I\u2019ve recently been criticized because I refused to give out my home address to my supervisor, who was inquiring suspiciously (in my opinion) and, besides, don\u2019t you have it on file?<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been nervous about giving out my address before (even to friends and lovers), and feel I have good reasons.\u00a0 Those reasons are:\u00a0 My father, my ex girlfriends, a few enemies, and a lawnmower.
\n<\/p>\n
The primary reason is thanks to my father\u2019s actions.\u00a0 We once had a lucrative family business in the DC area, founded in 1932 by my grandfather.\u00a0 When the old man died in 76, my father took it over and spent the next ten years dismantling the company.\u00a0 He then vanished without a trace, taking several million dollars with him.\u00a0 At the time, we were employing about 70 folks \u2013 several of which had been with the company since the 30\u2019s,\u00a0\u00a0 spending their whole lives working for my family.\u00a0 Dad cleaned out the payroll as well as the pension accounts when he took off, so isn\u2019t that a little piece of sunshine? You work for a family from 1932 to 1986 and then the boss leaves with your pension and your last paycheck.\u00a0 There are some real heartbreaking stories there where people killed themselves, lost their houses, and so on.<\/p>\n
Needless to say, this created something of a\u2026well\u2026blood feud.\u00a0 I think that\u2019s a good word for it.\u00a0 Until I left home in 92, mom and I were plagued by disgruntled former employees.\u00a0 They\u2019d come to our house, they\u2019d crank call us, they\u2019d veer their cars at us.\u00a0 There were some cases of vandalism and many, many threats.<\/p>\n
Through my own machinations (because I want my current business to do better), I\u2019ve dredged up all the old family shit and fed it to several major newspapers and NPR, with some positive bites.\u00a0 Already, during the researching phase, one of the people interviewing me has run into some sticky shit.\u00a0 And the first red flags have gone up \u2013 the blood feud carries on simply because I have the same last name and, therefore, carry the dark legacy of my dad\u2019s evil fuckery.<\/p>\n
But that\u2019s not fun stuff.\u00a0 The entertaining reasons I don\u2019t give out my address come from my own misguided youth.<\/p>\n
Exhibit one: The Wee Irish Lass<\/p>\n
Well, she wasn\u2019t Irish.\u00a0 But she wanted to be, so she dyed her hair red and affected an atrociously fake accent.\u00a0 And everything was all, \u201cThis is how the Irish do it!\u201d\u00a0 She was good in bed and she wanted to fuck all the time, so I tolerated her for about four months.\u00a0 The fake Irish accent and Tori Amos hair was strangely sexy, too.\u00a0 To be honest, I was somewhat in awe of her dedication to the illusion.\u00a0 She\u2019d talk fake Irish in bed.\u00a0 She was faking it even in private life.<\/p>\n
Now, I\u2019m bad with women.\u00a0 Always have been.\u00a0 I don\u2019t understand them, they don\u2019t understand me, we fight, we cry, we break up.\u00a0 It\u2019s mostly their fault, because women are stupid cows.\u00a0 The Irish lass didn\u2019t take kindly to the breakup, though.\u00a0 While I was out enjoying my freedom by drinking alone deep into the night and writing a science fiction novel on an oversized legal pad, she planned her revenge.\u00a0 This involved crouching in the trash room across the hall from my apartment until about 3am, when I stumbled home.\u00a0 Then she lunged out and slammed me against the door.\u00a0 She waved a knife around and threatened to castrate me and, for a moment, I got The Fear.\u00a0 Then she started crying and I took the chance to run into my apartment and bolt the door.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know what happened to her, but I spent the rest of my time at that apartment sidling in and out the door like a clumsy spy from a MacGyver <\/em>episode.<\/p>\n Exhibit Two:\u00a0 The Second Sword<\/p>\n Another breakup, but this time she sent her next boyfriend to take me to pieces.\u00a0 I was out drinking again at the old Flanagan\u2019s in Bethesda and this fucking faggot comes up and sits next to me.\u00a0 I was going through a JD and coke phase for some reason\u2026probably had seen it on TV.\u00a0 But it was a great combo and I was sexualizing it, as the drunken Indians say, and enjoying having the end of the bar to myself.<\/p>\n Being an urban creature, I\u2019m naturally wary of any other human being within 20 feet of my person.\u00a0 Even if it\u2019s some cute little girl in pigtails dragging a stuffed kitten behind her, I brace for the sensation of a knife sliding into my ribs while dexterous hands lift my wallet.\u00a0 So when this faggot sat next to me, I bristled and gazed intently into my drink.\u00a0 He ordered a Bud and then turned to me and said, \u201cWhat are you drinking?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNothing.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou have a drink right there.