Here it is. The entire month of April for the year 2001. Don't you just feel like a part of my life? Doesn't it make you all warm & fuzzy inside to know that I'm sharing a part of myself with you? I know it does. Read on, starting from the bottom.
April 28th, 2001: Another goal completed. I'm beginning to get too good at this.
Before I get started, I must tell a sub-story to catch my life up to where it should be. See, Scott from COSI and I have been talking online quite a bit ever since I corrected him on my MSN Messenger name. He spells; he uses correct grammar; he even understand the importance of punctuation. On Wednesday night, I was seriously beginning to believe that I wasn't going to find major fault in him. We had already had the sex talk, and I was rather put-off by the fact that he's had a couple of sexual relationships that he doesn't regret in the least, but still, it's something that I thought I could work through. However, that same night, Scott and I began discussing why it's so hard for him to find himself a good woman. He told me that he tends to scare women away for reasons that I would never believe. After a little prodding, he promised to tell me if I understood that I'm the only one at COSI who knows and if I wouldn't tell anyone in his division. He told me that I will never look at him in the same way, that he guarantees it, that no, he isn't gay. Then, he dropped the bomb, saying, "Anyway, my last 'serious' relationship was with a girl named Jessie . . . I broke up with her sometime at the beginning of '99 and then 2 months later I found out that she was pregnant. So the big shocker is that I have a daughter that just turned 1 in January."
Wow.
A daughter. A one year-old daughter. He told me to tell him when my jaw shut, and I laughed, as I had been sitting, staring at the words, my mouth agape. How does one react to news like that? I mean, really. Here I am, thinking that Scott's this big, hot computer dork, when in reality, he's been getting random girls pregnant. Or a random girl, but one might as well be one thousand in my world. I didn't really judge him for it, though. In fact, I rather envied him. To have this child, this baby girl whom he knows he created. What an incredible feeling that must be. I asked him how he felt, how he took the news. He wrote, "I was shocked a little . . . but I got over it the first time I held her . . . she looks more like me than anything, and she does the same stuff . . . she absolutely has to tear everything apart to see how it works." And I loved him more.
So, the next day as we sat typing again, I asked Scott when he was going to invite me over again. He didn't have to work tonite, and since we both have to work the 6:45 A.M. shift at COSI this morning, I decided that my coming over and us staying up all night would be a good thing. There's not a whole lot that we wanted to do at midnight, so I just told him that we would rent Requiem for a Dream. He evidently hates drug movies, but I assured him that he would love this one as I do. He was still unsure as to whether he was going to want to stay up all night, but I knew that I would win him in the end. I'm woman, after all.
I didn't see Scott online at all today, as he was at work, but at 5:00, as he was heading home, he came over to the Guest Services desk to ask me for food. I kind of blew him off and pretended to be doing something, as I'm accustomed to do, so he followed me around the outside of the counter. I asked if he was going to invite me over, and he said, "Maybe." "Maybe?" I replied. And he said, "You'll have to call me to find out," as he walked out the door with a man-whore smile on his face. Ahh, The Katie loves the teasing.
So, at 9:07, I called Scott's house, whereupon he invited me over to accompany him to Blockbuster. He once again refused to be eager to see my drug movie, but I figured that I could work that out as the time became more imminent. I left work at 11:18 after finding out that one of my arch nemesi (sure, that's the plural form of "nemesis") became unvirginised at 14 (exciting news, I'm sure you agree) and changing into my most "I'm not slutty; I just like to play the part" white tee shirts. I arrived at Scott's apartment at 11:40-ish, hopped out of The Beast (my Blazer's potential new nickname), took of my boots and threw on some sandals, and walked around to Scott's door. He told me that he was going to nap in between the time that I called and the time that I actually arrived, so I was all over the possibility of seeing him in post-sleep garb.
When Scott opened the door, he was wearing his black work pants and a white tee that's undoubtedly what he wears under his uniform shirt. I don't remember getting a hello, but I did get a "did you get lost?", which was an equally acceptable greeting . . . or not. I sat down and began watching the end of a sci-fi show with him, and at 11:45, I asked if he was ready to go. He informed me that the nearest Blockbuster was at least 10 minutes away, so we chose to forget the movie thing (or rather he did) and just sat watching a show on MSNBC about robberies caught on tape. I kept sneaking glances at him as I pretended to gaze at his giant fish tank, so he kept looking over at me, thinking that I was looking at him, which I was . . . but he didn't know that.
