Trey and Matt were in a local band called "Jessica's Satanic Brother". They could only get gigs at the one local club and never toured and never put out a real cd. They somehow had a huge following and were somewhat local mini-celebrities. Trey worked at a coffeehouse and Matt at a CD store. Both had new girlfriends each week. We were sitting around playing poker with buttons. Right now in the pot were an Adam Ant, Madness, Slayer, and two smiley faces.
"Why's that? I asked as I threw in a D.A.R.E. pin into the pile.
"Because you want to meet some girls! You should get a job there and you'd mack. You're all smart and talk shit, girls dig that shit. Trey threw in a "Keepin' It Real" pin.
"Yeah, coffeehouses and record stores. Matt piped in, "That's wear you get all the play. Or a bartender, but those guys never give up those jobs."
We all nodded and muttered something in agreement as the button/pin poker rolled on. Trey won a hand and took my favorite 80's pin; it simply said "RAD". Trying to get my mind off this, I thought about the missed connections and laughed.
"What? Trey's eyes narrowed and his head jerked to the side like a cat.
"I was just thinking of this missed connection I saw the other day... I said casually.
"Oh man! Matt's exclamation startled us, Are you talking about the "Lynard Skynard Late night" one?"
"Holy shit, yes! I was surprised that someone else actually paid attention to those things.
"Yeah, I read that one, Trey said over his hand, It was talking about how they made out on the back porch of some redneck party and he gave her his number on a five dollar bill but he lost hers."
"That's funny as fuck! Trey was nearly in tears laughing.
"Man, I can't believe you guys read that shit. I said.
"We read those every week at work. It's like our favorite thing. Trey boasted.
They both went on to tell me about how much they and there co-workers love to read the personals. They sounded as amazed as I was at the social phenomenon. Only I realized that they made it sound like a distant world. Like the main requirement to place such an ad was to be alien. They couldn't imagine who would answer or place such a cry for help. But they had to be coming from somewhere. There were over a hundred various personals in our paper and I know our city isn't that big. It's more of a little- big-city mentality, but the sheer number of folks living here just ain't that many. So the world those people lived in was ours. They walked amongst us, sat with us on the bus, and stood next to us in line. They were your coworkers, bosses, cousins, and the guy that works at the gas station down the street. I could be one of those guys.
I thought about and decided that I would place a missed connection in a gambit to win the affection of a lady. It couldn't hurt, because no one would know it was me. She might not even know when she reads it, whoever she is. Or will be. That was the problem. I couldnt figure out how to make a missed connection happen. Were people looking for them? Did they craft them, somehow? Or did fate just deal the hand and some played it and some folded and placed a missed connection a week later.
I began to notice every woman around me like a potential ad. Looking at them and deciding how I'd sum up their appearance with a few words. I would pay attention to everything a good looking woman did, in hopes of finding something that would be missed connection-worthy. If my eyes caught those of a woman I would smile, as if saying "could there be more?"
Missed Connection
You: Solemn brunette with Paul Frank
T-shirt and matching bag.
Me: Blonde w/glasses and Cheerios.
We smiled in line at the grocery store.
Want some cereal?
The following night I went with a friend, David, to see "Jessica's Satanic Brother" play at the Chucklehut, a local dive bar that served swill to most of the area's musicians, groupies, and hipsters. We came in late during their set, thank God, and mostly sat at the bar drinking. David was a good ol' southern boy that had lucked into fashion and style. His tattered thrift store clothes and mesh trucker's hat had become redneck vogue almost overnight right under his nose and he was barely aware of it. A few years and fads back, when everyone was sporting Buddy Holly /Rivers Cuomo glasses and plaid shirt, his look, the redneck vogue, hade yet to come into bloom. He looked like a casualty of the grunge era lurking around martinis and swing music. Now, with his natural vestures being the height of fashion, he was considered very, very cool. Especially because he genuinely didn't know he had become cool. Unlike the other kids that had to ditch the glasses and grow out shaggy hair and act like they aren't aware of the trend they were following. David was sort of a local trendsetter, I guess.
