special...for a living

i have decided to leave my job and work for Match.com.

i love personal ads. i read them compulsively. i am absolutely fascinated by what people think other people find alluring. i have learned more about Richmond by reading its personals ads than by any other means. i read them all. men for women. men for men. women for men. women for women. other. casual. serious. i find them all thrilling and curious.

Here are the first few ads from Richmond this morning:

WANTED: Enlightened, intellectual spring flower - 31
I am picky. But if you have, big, loving eyes that are filled with love (and wear that long skirt), you have damn good chances.

Bored Guy loves oral - m4w - 33
I'm an athletically built construction worker who absolutely enjoys getting women off with absolutely NSA or touching of my. My gratification comes from pleasing and tasting you. Front and back, its all good.

Southern Gentleman Seeking Younger Girlfriend
I am a mature and responsible white male seeking companionship. I have a son who is off to college.

Do you need a Loan? - 42
I can help.....email with your details/situation if you are serious about getting it!

okay okay, i'll stop, but i love them all. i wish that i could read them all aloud. I know that there were personal ads long before the advent of the internet, but it seems that there has been an explosion in the past 10 years of online personals, romantic or intimate chatting, matrimonial services etc.

like any other market that was opened up by free trade and quick and easy travel, the relationship market has opened up as well. it's a sound premise...just like you can easily find any obscure book, film, vintage handbag, nazi souvenir, now you can search through thousands of people to find exactly what you always wanted. the combination of your dream traits and fantasy looks.

the internet dating pool is overwhelming. no longer being forced to choose between the three village eligibles, our minds can wander and wander and wander, musing on what exactly would suit us best in a partner.

only that if you're anything like me ...your idea of suitable partner is invariably WRONG. forging a relationship with someone new, should be done, for most people, in the close quarters of their families and loved ones. basically, surrounded by people who are smarter about you than you are.

still, people have built veritable empires from internet dating. sites like eharmony and match.com and jdate proliferate...and they're NOT cheap. i am sure there are a number of factors that contribute to their success, but i think the key ones are that now people feel as if they can meet their true love from the comfort of their office, and since that is where they are spending 70 hrs/week, it's a pretty good idea. also, we all seem to be convinced that greater selection means increased chances of happiness with the choice we finally do make ( like "wow, i love this supermarket, they have over 50 kinds of tomato sauce, i'm sure to find the best"). i think this is erroneous, but never mind, i'm not going to let it stand in the way of my new career as a professional special person.


the new commercial that i hear on the radio for Match.com is themed : " go ahead, it's okay to look"

then they go on to say that if you use their service for 6 months at like $20/month and you don't meet anyone special, they'll give you next six months free.

Six months free! how is THAT for a guarantee??

it sounds to me as if they stand to lose a pretty penny, because even if you DO meet someone special, after six months, i'm sure you're hooked on the whole shopping aspect, and besides you never know when you might meet someone MORE special, especially if it's free. ..i mean go ahead, it's okay to look.

so i thought that i would offer myself to Match.com as professional special person, so that they wouldn't loose so much money.

basically i would go out on dates with as many eligibles as possible. i am infinitely qualified because i am REALLY good at going on dates. in fact i am as good at going on dates as i am bad at being in actual relationships. i would go out with men and women, i'm not picky. I imagine Match.com would set me up with the biggest train wrecks, those who they thought were the highest rick at making good on the guarantee after six months.

i would hep myself up, go on these dates and be ebullient and charming . i can make ANYONE feel interesting, so i imagine i would have to do a lot of that. when the time was right because we'd been skinny dipping in a water tower or drinking scotch at a drive in ...and maybe it would take one or two dates....i would move in for the clincher and say .... "Wow, goodnight, that was really special, wasn't it?" or " My, you are so special, i never thought i would meet anyone special like you"

and i would look so sincere, that whether or not they felt it, they would pretty much be obliged to respond in kind and be forever captured by the tiny hidden mic tapped to my chest as having said " you are special too". forfeiting their chance to a free 6 months.

since anything disingenuous seems to be a major asset to the modern business, i basically think this would make me the match.com employee of the month...forever. and think of all the train wrecks i would get to meet!

you are how you eat

food is important to me...my friends and my waist line might say VERY IMPORTANT, the only thing more important than food...that i can mention without shaming my sweetheart...is EATING! (you thought i was going to say drinking, didn't you)

