The Death of Jim Markunas

To quote one of the literary greats of our times, “I was 22-years-old, dumb as a box of rocks, and living on the streets in Los Angeles.”

This was of course after my untimely death. I had been dying slowly over the years, and it had finally caught up with me. My death had started off gradually, much as the clock ticks away while one is lying in bed at night, unable to sleep; too tired to get out of bed, but too wired to fall into the peaceful twilight of dreamland. The world had been slowly chipping away at me for years on end, and one day, it finally caught up with me.

I had out-grown Chicago, and decided to begin my 2nd time around in Los Angeles. Moving is hard. I spent a few days trying to find a place to stay, and eventually ended up subletting a dorm room at UCLA from some girl I met off Craig’s List.

Needless to say, when I arrived in the plush college neighborhood of Westwood just outside of Bel-Air, I was in for a shock. I turned on my newly-acquired GPS and punched in the address. I drove up the 405, California’s most infamous highway, and ended up near UCLA.

I drove down Gayley Avenue, until I found the room I had sublet. It was in a mansion across from the main campus. I was stoked, as I headed through the front door, but my demeanor changed when I discovered that this mansion that was picturesque on the outside was a shit-hole on the inside.

There was broken glass everywhere, every wall had a hole punched through it, and the whole place reeked like piss. I called the girl, who had moved into her boyfriend’s room down the hall from mine. She greeted me in the lobby with a warm smile.

“Hi, “ she said, extending her hand, “I’m Dava.”

“Hi, Dava.”

I was expecting her to be black, and was shocked as fuck to discover that she was as European as can be.

“Let me give you a tour,” she said.

She showed me the rest of the mansion; the kitchen was huge, and was reminiscent of a high-powered industrial-quality kitchen. It had everything a fancy restaurant would have. There was a high-powered, restaurant-grade dishwasher, stainless steel prep tables, a deep fryer, and an industrial sink. The only problem was that someone had thrown a massive kegger, and failed to clean up after themselves. To make matters worse, there were bugs everywhere.

“Here’s the fridge,” she said, walking right past it.

I opened the fridge, only to discover it was infested with maggots. We continued through the house to the living room.

“Here’s our pool table,” she said, “But you can’t use it.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because they broke every single cue, and lost half the balls.”

Sure enough, every pool cue lay on the ground in shards, and the rack was not even half-full of balls.

We continued to the outdoor area, only to discover a furniture graveyard. That’s right, a furniture graveyard. Broken couches, smashed televisions, and a microwave that looked as if it had fallen victim to its own suicide lay suffering in the middle of the concrete backyard.

“The boys love to get drunk, and throw things off the balcony,” she said.

“Geez,” I thought, “This looks like a frat house.”

I was still in denial at this point, as all fraternities everywhere, except for the black ones, are my enemy. I even saw fraternity letters and pictures on the walls, but I somehow failed to make the connection. We finally arrived at my room, which was the only one in the house not beaten to shit.

“Make yourself at home,” she said sweetly, as I started to unpack my stuff.

I hate frats. It all started with my tenure at Eastern Illinois University. The college was all too reminiscent of high school, as the hot girls wouldn’t give you the time of day unless you had Greek letters across your chest, and the guys who joined fraternities were all way too cool to give GDI’s (Goddamn Independents) the time of day.

I was 18-years-old, and pissed at the world.

“I hate frat jerks,” I had told my mom.

Needless to say, at that point in my life, I had never met anyone in a frat; I didn’t even know that the girl version of a fraternity was called a sorority. I only disliked frats because Kurt Cobain had written a slew of ranting essays on the plague of fraternal organizations. I only hated them because I was assuming they would all be like football players, dirty, jerky, and stupid.

“Don’t go to school with your mind made up,” my mom had told me, “You never know, you might like fraternities.”

I promised her that I wouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but I was still very skeptical. My first night away at school was a blast. I hadn’t yet met Eli or Brooke, but I had picked up some friends in a matter of minutes.

I was walking down the hall, only to be startled by a group of people pounding on the metal fire door in the stairwell. I opened the door and was almost tackled by the group of clean-cut young men who rushed into the hall.

“Thanks a lot, buddy,” a nice-looking young man with dark hair and a 5-o’clock shadow exclaimed, extending his hand, “I’m Andy.”

“Hi, Andy,” I replied, “I’m Jim.”

“I appreciate you letting us in, man,” he said, “If you want, we’re throwing a kegger at our house, and we’d love it if you stopped by.”

“Sure,” I said.

“Cool, man,” he exclaimed, “Just walk straight down 9th, you can’t miss it.”

“What’s the address?”

“You wont see it, just look for the ^T^. “

He shook my hand, and headed down the hall. After pondering why his house had a triangle and a T on the outside for a few minutes, I realized that I had been seduced by a fraternity.

I decided not to go, as I didn’t drink at that point in my life, and I hated fraternities. Later that night, I decided that I was hungry. I grabbed my skateboard and headed off to Wendy’s on the other side of town.

Charleston, Illinois, where my school was located, was not at all like the U of I, or any other college for that matter. There was nothing to do, nowhere to eat, and every restaurant was on the other side of town. I made it to Wendy’s only to discover that they weren’t affiliated with the rest of the franchises.

The restaurant in question had the same logo and menu items, but the fries and burgers were lower quality, and they served Pepsi instead of Coke. I hate Pepsi, and was super-pissed.

This was strike # 1 for old Eastern Illinois University.

I finished my so-called meal and headed back to campus. As I skated down the street, I heard someone call my name.

“Hey, Jim!” it was that Andy kid from earlier.

“Hey!” I called back.

He came walking towards me, and I would have skated off, but I didn’t want to be rude.

“Hey, come have a beer with me,” he said, pulling me toward the house.

There was a massive kegger, filled with beer and bitches. He introduced me to the other guys as we walked over to the keg.

I hit it off with everyone. Two girls took an instant liking to me, as Andy had introduced me to everyone as his brother from back home. It worked wonders with the drunk whores.

“Are you going to Rush Delt?” a skinny little blonde girl had asked me.

“What?” I replied. I didn’t know that “rushing” was slang for attempting to pledge a fraternity or sorority.

Basically, joining a frat goes as follows:

(For the men)

1. A member of a fraternity gets to know you a little, and invites you to Rush, which is an informal get-to-know you party thrown at the off campus frat houses during the week.

2. You show up to Rush, where the boys stuff you with free food and beer. Once you’re stuffed with carbs and liquor, the interview process starts.

3. The interview process involves them asking you a few questions, such as first/last name, where you’re from, your major, etc.

4. If the guys like you, you’re invited to rush the next night. If they still like you the next night, you’re invited to the third and final night of rush.

5. If the dudes like you still, they have a closed door meeting to discuss your fate. Those deemed worthy of Fratdom are given what’s called a bid. A bid is a written piece of paper, if you will, stating that you’re eligible to pledge the fraternity.

6. Once you accept your bid, you begin what’s called “the pledging process.” This involves learning the rules of the frat, getting to know your “brothers,” and most importantly; hazing rituals.

All fraternities across the U.S. claim not to haze, as it’s not only illegal, but against all university rules and bylaws. A select few fraternities don’t haze. The Delts, who were supposedly my friends, didn’t haze. Every other frat on campus, on the other hand, hazed the fuck out of their pledges.

These hazing rituals were under no circumstances to be talked about by any member of any fraternity. However, once you combine a few drinks, with Jim Markunas-style charm and interview skills, these fuckers will tell you anything you want to know.

Here’s how some frats hazed:

PKA (The Pikes) The Pikes had the coolest t-shirts on campus, and were famous for loving rock music, blonde girls, and date rape. In fact, my roommate/college best friend Eli had accidentally switched drinks with a girl at the Pike house, and woke up in the middle of the street four hours later. Let me digress…. They would make every pledge eat from the toilet: Bananas, ice cream, chocolate syrup, stuff of that nature.

Sigma Pi (The Sig-Pi’s) This frat was famous for intramural sports. Their hazing ritual involved taking their pledges “for a ride in the country.” After driving 20-30 minutes into the corn fields, the pledges were stripped of their cell phones, kicked out of the car, and forced to “work as a team” to find their way back to campus. (Most pledges cheated and crotched their phones.)

Delta Chi (D-Chi’s) They have several hazing rituals, the most famous being “The Elephant Walk.” This involves stripping the pledges butt-naked. Once all clothes are off, the men are forced to stand in single file line. Then, every guy must grab the bare balls of the guy in front of him. Once the human chain is made, the men are forced to parade around the chapter room pretending to be Elephants; hence the name, “Elephant Walk.”

Lambda Chi Alpha (The Lamda Chi’s, The Ramda Guys) These fuckers are famous for two things:
1. Being the biggest dorks on campus.
2. Having President Harry Truman as one of their Alumni.

As legend has it…. (Some dude on the internet claims this is an urban legend, as 9 frats have similar stories.) During the McCarthy era, all fraternities were forced to register their hazing rituals with the Library of Congress. Every frat in the U.S. has their deepest, darkest rituals written in a book hidden away in Washington. Truman, during his presidency, had the LXA rituals stricken from the records. There is no written proof of their hazing rituals, but people get drunk and run their mouths.

Their hazing was apparently more mental. The pledges were only allowed to walk on the sidewalk. If they were caught using a grassy knoll for a short cut, for example, they would be severely reprimanded. That’s all I was able to find out.

I was close to getting a guy named Kyle to tell me their secret initiation ritual one night when we were at a kegger at the LXA off-campus house. However, just as he was about to spill his guts, I was unceremoniously thrown onto the front lawn for unrelated reasons. Fuck you, LXA!

7. Once the pledge makes it through the initiation process; he becomes an active member of his fraternity.

(For the bitches)

1. The bitches all get together in a super large group; sometimes 100-200 bitches.

2. The bitches are led single file through each sorority house on campus. They spend about 20 minutes mingling in each house before they are led to the next one.

3. Once the bitches go to all the houses, they write their top 3 choices on a piece of paper and give it to a member of the Intra-Fraternal Council.

4. The sorority bitches then sort through the pieces of paper and pick who they feel should be in their sorority.

5. The bitches then start their pledge process, which I never bothered to inquire about; first because I’m not a bitch, and second, because their trials and tribulations aren’t nearly as nasty as “Elepahnt-Walking” or toilet drinking. Apparently, it’s more mental hazing.

(Both Bitches and Dicks)

Rinse, recycle, repeat for 100-200 years.

Also, all members of all fraternities and sororities pay to be a member. It costs an estimated $1,800 a year plus tuition, food, and housing to be a LXA in a small school; I gather it costs about the same in other frats in small schools, and 2-3 times the amount in bigger colleges.

Now that you folks in Internet Land have been edified on the inner-workings of college fraternal organizations, I’ll get on with my death.

“If Andy’s your brother, you’ll definitely get a bid,” the girl crooned at me, slobbering drunkenly, as she leaned on me for support.

Every Delt loved me. Not only did they get me drunk for free two nights in a row, pop my bar cherry, as frats don’t have to show I.D.’s at college bars, and introduce me to slutty Irish girls, but they genuinely seemed to be nice guys.

Andy and I hung around a lot that first few days before I met Eli and Brooke. I seriously thought I wanted to be in a frat.

“You’re coming to Rush, aren’t you?” Andy had asked me a few days prior to the event.

“Definitely,” I replied.

“Cool. You can bring your new friend if you want. Eli is it?”

“Yeah, Eli.”

“Cool, man. Monday is pasta and beer night, bring him along.”

These fuckers went out of their way to appear desirable during Rush. After all, a fraternity is a business just like Visa, Haliburton, and the Catholic Church. The Delts had gone as far as to hire professional wrestlers to perform at the last night of Rush.

Eli was VERY opposed to going to any Rush events. However…. The weekend before Rush, old Ellis and I had stumbled into a random kegger. That’s where I met Chaz.

I’ll always hate frat-jerks, but Chaz was the coolest human being ever! Ever!

