The Grass-stained amorist

So it may come to a surprise to many of my readers that I have, in fact, starting dating an attractive young woman. Go ahead and gasp. I promise not to be hurt. I totes can't hear your gasp anyway, if you hadn't noticed. While most of my crushes yield the same results (*ahem* FAILURE) through action or inaction, this one- somewhat ironically- paid off despite my denial/avoidance of the whole thing. I do not recommend this strategy for anyone else. Actually, I recommend the opposite. Leaving the initiative up to another, whom you are not sure feels like taking it into his/her own hands or even if they feel remotely the same way as you do is like betting that the cake that you just dropped off of the top of a parking garage will not land on one very unlucky pedestrian. I was extremely fortunate that someone was frank enough with me to take the reigns. I was a bit too slow in this department. I know what all of you are thinking. "Oh my god, but Craig totally seems, like, ambitious and exudes, like, a super-intellectual aura." I know, I know. You might very well be shocked to learn that behind my brilliance-laden facade lurks an unerringly stupid creature. I was especially putty around this young lady. I was seriously very much like putty around her, though not the kind any desirable person would be interested in molding or even the "silly" kind of putty that can be used to press against the page of a newspaper to attain a reverse image of the latest "Get Fuzzy" or "Marmaduke". More like the kind of putty that a child would leave on the living room floor collecting dust bunnies and dog hair. I won't try and fool you. I shan't pretend to be one of the finer putties. I know my place in the putty world. I know what putty category I fit into. I'm not trying to be negative. I just know most women don't glance twice at me and it has a little something to do with the combination of my fashion sense, awkward body shape, awkward mannerisms, repellent looks, degenerating book-smarts, deteriorating common sense, lack of career or goals whatsoever, abrasive and/or untimely sense of humor and an all-around dreaded personality. I suppose I could have said "a combination of all of my traits", but I like to type. This young person seems to see through all or most of these faults, though, or maybe even enjoy them. God help her, if this is the case. Where I live, I mean, is usually enough to send any creature with complex thought processes (let alone attractive human beings) to turn and bound for the nearest exit. Who honestly isn't stoked on the ability to make a mess of a living space despite a complete lack of furniture, and walls painted so sloppily that they could double as a Tristeza record cover.
I have to admit, this all makes me want to buy her a car, build her a house, or take her out for an expensive dinner, none of which I am capable of. Shucks, another person close to me let down once again.
And though this situation is not yet ripe, I'm learning hard lessons left and right. I have to admit, however, I'm not sure where the "men are from Mars, women are from Venus" thing came from. Venus has a much more hostile, dangerous atmosphere and I find her atmosphere rather accommodating, like Mars. I'm much more like Venus myself, given the fact that only one probe has ever successfully penetrated the atmosphere and snapped pictures of its surface. This was not meant to imply anything physical, just an ornery planetary joke. Also, like Venus, I draw the least amount of attention of the terrestrial planets these days. Self-deprecating, inner-solar-system-referencing aside, I was speaking of lessons learned. As our present situation took shape, very quickly and awkwardly (like a romantic comedy written by a 12-year-old), my overall happiness improved, while a lot of other parts of my life slowed or came to a complete stop. Having this lady-friend interested in yours truly as well as living in a house with some fucking wild-ass friends has forced my social life into full-bloom and simultaneously shattered any other ambitions I previously had. I'm definitely not complaining, but I would still be willing to bet that shortly after the advent of the physical relationship, a number of as-yet-unknown afflictions to mankind suddenly presented themselves. A few of these being: writer's block, missed classes, unemployment, runny noses, tunnel vision, radiation sickness, food poisoning, ingrown toenails, burst blood vessels, genocide, global warming, jam bands, Danielle Steel novels, and the full-length feature film "Remember the Titans". Just kidding. I actually believe that if someone were in a physical relationship at a special point in time, we might have been able to dodge the bullet that is "Remember the Titans". I mean, what a piece of garbage. Who was digging through the trash pile behind some high-school-aged aspiring screenplay writer's house when they found that fucking gem? Really? Come on. I could piss a more interesting movie idea into the snow than what they came up with. In July. And execute it better. I could get really immature and call whatever studio "exec" that gave the go-ahead to that movie a "fart knocker" or a "penis wrinkle" but it would just get ugly and I don't want you to have to see that. Or read it. I... uh, whatever.
N E Wayz, things are going pretty good in this new city. I've some silly stories to tell already and I promise to get around to them. The two next posts should be (in no particular order) a Stormgren Craigslist Singles Ad and a chronicle of my job-hunting interview failures, tying in problems with unwelcome erections. I hope this post finds you all well and in good spirits, as I feel like a million cash-dollars myself.

Hopefully not failing for long,
Craig

I'm Like, sooooo Content with Impending Doom Pt 2

Any one friend of mine from the Bay can attest to my living with 5 or so people off-and-on for about year in a one-bedroom apartment. This was a necessary evil to move out to the Bay apparently, though I've heard of no other such horror story.
The night we moved in, on New Year's Eve of 2004-2005, we went to a party at the- what I now understand to be defunct- 58 Tehama art and show space. A friend of mine got so drunk, she threw her new year's glass at an overpass and started quite the trend. People got so stoked on this act of rebellion toward the overpass that for the rest of the night, many party-goers would end their drinks the same way. I went for an adventure farther down the overpass and tried to relieve myself underneath it. This should've been a simple enough task, except for the part where I fell into a giant crack in the earth. There was a large fault- I believe where tectonic plate-shifting had occurred- that my drunken SONAR had apparently missed. I fell about knee-deep into the large crack, scraping my shins from ankle to kneecap, and burying my shoes to the top in mud. I spent the rest of the night wandering around in mud-encased shoes, while people had 5- to 6-person kissing circles. After the party, on the way home, a friend of mine insisted on running up to every other pedestrian he could find, forcing a high-five from them and yelling "2005, year of the high-five!" He then lead us a good 10 blocks in the wrong direction before realizing where we were. Shortly before we arrived home, I attempted to give a friend of mine a downhill piggyback ride. She is not a heavy person at all, but then again, I'm not that strong. I got quite a ways down the hill before coming to a sliding to a stop on my knees, adding another injury to my legs that I wouldn't feel until morning. The night was, however, a triumph. We all are still alive to this day.
I remember when I first proved my worth to a friend of mine who lived in the Inner Richmond. We got ridiculously drunk (surprise, surprise) and decided to walk around (and terrorize) the neighborhood. For one reason or another, there were at least 2 or 3 computer monitors or TVs laying out in front of people's houses. We decided throwing these straight up into the air was a novel idea. It was. As much as I feel bad after committing acts of vandalism, this was extremely loud and hilarious, and we were both so lazy that we couldn't manage to run half a block before slowing to a drunken stagger and continuing our journey like cops don't roll down Clement St. every 2 minutes. Though I don't remember the next part, my friend let me know about it the next day. He was walking ahead and he looked back when I hadn't said anything stupid in a while. He saw me trying to pull a giant fern-like plant from a pot in front of somebody's home. He said that I insisted it wanted to come with us and kept pulling until all the soil was coming out of it, as well. I eventually gave up. Lucky for the plant, I have the strength of about two babies. I'm pretty sure that's how you scientifically measure human strength. In Baby Units. BU's, if you will. And I will.
This same friend and I continued terrorizing the Richmond disctrict for years to come. One other account begins on the 4th of July in the year of 2006. He and I drank- and this was not premeditated- a fifth of whiskey to the dome. To the face. "Straight to the head like a fuckin' Excedrin," if one were to quote Lil Wayne. Or maybe it was Keats. Anywho, by the time the sun was coming up, a conversation about my need for a shelf CD player emerged and in our state, we decided to drive to Stonestown to see if we couldn't find one. I had the money and he had the car. The math worked. We hit the road and shortly arrived at the vast empty parking lot that is Stonestown at 8:00 in the morning. We had failed to anticipate the fact that most of these establishments would not be open until 10 or 11. We stood around in the parking lot, peeing beside the van and probably talking a lot of shit about people and bands. It was very surreal and to an observer, probably reminiscent of a typical parking-scape in the Midwest. We got impatient and decided that Frye's Electronics was a safe bet and that the hours spent driving to San Jose would work up our hunger enough to justify a trip to Falafel Drive-In. This was an exciting prospect and we soon embarked on our journey while dreams of falafel, fries and hot sauce danced in our heads. Despite inebriation and exhaustion setting in at an alarming, exponential rate, we managed to get there in one piece. We did, however, choose to eat falafel first. We had to wait about 15 minutes for Falafel Drive-In to open, so we killed time at a thrift store. We then walked back to claim our hard-earned falafel. This was the last straw. We were drunk, fucked on coffee, tired and quickly slipping into food-coma. We probably should have died on our feet. We must be made of sturdier material than I think, because we didn't die. We even attempted buying a shelf system from Frye's. I couldn't read any of the product specifications, though, and my friend went back out the van, afraid that he might vomit. Since I had effectively forgotten how to read, I followed shortly. We made it back up the city by around noon or 1:00. I drank a bottle of Gatorade in a record amount of gulps and passed out 5 minutes after I walked in my door.
Just this summer, a friend of mine came to visit me in SF. I was feeling a bit down at the time, for no apparent reason, really. He was essential in plucking me from my stew, though, as he reminded me what life was about. Causing trouble. Well, causing trouble and not getting caught. Despite accidentally getting a roommate and I banned from our regular bar down the street, getting his car towed, and a few random acts of vandalism, he had also managed to get a bag of money and weed caught on top of an awning that he insisted would be an excellent obstacle to throw it over. My roommate and I then boosted him up on this stupid-precarious canvas awning above a dog-grooming shop to retrieve that dank. He was climbing all over this awning- this awning that was not made to support human weight- when a lightbulb flashed into existence above my head. It struck me as odd that no one had ever written a story about a young gentleman with the strength and agility of a spider. Feel free to use this idea as I haven't the time to focus on it. Too many genius ideas, you know. Not good for the old cardiovascular, I mean. Anywhat, I ended up making my friend sit there for an extra minute, while I took terrible pixelated photos with my cell phone, once again ignoring the fact that the SFPD patrol our section of Clement Street rather routinely. In spite of the obvious danger of law enforcement catching me in ridiculous, sometimes embarrassing, criminal activity, I always seem to effectively turn one cheek, and then the other. All with a little help from my friends.
There was a time, however, that I was not so lucky. It being my 21st birthday, I was well-ahead of schedule with my first legal night in a bar setting. I enjoyed myself and my friends were very generous with the tab I racked up. Upon leaving, I decided that urinating on the side of a Popeye's was definitely on my list of priorities. I was suddenly awash in an intense light and a booming voice intruded on my existence. It was two young members of the local constabulary doing their rounds in their gas-electric roundabout. He was yelling at me through a megaphone, tell me to stop peeing on the building. An obvious attempt to embarrass me, as their was no way I could respond with a smart-ass remark without having a citation or fine of some sort being thrust upon me. I kept my cool, turned around, and proceeded toward the car. They then yelled at me- almost defensively- to pull my pants up. Oh, yeah. That old chestnut. You know, how people wear pants. Especially when speaking with an officer of the law. They then gave me some grief which I'm sure I didn't register and they sped away as if on important business. Probably off to harass someone with a bigger nose.
Many other things happened to my friends and I during my four years in San Francisco. A few highlights being my punching a hole in the window of a laundromat, then denying it to the people that were standing there with me, while my hand is bleeding at my side. Or falling asleep in the middle of a rave that was supposed to be a young gentleman's private birthday party. A young gentleman that I didn't know. I drank way to fast and then slept for a good hour or two in this 95 Decibel pulsing organism of sound and sweating people, sitting on a chair while young people danced all about me and occasionally tried to figure out amongst themselves who I had shown up with. I, actually, had shown up with my roommate of the time, and he luckily woke me up and took me home early, so as not to embarrass myself further. These are just a few stories that I will not elaborate on at this time, mostly for the reader's sake.
My point being, there's too much that happened and I don't at all regret spending the last four years of my life in this fucking wonderful place.

I have talked shit and sarcasm to drunk rugby players, lived in amazing houses that I may never see the likes of again, punched walls, windows, and garage doors in frustration, bonded with my mother over food and wine in Napa and Sonoma, learned what a proper burrito is, gotten drunk and fired roman candles in countless public parks, cumulatively bought more records than I'll probably ever own for the rest of my life, learned how to talk to people, learned how to beat a joke to death, tactlessly slipped "science fiction is the only true form of literature" into conversation, scanned the Milky Way from a pitch-black, sleeping Stinson Beach, and lived with amazing strangers. Most importantly of all, I've met some of the most inspiring, loving people I've ever met in my life. They have befriended me despite my dizzying list of character flaws and rescued me countless times from danger, boredom and depression. All of the care they've shown me leaves me shaky but warm with gratitude. That's totally a weird and cheesy way to put it, but it's hard to describe how much I appreciate it. I learned that people actually give a shit. Sometimes even about me. I'm stoked on it. If I can ever take a bullet for one of these people, I hope they'll ask me without hesitation.

Forever making out with San Francisco,
Craig