At one point, I looked over and said, "This is the first time I've really seen you since finding out about your daughter. I somehow expected you to look different." He didn't understand my rationale, so I told him my whole thing about always expecting people to have been physically altered after I find out something unexpected about them. But he looked no different. Still beautiful. Still far too young to have a baby. I told him that felt like I needed to cry for him, and not getting my meaning, he rubbed his eyes and said that they were kind of hurting him. Then, he kind of stopped and asked what the heck I had meant, but I couldn't explain it. I just can't imagine how terribly empty he must feel. Having those failed relationships, having a baby whom he never sees. But he goes on.
After a bit, Scott went over to his computer and pulled down a picture of two little girls in a grey frame and handed it to me. Alaina. She really does look just like Scott. I told him so, and as he got up from his seat and crossed the room, he began telling me of her visit to him, where she banged on his computer keyboard, and her most recent visit, where she immediately leeched onto the fish. Ahh, the pride in Scott's voice, the smile that Alaina brought to his face, the way he demonstrated her actions with such enthusiasm. I was so horribly jealous of Jessie's sharing something so special with him. He gave me a picture of Alaina from the newspaper and opened up his wallet to display a photo of her at birth. 20 year-old single men don't carry around pictures of their kids! They carry their families or pornography! The pictures of his dog on the refrigerator - normal. Anything else - NOT normal! But cute nonetheless.
Scott then showed me Tribes II, the game that he's currently addicted to. I love how men assume that women are dying to watch them annihilate others. Every time that Scott made a kill, he would spin around to face me and say, "Did you see that?!" I wandered over to his refrigerator, where I constructed sentences out of the magnetic words that he had won on numerous occasions for being Best Buy's Employee of the Month. (Make Mommy proud, Son!) We then sat and talked. About Scott's millionaire grandma. About my being accused of sexual harassment at work for calling someone a rapist. About old women who complain that one of our co-workers needs a good blow job to relieve his stress. I love how dorky Scott is. I mean, I recognised it immediately after talking to him for the first time, but sometimes the things he says just amaze me to no end. For instance. Last night, as I was busy constructing sentences, he began discussing pants and how he was ready for some new ones to wear to work. I pulled on the little elastic strings that were randomly decorating the pockets of his pants and asked if they were the type that unzipped at the knee to form shorts. They were, and he laughed as he unzipped them, explaining to me that they were called "tech pants", which was so perfect for him, being an Exhibits Tech at COSI. I mean, wow. Dork. Hot.
And then, at three, Scott decided that he actually did need some bed time. I was disappointed, obviously, as I was hoping for something more along the lines of toe-sucking time. However, I reached my goal nevertheless. Last night, I promised myself that I would get Scott to allow me to spend the night with him. And well, I did. Not actually with him per se. But at his house, at least. I told him that I would not be accompanying him and went to the restroom while he set up his DVD player for me. As to not wake up the neighbors with his horrendously loud stereo system, I used headphones and watched Gone in 60 Seconds. It was such a wretched situation, because I want Scott so badly. I mean, obviously, I'm upset that he's so impure and so unregretful for being that way, but at the same time, the whole baby thing and the smile thing and the being incredibly intelligent thing just totally do it for me. I want him to be pure and I want us to be married, and I want to have hours and hours of dirty sex with him. And yet . . . he slept for two hours while I sat on the couch . . . alone.
And when I was done with the movie, I sat at his computer and began writing this. His alarm went off at 5:29, but I couldn't hear him moving around in any way. I thought about going in to wake him up at 5:45, but I realised that I was only wanting to go in order to have an excuse to get into bed with him, which would make me a horrible, horrible person, so I stayed. He woke up a few minutes later, and when he emerged from his room, I spun around 180 degrees in this chair and said, "Good morning," which he reciprocated.
