ok. sitting back with a glass of wine and a movie. for lack of anything more interesting, I’ll copy and paste Galileo’s version of how he came to be my stalker, and what his role in my life is.
I know, I know, copy and paste makes bad symbols come up and makes it a pain in the ass to read. I think it’s funny enough to forgive.
Here’s (sorta) the thing you wanted about you being the center of the universe. A lot of people ask me to repeat something I just said or to write it down, which I usually can’t do because I make so much shit up as I go along. Although I have a habit of writing just like I speak (which is really helpful in writing dialog), I usually can’t write something down like I said it.
So, anyway, here’s what you get. Feel free just to take parts of it or rewrite it or edit it or whatever. The only way I could do it was to sort of give it a beginning, middle and end. Just buffet it: Take what you want and throw the rest away.
Fuck it, I can’t get it to save in anything but OO, which you don’t have yet, so I’m just going to paste it in here:
You know, some people say â??Stalkerâ?? like it’s a bad thing. In my defense, it should be noted that I have an IQ higher than Claire’s body weight, five years of post-grad college, two years of federal prison, and a charming personality comprised of equal parts ADHD, social apathy and a sense of humor like a sticky guillotine release lever. Claire deserves me.
Let’s all remember that Claire is the one who showed up at MY place of work…repeatedly. Because I have the social skills of a mildly retarded scorpion (and her friend Molly knew that and figured that Claire would appreciate it), Claire decided that she’d have to get to know me, mostly as a hyper, unsuspecting moving target for her finely honed, scalpel-like wit, which she wields as delicately and discriminately as a blind spastic swinging a baseball bat at mosquitoes.
When Claire would come in the bar where I work to see our mutual friend Molly, Claire and I would make fun of the eighty-five-dollar-T-shirt-wearing, fifteen-dollar-martini-sloshing, I-don’t-have-to-follow-any-rules-because-I’m-special-don’t-you-know-who-my-daddy-is Bitchy & Fameless that pass for a customer base where I work. As we did this, Claire and I quickly realized that we shared a common brain, albeit one that God had clearly tossed in the â??TO BE REPAIREDâ?? bin and then never really got around to. Claire and I spent most of her time in the bar hanging out together and trading snarkily spiteful snipes at the local douchebaggery, and I’ve never had a better time at work (except maybe when I get to drag out someone in a suit â?? I LOVE dragging out douchebags in suits.) Because I am not much to look at (think of Rob Zombie’s skinny-ass, busted-down, no talent brother) and Claire is a complete visual freakshow on par with Courtney Love at a PTA meeting, people noticed us hanging out together. When people would ask me about her, I would variously tell them that she was Molly’s lover; that she was my half sister from Ohio that I thought was hot and trying to get drunk to take advantage of; that she was a porn star in town to make a video, and it was no coincidence that Lexington is horse country; that she was a high priced hooker and I was her pimp; that she was a neuro-surgeon there to give a lecture at UK; or that she was just the chick I was banging because, after all, I am a guy and I’m like that. By any means, we spent several nights over a couple of weeks just hanging out while I was working, if by working you mean getting paid fifteen bucks an hour to sheepdog and give time-outs to the same bunch of self-appointed social dilettantes and bar scene regulars that I’ve been dealing with for a decade and a half .