You see, the coolest thing for a cool person to do is to deny said coolness. Maybe even profess dorkiness or geekiness. Real dorks, geeks, and nerds did not distinguish themselves from other citizens until they realized that their social caste was being infiltrated by the cool crowd and used as a trophy of coolness. Hipsters left and right were declaring themselves dorks because they collected albums, which they referred to as vinyl. They became nerds because they downloaded movies or music offline and had an online journal. And anyone could be a geek as long as they held on to some vestige of the 80's with passion. Dive bars were teeming with cool people trying to be cool, but not one of them referred to themselves as so. Instead they were all geeks, dorks, and nerds.
At this point, maybe I should settle the long debated argument of the difference between a nerd, a geek, and a dork. A nerd is a person with a distinguishing intelligence who works in the high tech field and usually plays some type of roll-playing game or Magic: The Gathering. They are often found lurking in comic book stores. Also in comic books stores are geeks. Geeks are any people that have a compulsion with pop culture and media, especially anything retro. At this point in my story, it would be the 80's that are hot with the retro kids. Geeks love comics, movies, pop art, pop books, and any other pseudo-intellectual crap they can get their hands on. Dorks are your guys in bands or bars that listen to shitty music that they swear they love and probably skateboard. Although a geek and a dork are similar, a geek has more aspiration, albeit misguided, whereas a dork tends to either socially dumb-down or actually be stupid. Although the three groups do get along and mingle, they have no problem being distinguished by the females. Females tend to go for geeks for long-term relationships, but can always be found fucking around with a dork. Nerds usually stick to their kind and actually find female nerds to mate with. Female geeks and dorks are rare, but usually a good find. Most females in this hunting ground are wanna-be hipsters waiting to be born-again Martha Stewart's once they're married and fat-ankled.
So, David and I are at the bar in the Chucklehut when Matt and Trey came up after their set. The band playing after "Jessica's Satanic Brother" was "one thousand tears" and they sucked as much as our friend's band.
"These guys rock!" Matt said as he took his complimentary PBR from the bartender.
"Yeah, we're thinking of touring D.C. with them." Trey added.
"Cool." David and I said in unison as we put our beers to our lips.
"But seriously, how do you actually tour D.C., I mean it's a city." I inquired, "Don't you just play in a city once or twice while on a tour, not actually tour a town?"
"Well it is the District of Colombia." Dave said with a smirk that made us all giggle.
"Seriously, there are literally tons of places to play in D.C... All kinds of clubs, bars, and coffeehouses and shit." Trey defended.
"Oh, see, now here's where you start misusing words all over the place." I felt my wit sharpening, "Malpropists, the both of you! A ton is literally 2,000 pounds which by "tons of places to play" you are implying over 2,000 venues for "Jessica's Satanic Brother" to play at, and you do so with a "literal" emphasis, as if to stress the actual factness of the claim. But you're wrong. There is no way there are over 2,000 clubs, coffeehouses, whatever to play in D.C.!"
"Um, factness isn't a word, dude." David said with a blank stare and a wide smile.
"Fuck you stoner, you know what I meant."
"Yeah, yeah, so let the guys tour D.C., fuck it man, why do you have to be so critical?" David said.
"Yeah, why are you always analyzing things?" Matt said, joining the bandwagon.
Trey just stared at me, victorious and proud, while the others looked at me like I had a foot growing out of my head. I apologized, laughed and said I was kidding and we all did shots of Jagermeister and forgot it happened. That's they way things went in our little social circle. It seemed a bit rough sometimes, but it didn't hurt so much. Kind of like a mama cat carrying it's baby in its teeth. We all sat at the bar shooting the shit until last call. At that point, we had consumed so much swill that it was completely impossible for us to drive home. Well, not actually us, but for David to drive since he was the only one that had a functioning car. Matt had a shitty Vespa scooter, but that didn't count as transportation, only a chick magnet.
We were walking throughout the Chucklehut's parking, rehashing the "touring D.C." argument when I stumbled upon my first missed connection. It was a girlthat came into the coffeehouse that Trey worked at and they kind of knew each other. Maybe she was being nice or maybe she was flirting with four drunken boys, regardless she offered us a ride home. Matt and Trey were arguing in the back with David slumped against the window passed out. I rode shotgun and was wide-awake.
