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

Image by Feuillu via Flickr

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The silence continues.

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

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

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

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

"Um, no."

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

"Um, no."

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

Then the grin. Impish.

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

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

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

* * * *

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

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

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

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

The feat will take about 15 minutes longer than sober.

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

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

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

* * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Hahaha....Um, no."

Silence.

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

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

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

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

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

Not one word about Baudelaire and his sexy poetry.

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

And the Hot Kid Fake Hippie sidekick offer.

Hmm? Maybe...?

Um, no.

- # # # -

SHORT TAKES AND SUCH: Of Being a Thirtysomething Senior Citizen in a College Town, Amateur Boxing, & Sweet Hitchhikers

“You're young, you're drunk, you're in bed, you have knives; shit happens..."

- Angelina Jolie (1975- ),
Actress and Adopter of Orphans

* * * *

"If I can't dance, it's not my revolution."

- Emma Goldman (1869-1940),
Anarchist and Feminist

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- He's a regular Killer Diller, walking the streets towards sexual oblivion at three a.m., a cackling buffoon of a bottle blonde in six-inch heels leaning into him to avoid slipping on the High Street ice.

Killer and blonde were, as is often the norm for the local undergrad population, overdressed for a night out in a town where the "nightclub" hot spots tend to resemble the mail-order-bride filled discotheques in some former Soviet republics.

And, being a college town with not a whole hell of a lot to do after dark, well, they were beyond hammered. At that all-too-common, black-out-and-horny point, the benchmark where responsible, consensual sex becomes merely a quick couple of grinds, a squirt or two, and a convenient amnesiac hangover a few hours later.

Like I said.

The norm in this here college town when the undergrads are the only creatures of the night making anything but sweet music.

I myself have been struggling to get a female friend to my pick-up. Not, well, because either of us were drunk and horny.

No, we were simply done for the night. And she needed a ride home. Her car died a few months back, and her new puppy was eagerly awaiting his late night piss in the snow.

We were supposed to be heading to a party afterwards but...

As we pass Killer and his red meat, I can't help but laugh. The blonde's got what looks to be piss running down the back of her leg - homegirl's so drunk, she's just letting it rip and asking Killer if he really thinks she's the sexiest thing alive.

As one gets older, wiser, more mature, one learns when "one more drink" partying often leads to nothing but a head over a toilet, or a dick in the wrong vagina, or worse.

Like "pissing yourself in designer, cunt-cutting leggings and being dragged home by a Neanderthal looking motherfucker" worse.

- MORE -

With a devastatingly fast left hook, the 175 pounder's nose burst like an overripe tomato.

Headgear, even top-of-the-line amateur gear, offers little defense against a natural murderer, a butcher of cordoned battle.

Trust me. Had my eye split open, had geysers full of red life pour from my own nose in the bouts - headgear ain't nothing but putting a quilt over a steak and waiting for the meat tenderizer.

The other fighter, a kid from a Catholic university down in Cincy, pure raw glistening ebony, could barely find a neutral corner - even he seemed to be surprised by the blow.

Crimson drops beget purple dots on the canvas. The referee began the count. The bell rang the end to the first round not a moment too soon for the Ketchup Kid.

Saturday night was fight night on the Local U. campus. And the local amateur boxing club managed to pull in a half dozen other collegiate boxing clubs for a tournament.

Murderers. Tomato cans. Killers. Bleeders and white-knuckled gloves and Everlast mouth guards galore.

Glorious! Hosanna in the Highest!

"I can't believe you'd go watch boxing over going to the Charter Day Ball," she said in a text, "I mean, you can afford $50 for a ticket...I could've found you a date..."

There were a few hundred of us, spectators to the Higher Education carnage, willing to pay a donation of five whole dollars to watch a good dozen fights that night.

"Boxing is so stupid... how can you watch that shit?"

Yes, boxing isn't a sport of civilized men these days. No, Americans have no stomach for anything but corporate-owned mixed martial arts and television wrestling.

We are CIVILIZED these days, CULTURED, SOPHISTICATES! That's why we clamor over celebrity gossip, reality television, and let talk show hosts pick the president!

- MORE -

"So, tell me," the lovely Czech hitchhiker began, green eyes aglow in the natural dusk light of the apartment, "You are... really from Virginia? Originally?"

"Yeah," the other woman said, lighting a cigarette, "[The Italian Ex-Fling] said you grew up a cowboy or... is it... country bumpkin?"

Two young European women, the Czech included, and their Afro-French traveling companion were crashing with me for what was supposed to be a night and a day - my apartment ended up turning into a bit of a hostel for foreigners for almost two days and two nights, due to winter weather.

We sat around in a circle as freezing rain fell on top of the snow outside one Sunday evening, smoking cigarette after cigarette. It was six at night, a few days after getting over the flu, and I was doing my best to be a good host - giving tips on roads and cities to avoid, offering insight on the places to eat, things to see...

I'm not going to lie. It was lust at first sight, on my end, in terms of the Czech.