One night when I missed Claire leaving, I asked Molly to give her my number if she wanted to call me, which apparently the usually reliable Molly failed to do. Molly regularly brought Claire up in conversation because she knew how well we got along, and she mentioned it to me the next time that Claire was in town. I asked if she would be coming down to work, and Molly said that Claire â??wasn’t allowed to come to the bar without an escort,â?? anymore, which I found pretty amusing, like, when you saw that circus monkey go batshit on that guy that was hitting it with the stick. Molly said Claire’s boyfriend, Jim felt that she was â??distracting the bouncers from doing their jobs,â?? which is like saying that the cheerleaders are distracting the players from scoring. By any means, it seemed presumptuous for someone who didn’t work there to be making judgments about how we do our jobs, so I sent a not-at-all-soaked-in-sarcasm note to Claire through Molly telling her something like I was sorry to hear that that she had been put on a â??bitch leashâ?? that wasn’t long enough to allow her to come play any more, but that if she could borrow a pair of balls for a few minutes, it would be nice for her to call. She sent word back, with no shortage of ball-busting sarcasm, saying that she didn’t know my number because I never gave it to her. Naturally, I went all finger-snappin’, neck-weavin’ kinds of crazy up in Molly’s face for not forwarding my number, but I toned it down pretty quickly because Molly clearly felt badly that she’d forgotten, plus if she felt like it she could hold me with one hand and beat me with the other until she eventually got thirsty and had to let me go and get a drink. Claire sent me a text not long after, and eventually negotiated terms with Jim (who I’ve never met, but never had any problem with and would probably like if we ever hung out together) to come to the bar and hang out, at least long enough to get food to go.
The first month after we first started talking to each other outside of the bar, I had to change my cell phone plan to accommodate the several hundred text messages we sent back and forth. (And I still figure she owes me at least half of the extra $125 it cost me that month.) So, obviously, I’m the stalker here. But if I’m her stalker, then let me tell ya what I’ve learned about Claire LASTNAME.
I have known a lot of women in my life that felt that they were entitled to certain things. Many felt entitled to be treated by the world in a certain manner, or to be involved in a relationship with a certain type of person. I’ve known women who have felt absolutely entitled to be respected and acknowledged in a precise manner by the rest of the world; entitled to be the center of attention and have all eyes, minds and hearts trained on them at all times. Individual in each case but similar overall, it was an expectation they had based on their upbringing, their history and their personalities.
Claire does not feel she is entitled to any of this. Claire simply thinks that’s the way things ARE.
Sort of like in the Dark Ages, when the Earth was known the center of the universe and everything revolved around it. It wasn’t that the Earth was ENTITLED to be the center of the universe, it just WAS, it was just obvious and common sense and anyone that didn’t see it that was didn’t really exist. Water doesn’t feel entitled to flow downhill; babies don’t reason their way into crying in the night; the moon does not rise due to popular opinion. It just IS that way, like gravity or the passing of time; it’s a fundamental factor of BEING, that should not be â?? CANNOT BE â?? challenged, changed or amended.
This is Claire LASTNAME’s world. She is the central, immutable, motivating factor in all that transpires because IT IS THAT WAY. Not because she feels entitled to have people treat her AS THOUGH it’s that way, but simply, inarguably, naturally because that is how it is. Our being is defined by time, space, gravity and Claire LASTNAME.
This is why I have told people that the bar at which I work is pretty much full up wall to wall when we have 375 people in the place, or 65 people and Claire and her ego. It is why I will never be able to think of her as â??C-Bear,â?? which sounds like a stuffed animal (albeit with several grams of good smack being smuggled inside of it), but instead refer to her as La Superbeasta (which if you’ve ever seen Rob Zombie’s The Haunted World of El Superbeasto, you’d understand, and if you haven’t, you probably wouldn’t understand anyway…)
And it’s what defines my relationship with her. I am here to remind her each day, every day, all day if necessary, that it’s not really like that. Like Galileo preaching that the Earth is just another planet circling the Sun, which is just another star in another galaxy, my mission is to remind the world that Claire LASTNAME is not the center of it all…FUCK! See, she’s got me doing it! Should have been: …my mission is to remind CLAIRE that she’s not the center of it all (not …â??to remind the REST OF THE WORLD…â??)
She needs me. She admits it. I need her, too. Keeps me focused, maybe even better than my Vyvanse. And you all should be glad I’m here to keep her in check. Because if she gets out of hand, which I think may happen when the Mayan calendar ends in 2012, then God help us all.
God help us all.