the wrong side of the bed

karaoke was delightful last night, until things got ugly. i think we left around 1:00, and i guess things must have turned bad around midnight when a group of people wearing headbands and matching shirts showed up. one man, an undergrad, did a horrible rendition of a song i can't remember ("let's get it on" maybe?), including impromptu cries of "motherfucker" and air fucking. it was disturbing in the extreme, and i was upset not just by the aggression, but also by the speaking in tongues. i'm not keen on making fun of religion - i just recently asked my christian coworkers to stop making fun of mormons - and the speaking in tongues came off as racist on top of that. we asked erika to move "total eclipse of the heart" up to the top of the queue and then jj and i got the fuck out of there.

on the street outside there were multiple women dressed lik a college student's approximation of a hooker. there were men making loud barking sounds. we passed the corner with wando's and were somewhat relieved by the presence of police officers, even if they were just giving out tickets to underage drinkers. the parking garage was remarkably asshole free, but driving out of it was more of a challenge as jj had to maneuver the car passed drunk people. when we made it to johnson, i commented that things seemed so much calmer by just driving one block. just then we saw a boy and girl in a parking lot running in a circle because... they were chasing a rabbit. drunk undergrads chasing a bunny in a circle.

Labels: fucked up, karaoke, really really weird

i don't know about boys. a kid* from my high school called me at 3:55 in the morning last night. yeah. we had a class together my freshman or sophmore year, i can't really remember. he was a nice boy, but very odd. we sat in the corner with a girl named julie. we all used to write funny little poems about history because the class** was so boring. i used to think steven had a crush on me, maybe. once he started telling me how great i was and i told him there was a wall between us (that is actually what i said). honestly, he was a pretty nice guy. anyway, he called out of the blue at 3:55 AM. he told me that he is in madison, passing through to milwaukee to see a sick relative. it was an odd conversation. as soon as i picked up the phone, he said he was sorry for waking me up and i probably had to worked tomorrow. yes, i said, i gotta make a living.

anyway, the conversation was quite odd. he mentioned some friends of mine that he had seen after we graduated from high school, but they were all references to events immediately after high school. he also asked me if i remembered working at randall's***, which of course i did. after all, i am the one who worked there, and he is the one who did not. i said that i hated ironing my uniform before i would go to work. he said he likes a crisp collar.

he told me he was applying for an assistant manager position at one of those horrible check cashing places*, and i said they were evil. he said if he got the job, he would stay in madison, but otherwise he was just passing through. he also said that he had worked in houston for a while for "internet companies" but that he left town on bad terms and that there were people angry with him. he said he had gone to school in indiana and that he had been in the navy.

it was quite odd. at the end of the conversation, i said, "well, don't stalk me." he said, "what?!" i said, "don't stalk me." he said, "you are allowed to call one friend from high school at 4:00 in the morning." i said, "don't stalk me."

thing is, he must have known i lived in wisconsin. probably found me on the internet. was coming through town and thought he would find my phone number and call me in the middle of the night. don't you think that is sketchy?

the other weird thing is that i mentioned chip, the kid from infinite eruption, who i wrote about in my last post. i said that i had just found him on the internet. it turns out that steven didn't know him. he said something about how i must have liked chip in high school. i didn't, i just knew chip from elementary school through 12th grade. and i thought the name of his band was freaking hilarious. at one point i think my friend clare and i were going to pretend to be groupies. i guess i am a bit weird, too, as i googled chip just the day before. who doesn't google old friends? i guess the difference is that i don't call them at 3:55 in the morning.
* he is a kid in my head, but i suppose he has actually aged at the same rate that i have.

** another boy in that class started out as my friend, but then he took to calling me a feminazi all the time. what the fuck?

*** a grocery store owned by mormons. they wouldn't sell alcohol or cigarettes. it was explained that this was because they were a mormon owned store. they did, however, sell caffeinated beverages.

**** at the cash store, you are cash-worthy with us.

Labels: childhood, fucked up, really really weird