SHORT TAKES & SUCH: Chitlin' Cough Hits Oxford Fucking Ohio, "OMG! Like, I Totally Made Out With That Online Library Guy" Stalker Moments, Etc...

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- After a week of rumors, half-truths, and downright stupid urban legends floating around Oxford Fucking Ohio, the Local U. finally released a statement confirming what many folks already knew.

The dreaded (over-hyped) H1N1 virus - the Chitlin' Cough, the ol' Bacon Lung, the Pork Rind Plague of Mass Paranoia - may have indeed hit the local community, with as many as 25 suspected cases of Influenza A reported on campus by Friday afternoon.

Wow. Twenty-five whole cases. In a city of around 20,000 or so.

At a university with a slight on-campus housing shortage - dozens of students, at week's end, were living in temporary barracks-style units created out of residence hall lounges and cubbyholes.

Huh.

Imagine that.

A contagious disease that, well, flies around a college town full of not-exactly-hygienic college kids.

Imagine that.

Never mind that other universities around the country are reporting similar numbers, that there are 10 Alabama football players quarantined because of test results, that there are cases being reported at Colorado-Boulder, at Xavier, at other colleges and secondary schools who start classes before Labor Day.

Twenty-five kids reported. Probably two- to three- times that number currently infected who just don't feel well enough - or who weren't turned into ranting hypochondriacs last year - to rush off to the doctor or campus clinic to take a test for a virus that, really, has no 100 percent treatment beyond a few OTC medications and bed rest.

You know, as several members of the African diaspora in this country have pointed out since this whole thing began, the U.S. leads the world in pointless fretting over a virus that will, well, kill you if it kills you.

Africans should know. Hell, their home communities are dealing with cholera, malaria, genocide, starvation, AIDS, basic sanitation, lack of clean water that the Most Industrialized Nations have only given mere humanitarian lip-service to for decades ... and now the Great Super Power's media-saturated masses sweat the flu.

Some might call it irony.

Huh.

Imagine that.

Go figure.

- MORE -

UPTOWN OXFORD (ZP) -- I've decided to write off a recent occurrence as a blog lurker drinking game. Or as a really awkward momentary lapse in judgment caused by too many Red Bull and Vodka cocktails - and too much time online.

I've been dealing with Ohio's strangest stalker - a woman who hunts her prey by running up, grabbing a guy's ass while bumming a cigarette outside of a random bar, licking/kissing his neck mid-sentence, and then wandering off without so much as giving her real name.

Same very weird girl. Very cute but very, well, creepy.

At one point, we're talking three nights, consecutively. Three or four run-ins a night.

The only information she would give me was that she "knew my O-M-G, like, so not a secret," that she was an upperclassman who's "major wasn't important," and that '[Whispering] One night we're hooking up, right, like, here on the motherfucking street."

Same weird girl. At least a dozen separate run-ins in alleys, on patios, even, a week ago, at a soon-to-be demolished local watering hole during the local band Look Afraid's last set (Great show, guys!) in their favorite longtime, soon-to-be-demolished, college town venue.

Seriously, how fucking drunk and/or stoned does a junior or senior undergrad have to be to just walk up to a 31-year-old librarian leaning against a bar during a loud-ass rock concert, ask for a cigarette, then tell him she's "got a motherfucking mystery" she's planning on showing him at some future time, when he's drunk enough, and that I "can just call her Raylene" in whatever I write?

Um, yeah.

Just a little creepy.

In all honesty, it's probably my fault to some extent. I probably egged it on a bit at one point ... ah, um... well, okay... I was sorta tipsy enough to kinda...you know...

... Well, if a random 21-to-22 year-old licks your lips for you, while tipsy, most guys are going to lick back, okay? My bad. I was a bit tipsy myself.

But in all seriousness, I REALLY don't roll that way, Mystery Lady.

Ever try something like, "Hey, I hope you don't mind me saying this, but I like your blog... My name's ______?"

You know.

Something less creepy?

- MORE -

CINCINNATI (ZP) -- After years of being accused of ignoring folks in the Queen City - I rarely leave the comfy bubble of life in Oxford Fucking Ohio without some motivation, to cut down on my carbon footprint - I was finally talked into hanging out with probably the most fun group of college students in Ohio.

I'm talking, of course, about the Local U.'s longtime rival in football and in scholarship, the University of Cincinnati.

There's a whole houseful of absolutely gorgeous girls down there who, well, know how to make amazing vegan food, who picked my brain about all sorts of things, in terms of both my former community organizer and [admittedly vague/sketchy] "information analyst" consulting days, in person, over way too much wine and grilled tofu.

I forgot I promised those wonderful Bearcat ladies a shout-out.

So, well... here it is.

Here's the fascinating thing: one Local U. alum, upon hearing the PG-13 version of that tale from earlier this summer, accused me of "cheating on" Oxford.

Yep, local students, my Ex-Other Man nature does sometimes lead to stepping out on ol' Oxford and its residents. And, I guess I should be honest here, I've also "cheated on you" with kids in Muncie and Bloomington, Indiana, even up in Columbus and down in Lexington, Kentucky.

I'm such a bad monkey. I know. Please forgive my cheating ass.

But when you can grill organic farmer's market corn and discuss Post-Marxist theory, Global South debt to various Industrialized nations, and culture-jamming like those lovely ladies, well, call me. I may let you spank me...

QUICK BITS

• Welcome back, college students. Be glad you're still in school, else you'd be another degreed kid in the Unemployment Line.

• Don't drink the Kool-Aid. That's for corporate media news junkies. Put a little booze of truth in it.

• Why, yes, I have been too busy to blog a lot. Don't I get a summer vacation, too?

• Apologize for calling Democrats and Republicans terrorists? Um, why the fuck would I do that?
  

• When I see real "health care reform," I'll be sure to write about it. But until then, well, I'm content to watch the U.S. Congress and the owners of both parties' collective balls duke it out like bullies on a playground.

• I respect the Dead Kennedys, sure. Oh, you're not talking about the punk band, are you?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Terror.

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

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

* * * *

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

Dream. Another stupid, goddamn nightmare.

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

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

Great. Fucking great.

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is the sanitized version.

Yep.

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

Sanitized version.

- # # # -

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