Ten: Fifty-Seven

Ten: Fifty Seven
Is there anything quite as annoying as going out of town and seeing people you know? Anything quite as, "...ugh" as seeing a person you know and don't particularly care for when you're out of town?
How about having the person you know and don't particularly--hell, especially don't-- like see you and initiate a borderline racially insensitive conversation?
Yeah. All bad.
After working for three caffeine deprived hours straight, I found myself standing bleary eyed in the line at Biggby. While waiting to place my order I felt my phone vibrate. Without looking down, I reached into my pocket, extracted my cell and silently cursed the fools that invented the chain letter and it's modern day equivalent, the forwarded message. Without bothering to tell the sender that if God was really testing me I was too tired to care about failing, I silently took a step forward as the line advanced.
I felt someone tap my shoulder. "Excuse me," they said as I turned around. "I think you dropped your mo--LauRen?"
Oh, fuck. Not this bitch, I thought to myself.
Plastering my fakest, "It's so nice to see you! Won't you please go play in traffic now?" smile on my face, I thanked her for telling me that I had dropped my money. She handed it to me and gave me an unwelcome and very much unwanted hug.
"So how are you? What are you doing up here in Grand Rap--do you live here now?"
I awkwardly patted her on the back while trying to disengage from her embrace. "I'm alright, thanks. No. I'm just visiting for a few hours before I head back to Lansing."
I noticed the line had moved out of corner of my eye so, with what I hoped would be one last forced smile, I turned and took a step forward. There was only one person standing in the way of my coffee and my hasty exit from the shop when I felt her hand in my hair.
"Oh, my God, LauRen. Your hair is so soft! It looks like it'd be...well, y'know. Rough."
The needle on the imaginary record playing in my head dragged across its surface and the music stopped as I turned to face her. "...Excuse me?" My internal DJ changed the song from Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3 to Lil Scrappy's "Head Bussa" as she blushed at her gaffe.
"Oh, I didn't mean it like that! It's a good thing. I like the 'natural' look on you! Makes you seem...ethnic. You look like you could be on your way to a Black Cat--Lion? Panther?--meeting in your leather jacket."
Oh. My. God. This bitch--this bitch tried it.
With my hands balled into tightly clenched fists at my side, I was about to whirl around and deliver a spinning kick to the side of her head when I saw the barista motion for me to come forward and place my order out of the corner of my eye.
I don't think she realizes or appreciates the fact that my Wild Zebra latte saved her reproductive organs from being introduced to my fists.

(Day)dreamin' and I'm Thinkin' of...

After spending hours writing, rewriting and trying in vain to perfect a piece, I found myself sprawled leaden eyed in the middle of my living room. Opting to conclude my exercise in futility for the night, I closed the notebooks I had fanned out in front of me, sat up and stretched. I glanced at the clock and groaned. It was a quarter to four and I had to be up and ready to make my weekly trip to Grand Rapids by half past six.

I knew that I would be tempting fate if I fell asleep in my bed. Instead, I stacked my notebooks into a crude facsimilie of a pillow and wrapped a blanket around myself. I silently prayed that I wouldn't wake up with another spiral shaped indentation in my face and, laying my head on the journals, closed my eyes. Within moments I was asleep and soon after I was whisked into my past.

The dream opened on a summer night forty or so miles outside of Chicago. From my place on the back porch steps I had a front row seat to the argument my fifteen year old self was having with my friend Julian. Chuckling as my younger self threatened to kick him in the ankle for being a jerk, I took a glance around the backyard.

"Y'know," a familiar voice behind me began, "you were always a bit...violent. I can't think of one time when you didn't threaten to punch, slap or kick me for something I did."

I paused as the warm tenor washed over me. "Violent? Psh. I don't know what you're talking about. If anything, you were fond of doing punchable, slappable and kickable shit and, loser," I replied without taking my eyes off of the frisbee that had nearly decapitated me earlier that day and turning around.

The owner of the voice laughed and took a seat next to me on the steps.

"Hey, Ren."

"Julian."

We sat in silence for a moment and watched as the memory continued to unfold. Fifteen year old Ren was making a show out of taking off her glasses and cracking her knuckles when Jay spoke up.

"You don't seem all that surprised to see me."

"Surprised? No. Not at all. Annoyed? Maybe a little bit."

"Ah, shuddup."

"Make me, buttface." I paused before asking, "What's this about anyway?"

"This?" he asked and gestured. "This is the night we were watching An American Tail and--"

I rolled my eyes and turned to face him. "No, dumbass. I clearly remember what night this is. What I'm asking is what're you doing in my dream and why?"

"Oh, " he said, suddenly sheepish. "Don't get smart; shuddup."

"Stop being dumb and I'll think about it," I challenged.

Muttering something that sounded rude even to my considerably fucked up standards under his breath, Jay simply shrugged and said, "We need to talk."

I arched a brow. "About what exactly?"

"A few things."

"Way to be specific."

"Way to be sarcastic."

I shrugged and leaned back. "You should know how I do by now."

"Yeah, 'cause that's a valid excuse for you to act like a dick."

