in a quiet little town full of hypocrites and secrets.

"Ya know, I thought you were gonna kiss me back there."

"Back where, chica?"

"Before we ate, outside of ______. You had that look. That squinty thing."

"Squinty thing?"

"Like, you squint your left eye when you're, like, thinking of trying to get away with something."

"So... could I have gotten away with it?"

"I dunno. Christ. But _____'s mom has a lot of pull in SLO, a lot of nosey fucking friends, shrivelled old cuntbags."

"Do you care? I mean, you're not married anymore."

"____ is my ex-husband. His mom knows about the motel room, everything. And we just finalized custody. I have to care. I don't want to give the bitch any more ammo. Ya know?"

"Tonya" stared at her ankles, tip-toeing across the tiled bottom of the fountain.

"Yeah, I know."

Being an adult fucking sucks.

* * * *

Walking "Tonya" back to her rental car, we chatted away about all sorts of completely batshit random things - her unhealthy crush on Nomar Garciaparra, my weird food allergies, her famous customers, and my sorta famous adult performer exes.

She still had four hours until her flight back home, back to her world full of purchase orders and sales reports and payroll issues. We sat in the parking garage for at least an hour talking, perched up on the hood of the compact rental, like we had all the time in the world.

At one point, she had her head in my lap, feet propped up on the windshield, twisted in ways that would make a yoga instructor envious. I put one hand on her shoulder and one on her hip, just in case she started to fall.

I guess she thought my hand placement meant something more.

"Jason."

"Yeah, chica?"

"You can get away with whatever."

"Whatever what?"

You know, I'm dense. Really dense.

"Yeah, but we're just friends. Friendly."

"If that. You're a dangerous fucking guy, dude."

"Tell me about it. Ya ever have mono?"

"Tonya" laughed and sat up, sharp elbows digging into my thigh, eye sockets pierced by that flirty stare thing she does.

* * * *

One hand slid from shoulder to breast, the other from hip to stomach.

Things went downhill from there.

I felt every corner of her tongue as we kissed, felt that tongue barbell of hers clicking against my teeth, felt every goosebump on the back of her neck.

It's amazing how easy it is to get lost in a moment, for me at least, to forget that one is actually in a crowded parking garage, that a true stereotypical San Luis Obispan rarely runs his hand up a $500 dress in public or slides her hand down the front of jeans...

As we slid into the back seat, adulthood - that stupid, goddamn reason-outweighs-lust part of it - kicked back into gear.

Something, well, just didn't seem right.

My brakes ground to a halt first; I was working my way south, down past her navel, my tongue an inch above her tan line. The c-section scar, barely noticeable, jumped out at me.

Hadn't noticed it back in December, and it didn't really turn me off. It did, however, remind me that if any one of her ex's family members walked by...

I looked back up at "Tonya." She was still into everything, physically (some poor shmoe at the rental place had one hell of a stain on his hands), but she seemed distant, her eyes filled not with any sort of pleasure but with what looked like... guilt.

"Hey, um, maybe we should..."

I couldn't get the STOP word out. Just wasn't happening.

"No, dude, it's cool. I want to..."

"Want? No. But maybe we need to..."

Again, unable to simply say STOP. Feeling just a tad uncomfortable, I came up for air, slid right beside her, between her back and the fabric.

"Tonya," I guess, figured I was just positioning myself; she reached back and guided me inside, pushing hard, to the point of causing her to wince.

Now I was more than just a little freaked out. "Tonya" was thrusting back, hard and deep, almost as if she was intentionally trying to cause herself pain, to use my flesh as a torture device.

I pulled out.

"Nah. I think this violates the whole 'Let's just be friends' thing, chica."

She couldn't make eye-contact.

I heard that childish voice again, too. She said that she, yep, needed to stop, that she wanted to just fuck away an afternoon in a car, but fear paralyzed her, fear that I wanted something more, fear that she wanted more...

And then she started to tear up, her face flushed, almost angry.

She said she wanted to throw up, felt as if she was on the verge of ruining my life, of dragging me back down into the pit with her... Even just being friends wasn't going to work, it was hurting both of us... we were being immature and only one of us could afford it...

A complete, screeching halt.

I just held her for about an hour, until her cell phone started to ring, until her mother called to ask why, exactly, her daughter used the word fuck so often.

* * * *

No long, dramatic goodbyes. The whole thing ended as it began back when she was just a high school kid with a skateboard, and I was a 21-year-old reporter: awkward silences and strange glances, a quick catch ya later, as if being 2,000 miles apart was somehow the same as living a few cities away from one another.

C'est la vie.

* * * *

I kept looking into the rear view mirror as my borrowed convertible crawled up the Cuesta Grade.

I'm not sure what I was looking for, exactly, but I saw something I hadn't seen before, something buried in the ever growing lines in my face, beneath the increasing numbers of gray hairs.

I saw an old man, a terrified old bastard, staring back at me.

Whoa.

Where the fuck did he come from?

- END -

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.

- # # # -