DON’T JUST DO IT: AN ESSAY BY JOHN M. SANDY

I decided that this society was completely fucked eons ago. However, I’ve only recently noticed a whole new level of interpellation. American society breeds the notion of necessary activity in its people’s minds. Everything has to be active in our culture. This requirement probably dates back to the Protestant Work Ethic and its importation to American soil by the Puritan settlers. I haven’t decided yet, but it may just be the reason that England kicked these pesky motherfuckers out in the first place. If you believe that “religious freedom” bullshit then you probably believe everything you learned in high school history class and you need to open your fucking eyes. To summarize the PWE in one word, it means WORK. The ugliest word in the English language, just look at it. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Okay then. Now just think of our modern society. What do strangers always ask, right after your name (at least we still have our names, but I’m sure that’s the next thing to go {in the next decade or so, multinational corporations will probably start buying people’s names for advertisement purposes} [I can see it now: “Hi, my name is Miller Genuine Draft and I’m an alcoholic...”]})? They ask, “What do you DO?” You are defined in America by what you do. Even friends always greet you with the obligatory “What have you been up to (i.e. doing) lately?” or “What are you doing?” or “Do you want to do something Friday night?” Thus, to communicate with other people you must have done something, be doing something, and plan to do something, just so that when they ask you these questions, you can actually have something to say.

In fact, it goes deeper. Much fucking deeper. Just look at our language. Every elementary school teacher indoctrinates their students with the iron rule that passive sentences are wrong. We must use verbs in the active voice. The point being that Activity = Good, Passivity = Bad. Yet, thanks to the Industrial Revolution and the advent of modern technology, we are finding ourselves with increasingly more leisure time. But guess what? We’ve all been conditioned to constantly be doing something. Activity has been coded into our brains as necessary to survival. Thus, we are desperate for activities. We’ll do the most mundane task just so that we can be doing something, anything.

How else can you explain the popularity of golf? Or the films of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Still, no matter how fast Hollywood can churn that crap out, there is never enough shitty activities to fill up people’s pathetic daily existences. Therefore, boredom seeps in. It is the number one neurosis in our nation. Americans are not allowed to accept the fact that they are not doing anything. So they get bored, then agitated, then depressed, then ultimately psychotic. All because they don’t know what to do with themselves. This is why I try not to do a goddamn thing. I just want to be. That’s all. Unfortunately, centuries of brainwashing aren’t easy to remove. Occasionally, I fuck up and do something. At least I’m fucking trying. One day I will be able to simply say, “I am.”

My Sociology TA returned the above essay to me with the following note:

Do it again! And, please, try to stay on topic this time. In case you forgot, the topic is: “How American Society Has Shaped You as An Individual.” I’ll give you another week to finish this assignment.

P.S. Please refrain from using such abrasive language.

Undaunted, I gave my TA the exact same paper along with my own note:

Hey, I was wondering if you actually read my fucking essay? I firmly believe that it was / is / shall forever be “on topic.” And if you did read it, then you should know that by forcing me to do it again (even mocking me in the process) you are tugging on the very social strings that I discussed in my paper. In addition, by trying to censor my words, you are attempting to socialize me to communicate by means which you, being a TA, and thus a socializing force in my life, deem appropriate. Or maybe you are just applying what we’ve been discussing in class to a real-world scenario. If that is the case, I applaud your effort and I assure you that the lesson has been learned quite thoroughly. Still, I categorically refuse to write another fucking paper on concepts which I quite obviously understand.

My TA then returned my paper once again, as well as my appended note, together with yet another note of her own:

Is this your new essay? If so, I suggest you rethink it as you clearly wrote it under the influence of some sort of drug. It makes no sense to the unaltered mind. It is far too short as well. However, we at the OSU Sociology Department understand that college kids are going through a very difficult time in their life. Trying to figure things out on their own can lead many youngsters down the wrong path. In other words, I understand your pain and can even empathize with you. Therefore, I will relieve you of the burden of this paper. Please continue to attend lecture and read the assigned materials. I will determine your grade solely based on the midterm and final examinations. If you ever need an understanding ear, please come see me during my posted office hours.