Eating is an old and sacred ritual. I didn't realize how i felt about it until i moved to the states where people eat crummy food by themselves -but it's the later that i don't condone under any circumstance, barring the untimely deaths of the other members of your polar exploration party.

nearly every day i do a strange thing at lunch time, which is to drive home rapidly and procure or make lunch for my sweetheart. it takes a lot of time and energy. everyone thinks this is some "sweet" or incredibly loving gesture on my part, but just like most of what i do, it's pure selfishness successfully gussied up as something more noble.

the truth is i have this phobia about eating alone or with anyone i don't like a lot. i feel like bad ju jus will get me if i don't at least stick to the part of the ritual that involves breaking bread with people one is really fond of. So midday finds me hauling my cookies to a bicycles shop where i eat standing up and dribbling a bit-part meal over orders for wheel sets and repairs. usually i have to check my work email at least once to ascertain if anyone's noticed my absence and thrown a fit. it's a little stressful, but i wouldn't have it any other way.

i just have to share my meals with someone i can talk to and laugh a little with, otherwise, frankly, i'd rather not eat at all...and we all know that's not going to happen!

i realized i'm not so much a food snob (I get this accusation often) as a meal snob. I love to feed myself while i look at people i like, or think i might like in the near future. i don't care what i am eating so much as who i am eating it with. much to luke's dismay i am forever inviting such and such neighbor or friend for a meal he will no doubt get roped into helping with. I can't help it! if i meet someone i think is interesting the first thing i want to do is eat with them.

luckily for all of you who have been tolerating this for years...my cooking seems to be improving.

i am illustrating this with a picture of my hot car for reasons known only to myself.

driven to drink

The French are always accusing Americans of being puritans, something that used to really get under my skin. The French can be painfully traditional and conservative and nearly the entire country is Catholic, so i never really saw where they got off pointing fingers.

But i am beginning to understand. Firstly, the French are only culturally Catholic, so the extent of their spirituality is limited to freezing their tits off in a medieval church on Christmas eve and occasionally waving a palm frond lazily on....that holiday with the palm fronds. Besides this sort of stuff...they don't actually believe.

Now that I am living here I am beginning to see that Americans are real Christians...even the awnry punk rock ones that I frequent, who wouldn't be caught dead at Sunday service, are still genetically Christian...you can tell by the omnipresent belief that life should be misery and suffering.

it's a real downer.

I realized all of this when i was introduced to the concept of DRINKING GAMES. maybe you are familiar with some of them...i'm not, but i guess i have gotten to witness my fair share of "Beer Pong" and "Asshole" and a few others in the past six months. EVERYONE here plays at one time or another.

Beer Pong seems by far the most popular in Richmond. people use a long table (sometimes a specially decorated sacred plywood board is brought out) You arrange cups in a triangle, fill them with beer, let the person at the other end try to throw what is probably the world's-dirtiest-ping-pong-ball into your cups of beer. If they get the ping pong ball in then you have to drink the, now-contaminated, beer. If they miss, the ball just goes into the corner of the room and collects more dust and germs...so that's also good.

at least this is how it works from what i can tell...i've never actually played. Why haven't I played? am i spoiled sport? a tea totaller? a bad shot? NO!

i just don't need any excuse or justification to drink. none what so ever. i love booze. i love all kinds...i like the feeling of being warmed by alcohol. i like beer and wine and liquor, i drink them all because i can't tell which one i like best..i like being a little tipsy, pretty drunk....whatever. then i like eating, dancing, or running around. did i say like? because what i really meant was LOVE, as in I LOVE IT.

alcohol is one of the most ancient human social pleasures. Many advanced cultures understand this. for all of its' flaws, France is at the vanguard. But america seems to be lagging despite the fact that drunk people here are drunker than anywhere else.