I laughed and threatened to punch him in his if he didn't shut his mouth. Shooting a glance at him out of the corner of my eye I asked, "So what are you exactly? And what is this really?"

"Why, whatever do you mean?"

I sighed. "Oh, don't play coy with me, jackass. You know exactly what I mean."

"I do," he agreed with a nod. "Break it down for me anyway."

I rolled my eyes and thought about it.

"Well, " I mused. "I don't believe in ghosts--"

"And you shouldn't because that would be dumb," he cut in.

"Look, are you gonna let me work this out or not? Sheesh. Like I was saying: I don't believe in ghosts so that's out even though you've been gone for years now. Um, what else? The chances of you getting into Heaven were slim to 'ahahaha--no', and...'ey. Don't look at me like that. I'm not even sure you can be punched but I'm willing to find out."

"You're taking too long to guess the obvious, kid."

"The obvious? Well, my last thought is that you couldn't possibly be an angel because, I mean really. You could, however, be a demon, so..." I trailed off.

"Real cute, Ren."

"Thank you."

He shook his head. "You're not thinking hard enough."

"Well excuse the eff outta me, Julian Dominique, but I could've sworn you just said that I was 'taking too long to guess the obvious'. Now you want me to think hard, too? Make up your mind!"

"Oh. So you're gonna make me say it then?"

"That I am."

I snorted as he narrowed his eyes at me. "You're such an asshole."

"I'm aware," I replied with a shrug.

He laughed. "Alright, lemme put it like this. You can think of me as the rather attractive if I do say so myself--"

"Because I certainly won't be saying it."

"Like I was saying," he continued, shooting me a look. "Consider me the physical embodiment, um...such as it is, of your unconscious mind."

My past self screamed with laughter as I sat on the steps facing Julian.

"Hol' up, wayment; what?" I stuttered. "Okay, so, you're supposed to be my subcon--"

"No," he shook his head. "Your unconscious mind. The term 'subconscious' is some new-agey, clearance rack self help book-y bullshit, kid."

"Okay, whateva. One question though."

"What's that?" he asked.

"What kind of Lifetime: Television for Women shit is this?"

He threw his head back and laughed as I continued to not so silently fume.

"I'm serious, Julian. I feel like I'm in 'Sweet Dreams: a Hijacking Story' right now. And that still doesn't explain why you're in my freakin' dream!"

"Doesn't it though?" He chuckled.

"Uh...no, loser. We just went over this."

"What'd I tell you earlier," he asked. "I said, 'we need to talk'."

"And we're talking."

He shook his head in frustration. "My God, kid. For someone so smart," he noticed I was about to interrupt and stopped me before I could. "I'm not here to stroke your ego so I'm not repeating that; shuddup. Anyway," he took a breath, "you're slow."

"I resent that."

Acting as though he hadn't heard me properly, he told me that he agreed that I represented that. My eyes narrowed into slits and my hands automatically balled into fists. I'm still not sure of what the consequences of punching my personal unconscious in the throat would be but at that moment I was willing to find out.

He looked at my clenched fists and sheepishly asked, " I just did something punchable, didn't I?"

A nod. "Kickable, too," I replied while flexing my foot.

"Okay, okay," he laughed and raised his hands in mock surrender. "Seriously though. Put it all together. Me, your unconscious mind, me...c'mon."

I rolled my eyes for what must've been the nth time and thought it out.

Julian, my best friend since the playground days and my unconscious mind had teamed up to hijack my dream....My unconscious mind and Jay, one of the people I miss most in the world...oh, what the hell.

"Exactly," he smiled as I sighed and cursed under my breath.

(Belated)

So my birthday was in August, right?
Yeah. The big, “Oh, shit! I’m inching closer and closer to twenty five…which is almost thirty. How the hell did that happen? What have I done with my life? What is that annoying ass ticking sound I keep hea—is that my fucking biological clock? Laaaaaawwwdddddd; I ‘on wanna be old!” twenty two.
Once the initial shock of realizing that I’m growing older at what must be a non-linear—not to mention exceedingly annoying—rate, I decided I wanted to do something special to celebrate. But I didn’t know what to do.
I was thinking about doing something “deep” and “meaningful” to show how much I’ve “matured” with age. Y’know, because I’m known for being “shallow”, “nonsensical” and “immature”?
Yeah, no. I tossed that idea out really quick.
After that, I thought about doing a letter to my future self from my then present self so that when Future Ren read it, she’d (I’d?) be reading Past Ren’s thoughts. The meaningfully deep levels present had the potential to reach an annoyingly pretentious high, so before I could make my future self hate m then current, now past self, I decided to scrap the idea and push it along like ATCQ.
After a host of other terrible ideas, some of which are too terrible to even mention, I finally decided to shoot a birthday video…which I never actually finished. Or really even began for that matter. I quickly discovered that I have this weird verbal diarrhea meets ADHD thing goin’ on which is no good. Besides that, have you seen my skin? Horrible. I look like the “before” portion of a Proactiv ad, smh.
I ended up not doing anything. Which sucks. I didn’t post anything on my much more important and much less scarring (unless you happened to be my liver that night) twenty-first birthday and I completely ignored my second Bloggiversary back in February.
…But that wasn’t the point of this.
My birthday was suppose to be my relaunch date.
This, The (Infamous) Life, was something I started for me. Hell, it's still is for me. But lately, I've slipped and slacked off in the worst way. And I know that I've said this in the past, but that won't be happening again. I mean it this time.
So, with all of that said?
I’m officially back on my shit.