Ellis and I had been talking amongst ourselves as we sipped cheap beer out of red plastic cups. The next thing I knew, I was in a tight embrace with another man.

“Hey buddy,” the hugger slurred in my ear, “You’re a cool dude.”

“Thanks,” I replied, moving about two steps back, “You’re cool too.”

“I’m Chaz,” he said, extending his hand.

“Hey Chaz, I’m Jim.”

“Jim, you’re a cool fucking guy.”

“Thanks, Chaz. You rock as well.”

He had stepped between Eli and I, and was completely ignoring the fact that he was there.

“That’s my friend Eli,” I said.

Chaz gave a quick, “Hey, buddy,” and promptly turned his attention back to me.

“I’m a Sig-Pi,” he said.

“A What?” I replied.

“Sigma Pi. The coolest fffffffucking frat ever.”

“I see.”

“You should rush my frat, because you are the coolest fucking guy ever.”

“Thanks.”

“What are you myajuring in.” he slurred.

“The female body.”

He let out a laugh that shook the room.

“You’re a cool fucking guy. Female body. You’re ffffffuckin’ hilarious, dude. You need to rush my frat.”

“What’s it called?”

“Sigma Pi.”

“Cool.”

“Rush starts on Monday, dude. Promise you’ll be there.”

“I promise.”

“Seriously, man. Promise me. You’re the coolest fucking kid ever. You promise you’ll be there?”

“Yes, goddammit. I’ll be there.”

“Sigma Pi!”

“OK.”

“Say it so I know you know, cause I want to know that you…”

“Sig Pi,” I said.

With that, I grabbed Ellis, and we parted ways. In addition to cold, hard business sense, the frats were also Ad-aware. They all hung posters in the dorms listing what kind of food would be served each night. I noticed that Chaz’s frat was having steak night.

It had been days since Ellis and I had home cooking, and Chaz’s steaks seemed much more appealing than the subway sandwiches the Delts were having that night. It was decided that we would eat with the Sig Pi’s, chill with the Delts, and then introduce ourselves to the Lambda Chi’s the next night.

Ellis had reluctantly agreed to tag along to the Sig Pi Rush, as steak night was pretty goddamn enticing. We put on dress shirts and headed to the Sig Pi off campus party house.

Partying worked as follows:

Every fraternity and sorority except for the Delts and the Sig Pi’s had on-campus housing in an area of campus dubbed “Greek Court.” Since this was university housing, and drinking was not allowed, every fraternity used a portion of their member dues to rent an off-campus party house.

This is where the magic happened. Most of the time, the frats had prime real estate just across the street from campus, as they had a lot of buying power, due to keg parties and member dues.

Sigma Pi did not have a Greek Court house. These crazy fuckers actually lived in their off-campus house. Crazy fuckers! For some reason, their house was 2 miles away from campus.

We trudged all the way there, and were met with steaks and a warm reception.

As Ellis and I grabbed our freshly-grilled steaks, Chaz came running up.

“Fuck yeah, dude!” he exclaimed, “Glad you came.”

“Glad to be here,” I replied.

“Come sit with me,” he said, as I followed him to a picnic table in a large dining hall.

“Hey, buddy. I’m Chaz,” he said to Eli, extending his hand.

“We met,” Eli replied coldly.

“Really? When?”

“I was with Jim the other day.”

He stared at Eli blankly.

“So… how do you like our house?” Chaz asked me, as he turned his attention away from Eli.

“It’s cool.” I replied.

“Wait till you get the tour,” he said between bites, “This is a crazy fucking house.”

After dinner, Eli and I, and a large group of guys, were given the tour of the house. It was a mansion. The house seemed nice, but it only had 5 bedrooms. This particular frat was heavily into sports, and boasted having Tony Romo as one of their members. Romo went on to play for the Dallas Cowboys in 2006.

“How many people live here?” I asked.

“About 30,” one of the guys replied.

I wondered where they all slept, as there were only 4 bedrooms. We were led to the attic. Upon our arrival, we discovered an attic the width and length of the mansion, crammed wall-to-wall with bunk beds stacked three high.

“This is where everyone sleeps,” one of the guys told me.

Suddenly it all made sense. Eli and I stared at each other in amazement, as they described their living conditions.

“Basically, we all share this room,” the man leading the tour said.

“What if someone wants to hump?” I asked, as this was a very valid question.

“That’s not a problem,” the man replied, “We’re all friends here. Guys hump their girls in their bunk beds all the time.”

I stared at the guy in horrified confusion.

“Don’t worry,” he assured me, “It gets really dark at night. You can’t see anything.”

After the tour, it was time for the interviews. It suddenly became my goal not to rush this frat! The interview was to be taped in order for the guys to review them later amongst themselves. I sat down on the couch across from the camera.

“What’s your name?” the interviewer asked.

“Jim Fuckin’ Markunas,” I replied.

“What do you do for fun?”

“I hump a lot.”

The man running the camera and the guy asking the questions stared at each other in shock.

“OK,” they stammered, “Do you play any sports?”

“Yeah,” I replied.

“What sport?”

“Mud-wrestling,” I said, “But with chicks. Mud-wrestling dudes is way too homoerotic.”

They stared at each other in disbelief before shouting “Next!” in unison.

Eli was up next. He made it his personal goal to top me the only way he knew how; by being fucking strange.

“What’s your name?”

“Eli.”

“Do you play any sports?”

“Yeah.”

“What?”

“Polo.”

“Polo?”

“You know, the one where you hit a ball around on horseback? I do that.”

The two men once again stared at each other in disbelief.

“What do you do for fun?”

Eli suddenly got a maniacal look on his face.

“Guns.”

“Guns?”

“Yeah,” he said in a monotone voice, “I like to shoot stuff. Small, furry animals mostly.”

Most people would have been taken for a joke, but old Ellis said it with such a straight face, they had no choice but to take him seriously.

“Next!” the two men shouted in unison.

Ellis and I giggled like schoolgirls all the way to the Delt’s off-campus house.

“There’s no way they’ll invite us to tomorrow’s rush,” I said between laughs.

We spent the rest of the night hanging out at the Delt’s off-campus house. Upon our return to the dorm, I discovered I had a message (We still had answering machines and lan-lines back then.) It was Chaz:

“Hey dude, it’s Chaz,” he said, “It was really cool that you came out tonight.”

“Un-fucking-believable!” Eli shouted.

“I really want you to come by the house tomorrow for second Rush,” the message continued, “Call me.”

We spent the rest of the week bouncing around between the Delts and the Ramda guys. The LXA’s liked me at first. I told them about my interview at the Sig Pi house.

“Dude, you said wrestling with guys is homo-erotic?” one guy asked me.

“Not wrestling,” I corrected, “Mud-wrestling. Normal wrestling is fine.”

I’d like to say anyone that wrestled in high school is a closet homosexual. I just said the above lie because I figured a lot of frat-jerks were probably on the wrestling team in high school. The above story made for an amusing anecdote, but would come back to bite me in the ass with my future dealings with the Ramda Guys.

Rush ended. I didn’t get a single bid; which was all right by me.

Being the boy genius that I am, I had a feeling the frats were faking it. I wanted to see if they would still want to be my friend after Rush. I had decided before Rush took place that I wasn’t going to pick a fraternity right away.

I told Andy that I would wait until 2nd semester to officially “Rush Delt.”

“I totally respect that dude,” he had said.

“Really?”

“Yeah. You’re a smart kid, so I would expect you to do your research and make an informed decision. I just hope you pick us instead of Sig Pi.”

Once Rush was over, everyone’s demeanor changed. The frat-jerks who wanted to party with everyone before rush, suddenly hated you unless you were pledging their fraternity. The girls were even worse. Girls who were down to talk to you pre-rush were in the process of pledging sororities and wouldn’t give you the time of day unless you had Greek letters on your chest.

(As a disclaimer, I’d like to say Chaz was still cool to me every time I saw him. He even booked my band to play at one of Sigma Pi’s keggers.)

I had gone to visit Andy one day after class. We were sitting in his room shooting the shit. He was playing Grand Tourismo on the Playstation, as I told him about my plans for the new Fadproof album.

“How’s your girlfriend?” I asked.

“Good,” he replied, crashing his cyber car into a brick wall.

“Tell her I said, ‘Hello.’”

“I will. What’s up with your Speech class?”

Just as I started to tell him about my crazy professor from Russia, his cell phone rang. He answered the call, and I waited patiently in silence, staring out the window as he continued his phone conversation.

“Hold on a second,” Andy said to the man on the phone a few minutes into the conversation, “Hey, Jim.”

“Yeah?”

“Do you mind? I’m kinda on the phone,” he said condescendingly, “Why don’t you get the fuck outta here?”

Needless to say I was stunned. In a matter of seconds my confidant had turned to my enemy. I slunked out of his room, in a hurry to get back to the dorms.

“Hey, Jim,” he called, his tone softening a bit.

“Yeah?”

“Close the door, would you?”

“Fuck you, Andy!” is what I should have said, but I was in such a state of shock, that I climbed the stairs and closed his door. The fucker didn’t even say “Goodbye.”

I slunked back to the dorms feeling betrayed, but I learned a valuable lesson: Never trust a frat-jerk.

I started hanging out with the Lambda Chi’s. They seemed to be nice on the surface, at least during Rush. A few weeks after rush, Eli and I were invited to a kegger at the Lambda Chi house. They gave us free drinks, and made small talk with us. As Eli and I were leaving, I saw Chuck, a kid I had met at rush that looked like Finch from “American Pie.”

“Hey Chuck,” I called, “What’s up, man.”

If looks could kill, I would have died.

“Get the fuck out of my house!” he yelled.

Needless to say, I thought he was kidding.

“I’m not fucking kidding, you little prick!” he yelled, as hundreds of drunk Micks stopped talking, and stared at me silently.

Eli and I slunked out of the house, and were followed onto the front lawn by a group of Ramdas. Andy and Kyle, two roommates, who happened to live on my floor in the dorms, ran toward me.

“Jim, wait!” they yelled, “Dude, what happened?”

As I started to tell them the story, more Ramda Guys came out.

“Get the fuck off the lawn!” Jim Gala, a metro sexual frat-jerk who closely resembled “Stubie” from Lucky Boys Confusion called out, “We don’t want you here.”

“Then why did you invite me?” I asked, as Eli and I made our way toward the sidewalk.

They followed us halfway down the street; half the mob called for me to come back and party with them, as the other half called for beating my brains onto the sidewalk.

They had made a powerful enemy that night.

I was more stunned than I was mad. It came out later that week that I had been disrespectful at Rush; it was merely a misunderstanding.

It all started with Tom Eddy. Tom was the world’s nicest kid. He was overweight, and given the nickname, “Biscuit” by his frat brothers. At Rush, they had asked me if I knew “Biscuit.”

“Yeah,” I had told them, “There was only one bathroom stall left the other week, and we had to fight over it.”

This of course was a joke, as there were 10 bathroom stalls on every floor in the dorm.

“Really?” someone had asked me, “Who won?”

“It was a tie,” I said giggling.

That was all that was said. I thought they knew I was kidding, as this guy would obviously have kicked my ass in a fight.

Apparently, in addition to making fun of his weight, the members also started to razz him about getting his ass kicked by a kid 1/8 of his size.

Then, they claimed I called that homo Jim Gala a homoerotic wrestler. We all know that Jim Gala is obviously a flaming homosexual. I have no problem with that, but I didn’t call him out by name as a homoerotic wrestler. I had said, “Mud-wrestling with men can be construed as homoerotic.”

These guys were bad Irish drunks, who listened about as well as they held their liquor. This was about 6 months after Rush, mind you. They were apparently prone to holding grudges.

I called a lunch meeting with Tom Eddy, Andy, and Kyle later that weekend. I went up to them in the cafeteria, and sat down with all the LXA’s.

“I don’t hate you,” Tom had said, “I just caught a lot of shit for getting my ass kicked by someone half my size.”