It's evening-ish now. I didn't hear Scott emerge from the bathroom in his towel (not that towels make an excessive amount of noise), so I can only guess that he had taken his clothes into the bathroom with him, which is a real turn-off. I'm big into taking my time in my towel. The clothes in the bathroom thing made me think that he doesn't trust me for one reason or another, though he told me that I'm the only person at COSI who knows about Alaina. I suppose he really doesn't have reason to let anyone else know, though. I watched Scott fix his hair in the bathroom mirror and sat on the couch as he grabbed all of his COSI whatnot. He had the sweetest sleepy look. I think I'm still in that "everything you do makes you so amazingly cute" stage with him, which is the best stage to be in while I'm in it but the worst stage to think about when I've moved past it.
We really didn't talk at all in the morning, save a few exchanges of no consequence. I kept thinking that a bad love gone bad song by someone like LeAnn Rimes or Tiffany should be playing in the background of the movie that is my life. Yeah, wasn't it Tiffany who sang Could've Been? That was totally the song that would have been playing. I told Scott not to lose me on the highway, which wasn't a difficult feat, what with us being the only two on the road at 6:15 on a Sunday morning. I was in such a great mood during the drive, but I kept thinking about how dirty I felt about the whole ordeal. He parked ahead of me and waited while I gathered my uniform shirt, my dirty socks from the night before still wadded up in my work shoes where I had left them. Funny how I had my spending the night all planned out, yet I hadn't brought clean clothes to change into. When we got to the door to the timeclock (after Scott faux scolded me for wearing loud flip-flops that woke up the Girl Scouts whom were sleeping on the floor), Scott got out his keys, unlocked the door, pulled it open a bit, and swung himself around it to avoid holding it open for me. Dirty times three, I felt. I stopped to clock in, while Scott went ahead down to his workspace. He told me to have a good morning and disappeared into the darkness of the hallway that houses his office.
When I got to the Guest Services desk, a Camp-In staff chick was standing there, and I thanked God that Myron or Chuck or one of the other Camp-In men wasn't around to see me coming back in the same clothes that I had left in the night before. I set my clothes down and ran off to buy some Mountain Dew to keep me alive before Chuck could bring me some juice. When I came back, Chuck and Myron were at the desk, much to my dismay. Chuck asked why I was there so early, and after I told him that the "person" I had followed needed to arrive by 6:45, Myron stated rather than asked, "Scott, right." That bothered me. It bothered me even more than Scott was talking to a girl upstairs an hour or so later, and then when he walked by the desk that I was at, he just looked at me for a moment and walked by without saying a word. This, my friends, is why The Katie can't have sex with random men. I was feeling all empty and used, and I hadn't even touched the boy.
However, I spent some time with Ryan and Scott later in the day, and everything seemed really normal, especially when Ryan told Scott that I obviously want his body, much to my amusement. Good times.
April 17th, 2001: So, during work last week, Scott and I were hanging out at the desk, when he asked me when I planned to take him bowling again. I informed him that either Friday or Saturday would work for me, so I called Mike the Volunteer Team Leader and invited him to accompany us. He had no plans that came to mind, so we made it a date.
I didn't see Scott for the rest of the week, but I called him, because I knew that he would make no attempt to message me to find out what was going on. See, a couple of weeks ago, Scott asked for my MSN Messenger screenname while I was on the phone with him one night. More specifically, he asked for my Hotmail address so that he could look me up, but I told him just to type in "Queen Katie Ett" and add me that way. After I said that, he replied, "At what?" I told him that it wasn't "at" anything, that it was just Queen Katie Ett. Once again, he asked, "At what?", and getting a little frustrated, I just repeated myself until he gave up and gave in to me. So, a few nights later, I saw him at work and asked why he hadn't messaged me yet, to which he responded that he had, that I was merely never online. I called his bluff and decided to hate him. That lasted all of about two seconds, so after all of my roommates had left for Easter weekend and I was left terribly, utterly alone, I called Scott's house, half hoping that he would be at work so that I could page him, thereby forcing him to call me. However, he picked up the phone on the second ring and said hello. I simply stated his name, which is my signature hello. I love how Scott's voice changes when he realises that it's me calling him. He starts out all serious and business-like and then switches into Katie mode; I appreciate the fact that he has a Katie mode. I asked how his day had been. That led to Easter talk. To dysfunctional family talk. To my other phone rining, upon which I accidentally hung up on Scott. And after I called back, to his genius brother who's a college drop-out, where Scott mentioned his brother's ACT score of 35, which led to discussion of my dad's 34 and his going to college to become a lawyer and instead deciding that he loves the farm too much to do anything else. While all of this was being discussed, I slyly slipped in a question about Scott's score and asked if