Group Show
Chapter 8
There is always some madness in love.
But there is also always some reason in madness.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Slaaapp!!!
"And don't bother calling you lousy selfish bastard, not tonight, not tomorrow, not ever!"
Julie storms out the front door knocking over two plants and my ego in the process. I stand there stunned, afraid to look up and see the faces of all the people standing before me. Instead I look at their shoes, believing if I stare hard enough, I could make time freeze, slip out the back door and run for my fucking life. Slowly I put my hand to my face, wince, then crack a half smile the way Bruce Willis always did in Moonlighting.
"Maybe I should have never encouraged her to take those Karate classes at the YWCA." I say jokingly, trying not to look too fucked up.
"That's showing her!" A snotty voice yells from the now silent crowd.
We're all suspended in an awkward moment that seems to last forever, eventually the silence turns to whispers and the moment passes, but not without noticing that a few people are trying very hard not to laugh their asses off. I didn't see her hand coming; it was like white fucking lightning, out of nowhere. I didn't roll with the slap and the impact was almost hard enough to knock me off my feet.
I try to smile, but it hurts like a bitch. I continue nevertheless, brushing off what just happened to me more for the comfort of my family and guests than for myself. The room starts spinning and I swear I'm looking at animated stars and little tweety birds orbiting my head like in a Road Runner cartoon. It's not so much the sting of her slap as it is the sucker punch to my pride that hurts, a problem I'm still working on. My father once told me a real man doesn't take shit from no one. No teachers, no police and especially no chicks. Well, shit is what this is and I'm taking it, hell I'm sittin' down to a 7-course turd dinner and askin' for seconds.
"Hey Daniel, are you OK? That looked as if it hurt?"
Jasen, my only buddy left from the horror of high school comes running over to me to see what all the fuss is about. He always had a knack for the obvious even back when we were still young virgins listening to Van Halen and cruzzin' for chicks at the beach.
"No shit it hurt asshole." I say under my breath
"What ya say?" Jasen asks with his head tilted to one side like a confused dog.
"Never mind."
In gym class when a classmate would fall back onto his head and make that deep thud sound like a stack of phone books that's been dropped, Jason, the concerned do-gooder would always rush over and be the first to help the person off the ground. He always asked the poor sucker if it hurt. This of course irritated me unbelievably. All I could do in those situations was put my hands in my face and shake my head. Today I respect that side of him, the good-hearted side; it's a hard quality to find in people.
"So like, does it hurt or what?" Jasen asks again, as images of gym class and falling phone books fill my head.
"Only when I do this..."
I throw my head up high arrogantly like Salvador Dali and smile with my eyes wide.
"What the hell is up her ass anyway?" Jasen asks.
"Ah, it's no big deal, don't sweat it It's the same old shit, not paying her enough attention I suppose."
It was a big deal though, and Jasen knew it. Julie and I have been having problems ever since I finally proposed to her last month. We had been dating for 13 months and it just seemed the thing to do. I soon learned it changes everything.
"No big deal!?! She nearly floored you!" A wide-eyed Jasen exclaims.
"Don't give it a second thought really, it's no big deal just do me a favor and go get me something to drink." I say this with a persistence that Jasen interprets as drop it.
My thoughts drift away as my simple friend heads towards the gallery's crowded bar. Recently I've found them wondering to times when my life wasn't so complicated. When I first arrived back in San Diego and everything was new again. Like when I saw Julie for the first time
It was last year at Ol Madrid that I met her. (A classy night-club/restaurant that my friends Mauricio and Luis had started with nothing more that a few grand and a prayer.) She was waiting tables as most 22-year-old college women do, and when I first saw her, a feeling whipped out of nowhere and slapped me in the back of my dizzy head. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen in 3D. Wearing a tiny pink and white baby doll t-shirt that showed off her belly button, tight black hot pants, that left little to the imagination, caressed her pear shaped ass in an unspeakable way and legs that didn't ever seem to end. Her deep auburn hair was pulled back in a ponytail from her perfect pale China doll skin. Blood red lips, parted as if they were waiting for a lovers kiss, seemed to be singing some silent siren's song. She wasn't normally the type of woman I would be rubber necking for, the college girl with the perfect figure, but I would've had to be a fool not to get an eye full. Usually self-deprecating strippers and Prozac using homicidal nut bags fall for me. I don't understand why it just seems the sad and demented gravitate to me like I'm some Charlie Manson father figure. The rock star art boy with the fancy words and comforting touch. Not Julie though, she almost had too much confidence radiating from her which gave me doubts about asking for her number. When she joked and laughed with the other customers, I felt it was hopeless to even try. That most certainly means she's a happy person, and anyone feeling good about themselves would never be interested in an angry, cynical bastard like myself. Yet something made me feel bold that night. I was sick and tired of being the messiah to the lost and lonely art groupies of this culturally barren city. Maybe I was just feeling horny, or lucky or both. But that night her deep emerald green eyes locked with mine, just for an instance, and she smiled (in that slow motion style reserved only for bad 70's television,) that gave me all the encouragement I needed. I was going to ask her out if it killed me! Then for a second everything went fuzzy, I thought it was the final effect to what was obviously love at first sight something I don't believe in. Instead it was just Jasen shoving my glass of cranberry juice in my face asking if I was going to finish it.
