what happend to me, a story for chojin

[Pentegarn]

There needs to be a trailer, like you have for the summer blockbusters

[george]

Aftermath: part 1

what do you do when you are upset? i am pretty sure most people would have slapped Nancy, chased that guy outside and kicked his ass. i just stood there. i just stood there and thought about the day i fell in love with Nancy.

i was working at Ames. Ames was a shittier version of KMart, and at this point in time no one had even heard of Wal-Mart in the north east. i loved my job. i had just moved back to MD from Mississippi, was having sex with the girl who worked in the she department (she was a Ms Maryland contestant) at least once a day while on the clock, and had reached legendary status in pissing my boss off. i would take a Talking Pee Wee Herman Doll:



then turn on the PA system for the store, pull the string, and blare Pee Wee through the whole place. The manager could never catch me doing it, and my co-workers hated him so much that no one would rat me out. The bane of my existence at Ames was getting shopping carts.

Now a days they have those little carts that they use to assist pushing the carts through the store. I hate those fucking things. In my day the carts were made of metal, all had bad wheels, and there was no happy ass cart corral to park the carts in. I would have to walk the whole parking lot to gather the carts, then push those heavy fucking things back into the store. to this day i will not put a cart into one of those cart corrals, fuck those lazy bastards and the assisted pushing of plastic shopping carts.

so, to pass the time i would sing songs while i gathered carts. i would sing metallica, i would sing aerosmith, i would sing skynyrd, GNR, and i would rap. Nancy and i went to church together as kids. one day we were working as voluteers at a church dinner and we snuck out to the parking lot and made out for most of the night--she was the first girl i ever made out with--and then promptly never saw her again until a very hot june day in 1998. i was rapping Public Enemies now classic "Don't Believe the Hype" and pushing ever fucking shopping carts. and a sweet voice behind me said "Hi"

I turned around and met my doom. Big brown eyes, long brown hair, and a beautiful smile. i was smitten. they say you know the moment you meet somone if you are ever going to be in love, and i would have said that it was bullshit until that moment. After that moment i knew i would have followed Nancy to hell if she asked (and she did), and done it smiling (and i did).

For the next seventeen years we went through the wars together. through good and bad, through everything i have told you so far (and a million that are just too personal) i always believed that our pathes would lead us back to being the two people who instantly fell in love because she liked the fact that i would sing in my awful voice and be unafraid of who heard, and because in my soul i believed that she heard the truth and understood.

I stood there and i thought as i had so many times about that girl i loved so much. i thought about the redemption that time would give to us both. all those days in our future when the fires had grown low and we had come to the end and watched the world burn together and the power of all that time had overcome the momentary hardships and pain and smoothed it all out into a story we could both be proud of.

i thought about all of that and went out to my car to get my gun.

ok, brb gotta pee.

[george]

Aftermath p.1 continued:

I didn't really have a gun. I wish I did. It would have made a better story, and at times i have told this to people for dramatic effect. here are some lies about myself that i have perpetuated in my lifetime that make me happy:

1. I have a tattoo on the inside of my wrist. i tell people it is the chinese symbol for monkey. i think i have only told like five people what it really means because explaining the real meaning would take too long and be too personal. the story of how i got this tattoo goes like this:

For Zoe's 14 birthday Nancy and I took Zoe to get her eyebrow pierced. The guy that was going to do the piercing was a family friend, had pierced both my and Nancy's eyebrows and ran a successfull tattoo shop until he died recently from the same type of blood infection that killed Bernie Mac.

So the guy swabbed Zoe's eyebrow, placed the clamp, and promptly pierced a vein. After a few seconds of hurried activity the guy turns to me and says "i'm so sorry, i did not check for a vein, i did both of yours, you should have told me you were not her father!"

calmly i replied, "i am her father."

He gave me the universal look that people give when they know that they have just gotten themselves into a conversation they don't want to have. he did not want to explain genetics to someone who was not going to listen, much less shatter the emotions of a young girl and her father(?). Instead he told us to go wait in the lobby to make sure that Zoe wasn't gonna be all fucked up from damage to that vein.

to distract ourselves from the great truth that we had just learned (although i have yet to find anything definitive confirming that vein placement has anything to do with genetics like eye color does) zoe and I started looking through tattoo books. she wanted to get one (and it was fine by me) but her mom would not let her. instead she picked one out for me: the chinese symbol for monkey.

i love that story.

2. I have met Justin Timberlake. Tuesday and I started this lie and tell it whenever we get the chance. this lie went so far that we faked JT's signature on a poster, and got a bday cake for T that said "love you T, from JT" anytime anyone tells us how they met someone famous, we double team them with our account of how we met JT:

We were bored one day and listening to 99.5, the local Pop music station. We called in to the station to request a song and just happened to win a contest, out of sheer luck. we got free tickets to his show and to meet JT backstage.

instead of being the dousche we expected him to be, JT turned out to be an awsome guy. Instead of just hanging out for a few minutes, we hung out together all afternoon. JT bought us pizza, and we all became great friends.

we will dogpile more and more onto this story until whoever we are lying to gets mad or decides to call us on it. it is great fun, and really great on those pompous people who like to name drop.

Since this the last time i will tell this story i will carry on with the truth. i went out to my car and started crying. i cried like a big fat bitch of a baby. i saw the future i hoped for go up in smoke. the life i suffered for, endured for, dreamed of, worked for, my whole vision of the purpose of my life, my reward for it was gone.

my shinning vision of the future had turned into a great void of nothing in the space of a day. to say i was hurt is not even right. she had killed me. the person i was right up until that moment was gone completely. sitting in the shitty parking lot, of a shitty nightclub in southern maryland i died and was wiped clean. nothing mattered.

then my cell phone rang. it was zoe. she wanted to know when i was going to come home. she wanted to make cookies, wanted me there because she and the other kids loved me and needed me.

so i went back into the club, and called the doorman over. they would not let me back in. they were afraid i was gonna start trouble. i told them that the bitch had my money, that she could go fuck the russian army for all i cared but that if she didn't give me my christmas money right fucking now i was going to go an epic level of apeshit on everyone in the place.

they drug her over, and she gave me my cash. i told her not to come home ever again. it was all over, and i never wanted to see her again.

i went home and made cookies with the kids. we had a good time.

i did not see Nancy again until Christmas Eve.