he cared to share. A 27, it was. I was wholly unimpressed, naturally, and then he told me of his math and science scores in the 30's that were weighed down by his English-related scores in the teens. His apparent lack of writing skills turned me off like nothing else can, but he assured me that he is, in fact, an excellent writer. This led to my asking who Scott's favourite author is. He told his favourite genre, sci-fi, instead, but that wasn't enough for me. I wanted, needed to hear either of my two favourites, Ray Bradbury and George Orwell, and lo and behold, after Scott sat and thought for a few minutes, he settled on my Ray. Talk about scoring points with The Katie. This led to talk of dogs and gods and apartments. And then, the subject of Scott's bed arose. Don't ask me how. I suppose Scott's bed is perpetually on my mind, though. His best friend lives in the dorm right next to mine, and since my room has a set-up identical to that of his friend's, Scott proceeded to tell me how incredibly small my bed is compared to the one that he has in his apartment. He told me that his is king-sized and firm as all get-out, which made me wretchedly jealous. I begged him to stop rubbing it in my face, so he made some orgasm sounds and moaned the characteristics of his bed, which was very un-Scott-like. And if I hadn't been thinking impure thoughts before, I was then. So, two hours later, I realised that I was going to get approximately one hour of sleep before getting up for work, so I told Scott to bring some clothes to work to change into and left him at that.
Saturday at work, Scott kept showing up wherever I was, but he was always around at times when I was helping a guest, so I couldn't flag him down to talk. I love situations like that - knowing that he saw me and that I saw him but not being able to do anything about it. Finally, with about 20 minutes left before I was scheduled to be off, I paged Scott and asked him if he had time to come up and see me at Little Kidspace. I told him that Mike was unable to go bowling with us due to some soccer practice and asked him if he would be too scared to go out with me alone, and he made me well aware of the fact that he's not the least bit scared of me, which was a bit of a let-down. So, a few minutes later, one of my co-workers called up to me and asked if I would be willing to stay an extra hour for her. I told her that I had some plans, which led to a long line of questioning in which I ended up not being able to hide the fact that I was going out with someone from work. So, when I came downstairs to gather my whatnot and change for the evening, my boss took me aside and said, "So, you've got a boyfriend at COSI." I explained that we were just going out as friends. Ted said, "Ahh, so you're just dating right now." I explained that we were just going out as friends. Ted said, "Oh, so you're only seeing each other." I flicked his forehead with my pointer finger and went out to my car to get some clothes. A bit later, as I was all changed and just hanging out, waiting for Scott to be done with whatever he was working on, he saddled up to the desk with his clothes in hand, nodded in my direction, and went off to change. It was at this point that I realised that Scott was going to be wearing the same thing that he had worn the last time we went out (which was actually the first time, too). I wasn't sure what to think. I had three things to consider: 1) Scott thought he looked really fabulous in the outfit and wanted to show himself off again, 2) Scott had totally forgotten what he had worn before, or 3) Scott only owns his work clothes and that one outfit. I was depressed and frightened. But he did look good, so off we went. I asked if he was driving, but I did it in my special way that let him know that it really wasn't a question at all, so after a quick discussion about the lack of comfort of my shoes, we hopped in his sporty, little Saturn and headed to Easton.
Let's talk about how evil and manipulative I am. See, we had been planning to bowl, but I couldn't see bowling being loads of fun with only two people, so as soon as I found out about Mike's not going, I formulated a plan to get myself to Scott's apartment for a viewing and possible using of Scott's bed. Now, we all know that I actually had no such thing in mind, so why was it that I needed to see his apartment? There's no reason for it, actually; I had just made it my goal, and I was going to see that I reached it. So, knowing that the shopping centre was approximately two minutes from Scott's, I asked him if he wanted to go there, since he says that he rarely does due to the outrageous prices of pretty much everything. While he drove, we listened to a CD that I made for him, most of which he says is far too weird for his tastes. I swear, all I ask for is a man with perfect taste in music (read: mine) who is willing to call me princess. That's it! Scott is all over Incubus, though, which is exciting. So, after we parked and Scott made fun of the rap that someone was playing, we decided to stop by the theatre that's inside the centre to see Enemy at the Gates. I was there for the Jude Law; Scott was there for the massive amounts of killing. As soon as we got into the theatre, my phone rang, and while I thought about doing the whole pretending it's another guy to make Scott jealous thing, I decided that I had no reason to mess with him, so I explained that it was my sister telling me what time to come home for church in the morning. He told me that while I was absorbed in my call, someone had come over the loudspeaker and said, "Thank you for turning off your cell phone during the movie." I laughed.