"Dude do you still want your drink?" He exclaimed.
"What?!" I exclaimed back with bite.
"Hey Dan, you asked for this drink, so take it."
Jasen returning with the drink I sent him to get immediately snaps me back into this time and space. I grab the glass and take a big swig of the juice.
"Sorry, I was just thinking about that night we met Julie. I remember the first thing sh"
Suddenly a gruff voice interrupts me.
"What the hell is going on here?" The voice slices through my words like a hot carving knife through a babys ass.
I freeze, scared to acknowledge the voice, and for a second I hope I'm just hearing things.
"Hey dick breath, didn't you hear me?!" Once again the voice spits.
Fuck! It's my ol' man.
As if this whole little improv wasn't bad enough. His whole idea on how to down play a situation is to escalate it to the point of pyrotechnics. I guess he figures the louder you are the more right you'll be, and if it comes to blows, be the first to throw. A philosophy he instilled in me at a very early age... it still gets me into trouble.
I spin around like a dazed drunk leaving Jasen and my thoughts of the good ol' days behind.
"Oh dad, howdy how's it going, I didn't see you come in." Of course I'm lying.
"Don't give me your howdy shit, what's going on here? Julie nearly knocked me over as I was coming into this fucking fruity place, and she didn't look too happy to me. What the hell did you do to her?"
"Me!?" I cry out.
"Yeah you nobody can get a rise out of people like you, you've proven that over the years." A low blow by dad.
"Except maybe you pops. Julie and I are having a little tiff, like you and the ol' lady used to have when we were playing house all those years ago. An even lower blow by me.
"Just leave your mom out of this." My father says with an odd sadness that takes me aback for a second.
"Jesus H. Christ dad, your not here sixty fucking seconds and we're already going at it. Why don't you go grab a beer and get off my back, I'm going to look for her."
At this point my dad has a look on his face like he just drank bad milk.
"What the fuck did I say!?" He says with a genuine confused tone and a face to match.
I turn around to leave, but Jasen is standing right behind me. We bounce into each other like two underweight sumo wrestlers.
"Hey, what dose the H stand for anyway?" He says with a dumb look on his face.
"The H?" I say confused.
"You know, the H, as in Jesus H. Christ."
Julie's assault, my fathers idiotic accusations, and now Jasen with ridiculous questions I have no time to humor.
"What the fuck are you talking about? Have you lost your fucking mind? I'm getting the hell out of this fucking place!" I say in an unflattering Don Knotts sort of way.
I squeeze past the old man they call my father and the idiot I call my best friend. The faces of both people I barely know and people I'd like to forget seem to glow at the building excitement. They're getting their kicks out of this, as if it's an episode of Cops or something. I suppose to them, this is one of those performance art pieces they always read about in those stranger-than-fiction tabloid periodicals. They're probably expecting black latex clad dominatrixs and penile pierced fire-eaters to drop from the ceiling any second. Right now they're settling for the goof ball artist with the dumb look on his face and the long legged, Mike Tyson fightin' fianc huffin' across the gallery like Stormin' Norman crossin' the Gulf.
I tear out of the gallery more to escape the absurdity of the moment than to find Julie. Although I know she'll be sitting on the corner, arms crossed, waiting for the door stumbling acrobatics of me running to catch her. I make the leap through the crowd that hovers outside the doorway, dodging their cigarettes and biting comments. As I stumble past the crowd, one I can only compare to the jock click in high school, I spot Julie down the street hailing a cab. I dart past a skin head with a tribal tattoo on his neck and bump into Greg, one of the other artist showing tonight as well. I don't have the time to apologize to him because of the cab I see pulling over for Julie. At this moment I realize she's not playing around.
"Julie, hey Julie, wait up!"
If you missed the previous chapter. Please go here:
http://suicidegirls.com/members/artthug/29897/
Chapter 8
There is always some madness in love.