P.S. You really shouldn’t use such profane language in formal essays. You’re attending an institution of higher learning, not a sailor’s bar.

Since I always have to get the last word in, I replied with a final brief note:

Do you even fucking understand what the word, “understand,” fucking means? I am not presently on drugs so I hope you can understand what the fuck I’m trying to say!

P.S. You really should take your fucking head out of your ass. This is an institution of higher learning, y’know?

I gave this note to Stan to drop off at the TA’s office. However, I doubt that it ever reached its destination since Stan discovered the OSU Computer Center that same afternoon and I didn’t see him again for nearly a month. By which time, he’d become a total computer geek. It was during this Stan-less window that I met Jim. So I guess in some weird cosmic way, that stupid-ass TA is responsible for the Depressed Idealists.

Alas, I did all that shit when I was still an idealistic freshman. Back when I actually believed that being a Sociology major would help me learn the ways in which a society encodes certain beliefs in its people and how one may counteract such powerful forces. Instead, I learned three important lessons that year: 1) the world seems to get off on crushing its young and idealistic inhabitants; 2) very few OSU Professors will accept a paper with the word “fuck” or any of its derivatives in it; and 3) almost all Sociology Professors are dudes with tidy ponytails that are experiencing midlife crises, which means that they tend to drone on and on about how their wife left them and took the kids and how they “feel so horrible” and “how do you students feel?” but they never actually exude anything remotely resembling an emotion. I may’ve also learned that I have a tendency to ignore rules of grammar and write extremely long run-on sentences. Though, I don’t really consider merely becoming aware of a shortcoming, yet never improving upon said shortcoming as “learning.” But hey, that’s just me.

Jim and Stan refused to go to the protest of the big game since they both fear football with a passion not seen since the Gospel. Jim dislikes it because he used to play and (besides his obsession with his beloved pectoral muscles) he’d prefer to forget all about his jock past. For his part, Stan strongly associates the sport with getting picked on by bullies. Plus, he fears most things that take him away from his beloved computer.

I tried to argue to the two of them that their respective beefs would also probably arise at the demo at frat row (which would be packed with drunken football fans) and that we promised the OCP that we’d rock that shit out.

Flustered by their apparent betrayal, I stammered: “And if Trotsky taught us anything, it’s not to fuck with the Communist Party, unless you like your ice picks located in painful places. Anyway, for the very same reasons that you guys hate football, that’s exactly why we should go to the game and protest.”

Since they failed to crumble in the face of my mighty logic (or react to my argument in any manner whatsoever) I started to scream: “Fuck me, you guys never do anything! How will the revolution come if you don’t do something? You can’t change the world by doing nothing! Could you please just do something for once!”

Although I was the one talking (and rather loudly to boot) I wasn’t really paying attention to the actual words spewing forth from my mouth. I was too busy being angry and hurt that I’d have to deal with the OCPers all by myself for the whole afternoon.

After I screamed, “Do something!” for like the tenth time, I noticed the peculiar looks on their faces, which hinted strongly at the fact that I was making a complete jackass of myself. Then, I finally realized what I was saying and immediately shut the fuck up.

Jim attempted to sooth my soul by saying, “Take it easy, Sandy. It’s no biggie. We’ll just meet up with you later at the frat protest. Football just ain’t our thing, man.”

With that pithy statement, Jim went off to see Nike and Stan did whatever the hell it is that he does on his computer all day. I, meanwhile, still felt like a jackass. Luckily, I was going to meet some other jackasses to protest a game played by a bunch of jackasses in a front of a huge audience of jackasses. So, at least, I wouldn’t be lonely.

All summer (and now fall) long, Nike has enjoyed getting high and sliding down the twirly slide at the local schoolyard. It’s been an arduous few months for her. After graduating from OSU with a degree in Psychology (a lot of good that fucking did her {she soon realized that a B.A. in that particular field merely allowed her to be a receptionist, a grocery store cashier, a temp slave, and the person at the zoo that cleans up the monkey doo-doo}), she grudgingly accepted the reality that she was crippled with debt and had to move back home for awhile. A fact that wouldn’t have been so bad if her dad wasn’t completely batshit crazy. Talking with him was like talking to one of those hebephrenic schizophrenics she’d learned about in her Abnormal Psychology course. Then again, maybe he was actually a fucking genius (Nike didn’t like to judge people) and was merely functioning on a different mental plane from everyone else. Whatever the diagnosis, living with Orson Steaminson was hell for Nike.