The movie was very good; good and bloody. I kept thinking about Scott's breathing, though. I love male breathing. Oh, what am I talking about? I love male anything. I used Scott's to judge his feelings on the movie - slow during the dialogue and quicker during the dirty killing scenes. No change during the horrid, horrid sex scene, though, which surprised me. At that point, I still didn't know whether or not Scott had been unvirginised, so I was looking for a hint of any kind, but I got nothing. After that, we decided to consume something, but we wanted to get out of Easton to do it, so after a long stop in Barnes & Noble that involved Scott making fun of me for being so in love with the art books, we drove off to Red Robin, which was flaming closed. This somehow brought up the topic of rap music again, and when I mentioned that I'm not a rap fan but enjoy Outkast quite a bit, I just plain opened myself up to ridicule by Scott. I swear, I'm all about the abusive relationships. Finally, we ended up at Applebee's, where I was thoroughly impressed with Scott's manners. I suppose with all of my loving the abusive men, I end up with guys who have not the words "thank you" and "please" in their vocabulary. But Scott has them, all right. He almost has them more than I do. No, wait. He didn't hold the door for me at Easton. Actually, I held the door for him. Yeah, he's gaining no points here. I'll give him nothing. Dinner was very excellent, though. Once again, I'm not used to being with men who talk. None of my twelve or so Mikes invite conversation at all, but Scott just wants to talk and talk and talk some more. (I just got that LL Cool J song Doin' It in my head. Anyone else? Doin' it and doin' it and doin' it well. Ha. I just found the best lyrics for that. Check out http://itsa.ucsf.edu/~v896/Other/Modern/RB/doing.html. I'm thoroughly amused. Put it on me like a G, baby. Okay, enough of that.) However, Scott was so all about telling me stories and whatnot that I felt like I was interrupting some sort of epic when I interjected something. He was okay with my vegetarianism, so that scores him some points, but he also scolded me for not offering him the chicken that was to come on my alfredo rather than just asking to have it left off, so the points are cancelled.
I think Scott must be terribly, terribly lonely living by himself, because I believe that I may have learned his entire life's story that night. I loved it. I love that he says that he's so hard to penetrate, and there he was, telling me about his family and his aspirations and his love of his work. It kind of scares me how much older Scott is than I am. Not in physical age, because he's only a little more than a year older than me, but in his position. Going to the school that he does, Scott's going to graduate in about a year, and then he'll be designing software or computers or something, and I'll still have twelve years of school to go. Computer knowledge impresses me so, too. Scott says that he doesn't tell many people of his computer know-how, because he doesn't want to get held down by people wanting him to fix their whatnot all of the time, but the fact that he could if he had the time drives me wild, for some reason. I'm a total dork-lover, aren't I? Scott's just too beautiful for me, though. There's a guy in my Literature of the Third Reich class who I'm deeply, madly sexually attracted to, and I couldn't figure out why until I realised that he's Scott's identical twin brother. Okay, so Scott doesn't have a twin. Leave me alone! So, we were sitting there, all done with our food, our waitress trying to shove us out of the place every ten minutes or so, and we took a break from talking (or more specifically, Scott took a break and I continued to smile and nod). It wasn't the sort of "we've run out of things to say" silence but more of a "wow, that was a lot to learn about a single person in one night" sort of simple quiet. So, I decided to make Scott uncomfortable. So I stared. He was looking away when I started staring, so I enjoyed the look of surprise on his face when he looked back and realised that I had been watching him. He smiled and stared himself for a moment, but soon it got to be too much for him and he had to look away again. I enjoyed that a little too much and told him what I was doing, but even knowing that I was doing it on purpose didn't help him to tolerate it any more. It was at that moment that I wanted to taste him the most. Looking all shy and scared, his eyes so warm . . . Scott-y. I developed an interest in tasting people lately. Lips are starting to be a real attractor, for some reason. For instance, I have a newly-discovered friend named Jeremy who randomly invited me outside with him last Thursday night while he had a cigar so that I could admire him while he smoked. I think I'm actually more infatuated with his lips than I am with him. They're this amazing shade of pink that looks so unbelievably perfect with his black hair that I can barely concentrate on anything else while we're talking. I think that somewhere in the back of my mind, I'm always hoping that he'll notice that I can't keep my eyes off of them and invite me to have a lick or something. No, I don't even need to taste them. Just a touch would be enough for me. I can so totally imagine that. "You know, Katie, if you really want to feel them that badly, just reach on over here and fondle them a bit. That's right. Go ahead." Wow, I hope he never reads this.
