Back at the end of 80’s, when my hair was halfway down my back and I was playing in a Thrash Metal band (we said it was Power Metal — but let’s be honest), I was having a great time.  All 5’9, around 170 pounds of me could walk up on stage and play any instrument that needed to be played — of course, that was limited to guitar, bass and drums at the time.  My voice was a solid octave and a half deeper than what it is now.  I could sing bass and baritone like nobody’s business, with booming volume that would rattle our drummers cymbals even before the mic was turned on.

     Off-stage was a different story.  Nobody could understand a damn thing I said back then, as my voice was so deep that it simply faded off into the background, only to be heard by animals, those odd people who get sick before an impending earthquake, and people who were so blitzed on alcohol and downers that I sounded normal.

     We traveled around quite a bit, and just had a good time with it.  We made enough money to keep ourselves in cigarettes, food, alcohol, hotel rooms and gas for the truck and van, and pretty much the only thing we had to worry about was how we were going to be treated when we got to our next stop.  In most places, people were pretty cool, but there were certainly a few towns where there might’ve been six whole teeth in the lynch mob walking towards us at the gas station or restaurant we’d stopped at.
     One night in particular, we’d driven out of Jacksonville, North Carolina driving towards Virginia Beach.  Instead of taking the interstate like a normal human being, Michael led us through every curve of US17, through rural North Carolina at 2AM.  “It’ll be easier!” he assured us on the walkie-talkie.
     Of course, if you’ve ever seen the movie This is Spinal Tap, you know it never is.

     Around 3AM, in heavy fog in the middle of nowhere, the van had flat tire.  We all pulled to the side of the road, and all five of our long-haired, dumb-punk asses got out to watch, assist, smoke cigarettes and generally complain.  Dave and Jeremy, instead of holding the flashlights where Michael could see what he was doing, began having a lightsaber duel with the flashlights in the fog.  I had one of my typical “bad feelings” that I used to get, and started urging everyone to get serious so we could get back on the road.
     “Man, chill out!” Dave urged.  “It’ll be fine!”
     Shortly after he said it, we heard a noise that sounded like a pack of wild indians.
     “What the Hell was that?” Michael asked, just before banging his knuckles on the concrete due to a slightly stripped lug nut.
     “Probably some birds or something,” Chris said, completely uninterested as he held the third flashlight where Michael could see.
     Then we heard it again, along with a mechanical noise that sounded exactly like a clutch-slipping on a big, red truck with a gun rack in the back window.  From behind us, down the road, the lights kept getting closer, and the whooping and hollering got louder and louder.
     “Oh, shit, Michael!” I exclaimed.  “Hurry the f$&* up, man!”
     Without a word, Michael furiously pulled off the damaged tire and handed it to Chris, who quickly replaced it with another from the back of the van.
     The whooping got louder and louder, the lights closer.
     We all stood silent, watching, waiting.  We were all nervous.

     As Michael was tightening the first lug nut, they were on us.  It was, in fact, a big, old, beat up, red-and-primer truck, three people in the front and three standing in the bed holding on to the top of the cab screaming like a bunch of wild indians.  They passed us silently, all of them peering at us like they’d never seen human beings before.
     We all breathed a sigh of relief until we looked ahead, and saw the truck put on its break lights — and started backing up.
     “Michael, hurry up, dude!” Dave exclaimed.
     In a fever, he quickly finger-tightened the remaining nuts and began spinning the speed wrench as fast as he could.
     We all stood around Michael as they pulled up, still silent, still looking straight at us with looks of disbelief on their faces.  The three in the back of the truck jumped out, shirtless with overalls, and the passenger door of their truck swung wide with a loud creak.
     “Ya’ll ain’ frum ‘roun’ heeyah, ah ya?” said the biggest one, who looked like he could’ve picked the van up without the jack.
     “Uhhh, no sir,” I stammered.  “We’re driving through on the way to Virginia Beach.”
     He looked back at his five friends, quietly at first, then turned back around shaking his head as they all began to snicker.  “Ya’ll shu’ got lawng hayur!” he said.  They all began to laugh.
     We blinked back at them, holding our implements of destruction close.  My knife was ready to flip from my pocket and Michael held the speed wrench as Dave, Chris and Jeremy clutched their Maglights.
     “Ya’ll in a bayund?” he asked.
     “Yes, sir, we are,” I told him.
     “Wail,” he started, turning around to look at his friends, grinning and snickering a bit.  “Why dincha jus’ say so?  Sheeyit!”
     They all laughed.
     “Yawnt any help with’at tar?” another asked.
     Relief!

     We stood around and talked for a few minutes with them.  They were cool people, out drinking a bit and “raisin’ some hail!”  They offered some assistance getting everything back in the van, asked if we liked Metallica or Megadeth better, and even tossed us all a beer right there on the side of the road.
     Eventually, after having a beer with ’em and acting like idiots for a while, we offered our thanks, said our goodbyes, got our mini-caravan back togther and continued on to Virginia Beach.

     It was funny… There we were, with our long hair, worrying about people judging us for it all the time.  When six people in a beat-up truck drove by in the middle of rural North Carolina, we were doing the same damn thing.

     Good people are getting harder and harder to come by these days. 

     I mean, hey, they didn’t even have a problem hearing my deep voice.

     Just goes to show, you really can’t judge a book by its cover… 

     Even the ones who are so blitzed on alcohol and downers that I sounded normal.  😉

We had just sat down to have our mid-day bread breaking when a good-old boy, who apparently either can’t read or just doesn’t give a shit about the no-soliciting sign on the door cruised in.  I figure it’s the latter, as it is posted on our door in plain sight where one would grab the handle and pull the door.