As annoying as it was to have a bunch of twenty-something European hippie-ish strangers squatting in the ol' Fortress of Motherfucking Solitude, I admit to being smitten with the ex-fling's flatmate - didn't help matters that she liked to shower with the bathroom door open and wasn't fond of bras in my nipply-cold apartment.

Hey, it's been a while, dammit - and ain't no crime in, ya know, looking. Alas, she brought her boyfriend with her on their North American walkabout.

"Yep. Grew up on a farm three hours south of Washington, DC."

"Really?" The Afro-Franc chimed in, "We haven't been there yet but we're hoping to see Monticello. It's in Charlottes...town?"

"CharlottesVILLE. Beautiful fucking place. Jefferson, for all his faults, was really a fucking badass-"

Suddenly, the Czech sat up in her sleeping bag and started laughing.

"________ warned me you had a toilet mouth. Very American."

"Bad American?" I was flirting. "Or good American?"

"No," she seemed to be flirting back. "Very, just, I'd say more fun than I expected. You talk like a teenager..."

We talked for a good six hours straight, she and I, long after her traveling companions fell asleep.

And I think, yes, I laid it on a bit thick. And she was flirting right back. Czech women, for the record, are some of the most dangerously fascinating women I've encountered to date.

Dammit.

Or do piče, to be more precise.

Why did couldn't she have left the boyfriend back in Europe?

- # # # -

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

A RARE PROLOGUE

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

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

"That's fucked up."

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

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

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

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

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

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

You had to be there.

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

* * * *

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

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

So long story short...

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

And no, not like that.

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

* * * *

Tough call, actually.

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

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

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

And then I went to bed. Alone.

* * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * *

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

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

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

- # # # -

THE OXFORD (FUCKING OHIO) DICTIONARY OF QUOTATIONS: Ringing in 2009 with Donut-Covered Boobs, Ranty Emails, and Destroyed Lucky Jerseys...

"I'm not drunk, I'm surreal sober. Now put that somewhere... wait... did somebody take my bra off?"

- Recently minted Local U. alumna,
On her last weekend in Oxford

Yeah, we'll leave it at that. Fun first weekend back in ol' Oxford Fucking Ohio, really. And I can honestly say that I've never eaten a donut off of a drunk woman's tits before last Friday night.

* * * *

"Hey, it worked in Blazing Saddles..."

- A Buddy's Facebook Status,
The Day After the U.S. Presidential Election

True enough. Maybe Hillary will unite the world by holding a chili bean fart-off in an effort to end the Iraq fiasco?

* * * *

"Until I was fourteen, I divided humanity into three categories: women, little girls, and buffoons."

- From Le Sabotage amoureux (1993),
by Belgian novelist Amélie Nothomb,
English translation, 2000

One of the most disturbingly hilarious French-language writers living today. A blog reader recommended this book to me before Christmas; I haven't laughed that much while reading a European writer in a long time...

Ha, while Tom Waits may be big in Japan, apparently I'm big in France...

* * * *

"Baltimore Ravens fans are all murdering egomaniacs. You suck, The Wire sucks, your team sucks, and you're unOhio for being a Ravens fan."

- A Cleveland Browns fan/Ex,
via drunken voicemail, Jan. 7,
On my choice of sports teams

Hey, it's not my fault Ohio's pro football teams are, well, pathetic. Blame the ownership. And while I may suck, The Wire is one of the best urban crime dramas ever. Thanks for returning my Ray Lewis jersey, albeit vandalized, after three fucking years.

Hope you enjoy the remnants of your Grady Sizemore jersey. The delivery driver who picked it up said his company often returns boxes full of ashes to loved ones. Especially Cleveland Indians baseball fans...

* * * *

"This presidential inauguration is brought to you by your starving friends at Corporate Welfare. Remember: for the price of a few hundred billion in taxpayer bailouts, you too can accomplish wallet-padding Change CEOs Can Believe In (by privately financing Rick Warren and Oprah's pet goat.)"

- The ZenFo Pro, via email,
To someone "shocked and appalled"
he "refuses to trust and accept change..."

The natural enemy of the People is the State, I told my Republican-voting mother over Christmas, And the moment the People's Hero becomes the State, he becomes not a savior but the same old incompetant tyrant in a new suit.

Best not to bring that subject up with someone who is completely not buying the Hope shit. I think I've made that pretty much clear as day. I'm, politically, a Libertarian Lefty - why would I change my views to accommodate yet another flavor of American Neoliberalism?

* * * *

"Just you watch - one day, those motherfuckers are gonna start having Martin Luther King Day sales...Free At Last, Buy One Get One Freedom sales..."

- Angry Black Activist,
On What's Wrong with MLK Day.

No explanation needed, really. And I wouldn't put it past retailers.

* * * *

"I think I may have broke my penis."

- C'mon, who HASN'T slammed
a that in the car door before?

-# # # -

OXFORD CONFIDENTIAL: Of the Global Economic Collapse, Mexican Revolutionaries, Insomniac Ponderings, And Making Out with a Stranger

"Es mejor morir de pie que vivir de rodillas."

- Gen. Emiliano Zapata,
Mexican Revolutionary Hero,
Wearer of "Cowboy Stuff"

OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) -- It's three o'clock in the morning.