Anyway, when our waitress starting flicking cashews at us from across the room, Scott and I decided that it was time to move on. He had just been telling me about the fabulous 75-gallon aquarium that he had installed in his apartment after his neighbor paged him and asked to buy some Mountain Dew from him, so I used that as my leaping point to reach my goal. I love how incredibly blunt I am. I didn't try to hint around to get him to invite me to see it, because trust me, Scott isn't the type to get hints. So, I simply said, "Why don't you take me back there with you?" "To my apartment?" he asked. And so we went.
It was absolutely perfect and not at all what I had pictured. I didn't know what to do with myself, because Scott seems like sort of a private person, so I didn't want to go rooting through his stuff. Actually, I did want to, but I thought it better to wait until after I seduced him and sent him off to sleep. So, he gave me a little tour of the living room and kitchen, which included viewing pictures of his dogs Sandy and Manny, named after Sandy Alomar and Manny Ramirez, which was a huge, huge turn-off for baseball-hating Katie. Then, there came the bed. I was actually a bit disappointed by it, mostly because of the colours in Scott's bedroom. I had pictured blue sheets and blankets. I had pictured a hardwood floor. I had pictured a large window with white curtains taking up one side of the room. But it wasn't a thing like that. It was very cream and camel. It was very man-ish. I suppose I'm glad that it wasn't pink and covered in a My Little Pony motif, but I don't know how comfortable I would have been in a brown bed. Plus, it was covered in boxers and random clothes, the bedspread all crumpled, disheveled. Still, I thought that I could get myself in it by the end of the night. So, we went back out to the living room, where I sat as Scott displayed his magical sound system with the help of the movie Gladiator. We got started on his schooling again as he showed me the computer that he's building for his end-of-the-year project. He then led me back into the bedroom (asking to be raped, I swear) to show me a random piece of equipment that employed polar coordinates, which got him talking about calculus and how he'll help me out when I actually take a calculus class at OSU. After he showed me his electronics toolbox (toolbox=man), Scott turned on his computer to let me see a program that he had written in high school. I think that he was just happy that someone was interested in his work, but he kept telling me to let him know if I was bored. He opened up his MSN Messenger to show how his program worked with that, but I don't think he was doing anything of the sort, because as soon as he opened it, he pointed to my address on his list and said, "See? It's on there." He had actually written "Queen_Katie" instead of "Queen Katie Ett", so it was then that I realised that as I had been saying my last name over the phone, he had thought that I was actually using the word "at". I was amused. I then went back over to the couch, lied back, and asked him if it was okay if I did a little napping, but as soon as he gave me the okay, he wanted to talk some more, so we did just that. I don't mean to make Scott sound annoying with all of his talking, because it's very refreshing. I can just picture you picturing him with this high, squeaky voice, doing nothing but working on computers all day. But he's nothing like that. If you saw him on the street, you'd be more likely to think that he's a model than a computer nerd. So keep that in mind.
