El Camino Community College Girls Say, "Um...OK"
The longest trip of my life was the excursion to New Jersey/New York that I took with a girlfriend in 1998, when I was a sophomore in college. She came to visit me from California (long distance relationship
Anyway, she had a cousin in NY and wanted to go up there while she was on the East Coast; apparently she didn't know how to read a map, because she thought New York was just a few hours from Charlotte (it's 12 hours away, but who's counting?). We (I) loaded up our (my) truck and we (I) commenced to drive the 11 hours to New Brunswick, NJ, where we (we) stayed overnight with our (my) friends. She (her) didn't do one goddamn bit of the driving because she (dumbass) didn;t know how to drive stick (insert sex joke here) and was unwilling to learn, even though we (her sleeping, me up all night driving) were travelling on a major highway and it was fifth gear all the way. People, train your children to be decent human beings. Buy manual!
That was pretty much a relationship-breaker right there. Josh gets a little cranky when he has to stare at one turnpike after another for a whole day. BTW, there is no way to get through Baltimore without paying that fucking $2 toll, so don't go out of your way trying to avoid it. I did, and the wankers got me with a toll booth out in the middle of a county road. And I added another hour to the trip. Sack of dicks.
We took the train into NY, and she did that thing that women seem to like to do where they look at all the maps in the train station (the fucking train SAYS right on the side where it's going!) and then they want to ask directions from the pimp who is eyeballing their purse once they get into the city, and then they want to talk to people on the street really loud and say stuff like, "I wonder where the Empire State Building is?" (hint: look up) and "I wonder if we can see a Broadway show?"--which is like wearing a shirt that says "I'm gay and I won't fight back. Please mug me."
Her cousin turned out to own a very small but nice apartment in Manhattan (about a block from the park) and she was a lawyer, although she had a prominently-displayed diploma from the Harvard graduate school of language. She spoke French. She was also one of those people who somehow has a piano in a 600-square foot apartment. How did she get it in there? Ship in a bottle and all that.
We went to Central Park (boring and frozen--oh, did I mention it was motherfucking January? It was so cold that I saw a pigeon frozen to a bum's jacket. I have no f-ing clue how that happened. Ah, sweet mystery of life). We saw the Empire State Building (it took three hours to get up to the observation deck. We spent about 30 minutes on a floor that was really just a waiting room, but the windows were open--it was 20 degrees outside--and the thought crossed my mind, "I wonder if somebody got tired of waiting in line and just jumped out the goddamn window?"). We ate a hotdog that we bought at a cart. We got "famous NY cheesecake" (it's imported, you know; it goes out into the Bay on a scow and then comes right back. My piece had some weird, testicle-shaped indentations in it.). We did see that Broadway show, "On the Town" by Rogers and not-Hammerstein (Oscar had apparently kicked by the time that one was written. It was perfect for Gene Kelly. If only he weren't still dead, too). It was great. The only redeeming experience of the whole herpes-meets sciatica annoyance factor of a trip.
After three dicktastic days in the Windy Apple (the people were also incredibly big assholes, even though I was expecting it. Super. Huge. Assholes. Kind of like people from California, the other self-obsessed state), we headed back. We had bought our tickets from the machine in the train station in New Brunswick. They were $11 and I paid with a $20 bill. I got 9 Sacajawea (Sp? Who knows/cares?) dollars back, because that was when the guys over at the US Mint had first hit on that fat whore of an idea. All three days in NY I tried to buy stuff with my Sacs, but not one of those scuzzy fuckers would take them. And, once they refused payment, they didn't accept my "I guess it's free, then" argument. Doucheholes. And, 9 one-dollar coins will pull your pants down. I tried to buy a belt, but it cost $9, after which I wouldn't need it anymore. It was a real conundrum, because the guy wouldn't take the Sacajaweas either.
When we got back in the car (guess who was driving?), I knew I only had 11 hours of torture left and then the California Cross would be gone for good. It was like waiting for Christmas. I talked to myself, sang along with the radio, anything to avoid counting the mile markers.
The point of this story is that my girlfriend was a college girl. El Camino Community College, which she called Junoir College but I called secretary school. 6 of one...and etc. To alleviate some of the intense hate I was feeling towards her for not doing a lick of the driving, I began to tell her stories. All lies and none of them very convincing or even with much of a point. It was like that Norm MacDonald bit where people lie for no reason. "Did you ever see that movie with Meryl Streep and the horse?" "Yes." "And your brain says, 'Wait a minute--what the hell am I lying about over here?'" It was along those lines. She believed every one of them, too, though not without some skepticism.
The best one was that the most popular brand of diapers in the country was Pamplers. With the extra 'p' after the 'm'. She was puzzled and then she argued with me for a while about how it was really "Pampers," but I wore her down through persistence, earnestness, and some made-up legal clauses that specified the name change for copyright reasons. In the end, she admitted that she had never looked very hard at the label of a diaper package and that she would do so in the future. So, the joke is that she flew all the way back to LA and then went to a WalMart and looked at some diapers and found out that I was lying. By then, we were broken up anyway, so what the hell?
I stopped at a 7-11 in Richmond (they don't have them in Charlotte anymore) and bought the pissiest tasting slurpee of all time, but it was 3 am and I was riding high on sugar and nostalgia. That slurpee reminded me of when I was a very ugly kid and my mom used to take us to the laundromat every weekend to wash clothes. It was attached to a 7-11 and sometimes, if we had some change left over, we got slurpees.
I was so fucking excited about that slurpee that I damn near cried all the way to Raleigh.
<< Home