To make matters worse, she also had to deal with Charles’ nightly phone calls. Nike couldn’t even fathom the amount of organizational ability one needed to be able to make a call at the same exact time every single fucking day, especially when the caller was two time zones away. As soon as she noticed this distinct pattern, Nike began to answer the phone before it even rang. She’d pretend like she was trying to get a line out to order Chinese food or call 1-900-BIG-COCK or something silly. She did this just to fuck with Charles’ head. He, of course, failed to notice that this was a joke. Instead, he decided that his designated phone calling time correlated almost perfectly with Nike’s calling out time. Therefore, he started calling her an hour later every night, still like fucking clockwork. Depressed, Nike no longer attempted such good-humored jokes.

Soon after this change in telephone protocol occurred, she noticed that whenever she talked with Charles she got goose bumps all over her body. The presence of these bumps of geese was rather strange since her father always turned on the heater during the summer (oddly, in the winter, he’d switch on the air conditioning {if questioned about such bizarre rituals, he would either respond with either “I do it for the realism. Cold outside, cold inside. Hot outside, hot inside,” or “What are you, some sort of faggot?”) so it was as hot as a Turkish sauna in the house.

To avoid these symptoms (and get some fresh air) Nike would slip out of the house and walk up to her old elementary school’s playground during the interval when Charles called. While he left cordial messages with her father, Nike indulged her new sweet tooth. Thanks to all the months she’d spent with Jim, she’d become a connoisseur of weed. It was during that summer that she first smoked weed by herself. Before, it was always with other people, usually Jim. Nike wasn’t sure what to think about this development (was she now officially a drug addict?).

In fact, she didn’t really want to think about any of her current problems, or her past problems or, most of all, her future problems. Instead, she threw her weight down the slide that twists and turns and screamed the battle cry of life, “Whee!” Frolicking beneath the Ohio moonlight, Nike, as always, moved like a sylph.

“Dipsomania, dipsomania, give me a beer, give me a drink, life’s too hard, I don’t wanna think,” I scream while I wink at the pissed-off frat boys. The Depressed Idealists’ live sound has been described as a “cacophony” (whatever the fuck that means {that’s what our one and only review claimed, please see The Mighty Buckeye Times, Vol. 23, Issue 42 [that is, if you can track down a copy that wasn’t used for kitty litter or the rolling of joints]}). Personally, I think we just plain rock. We play basic chord progressions (I only know how to play power chords) really loud and really fast. On top of which, I bellow my thoughts on the world and the word “fuck” a lot.

We’re a tight musical unit. Not so much because we play often (which we try to do), but because we all learned how to play our instruments together. None of us has ever played with anyone else. Plus, the three of us are best friends forever. So we’re pretty much connected physically and psychically to each other. I know exactly when Jim is going to slow down or when Stan is going to fall asleep. Likewise, Jim knows when I’ll stop pretending to do a guitar solo and when Stan is going to fall asleep. And as soon as Stan wakes up, he immediately starts playing in time with Jim and me. It’s actually kind of fucking amazing. You must see it to believe it. That and it’s rather nifty to see a fat-ass bassist pass out in the middle of a song, then wake up and continue to rock, only to fall asleep again and on and on and on.

The protest had gone relatively well so far. We seriously fucked up the football game and most of us even managed to escape unscathed. The unlucky ones are presently sitting in a cell underneath the OSU Student Library (Ohio is so crowded that they have to put their campus jails underground, apparently there’s just no extra space anywhere else in the whole stupid fucking State). They’re probably singing “Kumbaya” instead of “Dipsomania,” which I’ve dedicated to the frat boys in honor of this special event. As we vamp on the chorus, a bottle whizzes by my head and hits Jim’s cymbal.