I think this is the hidden subtext of drinking games, unconsciously, people here, even the wild ones, seem to feel guilty about pleasure. The real motivation driving the game is to assuage the sense of guilt that so many puritans associate with pleasure, thus forcing them to have fun. By besting someone in a drinking game you force them to drink, punishing their loosing with the pleasure they wanted in the first place and easing their conscience by making them feel that they just had to drink, since it is the penance for loosing. afterall, they are just following the rules

and we know how puritans love penance and rules.

it is not uncommon to hear someone say " i was sooooo drunk on Friday night, it was terrible, I just had to keep drinking, everyone beat me in Beer Pong" or " I lost at such and such and they made me drink three 40's"

it is not uncommon to hear me say " I was sooooo drunk on Friday, i drank everything in the house because i wanted to and I had a delightful time"

or, in truth, even more frequently: " Luke do you have any money? Good! let's go out on the lash and go crazy"

let's all embrace pleasure! ecstasies! aesthetics! irreverent spending! humour! beauty! poetry! sex! booze!



Hopefully my stint here will witness the ushering in of a new era of Bacchanalian Good Times.

we can do it if we try.

gotta work fast

There is a shelf at my parent's home that is empty, save for a sign that reads " Reserved for Nobel Prizes and pictures of grandchildren."

abject failure is getting me down.

like bandits

"making out" is a staple of the the Richmond social diet. it's fascinating and not a little fraught with peril. "making out" means some sort of extended kissing and groping...like snogging, although it can also mean to get a really good deal, or to discern something clearly, so you can see how i get confused.

as in:

he sold us the entire knife set AND the nun chucks for five dollars, we really made out!

or:
In the dark I couldn't quite make out whether it was him or his sister.



or..confusingly:
i don't remember his name, but we drank like 10 beers each and made out.


most of the time you can go on context, but not always, so beware.

i was at a show on Friday night at Casey and Marshé 's store and was introduced to some kid who got that dreamy faraway look in his eyes we all long to see in those of recent acquaintance.

we talked for a few minutes before he said "we should hang out or make out sometime"

i thought that i misheard him over the bad band from New York, but someone present repeated it to me later, so yep, i guess that was the real offer for kissing.

wow

an offer indeed.

one fellow who likes to mosey up and smooch ladies on the piste de dance was labeled by Marshe as a "walk up make-outer" . This, perhaps needless to say, is a bad thing.

So if, like me, you thought that french kissing and heavy petting was indelibly linked to sex....as in.... basically something to do with you face during....well, come to Richmond and think again!

Here you can kiss someone's stinky sweaty party mouth...or even more than one person, if you're feeling exuberant, and not worry that you have made a solemn oath to fuck them all night long! really!! people here do it all the time!

so for those coming to visit me in the near future, keep this in mind and brush up with mirrors, the backs of your hands, anything handy that you find around the house and prepare to make out!

you should not

(a leeetle more advice )

drink in the middle of the afternoon and fall on your head, thus frightening brand new boyfriend and putting your dentist's children through college...and graduate school...and probably a cruise.

The Fourth of July

there are a variety of occasions that one might, in theory, celebrate on the Fourth of July. Including, but not limited to-

• the 836 Pactum Sicardi between the Principality of Benvenuto and the Duchy of Naples





• the 1054 supernova observed by Chinese, Arabs, and possibly the Amer-indians alike, the remanents of which formed the Crab Nebula.





• the brief 1810 French occupation of Amsterdam





• the 1886 arrival of the first-ever scheduled transcontinental Canadian train in Port Moody





• The 1918 murder of Tsar Nicholas II at the hands of the Bolsheviks (but only if you use the Julian calender, so that is sort of cheating)





• The 1918 birth of Anne Landers, American advice columnist.





• The liturgical feast of St. Bertha, widow abbess of Blangy in Artois





• The 1980 death of Maurice Grevisse, the Belgian Grammarian

But if you are in Richmond, chances are you are celebrating American independence. The Continental Congress secretly declared independence from the British on July 2 1776 ( sissies), but the Declaration of Independence was not drafted until the 4th, because even with all those smart men in one room it still took two days to conjure the most high falutin language possible. The Declaration was sent to print and then read publicly and celebrated with bonfires on the 8th...go figure.

Today many people celebrate with fire works and parades. They also sing songs like " My Country 'Tis of Thee" and "America the Beautiful". Hundred of thousands converge on Washington DC and other major cities to enjoy the festivities and most people don't go to their crap jobs.