“But Tom,” I replied, “We never actually fought. I thought it would make for a funny story, since you could obviously kill me. I didn’t know people were taking me seriously.”

“I know that! It was a pretty funny joke, it’s just that a lot of guys get drunk and take things too seriously.”

“Are we cool?” I asked.

“Of course. Come by the house this weekend, I’ll buy you a cup.”

“They think you called Gala a homoerotic wrestler,” Andy told me.

“What?”

“At Rush. You said, ‘Gala’s a homoerotic wrestler.’”

“Goddammit! I said, ‘Mud-wrestling with dudes is homoerotic.’”

“Don’t worry about it dude,” Andy said, “Just go explain it to him.”

I visited Gala at work. In hindsight, I’m not sure why I gave a fuck what those cocksuckers thought about me, but I am always careful to watch my P.R.

“Jim,” I said, “I did not call you a homoerotic wrestler.”

“What are you talking about?” he asked.

“The guys said you were mad at me because you thought I called you a homoerotic wrestler.”

“No one mentioned that to me.”

“Then why were you so pissed at me Friday night?”

“I was pissed at you?”

“Yeah, Chuck kicked me out of the house, and you followed me onto the lawn and threatened to kick my ass.”

“I don’t remember that.”

“You don’t.”

“No, dude. You’re cool. If I threatened to kick your ass, I’m sorry. We started drinking at like 8 AM on Friday, dude.”

“So… you don’t want to, or have never wanted to ‘Kick my ass?’”

“No.”

“So….. am I still not welcome at the off-campus house?”

“Hell yeah, man. You’re always welcome. Come by next Friday, I’ll buy you a cup.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Look man, we get drunk, and say stupid shit. I’m sorry. We’ll buy you a beer, jeez.”

I thanked him, and walked away in disbelief.

The next weekend, they bought me a cup, and got me drunk. The weekend after that, the same. The weekend after that, the same.

A month later, however, I was drinking with Eli at the LXA house, when I was approached by Chuck.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” he yelled.

“Drinking.” I replied.

“You little smart ass! Get the fuck outta here.”

“Why?”

“Because you disrespected MY frat and MY house!”

“I’m sorry there was a misunderstanding. I really didn’t disrespect you guys. I happen to like this frat.”

“You called Gala a homoerotic wrestler!!!” He screamed.

“Goddammit!” I shouted, “I said mud-wrestling with guys is homoerotic!”

“Well, we don’t want you here.”

In his little tantrum, he managed to knock my cup out of my hand.

“You spilled beer on my shoes!” he yelled.

As I was about to deck the bastard, Eli dragged me up the stairs, into the kitchen, out the back door, and onto the lawn. As we sat dumbfounded on the lawn in front of the house, a group of guys came out and chased us down the street, half shouting to come back and have a beer, the other half calling for us to be hung by our necks from trees.

The only thing that was different was that more people were calling for the hanging this time around.

They had made a powerful enemy that day.

Then there was Tommy. He was a nice kid, until he became a Lambda Chi. This was my Sophomore year; a year later then the above incident. I was hardened, and had no patience for frat jerks. Eli and I had started hanging out with a blossoming Freshman songwriter named Aaron.

Eli and I met Aaron the same way we met each other. Eli had been playing acoustic guitar on the front steps of Carman Hall. Aaron walked right up to him and asked if he could sing to what Eli was playing. They went on to write a few songs, get 1 or 2 girls, and despise each other for the rest of time. (But that’s another story.)

I liked Aaron from the moment I met him. He had a gift for words, and was fuckin’ hilariously funny. All the three of us did was laugh, joke, and write songs about bitches.

Aaron may have been partly responsible for the demise of Fadproof, but I didn’t mind, as a girl named Lizzy and a girl named Sarah would later soften me to the point of abandoning hard rock for the snuggle factor of Goo Goo Dolls-style pop rock.

Aaron, Eli, and a guy named Pat had started a side project with no name that played Acoustic Emo. They were awful! However, Aaron was fucking phenomenal. I had wanted to produce a record with him since hearing him sing about Porno shops on the front steps of Carman. Let me digress….

Aaron and I went out to get drunk and Sarge one night. The cops had been cracking down on keg parties, and there were none to be found.

“Let’s party with the Lambda Chi’s,” he said.

“Can’t,” I replied.

“Why?”

“Because they’re fucking dicks.”

“Come on dude. You’re so judgmental. They’re not that bad.”

“Fine,” I replied, as Aaron was just as stubborn as I was, “We’ll walk by the house, but I’m not going in.”

As we walked past the house, Andy (The one who lived on my floor Freshman year) ran out on to the lawn to greet Aaron. He stared right through me. Old Andy started schmoozing Aaron, as it was a few days before Rush.

“Why don’t you come in and have a beer?” Andy said, as he put his arm around Aaron, and started to lead him into the house.

“I can’t party with you unless Jim can party too,” Aaron had said.

They reluctantly invited me in. They gave Aaron a free cup, and attempted to take $5.00 from me for mine.

“I don’t need to drink tonight,” I said, feeling uncomfortable.

“If you’re not going to drink, then we have to ask you to leave,” the guy selling the cups had told me.

“Sure,” I said, grabbing Aaron, and pulling him toward the living room, “Let me get my wallet.”

We stood there talking amongst ourselves, when I noticed half the people there were giving me the evil eye.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Chuck yelled.

“Nice to see you too,” I replied.

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

“Actually, Chuck. I was invited in.”

“He was invited,” Aaron said, “Ask Andy.”

“He was,” Andy yelled from across the room.

“You can stay,” he said to Aaron, “But your friend’s gotta get the fuck outta here now.”

“Later, fags,” I said as I headed to the door. Chuck still had his arm around Aaron.

Just as I was about to walk home alone, Aaron looked him right in the eye and said, “If Jim goes, I go.”

“We don’t like your friend,” Chuck replied, “No one does.”

“Then you don’t like me,” Aaron replied, taking Chicks arm off his shoulder.

“Fuck that kid!” Chuck yelled, “He’s a loser.”

By this time, I was already out the front door, as the whole frat had started to congregate. Aaron looked everyone in that room in the eye and said, “Fuck you. I’m out.”

He caught me on the front lawn, and we headed back to Carman, as I went on a 45- minute rant about how much I hated the fucking Ramda Guys.

They made a powerful enemy that night.

The next night, Aaron and I were sitting on the front steps. We were talking to two drunk girls who had just come from the LXA house. We started telling them they were lucky to be alive.

“Why?” they asked.

“Have you ever heard of date rape?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“Do you want to be date raped?”

“No.”

“Then stay the fuck away from the Lambda-Molesting-Chi’s,” I told them.

Then, I somehow managed to get everybody on the porch to shout, “Fuck Lambda Chi!”

By the next night, the girls had been saying, “Fuck the Lambda Chi’s!” every 5 minutes.
I had been sitting on the steps, not saying a word to anyone; which is rare for me, when a giant Irish kid with an LXA t-shirt came strolling up. He struck up a conversation with the girls.

“I jus got back from a chapter meeting,” he told them.

“What frat are you in?” they asked.

“Lambda Chi Alpha,” he replied.

Just then, the girls looked at each other, and in unison they shouted, “Fuck Lambda Chi!” at the top of their lungs. I smiled, as this was the most classic moment of the summer.

Tommy looked pissed! He stared at me for 5 minutes, not saying a word. Finally, he inched closer, putting his face a few inches from mine. He was breathing hard, and I could smell his breath.

“Stand up,” he muttered.

“What?” I replied.

“Stand up,” he said, a little louder this time.

“Why?”

“Because I’m going to beat your fucking ass!”

“Why?”

“Because you were talking shit about my frat.”

Now I was just confused.

“When?” I asked, thinking that he’d accuse me of calling Jim Gala a homoerotic wrestler.

“Just now,” he muttered angrily, “You said, ‘Fuck the Lambda Chi’s.’”

“When?”

“Just now.”

“I’ve been known to say that behind closed doors, but I didn’t say it just now.”

“Say what?”

Now I was really confused.

“I didn’t say, ‘Fuck the Lambda Chi’s,’” I said.

“You just said it again!”

“What? What’s your name?”

“Tommy.”

“Tommy what?”

“Burke.”

“Tommy Burke, I’m Jim Fuckin’ Markunas,”

I extended my hand. He just stared at me.

“Stand up.”

“Tommy. You’re fucking crazy. Are you drunk?”

“No. Just pissed. Stand up.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m gonna fuckin’ deck you in the face dude.”

“Why?”

“You were talking shit about my frat. Those are my brothers, dude. You were talking shit. Stand up.”

Finally, I just decided to roll with it.

“You’re right,” I said, “I’m a giant asshole, but maybe instead of hitting me, we could call this a big misunderstanding, and you could just swear at me a little. Call me gay, maybe?”

“Those are my brothers dude,” he said, “I worked fuckin’ hard to rush this frat, and you’re talking shit. Those are my brothers dude.”

“How hard did you work to rush Lambda “Everyone gets a bid” Chi?” I giggled.

“Stand up!”

Now everyone on the stoop was laughing at this kid.

“Look, Tommy,” I said, “You’re a Freshman, and I’m a Sophomore.”

“So?”

“So, you can’t kick my ass, because I’ve paid more dues. That’s a fair request isn’t it? Don’t hit me in the face out of respect.”

“I don’t fuckin’ care how old you are dude. Stand the fuck up.”

I patted the stoop next to me.

“Have a seat.”

“Fuck you dude, stand up.”

“Tommy, do you smoke?”

“Cigarettes?”

“Yeah.”

“Fuck yeah, dude.”

“All right,” I said, “How about this. I’ll give you two cigarettes. One for now, and one for later.”

“OK?”

“You sit down and have a cigarette with me, Aaron, and these girls, and we can pretend that this little misunderstanding never happened.”

He sat down next to me on the stoop. I handed him a cigarette and lit it as it hung from his mouth.

“Are we cool?” I asked.

“Fuck no, dude,” he replied, “You’re a shit-talker.”

“Fine!” I screamed, “I’m fuckin’ sorry!”

“It’s cool dude,” he said, “I’m not mad.”

Deep down, Tommy was a nice kid; he really was. A week later, I found out that his dad had a heart attack. I over heard him talking about it on the stoop. He was going to drive home that weekend for the surgery. I felt terrible, as no kid should have to lose his father at a young age.

The next week, I saw him in the cafeteria. He was eating dinner with all my enemies, but I was determined to be the bigger man. I marched right up to the table. I could hear them muttering about me as I walked up. I went straight to Tommy. I bent over, put my mouth to his ear, and said, “How’s your dad? Did the surgery go OK?”

He looked fucking shocked.

“Yeah,” he stammered.

“Good,” I said, patting him on the shoulder.

They all stared at me as I walked away. It was at that point, I decided to dismember the Lamda Chi’s bit by bit. I would start with a smear campaign, and would follow by dismembering them financially.

The smear campaign went fairly well, that was basically just talking shit about them to everybody we met. But… “Project Financial Ruin” was a masterpiece. I walked past their off-campus house and wrote down the address. The cops had been getting nasty, and were always out to bust frat parties.

Every time they threw a kegger; I called the cops and left an “anonymous tip.” Needless to say every party they threw was raided, busted, and broken up. I felt pretty good about myself.

So, Ramda Guys, if you’re wondering why the cops kept busting your parties during the fall of 2003, it’s because of me. You lost a lot of money, and caught shit from the IFC because of me. Chew on that, fuckers.

That was just the beginning of my demise.

From the time I was a pre-teen, I had dated, or tried to date the shittiest, meanest girls possible. Whether or not I did it on purpose is a debate in and of itself, but there I was, in my early twenties, dating a great girl.