So, there we are.  I wish my delicious Chicken Caesar Salad and  OG with her ethinic beet soup.  We are about to give thanks and partake, when this asshole walks in.

“Did you miss me?”  He asks as he swaggers our way, booty in hand.

“Uh, no.  It’s been about a year though,”  OG says.

He sets his goods, dozens of long stem roses (which were mighty pretty to be sure) on our lunch table.

“Remember how much they are?”  He winks at OG as she was the one who actually paid notice to his punk ass interupting our bread breaking.

“No,” she says. “But it doesn’t matter.  We don’t want any anyway.”

Then I chime in, “You can donate some for my bachelorette party tonight.”

Of which he offers congrats, but ignores the donation request… dick.

“Well, you could buy some to toss at your stripper,” he says, trying to appeal to my wild side.

“I ain’t got no stripper lined up, dude!”  I reply, aghast that he would even dream up that sales pitch.

“Mother or mother-in-law you could get some for?” he’s getting desparate.

So I decide to go in for the kill.

“Look guy, I’ll be completely honest. I’m not buying any because I am saving every penny to get balls out drunk tonight and if I buy your roses… that, my friend, will cut into my drinking budget.”

Have a great desert day, pal.

So, today marks the day of an ever so joyous event.  Diva’s bachelorette party!!!  Yay!

Well, our beloved Mark is sitting back, and sniveling, because he has a penis, not a vagina.

No penises at Diva’s bachelorette party.  Only people who are proud owners of a vagina are allowed as we will be greatly misbehaved and no males are allowed to be there to witness such naughty things as will be going on tonight. You´ll have your time to have fun, whatever that means for guys. What do they do on a Bachelor party?

In addition to lotsa drinkin, games on tap include:

Pin the bow-tie on the bachelor, Do or dare cards (which promises to be loads of fun since Robyn will do almost anything if dared), and a naughty scavenger hunt.

Details and photographic evidence to follow.

I just hate craving that damned chinese food from that damned yummy place over here by the office. 

I mean, I get a craving for it and I decided that, despite the fact I know that evil ass munch won’t give me the fortune cookie without a square off in the middle of the parking lot, I was going to go have me some tastey morsels of saucy goodness.

So, as usual, I go in, get my little styrofoam container, proceed to the buffet of happiness, load up my choices and go to the register to pay.  I set my container on the scale, as they charge for buffet to go by the pound.  This is where it the ugly gets on.

So, everything seems to be going smooth.  I’m mentally preparing for the fight for the fortune cookie.  I intend to win this time. 

“You need sauce or fork?” he asks me all smug like.

“Nope. But I want a Diet Pepsi,”  I tell him.

“Diet Pesi!” he calls out to the chick at the waitress station.

She totes it over and sets it on the counter as he rings me up. 

“That be $4.62,” he tells me.

UH OH!  Houston we have a problem.  Diva don’t carry cash.  Just something I don’t do.  It’s way too easy to use my debit card to have to fool around with dollars.

This ass munch “only takey the credit cawd fo ova fi dolla.”  Hasn’t he seen that VISA commercial that shows the world is officially going plastic???

Still yet, I try to slip it by him.  I pull out my debit card with VISA logo and push it toward him.

“We only take cawd fo purchase ova fi dolla,” he reminds me.

“Look guy, I don’t have any cash.  Well I have a handful of change in the bottom of my purse, but not enough,” I tell him as show him my empty wallet.

“You always can get another drink take wif you,” he tells me.

“Uh, no. You can run my card or I’ll have to leave it,” I tell him, now pissed.

“Well, I not running cawd.  You get cash, come back,” he tells me.

“OK, fine!”  So, I walk out the door.  No lunch, no friggin fortune cookie, and definitely no balls to tell him what he could do with his no useless carton of to-go.

God Bless Taco Bell.  They’ll takey my debit card for an eighty-nine cent bean burrito.

So, I’m still extremely new to this living in the same house and sharing the same bedroom full time thing. Not that it’s bad.  Actually, it’s quite nice being able to reach over in the night and play with his hair or crawl across the bed and give him a light little kiss while he’s sleeping. 

What is taking some definite time to get used to is the fact that his alarm clock is a screamer!  When I say screamer, I don’t mean one of those annoying buzzer sounding things.  I mean it’s an indescribable sound that has rattled my ass awake a 4:45 in the morning.  Not only does it rattle my ass awake, the clock actually grows legs, walks around the bed to my side, shakes the piss out of me, picks me up and drops me right in the middle of the bedroom.

Now, I’m not a morning person by any means.  It really doesn’t matter if I get 4 or 8 hours of sleep.  But when that damn thing goes off before the chickens are even awake, that’s a problem for me.  Especially since his ass doesn’t get up when it goes off the first time.  No.  He slaps the snooooze button like 6 times.  So, six times I get picked up and dropped on my ass in the middle of the floor before daylight.  What the hell?  We are gonna have to find an empass.  A new alarm clock, maybe?  Setting the bitch a little later instead of hitting snooooooze so many times, maybe?

Anyway, so he finally wakes up after the 7th roar of the alarm.  I’m wide awake already.  Sitting up in bed, smoking a ciggie, waiting for coffee to get done. Me and the cat staring at him, daring him to hit snooooze again. Thank Jesus, no more snooooze button. 

He rolls over, smiles all sweet and says, “Honey, I know I complain alot.”

“What’s the matter?”  I ask in the sweetest 5am voice I can muster.

“Well, I woke up and had to pull this out of my ass.”  He says as he hands the DVD player remote to me laughing his ass off.

God bless his little heart. I love him so much.  Maybe this is the answer to my being late to work every day.  If I’m dropped in the floor and wide awake by 5am, surely I can make it work work on time by 8:30?