But there is also always some reason in madness.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Slaaapp!!!
"And don't bother calling you lousy selfish bastard, not tonight, not tomorrow, not ever!"
Julie storms out the front door knocking over two plants and my ego in the process. I stand there stunned, afraid to look up and see the faces of all the people standing before me. Instead I look at their shoes, believing if I stare hard enough, I could make time freeze, slip out the back door and run for my fucking life. Slowly I put my hand to my face, wince, then crack a half smile the way Bruce Willis always did in Moonlighting.
"Maybe I should have never encouraged her to take those Karate classes at the YWCA." I say jokingly, trying not to look too fucked up.
"That's showing her!" A snotty voice yells from the now silent crowd.
We're all suspended in an awkward moment that seems to last forever, eventually the silence turns to whispers and the moment passes, but not without noticing that a few people are trying very hard not to laugh their asses off. I didn't see her hand coming; it was like white fucking lightning, out of nowhere. I didn't roll with the slap and the impact was almost hard enough to knock me off my feet.
I try to smile, but it hurts like a bitch. I continue nevertheless, brushing off what just happened to me more for the comfort of my family and guests than for myself. The room starts spinning and I swear I'm looking at animated stars and little tweety birds orbiting my head like in a Road Runner cartoon. It's not so much the sting of her slap as it is the sucker punch to my pride that hurts, a problem I'm still working on. My father once told me a real man doesn't take shit from no one. No teachers, no police and especially no chicks. Well, shit is what this is and I'm taking it, hell I'm sittin' down to a 7-course turd dinner and askin' for seconds.
"Hey Daniel, are you OK? That looked as if it hurt?"
Jasen, my only buddy left from the horror of high school comes running over to me to see what all the fuss is about. He always had a knack for the obvious even back when we were still young virgins listening to Van Halen and cruzzin' for chicks at the beach.
"No shit it hurt asshole." I say under my breath
"What ya say?" Jasen asks with his head tilted to one side like a confused dog.
"Never mind."
In gym class when a classmate would fall back onto his head and make that deep thud sound like a stack of phone books that's been dropped, Jason, the concerned do-gooder would always rush over and be the first to help the person off the ground. He always asked the poor sucker if it hurt. This of course irritated me unbelievably. All I could do in those situations was put my hands in my face and shake my head. Today I respect that side of him, the good-hearted side; it's a hard quality to find in people.
"So like, does it hurt or what?" Jasen asks again, as images of gym class and falling phone books fill my head.
"Only when I do this..."
I throw my head up high arrogantly like Salvador Dali and smile with my eyes wide.
"What the hell is up her ass anyway?" Jasen asks.
"Ah, it's no big deal, don't sweat it It's the same old shit, not paying her enough attention I suppose."
It was a big deal though, and Jasen knew it. Julie and I have been having problems ever since I finally proposed to her last month. We had been dating for 13 months and it just seemed the thing to do. I soon learned it changes everything.
"No big deal!?! She nearly floored you!" A wide-eyed Jasen exclaims.
"Don't give it a second thought really, it's no big deal just do me a favor and go get me something to drink." I say this with a persistence that Jasen interprets as drop it.
My thoughts drift away as my simple friend heads towards the gallery's crowded bar. Recently I've found them wondering to times when my life wasn't so complicated. When I first arrived back in San Diego and everything was new again. Like when I saw Julie for the first time
It was last year at Ol Madrid that I met her. (A classy night-club/restaurant that my friends Mauricio and Luis had started with nothing more that a few grand and a prayer.) She was waiting tables as most 22-year-old college women do, and when I first saw her, a feeling whipped out of nowhere and slapped me in the back of my dizzy head. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen in 3D. Wearing a tiny pink and white baby doll t-shirt that showed off her belly button, tight black hot pants, that left little to the imagination, caressed her pear shaped ass in an unspeakable way and legs that didn't ever seem to end. Her deep auburn hair was pulled back in a ponytail from her perfect pale China doll skin. Blood red lips, parted as if they were waiting for a lovers kiss, seemed to be singing some silent siren's song. She wasn't normally the type of woman I would be rubber necking for, the college girl with the perfect figure, but I would've had to be a fool not to get an eye full. Usually self-deprecating strippers and Prozac using homicidal nut bags fall for me. I don't understand why it just seems the sad and demented gravitate to me like I'm some Charlie Manson father figure. The rock star art boy with the fancy words and comforting touch. Not Julie though, she almost had too much confidence radiating from her which gave me doubts about asking for her number. When she joked and laughed with the other customers, I felt it was hopeless to even try. That most certainly means she's a happy person, and anyone feeling good about themselves would never be interested in an angry, cynical bastard like myself. Yet something made me feel bold that night. I was sick and tired of being the messiah to the lost and lonely art groupies of this culturally barren city. Maybe I was just feeling horny, or lucky or both. But that night her deep emerald green eyes locked with mine, just for an instance, and she smiled (in that slow motion style reserved only for bad 70's television,) that gave me all the encouragement I needed. I was going to ask her out if it killed me! Then for a second everything went fuzzy, I thought it was the final effect to what was obviously love at first sight something I don't believe in. Instead it was just Jasen shoving my glass of cranberry juice in my face asking if I was going to finish it.