Bob had always existed along the margins of society. He had no friends, no family, no one to watch out for him. Every cult, right-wing group, and left-wing organization had recruited him. But, eventually, even they decided that they didn’t want to deal with his shit. He hadn’t held a steady job in years. In fact, he doesn’t really remember the last few years of his life very much at all. He’s only now starting to accept the fact that he might drink a little too much.

He tried AA, but found their philosophy to be over his head. That and whenever he said, “Hello, my name is Bob and I think I may be an alcoholic,” no one responded to him. This may’ve been because he said these words at inappropriate moments. Though, he’s not too sure since he was always a bit in the bag during those dreadful meetings.

One morning, Bob woke up with his daily hangover near the Buckeye River. When he gazed upon the shimmering water, the haze in his head magically evaporated and he could think clearly for the first time in his life. At that precise moment, he swore off the hooch for eternity. He spent his first sober day studying the magnificent river, which seemed to meander every which way before it ended. He felt good, real good.

As the sun set, Bob walked along the curvy shore. When the river collided into a giant sewage pipe, he turned left onto Buckeye Road. At the first traffic light, he saw a “HELP WANTED” sign in the 7-11’s window. When he walked through the glass door, a small beep sounded. Bob walked up to the cashier and said, “I’d like to help.” He wasn’t even embarrassed that the very same clerk always used to chase him out of the parking lot for buying minors alcohol (the old Bob fed his habit by hanging out at convenience stores and offering to buy underage OSU-ers booze in exchange for a bottle of his own). The cashier, who was far too stoned to notice anything besides the Hustler he was perusing, lazily pointed toward a door that proclaimed, “EMPLOYEES ONLY.”

“Grab a shirt and you can start right away. I wanna get the fuck out of here.”

Bob was overjoyed. Never before had he been allowed to open a door that others were forbidden to open. He felt like he finally had a purpose in life. In his excitement, he didn’t even see the case of Hamm’s that caused him to trip and stumble into the Slurpee machine.

“I just know it, man! One of them was Mr. X. You aren’t that clever, Bobby.”

“Put it in neutral, Van. While I agree that what just happened was pretty odd, we are at Denny’s and weird things are known to happen here. Anyway, I can assure you that none of them honkies was Mr. X. In fact, they kinda reminded me of something from a bedtime story my grandma used to read me when I was a little kid.”

“Quit fucking with me Bobby. The joke’s over. I solved the riddle. Taking me to The Hole was just a diversion. You knew Mr. X would be at Denny’s. That’s why we’re here. This is so fucking cool. I’m gonna get me so much weed! I won’t even know what to do with all of it. Oh, man, I can’t wait. . .”

“Will you please just shut the fuck up, Van? I need to think. I got a bad feeling that something fishy is going down, but I’m not sure what it is exactly. However, I do know for certain that I had no intention of leading you to Mr. X tonight. I just wanted to have some fun. That’s all. So I tricked you into going to The Hole with me. And we came to Denny’s so that I could get some fucking shitty coffee and sober up a little bit. See, I have no qualms about driving drunk and killing myself since the apocalypse is upon us. But when I’m driving shitfaced and look over and see another human being in the car with me, I start to feel guilty about endangering someone else’s life. That’s why we’re at Denny’s It has nothing to do with Mr. X. Do you understand that, Van? I’m telling it to you like it is, which I admit is a rarity for me. However, for once in my life, I feel like I may’ve fucked with the wrong person thanks to your idiotic actions and my obvious association with you. In fact, why don’t you drop some coin for the bill so we can get the fuck out of here?”

As Bobby nodded his head, Van dug some change (and felt) out of his pocket and dropped it on the table. Stabbing out the cigarette that he just smoked in a matter of seconds, Bobby grabbed his corduroy jacket and headed straight for the exit.

Van, meanwhile, hesitated for a moment, appearing as if he were constipated (of course, anyone who’s ever actually eaten at Denny’s knows this is the opposite of what really happens when you try to digest their awful kangaroo meat) before following Bobby out the door.

In the parking lot, Bobby could see fires blazing in three of the four horizons. As he lit another cigarette, he shouted back towards Van: “Hurry the fuck up, man!”

Stumbling towards his companion, Van declared: “I’ve got it! You’re just pretending to be scared and shit. But really, we have to go meet Mr. X somewhere else. Man, Bobby I totally owe you one for all this shit. I just wish you wouldn’t make it so spytech-ish. Oh well, whatever gets you off, man.”

