Friday, June 3, 2011

Notes from the Coast: Part 1

When I was born in 1987, Cougars did not exist. The Baltimore Ravens didn’t, either.

Things change.

I started my evening telling myself I was going to stay in. My friend Phil convinced me not to with two text messages. The first asked if I wanted to drink a little bit, and the second said there would be Jungle Juice at his apartment. At 23, I guess by societal norms I should be opposed to the Juice. I should be going to wine bars where I talk to people about how their steady relationship is going while I eat cubes of cheese and talk about work and stuff.

But yesterday was the fifth anniversary of the day I graduated from high school, and that made me feel old. There’s a gray spot in my beard, and I can’t even grow a fucking respectable beard yet. So, in the interest of youth and pure enjoyment, I went to his place. Also, for the drinking.

We played some drinking games, which made me feel young even if it didn’t restore pigment to my stubble. It was fun, but I had to hold back. I had work in the morning, so I told Phil and his friends I had to head home. I’d taken my bike there, but was unable to pilot it home. Nobody wants a BUI (or a David Bowie, as I have just now decided to call it), so I caught a bus.

While I waited at a bus stop, a group of four women had an in-depth discussion with me about the merits of owning and using a vibrator, and also about how their respective boyfriends didn’t accept their desire to pleasure themselves with the aforementioned device, despite the fact most dudes have been rubbing out at least once daily since the day they discovered they were able to. (I told ‘em to keep making themselves happy. If I had a package of double-A’s, I would’ve given it to them.)





Eventually, two ladies who were standing on the edge of 50 (years old, not the highway) joined us at the stop. We all boarded the bus, and some dude in a Hurley tank top said something to them about being Cougars as they Rosa Parks’d it to some open seats in the rear of the vehicle. They did not enjoy being called Cougars. At all. (Kind of like how I don’t enjoy being called a faggot every time I try to go for a run in short shorts. It’s Forrest or nothing, dickheads.) There were multiple threats to slap the dude (who it should be noted was using hair gel) in his “ugly ass Dego mouth.” My people. I just sat in my seat and nodded my approval. For some reason, they dug my silence, and took it as an opportunity to ask me what a Cougar really was. They knew of Courtney Cox, her show, and the typical definition of a Cougar, which is an attractive older woman looking to sleep with younger men. I initially said it was a four-legged predator that could be either tan or midnight black, but they did not buy it. They were smaaat Cougaas, as Steve Irwin would’ve said before wrestling them into submission. Goddammit I miss him.

“Well, I guess a Cougar is just an attractive older woman who is looking to get her last kicks in before menopause,” I said. “You know, with a younger guy.” One of the girls sitting next to me took that opportunity to ask me something really trivial, God bless her soul. It did not work.

“What do you know about menopause?” Pseudo-Cougar 1 said.

“Who says we’re looking for ‘kicks’?” said Pseudo-Cougar 2, before I could say one word.

***(NOTE: If these women fell under the definition of Cougar that I hold so dear, the definition I pray every night to have sex with, then my penis is the size of Greg fucking Oden’s. In Layman’s terms: They were what TLC would call “damn unpretty,” and at one point I was actually upset they were upset that some dude had called them Cougars in the first place, but arrogance is an unrequited affliction.)

Since I was Juicing, I was pretending I had testicles of a normal size and stature. I said, “A lot, actually,” and “Nobody said that.”

“You said that,” said Pseudo-Cougar 2, and I nodded like a foreigner who didn’t comprehend what two crazy ass women were saying on a public bus.

“I could wear my husband out, and he’s 47,” Pseudo-Cougar 1 said, and I stared blankly at her. In my opinion, if you can’t wear a 47-year-old man out during sex without him finishing, then he’s either a porn star, impotent, or you do not have the physical prowess to be dubbed a Cougar in the first place.

The group of girls who had been sitting near me and laughing at these women departed. I was alone on a bus full of people, like the total opposite of Straylight Run’s “Existentialism on Prom Night” video. I stayed on the bus until a few minutes later, when we hit the stop that, as fate would have it, was the end of the road for these two women and myself.

“Oh, you two are staying around here?” I said, immediately upset that I’d not gotten off the bus and fucking ran for it without saying a fucking thing. I should’ve just sprinted toward the scent of turkey bacon.

“Yep, at Castle in the Sand,” one of them said, before they started across the street toward a bar. I was happy they were leaving, because I was heading home anyway, a few streets up, and was glad not to have to have any more stupid ass conversations with middle-aged women.(Ask my Mom. I always beg out in favor of reading books, which is why I never get my dick wet.)

“GO RAVENNNNNNNNNNSSSSSSS” one of them screamed from halfway across the street. In that moment, I thought that while neither of those women was the best looking in the state, they also weren’t as ugly as Ed Reed and his incessant pit stains (Google it). They also weren’t referring to my man Edgar Alan Poe. I shook my head and said drunkenly to myself, “Nevermore.”

It dawned on me then that I’d written a newspaper article days before about a Ravens pride parade that is slated to take place in my adopted city this Saturday. I also remembered that the Castle in the Sand Hotel was the host of this gathering of Ravens fans.

An idea formed.

I strolled over to the hotel and saw myriad Ravens fanfare paraphernalia. There were purple and black flags all over the place, and even a smattering of purple and black Christmas lights, like these people had bruised Santa and were prepared to parade maniacally about it. (I respected the sentiment, since I’m a born and bred Steelers fan and the team’s star QB1 knows a thing or two about bruising. Allegedly.)

I immediately called my friend, Josh, and told him I had an idea about an antic I thought would be cool to write about. He endorsed it, and I went after it.

I snagged a Ravens flag from some weird tailgating tour bus that was parked in the hotel parking lot. There were decals all over it professing the Ravens as World Champions. They were starting to peel off with time. I draped this blanket over myself. I went incognito, and began jogging around the various hotel floors where older men were smoking cigars and their wives were smoking Virginia Slims.

I can’t tell you now how many cans of Natty Boh I was handed during my 20 minute stint around the Castle in the Sand. I can’t tell you how many shots I was given of all varieties, from Sambuca to Crown Royal to, believe it or not, Banker’s Club (I told that dude I was an accountant, which is funny because Bankers is in the name! Ha!). Everybody was so friendly, and after each and every one, I revealed that I was a Steelers fan. Every single one laughed, except one. It was my third-to-last conquest, and he was really pissed he’d parted ways with a can of beer worth less than the amount of money necessary to make a 20-minute call on 10-10-220.

This guy called me a “sandwich loving dickhead,” because apparently Baltimore’s finest don’t dig sammies. I turned around and shot him my “Scott Look,” which is the look my parents and friends tell me I used to shoot off when I didn’t agree with a referee’s call in high school.

“Dude,” I said, “I’m just having a little bit of fun. You’re here on a Thursday night, just trying to have fun for the weekend. Have fun, too.”

He called me a dickhead again, which is fine with me, because I’m never going to frown about being the first into a vagina. Someone or something has to shine a light up there, because those things are mad confusing.

I tried not to chuckle, but it didn’t work. At all.

“What’re yewwww laughin’ at?” he said.

“You,” I practically yelled, poised to fucking sprint for it. This man didn’t seem like he was fucking around. I started to walk away, hastily.

He told me he’d come after me, if he wasn’t “so worn out.”

I made myself stop laughing, and decided to extend a pseudo-olive branch.

“I understand,” I said. “I’m sorry. How old are you?”

“Forty-eight almost,” he said.

“Sounds about right,” I said.

1 comment:

Joanna Leigh Simon said...

BUI = David Bowies = best thing I've read today.