I roadtripped down to St Louis this past weekend for another NAGVA volleyball tournament. But like most NAGVA weekends or weekends with Mike & Giniqua, it seemed more like a weeklong bender with every tragic mess from every season of The Real World. Which, methinks, is the reason I keep going back.
But this time I forwent the usual flight. And yes, I just used the word 'forwent' and if anyone doesn't like it they can get their own damn blog. Instead, I drove. Which, in the end, proved to add to the tragicity of the entire weekend.
(The plan was formulated along the following lines) [And then became a new plan]:
(1) Thursday afternoon: Pick up rental car in Milwaukee. Pick up Giniqua from O'Hare. Stay with Joe and The Roger in Gayville in the hopes of tragicity breaking out all over the place.
[1a] Thursday: Got cockblocked by the rental agent in Milwaukee. Which turned out to be a good thing because otherwise I may have had to spend a night with ex-friend-until-I-hear-three-years-worth-of-genuine-apologies Vodkina who I'd definitely already have thrown off a sixth floor balcony if it weren't for those damn CSI shows.
[1b] Thursday night: Got a phone call from Vera Wang, the pink-polo wearing 'straighty' our team met during Gay Games week, who can name fashion magazine editors in pictures but still claims to prefer the puntang. He and others at Joe and The Roger's pad wanted this blog address to peruse the bitchery contained within. Because of that mistake, I may or may not have a hit out for me. Not a gay one like Whitney or Sexyback. I mean the Sopranos kind.
(2) Friday: Drive from Gayville, Chicago to St Louis with Giniqua's I-pod playlists blaring every reason for us getting gaybashed in the Bible Belt.
[2a] I don't know cars. At all. Apparently, an Aveo and an Alero aren't the same car. I don't understand why the hell not. Also discovered that the Alero-sounding Aveo doesn't normally come equipped with a CD player or cruise control, both of which are painfully necessary when driving through 4,000 miles of Illinois prairie.
We hadn't even left the far south suburb of Chicago before Mike almost jumped out of the car and walked it to StL. Instead, Mike was treated to central Illinois' idea of the "latest hits" and the constant move between 60 and 90 mph. I got the distinct impression, somewhere around Kankakee, that Mike was playing in his mind those scenes in Monster In Law when JLo and Fonda imagined using a frying pan to the face instead of a polite smile.
I spent nearly the entire drive trying to convince Mike that the Illinois prairie is:
-- "A classic American landscape. Very O'Keefe meets Old MacDonald."
-- "The true heartland where honest people connect with the land..."
And some other bullshit like that. Mike didn't bite. And may have said the following over and over:
-- "Look, I can see the Washington Monument."
-- "Look, there's Denver."
-- "The weather looks nicer over Houston today."
-- "This isn't a hill. It's an overpass."
-- "There's the east coast, the west coast, and NOTHING in between."
-- "That's not a city, that's a village."
-- "If I had to live here, I'd kill myself. I might kill myself right now. And you."
-- "I'm calling the airline to see if I can just fly out of St Louis. This is bullshit."
-- "AAARRRRHHHHH"
Apparently, Mike hates America.
[2b] The roommate and her daughter came along for the roadtrip to visit family in StL. Which only meant that front-seat Mike's knees were pushing up against his larynx instead of his chest for 5 hours. I, having the genetically designed freakishly disproportional leg to body ratio, was just fine. I kept my mouth shut about that fact.
[2c] I discovered that stopping in good ole Chambana would only add 15 or so miles to our little Tragicity Road Trip. The added plus being that Mike would have time to either stretch his legs for an hour or find the nearest Amtrak station.
Introducing Mike to Champaign, I announced that we would soon be driving through "Downtown Champaign." He said something like, "...and what? Five story buildings." No, asshole. Little did I remember that Downtown Champaign's buildings don't exceed four stories. Luckily I only had to withstand Mike's bitching for all six blocks of Downtown Champaign. I offered to drive through "Downtown Urbana," to which Mike may or may not have grabbed the steering wheel and threatened to guide us into a streetlight if I "ever said shit like that again."
I got to revisit the old frat house with the added benefit of having someone to throw at the potential lynch mob while I ran for the car. I would never. But it was an option. And I thought about it. In my defense, Mike did get a free meal pass to the all you can eat "straighty" bar. Then again...instead of playing spot-the-newbie-gay, we ended up trying to figure out which frat boy wouldn't end up living at a Boystown bar in the very near future.
I spent most of my time desperately trying to prove that I was, in fact, a member of the fraternity for any amount of time. The few current brothers I met took the handshake as proof positive, but I had a helluva time convincing Mike. Apparently I only sat for one composite picture and the paddle with the list of pledges from my year was stolen at some party in the recent past. In the hallways I found a few group pictures with me in them. Mike pointed out that it was a shoulder here, an arm there and my face back then was so ambiguously asian that it could have been anyone. I considered leaving Mike and driving away but decided he'd like that too much.
*Actual events*
(KaBamm. Brent, bone dry sober, runs sideways into a brick wall.)
Mike: Did you REALLY just run into that brick wall?
Brent: I might have.
Mike: They just jump out at you, don't they?
(Four steps later)
Mike: I can't believe you just walked into that wall.
Brent: I didn't see it.
Mike: It was a fucking WALL. How could you NOT see it?
(Four steps later)
Brent: I can't believe I ran into that wall.
Mike: Really?
Brent: No, I can believe it.
Mike: And, scene.
*The End*
We stopped at good ole Murphy's for lunch, even after their brick wall attacked me. I spent a good amount of time trying to get into the heads of more than a few coeds there. I know a few women who got the most amazing sex of their lives from their turned-out-to-be-gay ex-boyfriends, but the couples sitting at Murphy's made me a little sad. The females were obviously living out some kind of Hallmark Precious Moments commercial instead of taking Dan Savage's advice. Seriously girls, ride that orgasmic sex wave while he's still givin it away to those without external genitalia. But don't fall in love. Everyone with intact frontal lobes hears the theme to Fame when your "boyfriend' walks by. Especially when he's checked out Mike the four times he's gone to the counter to "get you another napkin."
Mike made me do it so none of the following was my fault: I bought a t-shirt at Walgreens. So we could stay and check out the SERIOUS eye candy buying mints or the one using the ATM. The shirt was green. With pink lettering. And it was a small. It might have been a women's small. I don't know which was the worst. I swear I pulled out a 20 bill, grabbed the shirt and stuffed it in my coat. I may have told the cashier to keep the change.
Mike claims to have never before seen a sign on a highway stating:
DANVILLE: 4 miles
CHAMPAIGN: 29 miles
MEMPHIS: 450 miles
And then...
CHAMPAIGN: 21 miles
MEMPHIS: 442 miles
For a good hour and a half Mike had a very quiet nervous breakdown because of these signs. The main reason may or may not have been because he -- a big city dude -- couldn't handle being anywhere that measures distances between anything resembling "civilization" in hundreds and hundreds of miles.
More later.
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