“Think whatever you want to think, Van, so long as it forces you to get your ass in this car right this fucking instant!”

Shaking his head angrily, Bobby turned the ignition and flipped on the defroster.

Nike lost her virginity in the back seat of a car (a powder blue Ford station wagon) during her senior year in high school. The act itself was rather uneventful. Her partner came in like ten seconds and all ten seconds were painful for Nike. Of course, he tried to act all cool and experienced, but Nike knew he was just as naïve as she was.

The guy even tried putting the condom on her at first. Stifling her giggles, Nike gently guided him to the proper location for the prophylactic. When she first touched his penis, it felt both strange and familiar. She continued to caress his member until it started to hook. Her sense of touch seemed to be misleading her. She’d heard about dicks curving slightly, but this was like a fucking “J.” When she glanced down (for some unknown reason, 99% of the time people have intercourse they don’t even bother to look down at the action {it’s like it’s okay for genitals to do their silly little dance as long as nobody’s watching}), she noticed that she was actually touching her umbrella handle, which just so happened to be lying in the back seat of the car.

Nike was laughing her ass off inside, but was trying to maintain an aura of sensuality outside. All this time, the guy was too busy with her left boob to notice much of anything else. So she grabbed another condom and finally initiated the act.

When she returned home that evening, her mother saw the condom dangling on the umbrella and decided that they should have a little chat about sex. Nike immediately felt uncomfortable. Then gradually, she felt more and more at ease. When the night was over, Nike and her mom had managed to have an entertaining and informative discussion. In fact, she always remembers that night not for her pathetic first lay, but because that was the last time she seriously conversed with her mother.

I had a dream last night. It was the first time that I dreamed in a long long time. You see, I only dream when my body is exhausted and my body hasn’t been exhausted too much lately. So, anyway, I dreamt that I’d won an Olympic medal at the game of life and there were all these gods and goddesses handing out medals. The other recipients were people whom I generally admired (well, technically, I couldn’t really make out their faces so good, but I knew they were people I admired, you know how dreams are). But then, just as it was my turn to have a beautiful goddess place a medal around my neck, I suddenly woke up. I kept trying to fall back asleep, perchance to dream, but my body was no longer exhausted.

“With the laws and the guns on their side, what else could they do but commit genocide? Cops are coprophiliacs, cops are coprophiliacs, cops are coprophiliacs, yeah!”

I’m screaming the lyrics to “Pigs in the Blanket of the System” at the top of my fucking lungs since the cops have just cut off our PA’s power supply.

Still, we’ve managed to play for far longer than I expected. Five whole songs. The pigs probably figured that they’d just let the frat bros kick our asses for them. However, since the OCPers were able to successfully block their means of nutrition, most of the frat bros are so confused that they really don’t know what the fuck to do.

Having finally arrived on the scene, the cops are only now beginning to drag the OCPers away from the beer trucks.

The pigs actually brought a keg of beer for the frat bros. What a bunch of fucking bullshit! I’m starting to think that this is going to get ugly after all.

Now, they’re releasing all of the OCPers, even those captured earlier at the game.

“Hey guys,” I whisper in my bandmates’ general direction.

“What?” they both reply simultaneously.

“How bout say we get the fuck out of here? It looks like a setup,” I suggest, pointing to the coppers delivering the keg, then the angry frat bros, and finally the freed OCPers.

As their eyes follow my finger, both Stan and Jim nod in agreement and we all begin to furiously pack up our equipment.

A freed OCPer shouts, “Death to bourgeoisie scum!”

Chugging beer from the keg, the frat bros reply in unison, “You fucking faggots are so dead!”

A red flag is hoisted as the police cruisers screech away.

Some of the hardcore Depressed Idealist fans (the ones who never bathe and always have a plethora of dogs) start throwing rocks.

I grab my meager belongings as Jim gets tackled by a huge frat bro. Stan clubs the massive fucker in the head with his bass. He then proceeds to fall asleep.

An OCPer is hollering about dialectical materialism at a frat bro wearing a T-shirt that reads, “What I really learned in school…” followed by pictures of various alcoholic beverages.