And I'm neither drunk nor sober.

I'm simply enjoying a cold November storm, in fact, a lovely late night stroll through the rain, my gray Stetson sagging beneath the weight of a thousand cold water droplets.

Smoke from my thirtieth Marlboro of the day forms wispy plumes around the brim, water seeps down my jeans into my boots, the baptismal waters of a man deep in thought liberating the soul as Ariat heels clickclack down miles of sidewalk.

Good God Almighty! I say to myself, eyes closed, leaning against a telephone pole, There's just nothing quite as liberating as a man's thoughts, alone, in the rain.

Personal freedom, just like money, seems to be in short supply these days.

* * * *

I'm thinking, for some odd reason, about a different approaching storm - the shit blizzard of a failing global economy that, yep, my country's elite and their backroom financiers have unleashed, a Pandora's Box full of sub-prime demons, bailout monied monsters, and reckless, destructive capitalist devils of all shapes and sizes.

And, for some reason, General Zapata popped into my waterlogged head, a ghost from some long ago learned history, ¡Tierra y Libertad! now less of a rallying cry and more of a ominous echo against the bad debts of the Gringo Nation.

Hey, these things happen, market collapses. Especially when things like consumption as status and not of function has been encouraged for more than two decades...

Well, goddamn, you've gotta quit reading so much, dude.

Yeah. Head like a slingshot, really. Put the right pebble in, pull back, and release. It's self-loading.

* * * *

Suddenly, from nowhere, they're upon me. Two very drunk women, bundled in Northface jackets and impromptu rain gear, stagger out of the shadows from a side street, their heels clicking away an off-key collegiate chant.

"Ooooh. It's a cowboy!" One girl says.

"Ah.... ah... A CUTE cowboy!" The second girl says, too drunk to realize that the cute cowboy is right in front of her.

I stop, tip my hat, smile. A welcome disruption.

Some things, well, are just too damned depressing to dwell on for too long. And I don't know of a single straight guy or lesbian who doesn't appreciate being called cute by two mysterious, albiet drunken, hot women in skirts at three in the morning, either.

"Mr. Cowboy, I love your BOOTS! I, like, love, ohmygosh, cowboy stuff!" The first girl says.

"Yeah, I get that a lot."

The second girl bums a cigarette and begins what I call the Wasted Girl Play - the attempt to indicate, through wobbly eyes meant to be seductive, the convienient throwing of dead weight meant to be a casual arm around the waist, that, if I'm willing...

"I LOVE cowboys! When I was in Texas once... And I hooked up with a cowboy. I like... reVERSE COWWWgirl...."

The first woman, by the look on her face, is both the more sober one and the one most embarrassed. I laugh and discreetly slide out of the way-too-desperate girl's grasp. The first woman, too, bums a cigarette.

" We're kinda fucked up, sorry," The first woman says.

"It's okay. Happens. So's the world, if fact."

Again, I laugh. Another welcome distraction.

* * * *

The first woman and I chat - turns out she's been sobering up for hours as her now babbling friend had been getting more and more wasted - for a bit, over cigarettes, as the second woman rambles on, in fact, to the same telephone I'd been holding up before I'd surrendered it to her.

Also turns out that her father just found out he's being downsized after Christmas - hefty early retirement buyout from the sounds of it. He's been with the same firm since before she was born and, well, he's already put her on notice not to expect as much help with college expenses as she'd like.

So, she explains, she figured she'd better go out and get drunk with her whore of a roommate before the real world kicks her family in the ass.

* * * *

"Um, this is kinda silly, but can I try it on?" The first girl asks.

"Try what on?"

"Your hat. Looks Mexican or something. Like gunslinger, you know?"

I take off the hat, start to plop the soaking wet thing atop her head. And then, well, I don't know if it was the soaking wet hair, or the way her shivering skin shuddered beneath a cold street light, but I asked for something in exchange since I'd be giving up my shelter from the storm...

She didn't even hesitate. I guess, well, either I'm a good salesman or it was merely a good deal worth taking advantage of, when the money's getting tight.

And by kissing a stranger, yes, by even embracing and turning a peck into an impromptu make-out session, we were able to both share warmth and the brim of an old Stetson in the middle of a November rain. A hot mouth and a warm body beats shivering in the cold alone.

Drunk Girl No. 2? As the telephone pole proved to be too sober for her, she fell to her knees just in time to puke up all sorts of foul stuff, including what looked like semen.

Right in front of an ATM machine, down the street from a real estate office.

Land and liberty, General Zapata's fighters used to chant. There are, of course, still other things in life that are free, are open to better negotiation and barter and open free market exchange than our countrysides and our freedoms.

And yes, it is better to live and die on one's feet, even in the rain, than it is to live on one's knees spitting up a stomachful of vodka and jism.

Even in hard times, a fair trade in an open, honest marketplace, where each party uses the other for something in exchange for something, beats the alternative.

* * * *

Hey, chicks dig the hat. And the "cowboy stuff."

What more is there to say, really?

Really wish I'd bothered to catch the woman's name. Or to have given her mine.

That's a market where I'd consider investing again.

- # # # -