I had met her the same month that Rara Sosa and I had broken up. She was different from every girl I had gone out with previously. She was the same in that she was not the brightest bulb in the bunch, but she was a close to a normal girlfriend as I had ever come. It was adult love, take this conversation we had on Myspace for example:

JIM:

Nikki, you drrrrty slut, you're such a slut that you don't have any 'i"s in the dirty, it's just drrrrrty! You bitch! I'm having sex with Cindy right now, she's lovin' it, but please don't tell Harlan. I like you (not really, I actually wish you were dead) You're a shitface, and you have a filthy cumbucket, a.k.a. your mouth!

love,

Your boyfriend, Jimmy F. Neutron

NIKKI

yeah well you are a ffffffffffffucking peice of shit.
im really horny right now so if you dont mind, please give me a list of all of your freinds numbers...and also....try to loose mine because i really hate you. next time i see you, im going to give you a horrible, terrible, awful, really bad hand job, then give YOUUU an asshole buttering...but instead of butter, im going to use gasoline...??? what?? ok im done....

love,

nicki-suck-a-dicki
or
Ni**les (eeewwwwww)
or
Slutpants

JIM:

I'm just writing to say I miss your filthy cumbucket, better known as your mouth. You are a horrid slut, which is why I don't feel bad about the dirty sexual orgy that I had with Cindy, Christine, and Katie J. We didn't invite you because I told them how much you suck at eating pussy. They were like, "Fuck that bitch, if she's not going to eat our pussies, we don't want her to have sex with you while we're around." Then I fucked every last one of them. (Don't tell Harlan, Cindy told him that she was at her grandparent's house, she even called me grandpa big wang) When I fucked Christine, she kept making dirty comments and laughing at them. (I was not amused...but I was horny) When I banged the glasses off Katie J., she was all like, (In a monotone voice) "Oh yes, you are the best." That's all she said! I was like, "Stop acting like you're bored, unless you're bored, goddammit!" To which she replied, (In a monotone voice) "But I'm having a good time." That's all she said. I was a little frightened, so then I really let her have it, with my dick that is, and she sort of moaned, but screwing her was like fucking a wooden board. Cindy was the best, I actually found myself screaming, "You fucking whore! You fuckIng whore, I'm leaving my girlfriend for you!" It was crazy. BTW, you're a fucking whore, Nikki! I miss you, and we need to hang out soon. (Butt-ass naked, that is.)

Sincerely,

Jim Fuckin' Markunas

NIKKI:

oh man, i just got back from getting gangbanged by a bunch of mexicans....it was really sexy...there was one black guy there and he had my attention the whole time. he had the biggest dick ever...13 inches...oh it was spectacular. can you believe i could get the whole thing in my mouth?? i didnt think it would fit but i made it. it was yummy...it tasted like fried chicken...ewwwwwww. jim, your dirty mind is rubbing off on me except that my stuff is just weird....but now im serious.....i miss you already and its been about 20 minutes :) is that crazy too? i dont think it is, i guess its cause i have a little crush on you

love
Nicki-suck-a- dicki

JIM:

Nikki, you whorish slut. I want to fuck you in the mouth something fierce, but I just can't get over the dirty things your friends and I just did. It seems that every time you're at work, Christine, Cindy, and Katie J. (Also known as the fearsome three) call me up and demand that I service them. "Get the fuck over here," one of them will say. "Yeah, we're not getting any younger, goddammit," another will say, until I just can't say no. I can understand why you're not good at eating pussy.....Cause your friends have the DIRTIEST pussies I've ever eaten. They demand that I give them each the tongue-tornado, and I gladly oblige, but goddamn! What a bunch of sizzle-cunts. I see why you're friends with these girls, they're whores just like you. Katie J. was the randiest today, at one point, her and Cindy started beating me over the head with a dead fetus! It was gross. However, Cindy was such a good fuck, I actually found myself screaming, "Goddammit, you dirty little cunt, you fucking whore! You fucking bitch, I'm going to kill Nikki so I don't have to break up with her, because you are the queen of fuck, Cindy. The queen of fuck!" Katie J. and Christine got all jealous, which led to Christine farting in my face the whole night, as Katie J. sang backstreet boys songs with a lisp. Finally, I just got up and left. However, you are a fuckstatic shit-licker, and I love my goddamn papa roach cd. "You're running over it, to betray the one's you love!!! DDDDooDDDDDD (guitar sounds) I will forgive, but I wont forget, I hope you know, you lost my respect!" I hate your dirty guts, let's hang out soon (butt-ass naked)

Sincerely,

Your lover, Jim Fuckin' Markunas

NIKKI:

jim, you are one dirty little prick...i hate you so much but i guess im not mad at you because right know as im typing, im sucking that one black guy off with the 13 inch dick. a;lsgheoprtyporetyhwoerhgfdlk....sorry, he just shot it in my eye..hold on while i wash my face.....ok im back...anyways back to what i was saying...i just sent him home, hes been here for about 8 hours.I like how you screw my freinds when im at work, but i think its funny how you actaully think im at work..everytime ive been "working", ive been having lots of dirty sex with your freind..wait whats his name? oh yeah, its chris...oh god, he can go for a while..my mom walked in and was like "Neeeeeki....suck his dick, i'll record it!" so its on tape if you would like to watch...we can have a movie night and cuddle while you watch me and chris do the dirtiest things you have ever seen...its stuff that even YOU would not even think of...you will never guess who joined in the party..that moses kid...the one thats gay...i dont know how to spell him name but his name is not important...the imprtant thing is that i think i turned him straight, and then chris turned him gay again..so i was a little upset. anyways....i miss you and pretend i just gave you a kiss :)

your faaaaaaavorite girl EVER,
n*pp*es (ewww)


(MY RESPONSE WAS TOO DIRTY TO PRINT)

She may have been the death of me. Well, not exactly, but she was the first to mention that I may have been slowly dying. Rara Sosa and I had broken up the day before I met my girlfriend Nikki on Myspace.

Instead of being upset about Rara fucking her ex-boyfriend behind my back, I decided to hit the Internet like a madman. I logged into Myspace only to discover a Friend Request from a hot chick. As you can imagine, I was pretty stoked, and wrote this new girl a message asking her about herself.

JIM:

I noticed that you're from Des Plaines. I work in Mt. Prospect, which is close. Where do you work at?
- Jim -

NIKKI:

Hey, I actually work in golf mill for now, in 579. So thats not to far either. Where in Mt. Prospect do you work?

JIM:

I work at the Jake's Pizza on northwest highway and central. Tell me more about you, what's your major, what do you do for fun, and what exactly is 579?

NIKKI:

Hey, well, right now im at Oakton, and my major is accounting. I think Im going to Depaul after im done here. And for fun..its a little hard to say cause there isn't too much going on here, im sure you can agree with that, but im pretty laid back...im really close with the girls I work with so we all hang out a lot. They are big drinkers, Im not a heavy drinker but I'll still drink once in a while. It sounds boring but its really not as bad as it sounds! haha, but im not 21 yet so i don't really have too many options. A lot of the girls i work with are 21 so they are at the bars getting wasted most of the time anyways. I have a couple months to go but I doubt I will be that drunk all the time.
As for my work, 579 is just a small store where pretty much only anorexic girls can fit in the clothes. Its for skinny people. I guess its ok though. Im not really sure what else to say, im a little shy at first but i'll open up, after that, i think im a pretty easygoing, likeable person. Anyways, enough about me, im sure i missed something but i blabbed for a while. So now its your turn :)

Nicki

Oh by the way, Im sure you hear this alot but I really like your song "Walk Around". You have an awesome voice. Im sure you knew that already cause thats probably WHY you sing, but I just figured I would tell you either way.

JIM:

I'm all flattered that you like my song. You can buy it on itunes for a dollar :) How long do you have until you turn 21? I'm actually a bartender, but I'm not quite sure if I'm a big drinker or not. I mean I used to not drink at all, then I drank sometimes, and now that I'm 21, I drink 2-3 times a month at the least. Right now, I'm going to Roosevelt, and I'm majoring in rockstarism. I have 1 year left and then I'm done. What made you decide to major in accounting? I had to take financial and managerial accounting when I was majoring in marketing, but I only understood managerial. Tell me more things about you. Do you live at home? Are you really afraid of ghosts?

NIKKI:

haha thats awesome..that is probably my biggest fear. and then butterflies..i probably shouldn't tell you that but they give me the chills. thats really stupid but ANYWAYS..So your a bartender at Jakes Pizza? How long have you been doing that for? Bartending has to be the best job. So im guessing that you are more outgoing. I don't go to bars so i don't really know but when I think of a bartender, I don't see the quiet, shy type doing that. But thats just a guess. I have until January to turn 21. Im getting impatient only cause I just don't really know what to do with myself anymore. So are you in a band, do you play anywhere? Do you have a lot of groupies too?? Haha. But yeah i live at home right now..I need to find a better job so i can move out. I went away to school at Eastern for a year but I didn't really like it. I like the city more than cornfields. Just not my thing. My dorm had the shittiest food too. For some strange reason, I just prefer real food, not mystery meat. I got food poisoning from their meat....I dont know why I ate it in the first place but I don't really think before I act. Thats a problem. Are you living at home or do you have your one place? or do you live at school? I forgot if Roosevelt has dorms or not. Ok, i have to stop typing, cause i will probably have enough to write a fucking book. So yeah, I want to hear more about you ! :) but, I have to run to work now, I think im gonna be late...oops

JIM:

Oh my god, I'm so fucking excited we have something in common! I went to Eastern for 2 years and hated every minute of it. I don't know what I hated worse, the fraternities and sororities, the dirty south-side Irish, or the fact that there was nothing to do except thumb your ass and drink Keystone light! Fuck eastern up it's stupid ass! Which dorm did you stay in? I was in Carman for 2 years. I am in a band, but I lost people when I left EIU, so I've been trying to find a permanent bass player, drummer, and cellist for a year now. I just ran into my original drummer a few days ago, and he was talking about joining the band again, so I'm excited about that. What do you have against butterflies? They're so colorful. I'm afraid of crickets, they creep me out. I've been bartending at Jake's since I turned 21. You should stop in sometime, I'll buy you a coke or something :)

NIKKI:

Are you serious? Thats crazy that you went there! I mean I know its a big school but I still think thats pretty weird! See, I totally agree with you 100% about that shit hole. I lived in Carman too, I was there from 2003-04. It was a horrible experience for my first time leaving home and it kind of scarred me. I expected a lot more out of college and I got shit. I don't even know what fucking beer I drank. It was definetly some of the worst EVER though. So im sure that includes Keystone Light. I also drank lemonade and vodka from a huge barrell. Dont ask why I would drink from that. I hope it wasnt dirty.

Im glad to hear about your band! If you have a show anywhere let me know, it would be cool to see you play! But yeah, I dont even know why I hate butterflies. If I tan outside for a little while and a butterfly comes by me, I will probably sprint inside until its gone. I know thats a little extreme. But enough of my fear of butterflies... :) Its slightly embarassing, haha.

Yeah it would be fun to stop in your work! I'll take a coke, but what else do I really have to pick from.....maybe a Sprite or something :)

JIM:

You should come bother me at work, we do indeed have sprite, and root beer :)
I was in carman from 2003-04 also. Who was your R.A.? What floor did you live on? Yeah, the whole EIU experience was wildly disappointing. That's so crazy that we didn't meet each other at school, cause EIU would have been a lot better if there would have been more people like us :) Have you started school yet? I probably don't start my classes until September 7th or something. I'm really not sure! What are you going to do all week besides work?