Pissed, Jim pummels the huge frat bro with the bloody face while his brethren finish chugging. When the keg is emptied, the frat bros violently throw it to the ground and head towards the OCPers en masse.

“Why you gotta ruin our fucking sports and beer drinking and shit?”

“Stop exploiting us!”

“I’m gonna exploit your Commie ass all over the concrete, motherfucker.”

And so the donnybrook begins.

After an early rout due to sheer numerical inequalities, the Communists regroup and scatter to the winds.

Meanwhile, Jim and I hastily load our equipment into the van. Jim kicks a few frat bro asses in the process. I, of course, manage to avoid any physical altercations.

Our hardcore fans stealthily steal the other keg while the frat bros are busy hunting OCPers, who cleverly bait the frat bros one by one into their improvised traps.

Stan suddenly wakes up, grabs his gear, and jogs towards the van. Terrified, he begs us to take him home to his beloved ‘puter.

We peel out past the frat bros, graciously extending our middle fingers in appreciation for hosting yet another successful Depressed Idealists’ gig.

Crestfallen, Wingy slowly hangs up the phone. One of her friends down in Latin America had just told her the awful news. Apparently, the CIA decided that the puppet regime they’d installed in the eighties was getting a little too open-minded. So the fuckers replaced them with a new and improved puppet regime. In the process, the CIA and their cronies killed many of Wingy’s closest comrades. Her favorite printing plant was also burned to the ground.

Sitting silently on her sofa, she stares at her aquarium for hours. She doesn’t move a muscle. After a while, even the tears stop flowing. Too many people that she’s befriended over the years have died in similar fashion. Wingy has always believed that by exposing the atrocities of this modern world (in fact, her network of sources had already begun to fax her stories and pictures about the CIA’s latest outrageous coup), she could help end them for good. But now, she’s wondering if all her work has been for naught. She’s been fighting for decades and the same shit keeps happening. There’s just no fucking end to it. Things even seem to be getting worse.

Bitter and angry, she opens a bottle of red wine and tries to drink the negative thoughts out of her head. Once she finally passes out, she sleeps for days.

Nike and Jim are lying naked in their usual postcoital position. Her head is resting gently on Booboo. He is fondling her hair and Snookums with the same hand movement. Nike’s entire being is still feeling vibrations of ecstasy. Jim is casually smoking a one-hitter as his penis slowly deflates like a pierced blimp and the screams of some drunk asshole float in through the window.

“Hey Jim, why do you like me?”

“Huh?” replies Jim, who is lost in his own stoner thoughts about the intricacies of the human nervous system.

“Life is so fucking great! It’s so great, I fucking love it man! Hey, Phil give me the Boone’s.”

“I said, ‘Why do you like me?’”

“Like? I’ve told you a million times that I love you, Nike.”

“Okay, why do you love me then, Romeo?”

“If only I had a girlfriend. Man, I’d fuck her brains out! My dick’s so hard, I could break windows with it. Hey Phil, come feel my dick.”

“Well, to be totally honest, at first I was attracted to you because of your looks. I mean, you are so incredibly beautiful, Nike, it’s not fair to the rest of the world. Us ugly mortals can’t even compete.”

“Can it, Jim. I don’t want flattery. I want the truth.”

“It is the truth.”

“God, why does my life suck so much? I’m so fucking lonely! Why doesn’t anyone love me? Man, I hate myself.”

“Excuse me for a sec, Nike.”

Leaning out the window. Jim shouts: “No one loves you cause you’re a stupid drunk asshole! And if you don’t shut the fuck up, I’m gonna come out there and kick your pathetic little ass!”

Jim thrusts his naked torso out the window to show the drunk that he is serious and immediately realizes that this threat was pointless since the drunk appears to have passed out in the sewer. Though, Jim is rather confused by the fact that there’s no one else around.

“Who the fuck was that guy talking to?” mutters Jim as he returns to bed.

“What?”

“Nevermind that, so where were we?” asks Jims while he begins to kiss Nike’s breasts. His blimp is open for business again. For some strange reason, violence (even the threat of violence) often stimulates him sexually.