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI do.\u201d<\/p>\n He turned to the bartender, \u201cAnother of what he\u2019s having.\u201d<\/p>\n I accepted.\u00a0 I drank it.\u00a0 And, eventually, I warmed to the stranger.\u00a0 At last call, we went our separate ways.\u00a0 I weaved my way home, wandering through the backstreets knocking over benches and stealing signs from the front of stores, and then ended up at my apartment.\u00a0 There was the stranger.\u00a0 He was leaning against my door and smiling.\u00a0 Then he told me that he was going out with my ex, and she\u2019d begged him to come out and beat me up.\u00a0 But, he said, he kind of thought I was cool, and would \u201clet me off with a warning.\u201d<\/p>\n I moved two months later because, really.<\/p>\n Exhibit three:\u00a0 The Lawnmower.<\/p>\n Before the above incidents, I was attacked by an old college friend.\u00a0 He was a mutual friend of my roommate, who was pissed off at me.\u00a0 In this case, I had not given my roommate reason to hate me.\u00a0 This same mutual friend and I went out drinking, three months before the attack.\u00a0 Back in those days, I had a real job that paid real money, so I didn\u2019t have to work on the weekends.\u00a0 That meant Friday 5pm to Monday 8am was 100% devoted to drunken debauchery.\u00a0 And Highlander <\/em>reruns.\u00a0 This mutual friend was a bit of a drinker, and he\u2019d drive all the way from Baltimore to cat around Bethesda with me.\u00a0 This was pre-gentrified Bethesda, which meant Flanagan\u2019s was the only real bar.\u00a0 When Rock Bottom arrived, we all choked down their foul beer because it was cool to no longer be sitting in a dark basement.\u00a0 On occasion, I\u2019d also drink at the Yacht Club, because my grandfather had some sort of mysterious deal with them.\u00a0 Goddamned Masons.<\/p>\n Well, it was Friday and we were in bad shape.\u00a0 My roommate was visiting his girlfriend in Ann fucking Arbor and we planned to head back to the apartment and, you know, drink everything in sight and watch Fifth Element<\/em> or something.<\/p>\n (I\u2019ll pause to copy the IMDB plot keywords for The Fifth Element<\/em>: How can you say no to that?\u00a0 I clicked on \u201cfemale nudity\u201d and the number one hit was Band of Brothers<\/em>, which is confusing.)<\/p>\n On the way back, we crossed through an alley and this so-called mutual friend and I stumbled across an ancient lawnmower rusting away between two Dumpsters.\u00a0 Our mission was clear.\u00a0 The mutual friend took the lawnmower and we noisily wheeled it back to the apartment, giggling like schoolgirls.<\/p>\n The mutual friend wheeled it into my roommate\u2019s bedroom, and then ran to where I was setting up the VCR and started speaking in tongues before drowning himself in this cheap dessert wine I\u2019d stolen.<\/p>\n Monday morning found me dragging off to work, and my roommate returning to the creepy, rusted out push mower sitting in the middle of his room.\u00a0 Of course, the mutual friend played dumb and said it was all my fault.\u00a0 It took months, but the roommate eventually used that incident as a reason to throw me out.\u00a0 Which was funny, since my name was on the lease.\u00a0 So I kicked him out, and we never spoke again.\u00a0 But I kept hearing shit like he was really upset, and he was going crazy, and he thought of me as the best person in his life and so on.<\/p>\n Ready for this shit?\u00a0 No kidding \u2013 his father sent me a letter saying, \u201cIf you and my son were a woman and a man, you\u2019d be man and wife.\u201d<\/p>\n That still drives me to drink.<\/p>\n The mutual friend sided with my roommate and also cut me off, which was fine because he was a fucking loon.\u00a0 But then, one night, when I was still able to innocently approach the door of my apartment, there was the mutual friend charging down the hall with the goddamned lawnmower.<\/p>\n \u201cTake it!\u00a0 Take it!\u201d he was screaming, then he let it go, careening at me, and raced past me screaming.\u00a0 I stopped the thing with my foot, watched the mutual friend slam into the stairwell, and decided to take the next day off work to try and realign my sanity.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve always wanted to know the story behind that lawnmower, because that attack happened about two months after my roommate left.\u00a0 Maybe about five months after the initial incident.\u00a0 So the mutual friend had somehow retrieved the lawnmower, and had kept it for all that time.\u00a0 My only guess is that it became some sort of Telltale Heart for him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019ve recently been criticized because I refused to give out my home address to my supervisor, who was inquiring suspiciously (in my opinion) and, besides, don\u2019t you have it on file? I\u2019ve been nervous about giving out my address before …<\/p>\n
\nFemale Nudity\u00a0 | Humor\u00a0 | End Of Mankind\u00a0 | Cyberpunk\u00a0 | End Of The World<\/p>\n