"Dude do you still want your drink?" He exclaimed.
"What?!" I exclaimed back with bite.
"Hey Dan, you asked for this drink, so take it."
Jasen returning with the drink I sent him to get immediately snaps me back into this time and space. I grab the glass and take a big swig of the juice.
"Sorry, I was just thinking about that night we met Julie. I remember the first thing sh"
Suddenly a gruff voice interrupts me.
"What the hell is going on here?" The voice slices through my words like a hot carving knife through a babys ass.
I freeze, scared to acknowledge the voice, and for a second I hope I'm just hearing things.
"Hey dick breath, didn't you hear me?!" Once again the voice spits.
Fuck! It's my ol' man.
As if this whole little improv wasn't bad enough. His whole idea on how to down play a situation is to escalate it to the point of pyrotechnics. I guess he figures the louder you are the more right you'll be, and if it comes to blows, be the first to throw. A philosophy he instilled in me at a very early age... it still gets me into trouble.
I spin around like a dazed drunk leaving Jasen and my thoughts of the good ol' days behind.
"Oh dad, howdy how's it going, I didn't see you come in." Of course I'm lying.
"Don't give me your howdy shit, what's going on here? Julie nearly knocked me over as I was coming into this fucking fruity place, and she didn't look too happy to me. What the hell did you do to her?"
"Me!?" I cry out.
"Yeah you nobody can get a rise out of people like you, you've proven that over the years." A low blow by dad.
"Except maybe you pops. Julie and I are having a little tiff, like you and the ol' lady used to have when we were playing house all those years ago. An even lower blow by me.
"Just leave your mom out of this." My father says with an odd sadness that takes me aback for a second.
"Jesus H. Christ dad, your not here sixty fucking seconds and we're already going at it. Why don't you go grab a beer and get off my back, I'm going to look for her."
At this point my dad has a look on his face like he just drank bad milk.
"What the fuck did I say!?" He says with a genuine confused tone and a face to match.
I turn around to leave, but Jasen is standing right behind me. We bounce into each other like two underweight sumo wrestlers.
"Hey, what dose the H stand for anyway?" He says with a dumb look on his face.
"The H?" I say confused.
"You know, the H, as in Jesus H. Christ."
Julie's assault, my fathers idiotic accusations, and now Jasen with ridiculous questions I have no time to humor.
"What the fuck are you talking about? Have you lost your fucking mind? I'm getting the hell out of this fucking place!" I say in an unflattering Don Knotts sort of way.
I squeeze past the old man they call my father and the idiot I call my best friend. The faces of both people I barely know and people I'd like to forget seem to glow at the building excitement. They're getting their kicks out of this, as if it's an episode of Cops or something. I suppose to them, this is one of those performance art pieces they always read about in those stranger-than-fiction tabloid periodicals. They're probably expecting black latex clad dominatrixs and penile pierced fire-eaters to drop from the ceiling any second. Right now they're settling for the goof ball artist with the dumb look on his face and the long legged, Mike Tyson fightin' fianc huffin' across the gallery like Stormin' Norman crossin' the Gulf.
I tear out of the gallery more to escape the absurdity of the moment than to find Julie. Although I know she'll be sitting on the corner, arms crossed, waiting for the door stumbling acrobatics of me running to catch her. I make the leap through the crowd that hovers outside the doorway, dodging their cigarettes and biting comments. As I stumble past the crowd, one I can only compare to the jock click in high school, I spot Julie down the street hailing a cab. I dart past a skin head with a tribal tattoo on his neck and bump into Greg, one of the other artist showing tonight as well. I don't have the time to apologize to him because of the cab I see pulling over for Julie. At this moment I realize she's not playing around.
"Julie, hey Julie, wait up!"
If you missed the previous chapter. Please go here:
http://suicidegirls.com/members/artthug/29897/
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