7/13/07

On wearing a coin purse

Tonight I got dragged to Brothers, Iowa City’s bar for C+/B- types who think they’re hot shit and want to get laid, and thusly condescend to other C+/B- types who are actually exactly in their league, but whom they think are far below. (For a frame of reference, these people are hotter than me, but less hot than, say, Rosie Perez (with the accent) or Tom Sizemore, pre-meth/sextape-fiasco, to use a couple of ripped-from-the-headlines examples).
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It would be a sort of fascinating place to hang out (like an aviary) if it wasn’t so unnerving.

I spent the whole time huddling with a group of people I don’t really know, and for about ten minutes, our group bunched up with about a third of the Iowa Hawkeyes basketball team. Gorney, Looby, Cyrus, and some enormously tall be-dreadlocked gent of whom I hadn’t had the pleasure. People who are seven feet tall make you feel halfway between zookeeper and circus freak. You're not exactly who should be in charge.

On our way home, we shared a cab, first with a 27-year old with a baroquely webbed tramp stamp, whom I mercilessly hit on from the backseat. She was really nice, quite deferential, actually even ingratiating. John lied to her about how he broke his finger – this time, it was in a Cessna accident. When he got out to wind the prop, it started fast and chopped his finger at the joint. Crystal said she didn't look 27. I told her John was lying. Anyway, she looked 27. She and I discussed more plausible lies to give in explanation of a broken finger. I was sad to see her go.

After, the cabbie had to pick up two “regulars,” which involved sitting stationary at Panchero’s for about fifteen minutes. I decided I wanted a burrito if I was going to have to wait. So I went inside. I was talking to Crystal. I turned around, and accidentally hit a homeless guy in the balls with the back of my hand.

“My balls!” he yelled. He turned around and yelled again, “my balls!” He turned to a couple of thugs leaned against the wall and said “that guy hit me in my balls!” They started laughing as uproariously as you are ever bound to see thugs laugh in public. Finally, the bum turned to me and said, “you hit me in the balls!”

“Do you feel gayer?” I asked.

“I ain’t gay!”

“But I’m asking, do you feel gayer than you did before?”

He reached out his hand, and I shook it. It was rough. "I ain't gay" he said. He only had three teeth that I could see. He turned to the girl in front of me in line and said, “I’ll be outside.”

“I’ll bring it out to you,” she said. Then she ordered him some food.

We piled back into the cab with the recently arrived regulars, two girls who were arguing loudly about their vaginas.

“Ever since the last time I had sex with him, I swear to god, my vagina has hurt. It’s been like.......... twenty days! I’m going to make him wear a condom this time. I swear to god, my vagina hurts, every time I... every time I... I eat!”

“Your vagina hurts when you eat?” I asked.

“It totally hurts when I eat.”

“Maybe it wasn’t food you were eating,” said the cabbie.

“A little of that, too, probably,” she said. It’s amazing how adeptly, as a culture, we pick up oral sex innuendo.

“Maybe you have vaginitis,” I said, believing this to be a non-existent, completely made-up disease.

“Oh my god, my friend had that!” she said. “You can get it from Bath and Body Works. Like, their stuff smells really good, but when you put it all down up there, it turns bad, and you get vaginitis.”

“I just made up vaginitis,” I said.

“No, my roommate had vaginitis.”

Her roommate really might have had vaginitis. It actually exists.

The one with the hurt vagina swiveled around in the seat. “Do you have a condom I can use?” she asked.

“I do, but they’re all in my backpack. And my backpack isn’t here.” Realizing that this was already a totally weird answer, I said, “actually, the only condom I have on me is the one I’m using for a coin-purse. I’d give it to you, but then I’d have to shake my change all out of it, and it would taste like copper and sweat.”

“I’m actually wearing one right now,” John offered.

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