Just as Scott and I were watching a little video on his computer, I started getting that droopy-eyed, nodding-head look about me, so Scott decided that it was probably about time to take me back to COSI to grab my car. Darn it, I wanted him to invite me to spend the night just so I could look at him all sympathetic-like and say, "Aww, Scottie, I have to get up early and go home for church, love. Try me another time." But he had to do the same, and perhaps he wouldn't have wanted me to even if that roadblock wasn't there, but I'll just pretend that not wanting me to wasn't an option. So, on the way home, I made him listen to Jump, Little Children's song The Singer. I had put it on the homemade CD, and he told me that he didn't like it at all, because well, it's all talking rather than singing, but I was bound and determined to make him love it. So, when we got to the lines that say, ". . . where we kissed like we had never tasted lips before. I still wanted more; I still want more," I professed my love for it and made him do the same. I then popped in one of my Guster CDs, and just as we were working our way through Great Escape, Scott suddenly slowed the car down to ridiculous speed and did a bit of cussing under his breath before I noticed the cop sitting on the side of the road, just putting on his lights. We pulled over, and Scott explained that this was his third time as he cussed a bit more, totally unabashedly. I asked him how bad it was, and he told me that he had been going 71 in a 55 mph zone. However, when the cop came to Scott's window and told him that the speed limit was 55, Scott said, "Oh, really?" It was so fake, so uncaring that it hurt me. At least I'll know Scott's lying voice if I ever hear it. So, the cop asked for Scott's proof of insurance and license, and that's when things started getting bad. Scott reached into his glove box to grab his insurance card, all of the time talking to himself under his breath. I was actually a little frightened by him. He handed me the stuff from the compartment and asked me to help him look for a red pouch. I pulled some stuff out, but I felt like I was making him even weirder by helping, so I just sat and watched him dig around for a few minutes. He finally uncovered the pouch and pulled out his expired insurance card. Ouch. He assured the officer that he did, in fact, have current insurance, but the cop was thoroughly convinced that Scott was Satan. He walked back to his cruiser, while Scott continued to cuss and bit and generally slam some things around. I was really impressed with the way he handled things on the whole, though. He was very, very calm, where I probably would have either been hysterically crying or offering my body in exchange for a warning. We sat in total silence while the cop did whatever he was doing in his car, and I really felt as if I should say or do something to console or amuse Scott. I don't know him well enough to judge whether or not he wanted to be talked to, so the silence continued all of the way back to COSI save a few bits where he made comments about how rude the cop had been. I had been totally comfortable all night, but I pretty much wanted to be anywhere but in the car with him. So, I gave Scott a quick hug in the car after thanking him for dragging me around, and whoa, did he not reciprocate my love. I was worried and scared for him. I went home.
April 13th, 2001: Ever get the feeling that the weird smell invading your nostrils is actually that of yourself? That your own natural scent has somehow become so incredibly rank that you, who has lived your entire life with it, are beginning to reek of it so badly that you can smell it? That your stench is so offensive to the olfactory organs that you should be put out of your misery or at least shoved in a steaming vat and scrubbed raw? You're probably wrong about that; it's probably not you. Just keep telling yourself that, and you'll feel much more secure. I can tell you for sure that it's not me; I know that much. I think I may have discovered who it is, though. He works at a Kroger here in Columbus. The Kroger on Olentangy River Road, to be exact. He stocks milk for a living. The offender looks harmless enough from far away - middle-aged, balding, short in stature. But get too close to him, and . . . BOOM!, he releases his crazy funk on anyone or anything that approaches him. I went to said Kroger with my dear friend and suitemate The BIG K.N. (or Katie, as you may know her) last night, and as she was picking out Colby cheese cubes, I saddled on up to the yogurt section of the dairy case and selected some fine live culture-filled delicacies. Just as The BIG K.N. and I were turning to leave said dairy case, I zoned in on some fine-looking chocolate milk. Realising that one such as myself would never have the ability to finish an entire gallon on my own in a mere five days, I arrived at the decision to buy a half gallon and have a go at that. However, the halves were to expire in three days, which angered me. It's not that I didn't think that it would be possible for me to down the milk, but knowing that I was being pressured into consuming it so swiftly made me forget my love for the Kroger. So, I meandered amongst the milk products for a moment until The BIG K.N. pointed out the milk-stocking man, so I moved toward him a skosh to examine the wonders upon wonders of frothy goodness that he had stored in his cart, but alas, there was no chocolate to be seen. But oh!, the stench. The stink that radiated from him, dripped from his very pores.
I'm thoroughly convinced that every bad smell in the universe was derived from the natural odor of that one man.