"Why's that? I asked as I threw in a D.A.R.E. pin into the pile.
"Because you want to meet some girls! You should get a job there and you'd mack. You're all smart and talk shit, girls dig that shit. Trey threw in a "Keepin' It Real" pin.
"Yeah, coffeehouses and record stores. Matt piped in, "That's wear you get all the play. Or a bartender, but those guys never give up those jobs."
We all nodded and muttered something in agreement as the button/pin poker rolled on. Trey won a hand and took my favorite 80's pin; it simply said "RAD". Trying to get my mind off this, I thought about the missed connections and laughed.
"What? Trey's eyes narrowed and his head jerked to the side like a cat.
"I was just thinking of this missed connection I saw the other day... I said casually.
"Oh man! Matt's exclamation startled us, Are you talking about the "Lynard Skynard Late night" one?"
"Holy shit, yes! I was surprised that someone else actually paid attention to those things.
"Yeah, I read that one, Trey said over his hand, It was talking about how they made out on the back porch of some redneck party and he gave her his number on a five dollar bill but he lost hers."
"That's funny as fuck! Trey was nearly in tears laughing.
"Man, I can't believe you guys read that shit. I said.
"We read those every week at work. It's like our favorite thing. Trey boasted.
They both went on to tell me about how much they and there co-workers love to read the personals. They sounded as amazed as I was at the social phenomenon. Only I realized that they made it sound like a distant world. Like the main requirement to place such an ad was to be alien. They couldn't imagine who would answer or place such a cry for help. But they had to be coming from somewhere. There were over a hundred various personals in our paper and I know our city isn't that big. It's more of a little- big-city mentality, but the sheer number of folks living here just ain't that many. So the world those people lived in was ours. They walked amongst us, sat with us on the bus, and stood next to us in line. They were your coworkers, bosses, cousins, and the guy that works at the gas station down the street. I could be one of those guys.
I thought about and decided that I would place a missed connection in a gambit to win the affection of a lady. It couldn't hurt, because no one would know it was me. She might not even know when she reads it, whoever she is. Or will be. That was the problem. I couldnt figure out how to make a missed connection happen. Were people looking for them? Did they craft them, somehow? Or did fate just deal the hand and some played it and some folded and placed a missed connection a week later.
I began to notice every woman around me like a potential ad. Looking at them and deciding how I'd sum up their appearance with a few words. I would pay attention to everything a good looking woman did, in hopes of finding something that would be missed connection-worthy. If my eyes caught those of a woman I would smile, as if saying "could there be more?"
Missed Connection
You: Solemn brunette with Paul Frank
T-shirt and matching bag.
Me: Blonde w/glasses and Cheerios.
We smiled in line at the grocery store.
Want some cereal?
The following night I went with a friend, David, to see "Jessica's Satanic Brother" play at the Chucklehut, a local dive bar that served swill to most of the area's musicians, groupies, and hipsters. We came in late during their set, thank God, and mostly sat at the bar drinking. David was a good ol' southern boy that had lucked into fashion and style. His tattered thrift store clothes and mesh trucker's hat had become redneck vogue almost overnight right under his nose and he was barely aware of it. A few years and fads back, when everyone was sporting Buddy Holly /Rivers Cuomo glasses and plaid shirt, his look, the redneck vogue, hade yet to come into bloom. He looked like a casualty of the grunge era lurking around martinis and swing music. Now, with his natural vestures being the height of fashion, he was considered very, very cool. Especially because he genuinely didn't know he had become cool. Unlike the other kids that had to ditch the glasses and grow out shaggy hair and act like they aren't aware of the trend they were following. David was sort of a local trendsetter, I guess.
You see, the coolest thing for a cool person to do is to deny said coolness. Maybe even profess dorkiness or geekiness. Real dorks, geeks, and nerds did not distinguish themselves from other citizens until they realized that their social caste was being infiltrated by the cool crowd and used as a trophy of coolness. Hipsters left and right were declaring themselves dorks because they collected albums, which they referred to as vinyl. They became nerds because they downloaded movies or music offline and had an online journal. And anyone could be a geek as long as they held on to some vestige of the 80's with passion. Dive bars were teeming with cool people trying to be cool, but not one of them referred to themselves as so. Instead they were all geeks, dorks, and nerds.