But Richmond is a true original, and if you are in Richmond you celebrate by going to a really really dirty family-owned water park and drinking a lot of Pabst Blue Ribbon ( voted America's Best Beer in 1893) and malt liquor. You wear some piece-meal, home-made swimming costume that probably involved a thrift shop, your old underpants, or taking the scissors to a pair of Dickies, you go off of a rope swing or a water slide, eat a vegetarian hamburger, stumble around, get a sunburn on your tattoo, pass out in the dirt and eventually cycle or drive home drunk at the end of the day.

it's patriotic and it's fun!

you should

i am a big one for giving advice. i can hardly imagine a less attractive quality in a human being besides actual homicidal tendencies, but there you have it.

my advice today:

WRITE LETTERS!

i mean it. there are few things where the return so outstandingly overshadows the effort. i write outrageous letters because i don't have to live with them. i just send them on their merry way and never look back. i kiss the envelopes when i drop them in the post box the way that Francis Stellof (founder of the Gotham Book Mart ) used to say her father kissed the books he accidentally dropped. i kiss my letters as if inanimate objects could store tenderness, warehousing love for release at a later date.

i can conjure the look of pleasure when they hit the hand for which they were intended or when my penmanship is recognized amongst a pile of bills and grocery store inserts. How many times have i thrilled at the small corner of Angelo's brown envelopes, Scottie's old Olympia's type face, Jeremy's allegiance to green pens.

i try to do them justice with my replies, they are the best of me, like the best of anyone, only fully realized once they are given away. my letters are dashed off in cursive, they are invariably misspelled, i never reread them, i never rewrite them, i never correct anything lest i reneg on a fleeting bold sentiment.

the letters i have been lucky enough to receive are some of my most valuable possessions. i schlep at least 50 lbs of them around whenever i move - which is often. i have hundreds- maybe thousands, because i am attracted, somehow, to other letter-writers. i tie them in ribbons or push them into books. i am not a very reverent reader of anything, precious post included, my envelopes are shredded carelessly in haste, their contents stained with coffee, grease, blood or worse. i don't care very much, my relationship with paper has always been a carnal one.

they change me and their rereading changes me again.

recently one of my letters was excerpted and published in a friend's article about donating sperm. he sent me a photograph of the letter in question and i was charmed by it...in its new life in the sun of Marseille. I felt a bit like those people who train seeing-eye dogs and then send them to their new homes, it was rare and nice to see my letter in action, doing its job.

I've gotten great compliments on my letters, but, to be honest, none have ever taken me more than 25 minutes to write. i say this only to incite you. they are like art and babies - a chance to make something good out of nothing special- except heaps less work. so do write to someone immediately. please.

butt naked angel

i have never actually known if the expression was "buck naked" or "butt naked" admittedly, neither make much sense and one doesn't see it often in print, but last night i really strained my ears at the chorus and i am pretty sure the singer was saying " butt naked" so that's what i am going with.

i went with my neighbors Marianne, Coco and Kelsi Ray to the Hollywood Grill, a local Oregon Hill sort of honky tonk, named for Hollywood Cemetery and not Hollywood Hollywood, the cemetery being named for actual hollies...you know...the trees. they were trying to cheer me up and it worked.

There was a band of fat men playing electric guitars. they had things like roses tattooed on their hands and guitar straps with skulls and lightening bolts. They played some pretty good original compositions and a little Skynnard, but the best by-far went:

I'm waking
and I'm baking
with a butt naked angel
how could so much, of something so fine, be all mine?

in case there were a few of you left unconvinced about paying me a visit after all of that Virginia history, i am betting this pretty much wins you over.

whistling dixie

i guess that song was originally a strange antebellum composition sung by black minstrels about how great plantation life was. then it became a nostalgic civil war anthem for the anemic southern loosing streak. so to whistle dixie is synonymous with some sort of quixotic misremembering of the glorious good old days. more commonly phrased as you ain't just whistling dixie, as far as i can make out, in modern richmond speak this just means "for real".

in case you wanted to know. and admit it, you did.

today i am just posting some pictures of the things i own. i never owned much before.

Sic semper tyrannis

thus always to tyrants.

i am not entirely sure what that means, but it is the state motto of Virginia, which is in America, and where i am currently residing. since i am a joiner i thought i would spread the word about Virginia in an effort to feel closer to her.