…Can I talk my shit again?

So I'm cleaning my room, right? Well, that's what I told people I've been doing at any rate. I've actually been enjoying a bit of Me time locked away here in my admittedly messy ass inner sanctum. Y'know, catching up on my much needed beauty sleep^[1] and sorting my nail polish collection and things of that nature. The finer things in life if you will.
That is, however, until I got bored enough to hijack Egg’s laptop and logged onto Aintshit Social Network # 3:
Tagged.com.
For the people out there that’re blissfully unaware, Tagged is a bit like MySpace meets Black Planet in terms of ratchet nutfuckery. It’s the type of site that makes you wish you could give yourself a real life virus scan in terms of general skeeviness. In short: it’s an awesomely bad place to hang out when you’re bored and it’s filled with the sorts of things that’ll make you love and loathe the Internet.Okay, mostly loathe it, but still. I can’t call it all bad. There’re actually quite a few decent people on there. Quite a lot of thirsty gentlemen in search of a good quenching, but hey, that’s the Internet for ya. If my DM inbox on Twitter could talk…
So there I was, lounging on my bed, listening to Gemineye’s “Penny for your Thoughts” on YouTube when I looked at my notifications and noticed that I had new messages. I clicked the link hoping that someone that I could actually stand had written me a message and let loose a string of curses that would’ve made the proverbial sailor blush when I found out who it was.
You see, for the past day and a half or so, this fool has been harassing me. At first, I thought it was funny in a pathetic sort of way, but now…
Not so much, no.
Dude has sent me a ton of messages—upwards of two and three at one time, smfh—and trying to get the exact order of things down has me confused, but here’s the latest round of What the Fuckness that he’s been sending me,
(Read from the bottom up; you know the deal)

 

Noticing that I changed my name to “Kyrie Eleison”, he sent a separate message asking if this is in fact my real name

 
By now, as I’m sure you understand, I was losing my cool, so when he sent me this

I decided to reply with

Which somehow turned into this
(You may have to click to enlarge these last few messages)


To which I replied

 
And he fired back with

I have no intention of responding by the way. I’m not too big a fan of being sexually harassed online.
I think the moral of today’s story is that the Internet can be a wonderful place full of many joys and wonders, boys and girls. But, if you happen to be me, it’s usually like the club on those rare occasions that I decide to go: full of horny, crazy old bastards.
Anyway doe.
If you’re one of the few people that’s been wonderin’ why I haven’t posted on here—I know, it shocked me to find out that people actually cared, too—you can find me sporadically posting over at The (Infamous) Life: V. 2.4.
Kbye.
♥ 

^{1 if you’ve seen me recently (…or at all) you would understand what I’m saying here is the absolute truth.}

Guess Who’s Bizzack?

If I wasn’t convinced that a wild Stan would appear on some Pokemon Diamond shit, I’d channel Pay-Pal’s supposed number one seller <Kanye voice>of all time!</Kanye voice> and hip-hop’s poster child for fellatio, lace front wigs, self hate botched plastic surgery and colored contacts by saying “I’ve been gone for a minute but I’m back wit’ the jumpoff”, but…y’know. I don’t have the time, energy or the very patience necessary to battle someone who plans on extolling the virtues of Ms. Kimberly Jones because she can make a Sprite can disappear in her mouth and because Hardcore use to be the shit back when I was in first grade[1], and I really can’t be bothered to be inadvertently dragged into that whole Nicki v. Kim thing right now. Beside all that, I’m fresh out of Master Balls. Not that I’d want to capture a wild Stan or anything, but eff it. I think someone out there knows what I’m trying to say. Maybe.
Anyway doe.
Shady bullshit in the introductory paragraph aside, it has been a minute since I’ve posted anything on here or my alternate blog of choice. Not that I’m about to apologize or anything like that. I’m sure that nobody, myself included, cares much or at all, so I’d just be wasting my breath and my keystrokes, but I’ve been busy-ish goin’ through some stuff lately. Nothing bad or even particularly good, just a lot of annoying and necessary, supposedly grown up, things.
During the first four months of the year, I lost a lot and, in exchange, I gained a lot of knowledge and insight. I learned a lot about people, things and situations and I’ve had to make a few not so minor adjustments to this (infamous) thing I call my life. I cut out a lot of shit and quite a few folks and now? Now I’m focusing on who and what matters most to me while chunkin’ the deuce to everything and everyone who never did.
…Ugh. That paragraph sounds like some of the empowering drivel designed to keep women single, lonely and bitter as hell for the rest of their lives, smh. Forgive me; it’s not even like that. I’d elaborate but…
I don’t wanna.
*shrugs*
lol.
Here’s to days filled with more consistent infamy.

♥

1 1996 was a long time ago…dammit, now I feel old.