NIKKI:

My RA was Kristen something..I hated that bitch anyways..I forgot her last name..some blonde girl...I was on the 10th floor...a good floor for someone who is scared of elevators :) my god, Im scared of just about everything. Did your band play at eastern? because I remember one time I was sitting outside on the phone and I heard a band playing in carman, maybe that was you..that would be pretty cool if it was! I have school now and I only have it on tuesdays and thursdays. But I also work every other day. Thursday night I have off, thats my only day for this week which sucks ass. If you are working that day I can stop in there and say hi! Let me know if thats ok for you

JIM:

I knew Kristin, and she was indeed a bitch! I was the hall vice president in charge of programming, so if you ever went to a Carman hall event, it's highly likely that I planned it. We played around campus all the time, and we practiced in my dorm room, where the bass-player and I lived. We had one of those deluxe doubles. If you heard a band, it was definately us. Small world! I'm scared of elevators too! But only the jank-assed ones that are over ghetto-fied. I do work thursday, so you should stop in, otherwise I will be disappointed and forced to cry without shame :)

NIKKI:

Well, than I heard you band playing and that is definetly a small world. You guys are so good!! It was a while ago but I definetly remember liking it. I wish I knew more about your band when I was there because I would have had a much better time. :)

Haha, also I dont want you to cry so I think im just gonna have to come in..I have no other choice! :) Im not exactly sure what time im coming in but I thinking i'll just surprise you. But what time do you get off because I dont want to come in and you would have already left. Cause that would suck

JIM:

I'm all flattered that you liked my band, because one of the main reasons I left eastern is because people hated my band. It sucked, when I was a freshman, we had a big following, but the year after that (your freshman year) nobody liked us. I guess it's just the fickleness of the American public :)

Anywho, I work 4-10 on thursday.

NIKKI:

Ok! Then I will come in on thursday.
See you soon :)

JIM:

Remember, with out shame! I hate to see a grown man cry (especially when it's me) j/k

NIKKI:

Haha. No grown men crying today! I will definetly be there :) My friends have always wanted to meet a rock star anyways. I hope you don't mind them coming, cause they wanted to get some food. There is just 2 of them. You will love them. I promise


From that moment on, we were almost inseparable; at least by phone. She came to visit me that Thursday just as she had promised. She came with her best friend Cindy, and Cindy’s boyfriend, Harlan.

After an hour or two, Cindy and Harlan decided to leave.

“We’re going to go,” Cindy said, “Are you coming with us, or do you want to hang out with your new friend?”

“I don’t know,” Nikki replied, “I don’t really have a ride home.”

She looked as if she wasn’t ready to leave. Being the boy genius I am, I had an idea.

“I can give you a ride home if you’d like,” I told her.

“OK,” she said, smiling coyly.

I thought I was smooth, but would later come to find that the three of them had planned the above conversation out in an effort to get me to take Nikki home.

Cindy and Harlan left, and I took Nikki for a ride through the Northwest Suburbs; 1 month later she was my girlfriend, 5 months later we broke up, and 11 months later I moved to Los Angeles.

Back at the frat house, I had befriended Dava’s boyfriend, Keith. We both hated Puerto Ricans, and would watch every Olympic basketball game that the Puerto Rican team played just to heckle them.

We were stoked when the U.S. team kicked the shit out of Puerto Rico, but all that heckling had taken it’s toll. By the end of the game, the two of us were so tired, all we could do was half-assedly muster out racial slurs. It was decided that we were going to bed.

I slunked down the hall to my room; it was 1 AM.

At 4 AM, I was thrust into consciousness by blaring Rap music and bitches cheering. Needless to say, I was pissed. I threw on pants, and calmly walked down the stairs. One bitch was so loud, she actually over-shadowed the music. She was sitting on the stairs with a leggy Californian blonde, and some random sausage. I sat behind the girl one stair above her, and stared at the back of her head.

After 5 minutes of me glaring at the bitch silently, she turned around.

“Want a sip?” she slurred loudly, shoving a bottle of Boone’s Farm in my direction.

“No thanks,” I said deliberately.

“What’s your name?” the blonde asked me.

“Jim,” I replied, glaring at her as if I wished she were dead.

“Hi, Jim. I’m Beth.”

“Hello.”

As we introduced ourselves, the obnoxiously loud girl slunked off into the Chapter room. The rest of the F.J.’s decided to go to bed. They turned off the blaring Rap music, and headed off to their respective rooms.

Partying in California worked as follows:

People start drinking at 10 PM and stop at 11. Lame! On this particular night, they had started at 4 AM and stopped at 4:30 AM.

“Where did that loud bitch go?” I asked the blonde, “She was obnoxiously fucking loud and drunk.”

“I’m right here!” the girl called from the Chapter room, “I can hear everything you’re saying.”

“I could hear everything you say from the other fucking side of town,” I called back.

“Come have a cigarette with me,” the blonde said.

“I don’t smoke anymore,” I replied, as I had decided to quit once I moved to Los Angeles. This lasted exactly one month.

“Fine,” she pouted, as she walked towards the front door.

She swung open the front door, only to discover a burning trash can on the stoop. She screamed as the flames jumped around the porch. No one seemed to notice. After 20 minutes, one of the frat jerks tried in vain to put the fire out with a garden hose; this failed miserable, as the trash can was made from oil-based plastic.

Welll… all plastic is oil-based. This particular trash can, however, was not willing to be put out. As the F.J. sprayed the can with water, the flames became more and more wild.

As this was happening, a police car drove by. The officer didn’t even stop, he just kept driving; I gathered that this was common practice on UCLA’s Greek Court.

By the time they put the fire out, it was 5 in the morning. I needed to get out of this house.

My old girlfriend, Nikki, had the world’s strictest parents. She was almost 21 years old, and had an 11 o’clock curfew. It was really uncomfortable hanging out at her house for several reasons, one being that I hated her parents.

Nikki’s parents were absolutely insane. A normal person wouldn’t have looked beyond the guise of the suburban faasod of loving husband, devoted homemaker, and two charming children. However, they were both certifiably insane.

In the whole six or seven months that Nikki and I dated, I met her mother only once, and never once met her father. I didn’t want to meet them. I knew their secret. The thing about crazy people is that they can instantly sense when you know they’re insane, and take an instant disliking to you. It’s how crazies survive in modern society.

We had been talking on the phone one night, when her father started screaming at her to clean her room.

“Your rooms a fucking mess!” I heard the old man shout.

“I’m on the phone!” she yelled back.

This went on for about six-and-a-half minutes until the old man finally relented. This was the kindest he treated his daughter. Towards the end of our relationship, her father had told her that she was a complete and utter failure. She never admitted this to me outright, but I could tell.

“Why are you so concerned about school?” I had asked her, “You don’t even want to be an accountant anymore.”

“I don’t know,” she had replied in an effort to brush me off.

I on the other hand, can never have the subject changed on me because I suffer from intense focus.

“You told me you want to be a beautician,” I reminded her.

“I know, but I don’t want to be a failure anymore.”

“What?”

“I’m a failure, Jim.”

“You’re not a failure, you’re just not meant to be an accountant; there’s nothing wrong with that.”

“I don’t want my parents to think I’m a failure.”

“Sweetheart, you’re not a failure. Besides, it’s your life, you should do something that makes you happy.”

“I’m a disappointment to them….I just don’t want them to be disappointed in me anymore.”

At this point, we hadn’t spent time together in weeks; she was working too much at her job at the clothing store that she hated, and since she wasn’t at all book-smart, homework took her hours to finish. This hadn’t always been the case, we were once partners in a healthy relationship.

Nikki and I had been lying in the grass outside the pizza place. This was a month or so into our relationship. I remember how warm the fall breeze felt, as her hair blew into my face, as we cuddled on the grass under a tree in the parking lot..

“I have to tell you something,” she said.

“I know,” I replied, “You want to have my illegitimate babies.”

“I’m serious,” she whined.

“Tell me.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because you might get creeped out.”

“Maybe I don’t want to know then,” I said laughing wildly.

“Stop laughing,” she whined, “I’m serious.”

“If you tell me, I promise I wont get creeped out,” I told her.

“Do you remember how we met?” she asked me.

“Yeah,” I replied, “On Myspace.”

“Not exactly…” she replied.

Now, I was quite curious.

“Where did we meet?”

“You were my waiter at the Olive Garden,” she said.

“Really? When?”

“I came in with my friend and you gave me your business card and told me to call you.”

“I did that a lot,” I replied, “You’ll have to be more specific.”

“I had darker hair back then,” she told me.

With that, it all came back. It had been my last night at the Olive Garden, and I was randy as fuck. I was working the smoking section, and ended up waiting on two girls. I struck up a conversation with the ladies, and took an instant liking to the curly-headed one, only because she looked like a brunette version of Sara.

I hadn’t recognized her because she was blonde when we started dating, which made her look even more like Sara.

“Oh yeah!” I exclaimed, “I gave you my number because you looked….”

Then I trailed off, realizing that saying what I was about to say out loud would have been disastrous.

“I looked like what?” she asked, as her curly hair blew in the fall breeze.

“Hot,” I replied, “You looked absolutely hot.”

“Really? I didn’t even do my hair that day.”

“Nope,” I replied, “You were hot. That’s why I gave you my number.”

Then we made out; I got away Scott-free.

“I couldn’t stop thinking about you,” she told me, “Even though I had a boyfriend.”

“Why didn’t you call me then?”

“I didn’t want to do that to Tom.”

“Then how did we end up here?”

“I broke up with him. He started hanging out with this other girl a lot; I got really jealous.”

“He cheated on you?”

“I don’t think he did, but I didn’t love him anymore.”

“Yeah? Why?”

“We had been together such a long time, and he never once complimented me.”

“Really? He never told you that you’re beautiful?”

“No, he didn’t, but neither did my dad.”

“Your dad never told you that you’re beautiful?”

“No. Once in a while, he’d say that I looked nice, but he never called me ‘Pretty,’ or ‘Beautiful.’”

“I think you’re beautiful,” I told her, as we once again started to make out.

“There’s more,” she said.

“Tell me,” I replied.

“I can’t.”

“Why?”

“Cause you’ll think I’m a stalker or something.”

“I promise I wont think you’re a stalker.”

She stared at the sky for a few seconds before turning her attention back to me.

“I couldn’t get you out of my head,” she told me, “I didn’t want to call you, since it was a few months after I got your number. So… I went to your website and found your Myspace.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Then I still wasn’t sure that you would send me a message, and I didn’t know if you’d recognize me.”

“I didn’t recognize you,” I replied, “But there’s no way I wouldn’t send a hot chick a message if she sent me a friend request.”

“There’s more.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I wanted to go on a date with you, so I purposely didn’t bring my car with me the first night we met. I wanted you to give me a ride home.”

Now I was just blatantly turned on. I had never been someone’s fantasy before. Let me rephrase that, I had never been the fantasy of someone who wasn’t disgusting before. I was super-flattered that she had gone through all that trouble to pick me up.

“You don’t think I’m weird?” she asked.

“No,” I said, staring deeply into her eyes, “I think it’s fuckin’ hot.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. It’ll make a great story to tell our illegitimate grandchildren.”

She smiled at me, as she was relieved that I didn’t think she was creepy.

A year later, I was homeless in Los Angeles. This was of course after my death. I knew the book was coming when the crazy lady I was living with started trying to sublet a 3 bedroom house to six people.

“Where are you going to put these people?” I had asked her.

“Well..” she replied, as her 4-inch pupils burrowed intensely into mine, “You’ll have your room, I’ll put Dan the movie star in my room, Michelle will be in the nook, Kameron can live in the other bedroom, Mark can sleep on the couch in the kitchen, and I’ll sleep in the living room.”

The crazy bitch didn’t even own the house. She rented from a REALLY unlucky Kraut from West L.A. It’s not illegal to sublet in California, but it’s rent controlled, meaning that the amount of money she was planning to charge people to live in that ranch in Studio City was well over market value.

She paid $3,300 in rent to her landlord, and was attempting to collectively squeeze $6,000 per month from the other six people she was trying to get to move into the house so that she could rent an apartment in Laguna Beach. She was an out-of-work actress, she didn’t work, and she “needed” this apartment in Laguna so that she could stalk her ex-boyfriend.

I remember thinking that her ex-boyfriend had to have been the smartest man in the universe and the stupidest at the same time. He was smart for leaving her, but stupid for dating her in the first place. She wasn’t even pretty. She had nice legs, but her face looked rather snake-like, as if you were to take Skeletor from He-Man, Masters of the Universe, and put brown sandpaper over his face.

