Invisible weekend of corporeal punishment

Intro:

This weekend has passed by obscured by the hazes of excess and pain. My back pain has been an omnipresent and elemental force devouring my consciousness, and all attempts at fun have been somehow subducted beneath an incalculable malaise. I have been attempting to coerce inferior computer equipment to perform internet-telelphony services for which it is ill-suited, with tantalising but still unworkable results. From my window I see the perpetual shit-pile of the construction crew's abstruse doings, through my computer I see my dear friend Char feeling sad, and as I ride the MTA bus I am jostled to the core amid a bleary solar haze, and feel inexplicably empty.

Although THIS happened on the bus:

The other day I took the Nashville MTA bus downtown to my chiropractor for a cracking. It was incredibly hot outside, and I was all bleary from being unconscious and immobile, and I had just the tiny bit of walking-rigor mortis, and I missed the bus I was intending to take, so I walked a bit further to catch a different one. When it arrived it was stuffed completely full with humans. This was at about three o'clock. Why all of these humans were riding the bus at 3 p.m. is a mystery. It was standing-room only, and the ambience was surly. I found a spot at which I could stand and do my stuff and got out these placards that I carry around that have the names of bodily emissions on them. I hold the appropriate card up when one of said emissions makes its presence known aboard bus. What was in my Discman: Junkyard, by The Birthday Party.

The heat was just tremendous, and people were jostling against one another in a most bovine fashion. I thought about the mass of all of these people. I thought about how many pounds of meat, fat and bone it would all add up to if all of the people were rendered into those items and separated into big bins. I thought about the volume of oxygen consumed, the volume of CO2 exhaled, the volumes of other gases generated by these people if it were all bottled up and separated into pressurised tanks. Anyway, during this time I was also operating the placards like nobody's business, and people were pretending not to notice, but were noticing anyway, and finally this one woman in her early twenties started getting fidgety and commenced to make comments at a person she's sitting next to, whom I gathered was her boyfriend or husband or someone who performed a similar function. Soon they're both looking at me and talking, and the guy was eyeing me beadily, and I stared resolutely forward over the top of my glasses, cool and impassive (though I was becoming increasingly aware of this bloke's increasing interest in me, also during this time I noted that he was of a not unimpressive size, and was missing the odd tooth, and was obviously the sort of person with whom I would choose to steer generally clear, normally, for a number of reasons).

After about five minutes of this, the man with the teeth stood up and said "Hey!" and I did nothing. Then he said, "Hey, you in the hat!" (I was wearing a black fedora). "May I help you?" said I . Very cool. Inwardly nervous, though. I took my left hand off of the rail I was holding onto and prepared for unpleasantness. "Yeah, buddy, I think so." "Yes? How so?" I was sweating! Then he lowered his voice and uttered this:
"Look, mister, I hate to bother you, but you see, my girl over there really wants to be on television."

This was not at all what I was prepared for. "Er, does she!" I said, cocking an eyebrow as though I was deeply interested. I now thought the man must be mad, so I would diplomatically humour him. "Yeah, and we was wondering if you would mind letting her be in one of yore skits."

All kinds of lights came on at this point. It dawned on me that he and his lady friend must've confused me with one of these comedy-troupe people that sell their videos on late-night television. I deserved this for shaving, for once. I said, "I'm sorry, sir, but I'm not on television. If this is about the cards here, this is just an experiment and possibly an effort to improve our travelling conditions." So he said, "Then who's your buddy with the camera?" Indicating with his thumb over his shoulder. Ands sure enough, at the back of the bus was some guy taping the whole thing!

The guy at the back of the bus was just a tourist with a rather expensive DV outfit. But the whole episode made me look like a bit of a dufus, and I was shaken for a while afterward. The guy who came up to me about it was very cool about the whole thing, and I got off the bus several stops later.

Then there was the party:

I went to an art-gallery opening down-town this weekend, due to popular demand. The show was quite good, lots of local abstract artists, some of whom were good and some who weren't. The logistics of the party were handled very professionally, with very good wine and orderves and such. There were surprisingly few of the aggri-matic society-types there who like to go to art-gallery openings to pretend that they know stuff about art and try to impress their friends. Indeed, most of the crowd was composed of artists, and we had some great conversations about the future of visual art and Flash and the Internet. It was a great time, and thanks to Rob for the official invitation, but I would've showed up anyway. Got to give the people what they want.

But anyway the gallery-opening went beautifully, fantastically, but then there was this after-party. Let's not say too much of this. I made the mistake of stopping home to change out of my suit and into the All- Purpose-Uniform (abbreviated APU from here forward). The All-Purpose Uniform consists of: Black leather pants, motorcycle boots, a black silk t-shirt or other t-shirt , and a blazer. Somehow during that small interval my mind's squid got to thrashing about a little bit, making me sullen and slitty of eye. By the time I stepped out the door I was dominated by squid, malevolently staring about and all but baring my beak at people. The party looked like a big aquarium when I walked in the door. If I dropped fish food there would've been a great convergence upon it from below.

But this was all in my head! It was actually a nicely-done party; there was a bartender, and I drank martinis most of the night and made conversation that was less-than-scintillating! As was expected of me, I got to ranting in short order and a small group of groups of people gathered around me: those who thought I was funny, those who were concerned for my welfare (or so they thought), those who knew me and just wanted to talk to me, and the obligatory couple of women who thought I was attractive and wanted to find out if I'm REALLY this weird or if it's all just a big show. Wouldn't they like to know! But I realised then that I was the fish-food, and that I really needed to get the hell out of there. And so I left after three hours with a bottle of inferior-vintage Cab, went home and drank it by myself while listening to the Replacements' Pleased To Meet Me over and over and over.

The whole weekend was downhill from there

...with the exception of an isolated idea for a song that I shall explore in depth later on this week. Oh, and this caricature of me, executed on a bar napkin at the party: