Menial

The state of South Dakota is basically a large principal’s office. Every room is painted some color of brown, Benjamin Moore would say the palette ranges from “Pot Roast” to “Meatloaf” completely ignoring the shades of brown that aren’t served Monday through Friday at office cafeterias. I enjoy the lower Dakota, but like lonely bricks of meatloaf under heat lamps, it makes me sad. My friend Julie got married this past weekend beneath a popcorn ceiling, in a carpeted church with 200 people wearing various unfortunate patterns of geometric shapes floating on top of each other and fighting for polyester space. Everybody dressed like Blossom. Less than one year ago, Julie lived in the south, most of the time on my rented couch in my rented apartment. She was cutthroat, she had a Blackberry full of important names, and a schedule filled with efficient lunches. She also happens to be one of the very sharpest knives in the drawer, and looks like a better dressed version of Lynda Carter in Wonder Woman. His combination of IQ, T and A made certain coveted lunches very much, within her reach. She has mutated from the deadly corporate cleaver in the proverbial business drawer to June Cleaver, which is much better for her. I was really happy to be there, I danced to a Billy Joel song, the shower in my room at the Marriot Courtyard was large enough for about six handicapped people to have a Greek orgy in, and I thought my chest was going to explode when I hugged my long lost buddy. For some reason however, I also felt like throwing up a little bit the entire time. Julie, who less than a year ago, was falling asleep atop a pile of half crushed Miller Lite cans in my living room, had managed to find the love of her life while balancing her fancy job, a cross country move, and looking like a man’s illustration of a perfect leotard wearing woman, I on the other hand, have a blog, I have so much time that I spend hours writing about how much time, but I am still alone. I am sleeping with only my computer and my guitar ( Note- I tell people I’m sleeping with a guy called “Mac Gibson”….they think that’s a stupid joke too, so don’t feel bad) There is a reason for my failure aside and its no a gypsy curse, I have concluded that my “vibes” suck. I am in possession of terrible vibes that escape from their viberglass insulated enclosure and ransack the world around me. Stupid vibes. Imagine if you were a lamb and all you wanted to do was hang out with some other likeminded lambs, maybe even get fluffed by a suitable ram. Imagine pulling this off if you bore a “striking” (this is a pun. no accident.) resemblance to a King cobra. So instead of attracting lambs and rams (and hams, strawberry jams, and trans ams..) I attract cobras and weirdos who stick me in hand woven baskets and expect me to dance to their terrible flute music. Men tend to think I’m an entirely different person than I am, they tend to think I’m a flaming imbecile with the IQ of toilet brush. This became painfully evident to me at the carpeted celebration of my friend’s blessed union. 

I got to South Dakota just in time for the rehearsal, I literally changed into my yellow dress, marveled over the fact that I had two queen sized beds and only one body, and was shuttled over to the church. Inside, I met “The Guy Who Plays Touchscreen Poker”, a not very distant relative of Jules. He was very nice, his shirt had lots of buttons and his blue jeans were from Italy. It was he, who was in charge of delivering me to the post practice roast beef and green bean extravaganza. He was quiet, almost to the point where I thought he was angry at me or an anti-Canadianist, until we got inside his incredibly clean BMW. Once he was comforted by the safety of his incredibly confident automobile, he wouldn’t shut up…about his self assured Beemer. If BMW was hiring any sales fraulein, I would be recruited tomorrow. I know things about run flat tires, GPS navigation systems, and suspension that I never, ever wanted to know. I know BMWs have an inline 6 cylinder engine, rear wheel drive, and 6 speed Steptronic with paddle shifters, how sad is that? I ride a bicycle with no shoes on most of the time, things like Bluetooth Wireless Communication don’t exactly turn my fucking crank. I should emphasize again, that he was very nice. If he sends me an email, I will send him an email back because I genuinely hope he will be doing lovely, even thought the things that make him feel lovely make me feel nothing. We hung out for the rest of night, linked only by our love of Jules and beer, and I got to hear all about how selling mini mansions makes you very rich and how girls who visit tanning bed like to steal money and pierce their belly buttons. I was sad by the recitation of facts and figures that he thought made up his person, I was even sad that he ran two miles a day, but I was most upset by the reality that I looked like the kind of person who gave rats ass about all that careless, kennel club-ish, information. Specs mean nothing to me, but my unfortunate runaway vibe suggested I was a real she-dick. He’d recently had a broken engagement so he was sad too, and after two hours of Touchscreen poker and Video Keno, he drunkenly confessed that he was smitten. He was not really, obviously. I suppose he thought I was a good investment of energy like buying plots of land, running two miles a day, or driving a German sedan the colour of a gun. I would be a shitty addition to his collection of stuff and that’s what I told him in a much nicer language. There was a good heart in there, even if he did have a tribal armband tattoo and knew where the oblique muscles were. I don’t think he understood why I wasn’t interested and I hope he doesn’t start running an extra mile because of it.

I wore an outfit to Julie’s wedding that had been rumpled by airplane travel, probably because I thought it practical to stuff all of my clothing into my laptop bag with my computer. It was a dumb idea. I would have been laughed at if I was not in a town where people were allowed to go in the shopping mall with neither shirts nor shoes because to be quite frank, I look like I’d been late night assaulted in a parking lot. Due to the fact that I looked like a victim on CSI I was surprised when ANOTHER renegade vibe escaped and returned with another unsuitable suitor. The wedding reception would have been a great place to meet somebody funny or a taxidermist because it was at the zoo and we were literally in a room surrounded by stuffed endangered species. There was a large stuffed walrus with scary plastic eyes staring at me while I ate my wild rice and very frosted cake. I did not get to meet a witty taxidermist who would lighten the mood, instead, I met a man I have met at least sixty times in my life, a Jewish New Yorker. I love Jewish New Yorkers, they have ridiculous accents, every sentence spoken sounds like a retort in a heated argument, and they always know a bunch about Frank Sinatra and baseball teams. “The Guy Who Thinks I Have a Green Kitchen” walked up to me and did not say hello, he said;
GreenKitchen- I like what you’re wearing
GK-Its vintage isn’t it?
Me-Actually, I bough--
GK-Boom! I knew it was vintage. From the forties?
Me- Well--
GK- I knew it was from the forties. I bet you live in a period home, a period home with modern lines.
Me- I don’t really know, its--
GK- You like antiquing (←statement , not a question) I love antiquing.
GK-What colour is your kitchen? Its green. Boom! Its avcado green
Me- I wouldn’t call it gree--
GK- See? You got kitchen a green. I’m good.

Apparently, I have a green kitchen somewhere.
I don’t, but I let him believe I did because I was getting a bit anxious. “The Guy Who Thinks I Have a Green Kitchen” didn’t get to know people, he just KNEW people. He thought I was “real cute” and that I should move to Williamsburg, “maybe the east side” because "I look like like an eastside girl". I was trying to learn the differences between dead gazelles, gnus, and impalas as he was talking at my face, I needed something to do while he was thinking for the both of us. Eventually “The Guy who Plays Touchscreen Poker” rescued me, as even he could see that I had that “Gnu in headlights” look about me. . “The Guy Who Thinks I Have a Green Kitchen” was probably a great dude, he probably yelled at the Yankees, and knew where to get a killer Rueben at 3am in Brooklyn, but he didn’t know shit about me OR the colour of my kitchen (Its somewhere between buttercup and creamed corn in case you were wondering) and the end of the day, he didn't care. 

After the wedding reception was ended in favour of Jules wedding conception, the whole lot of us ended up a Harley Festival listening to a band that sounded like REO Speedwagon, me, The Guy who Plays Touchscreen Poker”, “The Guy Who Thinks I Have a Green Kitchen”, a cousin from the quad city area, a cousin who was a recovering meth addict, and the former meth addicts’ 18 year old son ( a King Cobra in training) I didn’t sleep well when I got back to my two sizes too big room probably because all the newly constructed identities that had been made for me over the weekend were hogging the bedspace. I felt like I needed two Advil and a lobotomy to fix my shitty vibes. I at least needed a really distinctive haircut that had the words “I DON’T HAVE A GREEN KITCHEN OR DRIVE A CAR WITH LEAHER SEATS” shaved into the back. Unfortunately my head is not big enough to accommodate such a statement. I don’t think it was the state of South Dakota that made me sad, I think it was just my state of being in the state of South Dakota and THAT state was a state of distress (I just wanted to see how many states I could throw in there. Impressive) I makes sense that a great dude has not found me yet, its because my outside is making my inside look bad. I hope I will stop releasing idiot pheromones into the wilderness soon so I will not ever have to make polite conversation about Horsepower and paint chips ever again.