I had to get out of that house! I had met two dudes through the crazy lady, who incidentally, were perfectly normal. She was going to have them stay in the house with us, but after seeing how crazy she was, the two of them thought better of it.

The three of us started hitting the pavement looking for houses and apartments to rent. We found several suitable places, one was a mansion in the Studio City-side of the Hollywood Hills; the other was a condo a few blocks off Ventura Blvd in Studio City. The only problem was that the two dudes couldn’t stand each other.

I could have been in a house or apartment away from the crazy lady within days, but these two guys fucked it up for me royally. The only thing the three of us had in common was that we loved Studio City, other than that, they hated each other, and I hated my living situation.

I came back to the crazy lady’s house one night after spending hours with a real estate agent only to discover that all my stuff had been moved into the living room.

This wasn’t the first time I had been in a sticky situation. Six months earlier I had said:

“Nikki, I can’t fuckin’ believe that you drove all the way out to the fucking Metro to see SKANK, but you can’t drive 15 minutes to see me.”

I had gone to see SKANK, a band that I handled publicity for back in Chicago. They were playing at the Metro, one of Chi-town’s premiere concert venues. Nikki had been there, and I flew off the handle. I had called her on my way home, and found myself screaming at her voicemail.

“You were the WORST girlfriend ever. You cheated on me. Maybe not with a person, but you cheated me out of time. You wasted my fucking time! I really just wish you were dead.”

I hung up the phone, and drove aimlessly through the Northwest suburbs, something I always did after a break up. I probably should have felt guilty about leaving her a voicemail that nasty, but she had asked for it.

Just like the Dog-Humper (You’ll get that story later) she would ditch me. When we first started going out, we would hang out all the time, but a few months into the relationship, she started blowing me off on a regular basis.

It’s not that she was fucking someone else, but there were several determining factors:

1. She had a curfew at the age of 21. Her crazy parents wanted her home at 10 PM on weeknights and 12 AM on the weekends. This didn’t really mesh with my schedule, as I was a bartender.

2. She worked full time at a job she couldn’t stand, but didn’t have the balls to quit.

3. She went to school full time in a major she didn’t want to have.

It all started with her Christmas present. We hadn’t been spending a whole lot of time together, as she was busy with work, school, and curfews. I had decided that I was going to take her out to a fancy lunch. This was New Year’s Eve, and we also had plans to hang out later that night, as this was a couple’s holiday. We had been driving down Irving Park Blvd looking for an Italian restaurant.

“I know what I want to do with my life!” she had told me.

“Really?” I replied, “What’s that?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Why?”

“You’ll just think I’m stupid.”

“That’s ridiculous. If it’s your dream, I’m not going to tell you it’s stupid.”

“You’re going to think I’m stupid,” she persisted.

“I promise I wont think you’re stupid.”

“I want to be a beautician,” she told me, staring at the floor.

“Really?”

“Yeah. Do you think I’m stupid?”

“Of course not. Why do you want to be a beautician?”

“Because I want to make people beautiful.”

Her eyes lit up as she said that, and I could tell she was completely serious.

“I think that’s a great idea,” I told her.

“Really?”

“Yeah. Beauticians make a lot of money.”

For a moment, she looked really happy; it was the happiest I had ever seen her. Then her whole demeanor changed.

“My parents wont like it,” she told me, “They’re going to call me stupid, and they wont pay for beauty school.”

“If it’s really your dream, you’ll find a way,” I told her.

She smiled out the window, as we drove down the street. I think she was just happy that for once a man in her life didn’t tell her that she was an idiot. We finally found a restaurant, ate, and headed back to the Northwest burbs.

“We’re still on for tonight, aren’t we?” I asked her.

“Of course,” she replied, “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

With those words, she was gone again. I have this thing about New Years. If I’m dating a girl, we have to spend New Years together. It’s a superstition. I was stoked that I had a girl to spend New Years with, as the two previous New Years hadn’t gone so well for me.

I shat, shaved, showered, and waited excitedly for 9 o’clock to roll around. At nine, I excitedly dialed the phone, and was met with Nikki’s voicemail.

“No problem,” I thought, as I left her a short message, she’ll call back.

At least I thought she would call me back. When 10 rolled around, she still hadn’t called. 11 rolled around, she still hadn’t called. As I turned on the TV to watch the ABC 7 countdown at Midnight, she still hadn’t called. I was unbelievably sad, not mad, just sad.

At 1 AM, my phone rang. I excitedly looked at the caller id, only to discover that it was my friend Chris, not Nikki.

“Hello,” I muttered.

“Hey man,” Chris said, “Come meet me at this party.”

I got in my car and headed to the other side of town to meet Chris. I was not in the mood to be out, but figured it was better than sulking inside my house.

At 1:30, my phone rang. It was Nikki. I ignored the call, as there was nothing she could possibly say or do that would send us back in time to 11:30 PM.

She called every five minutes for an hour, and every five minutes for an hour, I ignored her. At 2:30, I decided to check my voicemail.

Nikki had called me crying, begging me to call her. After thinking about it for a while, I decided to call her, by this time, it was 3 AM, and I was still mad.

“So what the fuck’s your excuse this time?” I asked her, as she answered the phone.

“I’m so sorry,” she pleaded.

“I don’t want to hear it,” I replied. I wasn’t even yelling at her. I was beyond that, I was just sad.

She proceeded to offer the following explanation:

“Christine dragged me along to this New Years party, because a guy she liked was going to be there and she didn’t want to go alone. She came and picked me up, so I didn’t have my car with me. This was about 8:30. I knew that we were supposed to hang out, so I told her that I had to leave. She didn’t want to go because the guy she liked was there. After an hour, Katie J. called, and we had to go pick her up. When we got back to Des Plaines, I realized that I left my purse at the party, so we had to go back for it. Nobody could find my purse. My cell was in my purse and Christine had dropped her cell phone in the toilet earlier in the night, so I couldn’t call you. It took another hour to find my purse, because nobody would help me. Then I got a voicemail from my parents, demanding that I come home. They yelled at me for an hour for not answering my phone, then they told me I couldn’t go out.”

I stood there in complete silence. Was she lying? She couldn’t have been. That story was far too asinine to be made up. I was still sad.

“Where was the party?” I asked.

“Arlington Heights.”

“That’s 5 minutes away, why didn’t you just call me?”

“Because I didn’t have my phone.”

“Why did you go back to Des Plaines, you should have just come over.”

“I couldn’t Christine wouldn’t drive me.”

“Goddammit, Nikki. Tonight was important to me, and you didn’t even care enough to be there.”

“I’ll make it up to you.”

“Do you happen to own a time machine?”

“What?”

“Do you happen to own a time machine?”

“No.”

“Then how on earth are you going to make this up to me.”

“I don’t know. I’ll make it up to you somehow.”

“You really hurt me.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“You know this means we wont be together much longer.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s bad luck for a couple not to spend New Years together.”

“That’s just a stupid superstition.”

“So you think it’s stupid?”

“No…. I….. I just feel bad.”

“You should.”

“I’ll spend time with you tomorrow. I promise.”

“You’ve been saying that for weeks. I’m shocked you found time to go to lunch with me today.”

“I’ll come over after work tomorrow.”

“Don’t bother,” I told her, “You’ll just call two minutes before your curfew like you always do, and give me some line of bullshit about having to be home.”

I know what you’re thinking. If she had a curfew, why didn’t you just hang out at her house?

Hanging at her house was no fun at all. Her parents were light sleepers, and went to bed early, which was fine, because I had no intention of ever meeting them. We would have to be super-quiet, and every time she’d hear a noise, she would jump to the other side of the room thinking that her dad was coming down the stairs. That’s not even the worst part.

I had gone to Nikki’s house late one night on my way home from my friend Moises’ house in Chicago. I arrived at Nikki’s house around Midnight. We had been snuggling on the couch, and I told some sort of dirty joke. She started to laugh loudly, and I put my hand over her mouth, as I knew her obnoxious father would come downstairs in his underwear, as he always did, yelling up a storm for her to shut the hell up.

He never actually came into the living room, he just called her name from the top of the stairs. She would run over to him like a small child, and would cower as he yelled at her. On that night, he was especially pissed.

“Nikki, get over here!” the old man yelled from the top of the stairs.

“You’re so goddamn loud,” he continued, “Your mother and I are trying to sleep.”

“I’m sorry,” she cowered.

“Tell your goddamn friend to leave, and go to bed.”

I knew I had gotten the boot. I waited for the old man to go back to his room, got my shoes, and left. She came running after me as I started to get into my car.

“I’m sorry,” she whined.

“It’s ok,” I told her.

“I hate my parents.”

“I can’t believe he gave me the boot.”

She tried half-assedly to deflect the blame directed at her father toward herself, but I wasn’t fooled. I got in my car and headed back home.

I probably should have broken up with her on New Years, but I decided to give us a second chance.

“Maybe she will make it up to me,” I thought. She didn’t

Four weeks went by, and we didn’t see each other once. We would talk on the phone every night, but she always managed to not hang out with me. I tried everything.

Seven months later, I was standing in the crazy lady’s kitchen, wearing my sunglasses, even though it was nighttime. I hated confrontation, and thought not having to make eye contact would make me more intimidating. I had learned early on in my L.A. career that it fucks with people when you wear your sunglasses indoors. I don’t know why, it just does.

“I’ll bet you’re wondering why I moved your stuff into the living room,” she said.

“A little,” I replied.

“You owe me $800 for a security deposit.”

“Why would I pay you $800 for a security deposit when you’ve got this cute little habit of spending people’s security deposits?”

Old Crazy Lady had a giant money pit on the account that she hadn’t worked in months, and was in the habit of spending people’s security deposits, and then making up reasons not to refund the deposit once people moved out.

“I haven’t spent anyone’s security deposit!” she yelled. She was always yelling.

“What about Kameron?” I retorted.

“That’s none of your fucking business Jim!” she screamed.

“Be that as it may,” I replied, “I paid you $800 to stay in that room for a month, It’s been two weeks, so you owe me two more weeks in that room.”

I calmly walked into the living room, grabbed some of my stuff, and brought it back to my room. She jumped in front of me and shoved me with all her might into the hallway.

“This is MY house!” she screamed.

“Actually,” I calmly replied, “It’s not your house. You rent this place from Kevin Mullen.”

This statement pissed her off beyond belief!

“Fuck Kevin Mullen!” she screamed, “I own him, and I own you, and I want you out of my house.”

“It’s not your house,” I retorted, grinning ear to ear, as only I can.

“You little shit!” she yelled, shoving me into the kitchen.

Before I finish this story, I have to mention, Steve Corel, A.K.A. the 40-year-old Virgin was our neighbor. He lived in the house right behind ours. We never saw him, but he lived there, and crazy lady claimed to be friends with him.

“When Steve Corel finds out about this, you’re going to be in trouble!” she screamed.

“Oh yeah?” I giggled, still grinning ear to ear.

“That’s right,” she hollered, “The 40-year-old Virgin is going to find out about this. He’s going to be pissed at you!”

Now I just started to laugh uncontrollably, as I had the vision of Steve Corel kicking my ass in a barroom brawl over his crazy neighbor, that his real estate agent probably failed to mention as he/she was selling old Steve his plush Studio City home.

“You’re going to be blacklisted from Hollywood!” she screamed, her eyes bulging.

Now it was time to have some fun. Crazy lady was a close-talker, and a close yeller. This annoyed me, so I decided to get back at her. As she was in my face yelling about what a little shit I was, I pulled out a cigarette, lit it, and blew the smoke right in her wrinkled face.

Needless to say, in a matter of 2 seconds, she went from standing on top of me, to the other side of the kitchen. She physically leapt from one end of the kitchen to the other.

“Are you smoking??” she stammered.

“Yep,” I said, taking a drag off my freshly lit cigarette, and blowing the fresh white smoke slowly into the air.

She ran to the sink, filled a glass with water, and threw it in my face. Needless to say, I was drenched, but I was still smoking that cigarette. Then, out of sheer spite, I blew an even bigger cloud of smoke in her face.

