Welcome to the 300th entry. If you’ve managed to stick around from the beginning, congratulations. If not, then congratulations anyway.
If you’re in the area, and you watched News 4 at 7 on Friday night, they showed part of my building in one of the live clips. I’m not going to tell you what part, or which live clip.
I got my oil changed on Friday. As a reward to myself, I bought the Tae Bo tapes, then I stopped by Katie A-‘s job to say Hi.
Tae Bo is hard. It makes many things hurt. I felt like an idiot the whole time, in my spandex exercise leotard, tee-shirt, with my hair tied back in a bandanna. I liked it, though. It’s the first work-out I could honestly feel working. Aaron was really supportive when he found out I was doing this, as was Katie A-. I got ridicule and/or disbelief from most everyone else, though.
Never mind. The last thing I expected was support.
We went out with Katie on Friday night – we basically read comics and smoked. Dirk was supposed to work, but he got a new manager who changed the schedule around. Before we dropped Katie off at home, we stopped by a 7-11 so Dirk could get beer. I guess he’s going to take full advantage of the fact that he’s 21.
Saturday was a stupid, pointless day. I may as well not even have gotten out of bed. The only worthwhile thing that happened was going to a flea market and getting two Victorian-Era postcards, complete with postage and messages. One of them was sweet, showing a photograph of a man and a woman that had been colored in with pastels kissing. Over the picture it said, “Don’t wake me, I am dreaming.”
I got to Dirk’s house fifteen minutes late, thanks to the flea market expedition, and the day went downhill from there. He first got mad at me for being late, since he hadn’t bothered to haul his ass out of bed. Then, when we got to practice, he blamed me for all of us being late, because neither he nor his brother had bothered hauling their asses out of bed before I came over. Apparently, I was expected to call and wake them up half an hour before I came over.
I don’t fucking think so.
Then the P.A. blew a fuse, so we couldn’t do any vocals. This completely set Dirk off. He went into the lobby, pouted, and smoked a clove. When Aaron and I came out of the practice room after fiddling with the PA (to make sure it wasn’t just the extension cord fucking up), we sat down for a second while Dirk went into the practice room. He came stomping back out, grabbed Richard’s card from the bulletin board, and grated out, “Any of you guys could have called him by now. Do I have to do everything in this goddamned band?”
To which I responded, “Yeah, and you could have hauled your butt up off the couch and called by now, instead of sitting there and sulking.”
He stomped all the way to the pay phone down the street.
Doshu came along eventually, though he couldn’t stay long. His nephew was in a rather nasty accident, and he needed to get to the hospital. Not that it mattered, considering the PA was dead. Greg and Miranda eventually came, and Dirk calmed down enough to be civil. He stayed that calm until Richard finally came to fix the PA, then he started going off again. And guess what? The PA screwing up became my fault to, because we’d been late, because I was fifteen goddamn minutes late.
Basically, he was civil to everyone but Aaron and I. I’m assuming that it’s because we’re so close to him...familiarity breeds contempt.
We got home, and Dirk went to sleep instead of talking to me. Fine by me. I talked to Aaron for a while, and we made plans to hang out without Dirk.
Never make the mistake of thinking I need you. I honestly don’t need anyone.
When I came back from dropping my bass off to pick up Aaron, I even woke Dirk up to ask if he wanted to join us – when he indicated that he wanted to continue sleeping, I didn’t press it. Aaron and I went out to Bobbie’s and had a fabulous time. Nothing exciting happened, but it was nice to not be pandering to Dirk’s mood swings (which have been getting bad for the past week).
It was funny, though, because I was wearing this old sweatshirt that I’ve had since the beginning of high school. It’s light yellow, with a patchy penicillin-green undertone in places, with the word “ITALIA” on the front. The seams along the shoulders are going, and threads were hanging all over the place. I’d dug the sweat shirt out of storage just that morning, after years of not wearing it.
Anyway, Aaron was, as usual, decked out in a leather biker jacket (his newest acquisition), and his hair was dyed a bright crayola green. He’s over six feet tall. When we went into the quickie mart, the rednecks in line were staring at us, and my first reaction was to think, “I know this sweatshirt’s in bad shape, but I didn’t think it was quite that bad.”
When we got back, Dirk was already getting ready for work. He was puzzled because I was being cold to him. I explained that no matter what the provocation had been for his behavior, there was no excuse for treating me or Aaron the way he did. I explained it several times. I enunciated it carefully. He apologized. A lot.
Damn straight. Nobody treats me like that. I don’t know if he apologized to Aaron, though.
Sunday was much better. I did squat all day, and I got to eat with Dirk.
Alex apparently had some sort of gay commitment ceremony. Honestly, I’m all for that stuff, but I just wanted to laugh at him. He’s such a fucking parody of a human being. The ring he got was way, way too small, and doesn’t even fit over the first knuckle on his ring finger. He wore it anyway.
And everyone’s getting on my nerves today......