Sometimes Virginia is called the mother of states and statesmen. The original charter was for a tract of land so large that it extended from south Carolina to Maine and out into the Atlantic to include Bermuda. 8 U.S. presidents were born here including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and six others that no one has ever heard of...except maybe Woodrow Wilson, and that is a big maybe.

our state insect is the tiger swallowtail. our state beverage is milk. our state fossil is the Chesapecten Jeffersonius whatever that is. and our state song WAS " take me back to old Virginny" until the song was retired in 1997 for reasons which apparently can't be disclosed on the Internet, but i will tell you that the last verse included these classic lines: when I'm dead and gone to rest, Lay de Banjo by my side, Let de Possom and Coon to de funeral come, For dey is my only pride.

Virginia was named for Elizabeth I of England - the 'virgin' queen (since she was able to adopt this title solely because she never married, i must qualify for the same, so if everyone would please make a note to start calling me the virgin queen, that would be great)

Above is a drawing of the colonial city of Jamestown. formerly unpublished, we now know from studying this document that Jamestown was colonized by a group of bratty British toddlers who still drew with their boogers.

At the time of the English colonization of Virginia, The native American tribes inhabiting the territory were the Cherokee, Chesapeake, Chickahominy, Mattaponi, Moobs, Nansemond, Nottaway, Pamunkey, Povic, Powhatan, Occoneeches, Rappahannock, Saponites and others. Naturally they are all dead now, but some of these names live on as street names in new housing developments in squalid suburbs, so that seems pretty fair.

Richmond is the capital, just as it was in the American Civil War when the southern states decided to take their toys and go play somewhere else on account of Abe Lincoln wasn't going to let them keep the nice people the brought over from Angola any longer just growing tobacco in exchange for boiled sow's ears and a good rogering from the master now and again...even if the master was Thomas Jefferson.

it's hot in the summer, cold in the winter, slow and polite and there are places that still grow peanuts and tobacco and if anyone. and i do mean ANYONE, wants to come and visit. why, you're most welcome.

hypothetically speaking

anyone who knows me naturally knows that NO ONE i would ever be romantically linked to would come to my house drunk in the middle of the night and wake me up and break up with me citing reasons like " i think i have serious feelings for your neighbor" and " i hate everyone" and then never speak to me again. that would never happen to me. my life is just too fucking classy.

but lets just say for a nano second that it did happen...purely as an experiment. and lets just say that you were forced to relate the embarrassing incident to a piece meal international posse of your nearest and dearest as they all began to ask " how is so and so that you said you're falling in love with?"

going from these hypotheticals, this is a list of things that person might be called in a comedic attempt to make you feel better, whilst only succeeding in making you feel as if, according to your entourage, you had chosen the most subhumanly vile and repulsive partner on earth. and earth....well, earth was just waiting to let you in on the joke.

this list has no attributions, but parents, richmond locals and an awnry australian are amongst them.


loser
total loser
joke
total joke
idiot
crazy
fucking crazy
fucking idiot
fucking faggot
nutter
cunt
cunt rag
fetid smear of cuntsludge
pussy
twat
dick
prick
ass
asshole
bitch
son of a bitch
total peice of shit
cocksucker
dickless fuckwit
dickless toddler
wack job
wanker
fool
stupid
douche bag
brainless
spineless
thoughtless
gutless
useless
tasteless
jobless
penniless
talentless
scared little boy
pansy
sleazy
stoner
friendless stoner
friendless scenester
vegetarian with thinning hair
drunk
mean drunk
drug addled drunk
completely devoid of a future
chicken
chicken shit
cruel
mean
imbecile
sincerely confused
white trash mamma's boy
just some random dude




thanks guys. why not tell me what you really think! whilst copying and pasting those from concerned emails might feel momentarily good (if this was a real story, it might) i would actually contest that COMPLETELY BESMIRCHING the n'er do well loved one in question is not, in the long run, any cure for the broken hearted. infact i think it could hypotheically really make a person feel a hell of a lot worse! and besides it wasn't all bad.... i mean.... doesn't a jobless crazy white trash mamma's boy sound really good right about now! well... i know i'm in!

you wouldn't believe me if i told you.

i preface the word "Richmond" with this sentence when ever any of my friends say " haven't heard from you in months, where are you?"

and i am right. they don't. belive me, that is.

if you told me a year ago today that i would be working in some dixie outpost full of college kids and bad tatoos and small town thinking, i would have laughed you out of my arrondisement.

but here i am and here goes nothing. literally.