“You little fucker!!!” she yelled, “I want you out of my house!”

“It’s not your house,” I replied, giggling, “It’s Kevin Mullen’s house.”

“Put that fucking cigarette out!” she screamed.

“You really want me to?” I asked, still smiling.

“Yes, you little shit.”

“Have it your way,” I said, as I dropped the cigarette on the carpet, and took my time stamping it out.

If she was mad before, now she was REALLY mad. She started stuttering, and convulsing, as she tried in vain to threaten my career in the entertainment business.

“You’re lucky I don’t kick your ass,” she screamed, “Cause I know Tae-Kwon-Jitsu!”

Then she did a half-assed little jump kick, while yelling, “Hi-Ya!” Crazy bitch!

I ended up leaving that night. Luckily, my new friends had agreed to bounce me around on various couches for the two weeks following the above incident. Mike had decided not to move in with Kameron and me.

He had his own one bedroom apartment, and let me crash on his couch. Kameron, was living with two crazy whores of his own, and let me stay on their couch when Mike was tired of me. It worked out, but all my shit was in the trunk and backseat of my car.

Two weeks later, Kameron and I found a two bedroom apartment in Studio City, a plush northwest suburb about 5 miles west of Hollywood.

Seven months earlier, I had tried in vain to mend my relationship with Nikki. We had gotten in a huge fight over fucking around.

I say 50% of every romantic relationship is sex. This is a proven fact, ask any relationship expert. In fact, 50% is probably low-balling the figures by about 10-20 % Anyhow, I had politely mentioned that it had been four weeks since the two of us had hung out in person.

“I miss you and I’m horny,” I had said.

“Is that all you fucking think about?” she replied.

She went on to lecture me for an hour about how a relationship is more than sex, and how I was just using her for sex.

“One day you’ll meet a girl that will change your outlook,” she cried, “Maybe it’s not me, and maybe you don’t love me, but you’ll find that girl one day.”

“Are you done?” I replied.

“No.”

“Too bad, I gotta go to work.”

She started to cry harder, as I hung up the phone and headed off to the bar. This was not a new fight. The previous week, she had promised to hang out with me. It was a Saturday, and I blew off all my friends just to hang out with her.

She pulled her usual line of bullshit in which she waited until 10 minutes before her curfew to call me. This time was different. She wasn’t calling from home, she was calling from a party.

“I thought we were supposed to hang out,” I said, as the rage welled up in my chest.

“I know, we are, I’m still going to come over.”

“What about your parents.”

“I just wont go home tonight.”

“Where are you?”

“I don’t know, Christine dragged me out to this party in the middle of nowhere, and wouldn’t take me home.”

“You just don’t learn, do you?” I replied; I wasn’t even yelling, I was beyond that.

“No, don’t be mad,” she said, “I’m coming over, I’ll call you when I’m on my way.”

By this time it was 1 o’clock in the morning. I waited until 2:30 and went to bed. When I woke up, there was a message from Nikki. She had ended up going home, and her parents grounded her, yada yada yada.

I just decided that I wasn’t going to talk to her. She called later that day; I didn’t answer. I kept this up all day Sunday, and all day Monday. I would have gone all week, but my mom made me call her.

“Don’t be an asshole,” she scolded, “Just talk to her.”

I begrudgingly dialed the phone.

“Why haven’t you returned my calls?” she asked.

“I just didn’t feel like it,” I replied.

“I called you like 300 times!” she screamed.

“I didn’t feel like talking.”

“Why?”

I couldn’t fucking believe she had just asked me that. I was mad because she kept doing the same thing to me over and over.

“I just didn’t feel like answering the phone,” I replied.

“That’s not right, Jim!” she screamed.

“You make me feel like I’m two-feet-tall,” I told her. Dead silence ensued.

“What?”

“You make me feel two-feet-tall.”

“Why?”

“We used to be in a relationship, now I’m just some asshole you call when you’re bored.”

“That’s not true.”

“Then why haven’t we spent time together in 5 weeks?”

I wasn’t exaggerating, it had literally been 5 weeks since we had last hung out. I had tried everything.

That day we had fought about messing around, I had felt unbelievably guilty about leaving her crying on the phone. I had gone to work, and sulked in the kitchen for a few hours, before Dave the pizza delivery driver gave me a lecture on relationships. On that day, I wasn’t bartending, I was actually managing the place.

“Girls are funny,” he told me, “They want sex just as much as we do, but they want you to make them feel like you want more than just sex.”

“But I do,” I had told him, “I like this girl a lot.”

“Then you need to apologize,” he said, “There’s this thing in every male/female relationship; it’s called the false apology.”

“The what?”

“The false apology. Even if you’re right, which you are, you still apologize and admit that you’re wrong for the sake of the relationship.”

“Well, fuck,” I said, “I better go apologize.”

I told the kitchen guys I was going to the liquor store, and headed off to see Nikki at work. I stopped by the nearest jewel, and bought her a bouquet of yellow flowers; yellow was her favorite color. I drove across town to her work. I stood outside for a few minutes, watching her sell a girl and her mother clothes that were several sizes too small. As they exited, I entered.

I walked up to her, and handed her the flowers. She looked absolutely shocked.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

We hugged, as she scrunched the flowers into my back.

“You didn’t have to buy me flowers,” she had said.

“I want you to know that you’re special to me,” I told her, “I don’t want you to think I’m just using you for sex.”

“I don’t think that,” she replied, “I was just mad at you.”

“Are you still?”

“No,” she said, smiling ear to ear.

“I have to go back to work.”

“I’ll call you.”

She called me later that night, but my actions changed absolutely nothing.

“It really hurts me that you wont spend time with me,” I had told her.

“I’m sorry,” she replied, “I want to spend time with you, I just can’t get my life together.”

This was a few weeks before her 21st birthday.

“Do you even realize it’s been 5 weeks since we last hung out?”

“It hasn’t been 5 weeks.”

“Count,” I told her.

She took her sweet time counting the days, as she was not good with numbers whatsoever. I wondered what ever made her think she’d make a good accountant. I had asked her that very question one night, and she had responded that computers do most of the work these days.

“God,” she said, “It has been 5 weeks.”

“Can I take you drinking on your birthday?” I asked her.

“I wouldn’t want to spend my birthday with anybody else,” she had said.

The next week, I took her all over Chicago and the Northwest suburbs drinking. Her father had given her permission to stay out all night. However, he did manage to ruin all of our fun by calling every 20 minutes to check up on her. By the end of the night, she was drunkenly shouting that it was the best 21st birthday ever.

It was 4 o’clock in the morning, and we were on our way back to her house. She was supposed to spend the whole night with me, but at 3 o’clock her father had called, screaming at her to get home. I took my sweet fucking time driving her back to her house, taking only side streets from Chicago to the suburbs. I hated that old fucker, he was always ruining my fun.

“I’m sorry I’ve been such a shitty girlfriend,” she slurred.

“Don’t worry about it,” I told her, “You’re not a shitty girlfriend.”

“I am,” she replied, “You took me out for my birthday, the best 21st birthday ever, and I’ve been a total bitch to you for the past 5 weeks.”

She had been a shitty girlfriend, but I wanted her to have a good birthday.

“I miss spending time with you,” I told her.

“I’m going to spend more time with you,” she said proudly, “I miss fucking around.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“I love it when you tie me up!” she slurred, “You’re so fucking creative.”

“I try.”

“I promise things are going to be different.”

Then, she put her head on my shoulder and passed out. When we got to her house, she was still ready to party, but could barely walk. I walked her to the door, but stopped short when I heard her father yelling from the top of the stairs.

“The party’s over!” the old man screamed, “Get to bed!”

She kissed me goodbye, and slunked into the house. Despite her drunk sincerity, things still didn’t change.

Two weeks went by, and we still didn’t hang out. Valentine’s Day, another couple’s holiday was just around the corner. I knew she was going to fuck up my Valentine’s Day. I called her the week before the 14th. When she picked up the phone, I led with:

“So… are you going to fuck up my Valentine’s Day?”

“What?”

“Are you going to fuck up my Valentine’s Day,” I repeated, “Are you finally going to spend time with me, or should I get a date off Myspace?”

“You’re so mean!” she replied.

“I’m not mean,” I told her, “I’m practical. Your track record’s not so good these days.”

“I promise we’ll spend Valentine’s Day together,” she said, “I have to work, but I’ll try to get off early.”

“You ARE going to fuck up my Valentine’s Day.”

Whenever Nikki said she was, “Going to gett of work early,” that really meant, “I’m going to ask half-assedly to get off early, but they’re going to tell me, ‘No,’ because I’m a pushover, then I’ll have to be home because my curfew is 9 PM, and my parents wont let me go out, but I’ll call you 2 minutes before my curfew to offer up a lame apology and an empty promise.”

“I can’t believe you just said that!” she said.

Oh shit! I hadn’t been thinking the above statement in my head; I had actually said it out loud.

“Prove me wrong then,” I told her.

“I will,” she said, “I promise.”

A few days before Valentine’s Day, she called me.

“We have to talk,” she had said.

“OK,” I replied, feeling a little uneasy.

I had kind of know that the book was coming, so I had stored Myspace profiles of hot Asian and Hispanic chicks in my Internet Favorites. As we were on the phone, I was sending out mass amounts of Myspace friend requests.

“I’m not ready for a serious relationship,” she told me.

She was going to fuck up my Valentine’s Day! I wasn’t going to make this easy for the bitch.

“Why, whatever do you mean?” I asked innocently.

“I just don’t have time for a serious relationship right now,” she told me, on the verge of tears.

“But sweetie,” I said sarcastically, “Didn’t you promise to make time for our ‘Relationship?’”

“I just can’t balance school, work, my parents, and you,” she said.

“So what are you trying to say?” I asked.

“I can’t do this anymore,” she replied.

Then, she started to ramble on, but I wasn’t paying attention, as I was in the middle of sending hundreds of Friend Requests on Myspace.

“So… you’re breaking up with me?” I asked.

“Yes,” she stammered.

“You’re silly,” I told her, as I read Monica Martinez’s profile. Apparently she was a marketing major. Good stuff.

“I just poured my heart out to you, and you’re calling me silly?” she screamed.

“Anything else?” I asked.

“No, “ she replied, “I want to hear what you have to say.”

“So… you’re done talking at me?”

“I guess,” she whispered, I could tell she was about to cry.

“Can I go now?” I asked.

“I guess,” she whimpered.

I hung up the phone, and continued to send hot chicks requests on Myspace. I didn’t feel a goddamn thing. I suddenly realized that I hadn’t felt a goddamn thing in weeks; months even.

A few weeks went by. I continued my everyday life un-phased, I had even met some Hispanic bitch off Myspace that I thought had a cute personality. One day, I was playing guitar in my room, when my phone rang. It was Nikki.

“I miss you,” she told me quietly.

“Why?” I asked.

“I made a huge mistake,” she told me, “You were a great boyfriend, and I fucked it up.”

I kind of missed her myself; at least I thought I did.

“I miss you too,” I told her.

“I’m sorry I hurt you,” she said, starting to cry.

“Are you crying?”

“Yes.”

We talked for an hour and a half. When I woke up the next day, I found a message from her in my Myspace inbox.

----------------- Original Message -----------------
hey you,

i just wanted to tell you that im so happy we talked yesterday! im so glad that everything is going well. i was really happy to hear your voice again. i know i said that last night but its true. anyways, im always thinking about you and i miss you!!
i just wanted to tell you that. :)

love,
SP :)

It appeared as if we were giving “us” another chance. We talked every day after that. I was still trying to meet Hispanic bitches off Myspace, as she still hadn’t earned my trust.

It was the day before I was supposed to start my internship at Minty Fresh Records in Chicago. I had just lit up Rara Sosa on my blog, and called Nikki to tell her about it.

“It felt so fucking good,” I told her, “It was a text book light up.”

“You’re not ready for a relationship,” Nikki had told me.

“What? Why?” I asked.