“Not there. We just finished that, remember? Actually, we were conversing about why you like me. I mean, love me.”

“Oh yeah!” mumbles Jim, who is slightly embarrassed (like a child reprimanded for having his hand in the cookie jar) as he de-tits his face.

“So?”

“Well, like I was saying, at first it was the looks. But that was attraction not love. Remember when we first met? We were practically inseparable. It was then that I realized I was totally in love with you. I mean, I could talk with you about anything. And you could talk with me too. It was so fucking amazing. Every second was perfect. Sure, I had other girlfriends before and we had some good times, but there were always those painful lulls. Like if we went out or were doing something in particular, we had a blast. But then, if we were just hanging out, not doing much of anything, it was always so boring and uncomfortable. I always felt like I couldn’t be open with them. That I had to protect myself. But I can just be with you and everything seems so right. Initially, we filled the lulls by discussing our hopes and dreams and crazy thoughts and all that rad stuff. Then, we could just sit, maybe holding hands or something, but we’d just be there together and feel good together cause we were together. You were like oxygen to me. When I was with you, I felt alive. And when I was away from you, I felt like I needed to be with you as soon as possible. And, well, that’s the way it still feels, but somehow, amazingly, it just keeps getting better. What’s better than perfect?”

“Geez, you really know how to woo a girl. I don’t even know what to say.”

“Well, yeah, that’s just the way I feel, I guess.”

Leaning over Nike’s outstretched body, Jim grabs her pack of cigarettes off the floor. He flips one out of the pack James Dean style and offers it to her with a grin.

“Thank you. Thank you so much, Jim.”

“I could really use me a Slurpee right now!” Bobby finally broke the eerie silence of the last hour, which he’d passed by constantly checking his rear-view mirror.

“Huh?” Van’s brain was still reeling with fantastic thoughts of Mr. X and giant sacks of weed.

“I said that I need a fucking Slurpee. It’ll help me think. To figure out how to get us out of this shit.”

“Oh, I get it. Mr. X is at the 7-11 now. Cool beans! Slurpees it is then.”

“Van?”

“Yeah, Bobby?”

“Nevermind.” Smacking his lips, Bobby flashed his signal and turned the car onto Buckeye Road.

“Fuck yeah! OSU! OSU! OSU! Fuck you, you stupid fucking Michiganders! We kicked your ass! Hell yeah, I love the smell of victory!”

“Sir, if you’d like, you’re more than welcome to take a gander at these beautiful steaks. It is, after all, your house. And I completely agree with you that the present aroma is rather pleasant,” yelps Charles from the kitchen.

“What the fuck was that noise?”

“I don’t believe that I heard you correctly, sir. Is there some sort of. . .”

“Who the hell are you?” screeches Mr. Steaminson as he enters the kitchen.

“Charles Watson Skinner, sir. Remember. . .” Charles soon realizes that talking is not the best idea at this point in time since his host is brandishing a meat cleaver.

“Well, I best be going. Please tell Nike that I will call her tomorrow, sir,” Charles states hastily, yet politely, as he runs out of the house.

Enraged, Mr. Steaminson chases the little fucker all the way down the street. When he returns to his castle, he is surprised to find a pair of cooked porterhouse steaks waiting for him on the grill. Not being one to question providence, he gormandizes both steaks while watching the “Buckeye Postgame Show.” As he digests, he feels content.

Eventually, the crazy little man in his head starts working again. He wonders where the steaks really came from. After tossing aside a few poorly constructed theories (mostly involving Oompa Loompas that got assigned shitjobs at the slaughterhouses of America), he decides that it must have been his dead wife since she was such a good cook and they were some damn fine tasting steaks.

Wasn’t he chasing someone earlier? Maybe, it was a ghost. Perhaps, his wife’s. But why would she haunt him? Oh yeah.

Jim finally came out of his room. While he was showering, I peeked inside to check out the carnage. It appeared as if he broke everything he could possibly break and then it looks like he started to improvise. Have you ever seen a TV with a pick ax (made out of a pool cue and a hammer) lodged in it? Poor Jim. He really must be hurting. Well, at least he left his room. That has to be a good sign, doesn’t it?