At this point, maybe I should settle the long debated argument of the difference between a nerd, a geek, and a dork. A nerd is a person with a distinguishing intelligence who works in the high tech field and usually plays some type of roll-playing game or Magic: The Gathering. They are often found lurking in comic book stores. Also in comic books stores are geeks. Geeks are any people that have a compulsion with pop culture and media, especially anything retro. At this point in my story, it would be the 80's that are hot with the retro kids. Geeks love comics, movies, pop art, pop books, and any other pseudo-intellectual crap they can get their hands on. Dorks are your guys in bands or bars that listen to shitty music that they swear they love and probably skateboard. Although a geek and a dork are similar, a geek has more aspiration, albeit misguided, whereas a dork tends to either socially dumb-down or actually be stupid. Although the three groups do get along and mingle, they have no problem being distinguished by the females. Females tend to go for geeks for long-term relationships, but can always be found fucking around with a dork. Nerds usually stick to their kind and actually find female nerds to mate with. Female geeks and dorks are rare, but usually a good find. Most females in this hunting ground are wanna-be hipsters waiting to be born-again Martha Stewart's once they're married and fat-ankled.
So, David and I are at the bar in the Chucklehut when Matt and Trey came up after their set. The band playing after "Jessica's Satanic Brother" was "one thousand tears" and they sucked as much as our friend's band.
"These guys rock!" Matt said as he took his complimentary PBR from the bartender.
"Yeah, we're thinking of touring D.C. with them." Trey added.
"Cool." David and I said in unison as we put our beers to our lips.
"But seriously, how do you actually tour D.C., I mean it's a city." I inquired, "Don't you just play in a city once or twice while on a tour, not actually tour a town?"
"Well it is the District of Colombia." Dave said with a smirk that made us all giggle.
"Seriously, there are literally tons of places to play in D.C... All kinds of clubs, bars, and coffeehouses and shit." Trey defended.
"Oh, see, now here's where you start misusing words all over the place." I felt my wit sharpening, "Malpropists, the both of you! A ton is literally 2,000 pounds which by "tons of places to play" you are implying over 2,000 venues for "Jessica's Satanic Brother" to play at, and you do so with a "literal" emphasis, as if to stress the actual factness of the claim. But you're wrong. There is no way there are over 2,000 clubs, coffeehouses, whatever to play in D.C.!"
"Um, factness isn't a word, dude." David said with a blank stare and a wide smile.
"Fuck you stoner, you know what I meant."
"Yeah, yeah, so let the guys tour D.C., fuck it man, why do you have to be so critical?" David said.
"Yeah, why are you always analyzing things?" Matt said, joining the bandwagon.
Trey just stared at me, victorious and proud, while the others looked at me like I had a foot growing out of my head. I apologized, laughed and said I was kidding and we all did shots of Jagermeister and forgot it happened. That's they way things went in our little social circle. It seemed a bit rough sometimes, but it didn't hurt so much. Kind of like a mama cat carrying it's baby in its teeth. We all sat at the bar shooting the shit until last call. At that point, we had consumed so much swill that it was completely impossible for us to drive home. Well, not actually us, but for David to drive since he was the only one that had a functioning car. Matt had a shitty Vespa scooter, but that didn't count as transportation, only a chick magnet.
We were walking throughout the Chucklehut's parking, rehashing the "touring D.C." argument when I stumbled upon my first missed connection. It was a girlthat came into the coffeehouse that Trey worked at and they kind of knew each other. Maybe she was being nice or maybe she was flirting with four drunken boys, regardless she offered us a ride home. Matt and Trey were arguing in the back with David slumped against the window passed out. I rode shotgun and was wide-awake.
VIEW 6 of 6 COMMENTS
AND I better have my very own MC come this Wednesday.
Nothing about being a groupie, either.
(I like this one, very nice)