“Because, Jim.” She replied, “You dated the shittiest girls ever, they broke your heart, and you bounced right to the next girl. You need to take some time to get over these bitches, otherwise you’ll never truly feel anything for anyone again.”

It was the ONLY time in our relationship that she had ever said anything remotely intelligent. She pretty much hit the nail on the head. When I woke up the next day, I realized that I hadn’t felt anything for anyone in a long time. It was as if I were dead.

I didn’t realize that I had met my demise right away, it took a few weeks to sink in.

In the meantime, Nikki was pulling her usual bullshit. We had plans to hang out on a Thursday night. Two minutes before her curfew, my phone rang.

“I’m so sorry,” she began, “I got off work late…blah….blah….blah.”

I was pretty mad, I think at one point I told her that she sucked at life. Maybe that was going a little too far, but she did in fact suck at life.

“I don’t need to be talked to like that!” she screamed. It was the only time she ever stood up to me, or anyone in fact. We hung up the phone, and I once again went to bed unfulfilled.

The next day, she called.

“I’m sorry about last night,” she crooned.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “I don’t really think you suck at life.”

“I do suck at life, Jim,” she told me.

“Don’t say that.”

“I do. I don’t know why you still talk to me, I’m such a bitch to you.”

“Why don’t you make it up to me?”

She promiosed to hang out with me later that night. I oiled up my pair of police-style handcuffs, and waited excitedly for her to call. She never did.

When I woke up the next morning, I found the following message in my Myspace inbox:

"hey i tried to call you 3 times yesterdy!! i left a voicemail too but halfway through it started beeping at me..like if the call dropped or soething...i left work at 12:45....kinda late but i was driving around for a while and trying to call you, i cant receive calls so thats why i called so much...i really dont know what the fuck happened yesterday, im kind of pissed...its not anyones fault though i guess, but yes i DID call you, i was hopig you got the voicemail but i guess you didn’t"

My reply went as follows:

“Oh it is somebody’s fault,” I had typed, “Yours. You have 3 days to make it up to me.”

I knew she wouldn’t make it up to me, but I decided to have a little fun. On the first night, I called her, and for once, she didn’t answer her phone.

“Hey sweetie,” I had said to her voicemail, “I’m just calling you to inform you about the countdown. It’s the end of day one, you have two more days to make it up to me, or I’m gone, baby. Gone!”

I hung up the phone laughing hysterically, since I didn’t actually feel anymore, I was having a good time with the whole situation.

Day two, I once again got the voicemail:

“Day two, baby,” I laughed into the phone, “You have one more day to make it up to me, and it better be good. I’m talking epic make up involving murder, conspiracy, and loose cunts!”

I once again hung up the phone laughing. I still didn’t feel a goddamn thing.

Day three rolled around. She didn’t call. At around 11 PM, I called her, and once again got the voicemail:

“We’re nearing the end of day three,” I had said, “You final day. I was originally only going to give you until Midnight, but since I’m in a good mood, I’m going to extend your deadline until 2 AM. Aren’t I a hell of a guy?”

I once again hung up the phone laughing. I was glad to be rid of the bitch, as I was well on my way to having illegitimate babies with this Hispanic girl, Gina. Here’s her Myspace link, in case you want to know what she looks like.

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=47939500

It never panned pout, because I couldn’t bring myself to feel anything for this girl. I still, however didn’t realize I was dead.

A few days went by. I had stopped working press for SKANK because Clay the lead singer, owed me money/back pay. (Hey, might as well light everyone up, right?)

SKANK was supposed to play at The Metro. I had met Clay through his mother Gloria, whom I worked with at Jake’s Pizza. It was tradition for the two of us to carpool to SKANK concerts.

We arrived at The Metro, and saw the show. After SKANK finished playing, I turned around, and saw Nikki. She wouldn’t break curfew to see her long-term boyfriend, but she would break curfew to watch a Rock band she wasn’t even that into. Needless to say I was pissed. I finally felt something; anger, blind anger.

I grabbed Gloria, and we headed back to the Northwest burbs. After I dropped Gloria at her house, I called Nikki. She once again didn’t answer her phone, but I left her the most horrible message, which in retrospect I can’t really tell if I feel guilty about. My last words to her were: “I wish you were dead.”

The ironic thing is that I, myself was dead. I finally realized it a few months later. I had outgrown Chicago, and decided to move to Los Angeles. All the while I was dead.

WORD TO THE FEMALE CONSUMER: Don’t give up a good thing, you’ll regret it forever. Also, you’re a fuckin’ dumbass if you have your Myspace profile set to “private.”

Sara And The Trophy

“Get the fuck outta bed!!!!!” came the shout.

It was 6:30 in the morning and the sun was barely in the sky as my 6-foot-6-inch best friend towered and swayed like a skyscraper over my bed.

“Get the fuck outta bed!!!!!” he repeated, ”I’m drunk, and I wanna watch the sunrise!!!!”

My head pounded, as I was still hung over from two days prior. My two best friends at that point in my life were my roommate Eli and his girlfriend Brooke. The three of us had met the first week of school when were college freshmen. Eli and I had hit it off instantly, the infamous story being that I had walked up to him on the front steps of Carman Hall, and asked him flat out to play the bass guitar in my band. The kid was a virtuoso bass player, and we went on from that moment to write a few songs, sell a few records, and rock a lot of local shows, but before all that, we were just two good-looking guys that had similar taste in music. A few days after I met Eli, he met Brooke. Eli and his roommate at the time had gone to hang out in front of the dorm, and old Ellis had emerged the next day with his first college girlfriend.

Brooke was painfully shy, and I was deathly afraid that she wouldn’t like me, but that all changed after I told her some story involving my dick, or something equally as filthy. It was one of those times in which I actually made coke come out of someone’s nose; just not Brooke’s. Brooke’s friend Meghan had been the coke victim, and Brooke just thought that Eli and I were the wildest thing since sliced bread. She had grown up in a town of 500, just south of Kankakee, Illinois, and was quite sheltered when she first started hanging out with us. It took Eli and me about six months to loosen Brooke up, but when we did, man did she come out of her shell. Her mouth got filthier, her appetite for partying and rock music got stronger; her boobs even grew a cup size. If you ask her, she’ll tell you that she has small boobs, but I swear on my immortal soul that her jugs grew at least a half-cup size due to the fun that she had with Ellis and I.

They dated for a year-and-a-half, but came to an abrupt halt one spring break. Eli had been going through a rough patch, and decided that instead of cheating on Brooke, that he was just going to break up with her, screw this girl from his town of 500, and then try to mend the relationship. Yes it was a bad idea, since Brooke was hip to Ellis’ bullshit, and dumped him. This is purely speculation, but I think the scenario played out somewhat like this:

BROOKE ANSWERS THE PHONE ONE NIGHT DURING SPRING BREAK ONLY TO DISCOVER HER LOVE INTEREST ELLIS HAMILTON ON THE OTHER LINE. THEY MAKE THE USUAL SMALL TALK/SEXUAL INNUENDOS, WHEN ALL OF A SUDDEN, ELI PUTS HIS PLAN INTO ACTION.

ELLIS: Brookie, I’m just so confused, I need to be by myself for a little while.

THE BORRKE: What!? Whatever do you mean?

ELLIS: I just think we should take a break, that’s all.

BORRKEY: But why?! Did I do something wrong?

ELLIS: No, you’re a great girl, I’ve just been so depressed, and I need some time for myself.

FAST FORWARD TWO WEEKS TO A LUNCH DATE BETWEEN ELLIS AND THE BORRKE.

BROOKIE: How are you? Are you OK? Are you less depressed?

ELI: Sigh… Huhhhh, Hmm I don’t know.

BROOKE: What about us? Are we still together?

ELI: I guess… I mean, we’re together, just on a break.

BROOKE: Why are we on a break? You either want to be with me, or you don’t.

ELI: Brookie, I’m just not sure right now, I think we should be together, but on a break.

BROOKE: Fuck that and fuck you, you giant cock. I don’t want to be with YOU then.

BROOKE THEN PROCEEDED TO MOON ELI WITH THE “SCREW YOU, FUCK FACE” SIGN THAT SHE HAD HER ROOMMATE HOLLY SCRAWL ONTO HER ASS EARLIER THAT MORNING WITH A SHARPIE. SHE SPILLED HIS CHOCOLATE MILK ON HIS LAP, UNZIPPED HIS FLY, STUFFED THE EMPTY CUP DOWN HIS PANTS, TURNED AROUND, AND STORMED OUT OF THE CAFETERIA.

The above scenario is purely speculation, but the fact was that Eli had cheated, Brooke had dumped him, and I was now caught in the middle. They were both devastated, Brooke spent the weekends getting drunk with me at my friends Matt and Justin’s house, Eli spent the days moping around the room with me, and I spent the whole time trying to mend the fences.

In the midst of all this, Sara came back into my life. I was getting smashed at my friends Matt and Justin’s house with Brooke, and her friends Holly and Stacey. We had been drinking coconut rum mixed with orange juice. I had 2 drinks, and was hammered as fuck. Brooke, still being upset about the break up downed one drink, and proceeded to spend the rest of the night puking in Matt and Justin’s bathroom.

“I have to go home Jim,” she told me, on the verge of tears.

“It’s OK sweetheart,” I said, “I’ll walk you.”

“No, I’ll go with Holly and Stacey, you stay here with your friends.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” she replied, as Holly and Stacey started to carry her out.

“Wait,” I shouted, “I’m coming with you guys”

Just as they started to leave, the garage door flew open, and SHE came wobbling in, drunk as usual; it was Sara.

“Oh my God, Jim!!!!!” she exclaimed, as she either gave me the world’s biggest hug, or just plain tackled me onto the hood of Justin’s car, I couldn’t tell, but there we were, laying on the dirty concrete, hugging each other.

“Jim,” she slurred, we were both pretty drunk at this point, “I’m really sorry about the U of I. I feel so terrible.”

“Don’t worry about it sweetheart,” I slurred, “It’s water under the bridge,”

“No, it’s not OK,” she said, as I helped her up, only to be tackled once again onto the hood of Justin’s car, “I was a total bitch, and I want to explain what happened.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“No, really,” she said, as we stopped hugging, “I want to eat lunch with you tomorrow, and I’ll explain everything.”

“You changed your hair!”

It was shorter than before.

“You like it?”

“Yeah, it makes you look like a super model,”

“You’re so fuckin’ sweet,” she cooed, as I was once again tackled onto Justin’s car.”

“Call me tomorrow,” she said.

“I can’t, I don’t have your number.”

“I’ll give it to you,”

“Will you write it on my chest?” I asked her, as I handed her a pen and lifted my shirt.

“OK,” she giggled, as she scrawled her cell number on my right breast.

“I gotta go walk my friend Brooke home,”

“Call me tomorrow,” she said.

“I will.”

“You promise?”

“I promise,” I said as I escorted the three young ladies back to their dorm.

“Who was that?” Brooke exclaimed as the four of us swayed and swaggered back to Taylor Hall.

“That was Sara,” I replied.

“The one that was friends with the Asian chick?”

“Yeah.”

“She totally has a crush on you,” Holly interjected.

“What?” I exclaimed.

“She does,” Brooke shot in, “You should call her tomorrow.”

I had no intention of calling Sara, and I’ll explain why. I have a rule called the “Barking up old trees rule.” Relationships are like trees that dogs piss on. If you’ve ever owned a dog with a keen sense of smell, you’ll notice that the dog wont piss on the same tree two nights in a row, because the dog can smell the piss from the previous night. The same basic concept should apply to the male/female relationship; don’t bark up old trees. If a dog wont piss in the same place twice, neither should you.

Sara was the only girl that I ever liked enough to break that rule over, and man did it blow up in my face. I spent the whole night tossing and turning. Why does she want me to call her so bad? Where has she been for the past month? Should I call her or forget about her?

The next thing I knew, it was sunrise, and there were a school of wasps congregating by my window. Eli was deathly allergic to bees and wasps, there was a hole in t