Short story -- my emotional problems, your enjoyment!

Started by Weak2ndAct, October 11, 2003, 02:21:36 AM

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Weak2ndAct

I just stumbled upon this relic while doing some housecleaning on the hard-drive.  A 100% sad, true story from a few years back.  Made me laugh reading it again.  I really do have some issues I need to work out.  LA peeps should enjoy this one.

appearances
by *(bleep)*

So I’m a week or so in L.A. and decide it’s high time to get some L.A. clothes and I go to the Urban Outfitters store on Melrose, a two story place with that unfurnished-pipes-sticking-out-dirty-warehouse look, or simply cheap, as I like to call it, mostly because it will make my sister jealous because she lives for shopping and I get joy from making people jealous for such petty things and I see that the place has a lot of those t-shirts that you always see on the guys in the cool rock bands that are tight and out of date and have some old logo or corny saying it, which you would think would come from a Goodwill or Salvation Army but really came from a store just like this and after much consternation and throwing occasional peeping tom-ish glances at the ladies in the place because I’m still in that green-from-the-East phase where everyone I see is hot and reminds that I am not, I decide my first t-shirt purchase will be a powder blue number featuring Bruce Lee circa Enter The Dragon as a Lego with slash marks across his chest and I grab an XL of course, because I am fat, and the next fat t-shirt, or should I say “baseball style shirt,” since that’s what I’ve heard them called, the ¾ sleeved t-shirts with different colored sleeves, I buy is a powder blue/navy blue Atari shirt with the classic logo ironed onto the center with velvet and then I notice that I picked up another powder blue shirt and I wonder if that’s gay, but I like Atari games and spent much of my youth being jealous of those other kids who had them, so I figure what the fuck, someone will think this is cool or retro and maybe will this will make up for all my Atari-less years, so after that I scrounge around for a cool pair of pants which would be a much appreciated addition to my “wardrobe,” and I use quotation marks when I say wardrobe because in actuality it isn’t much of a wardrobe because my clothes basically consist of t-shirts that
1. Are black, to hide the fact that I am fat
2. Have some kind of picture from a movie, comic book, or some hopeless, geek-related thing because that’s what I thought was cool 5 years ago when my parents still bought me clothes
3. Are not cool
and dress pants that are frayed around the cuffs since they’re hand-me-downs from my dad’s work clothes and I’m too cheap and lazy to buy new ones because I’d rather spend my money on dvd’s and cigarettes so I own nothing really nice per se, save for my Mr. Blonde suit which doesn’t fit me anymore since my mom bought it for me when I was not as fat as I am now, so when I spot a pair of gray cargo-ish pants that are made out of the kind of material that you would expect to find on a spring jacket or something I think this looks cool and I grab them, then realize that these three items have already set me back a good eighty dollars, but hey, what a credit cards for, huh?, so I scrounge the clearance table next and see everything is too small for me, big surprise for the fat guy, and I am about to give up when I find a green, short-sleeved t-shirt that says “Coney Island” on the front in white and on the back is the number “31”, and the price is ten dollars, which seems like a steal at this place, I say as I try to not think about that I’ve never been to Coney Island and on my way down to the cash registers I spot a shelf of fancy ashtrays and peruse them with the scrutiny of buying a used car as I will be putting this thing through the wringer very soon since all I have at my apartment are beer bottles half full of water and butts which are not very appealing to the roommates, but an ashtray that will stink all day, now that’s more classy, and I find one that is metal and looks like a crystal ball, complete with a lid that opens and closes and after grabbing it I bring my purchases down to the register and am helped by a girl who has easily had a grand’s worth of tattoos and piercings done to her and is short, fat, and angry, as is her co-worker, and they are chatting about a bitch that they hate and how they need to turn on the air in here and when I flash my gap-toothed grin the cashier regards me as if I’m that relative that no one really likes because they drink all the time and occasionally get grab-ass, so I regard her as someone who is a lesbian because no man can drink enough beer and remain conscious to be able to get it up and fuck her, but perhaps that is too harsh and I realize that if I was wearing my new clothes she wouldn’t be looking at me that way, or maybe even worse since I would be wearing the clothes bought at her store, I think to myself as I slide my Platinum Mastercard across the counter, yes, I have a Platinum Mastercard, despite the fact I made $0 last year, there’s a $3000 limit, and I wonder who’s more dumb, the company who gave me the card, or me for taking it, and after I sign the receipt my stuff is tossed into a bag and I leave quickly because I am paranoid about loitering in stores after making purchases because it just doesn’t seem right to hang around once you’re done shopping, like hanging around the bathroom after a shit, and that night, like most nights lately, I go to the Saddle Ranch Bar and whatever on Sunset, a western-themed place with a mechanical bull and unfinished wood everywhere, but alas, no peanuts to throw on the floor, and I am wearing my Coney Island shirt and my gray pants, the outfit almost convincing me I look cool, fat, but almost cool, so I walk around the place, no one really paying any attention to me and my new clothes, so I decide to pay no attention to any of them, as if they would notice, and I decide to start the night off with a Big-Gulp sized Red Bull and Vodka which seems to be well worth the ten dollars I slide across the counter when I see the bartender dump two cans of the Bull and a shitload of vodka inside, and the moment I take the first sip of my drink I realize what is missing from the moment, a cigarette, so I push past the crowd around the mechanical bull, I would stay and watch if it were a cute girl on there because simple things like that get me off, but instead there’s a drunken white-hat guy, so I make my way through the heavy brown curtains and step into the almost chilly evening air to have my smoke and realize my drink is so big it should probably be taken with two hands, so I set it on the ground when I light my American Spirit Regular Filter, which is the kind David Lynch smokes from what I hear, so I smoke them too, because I am not cool, not to mention fat, and with the smoke finally going, I pick my drink back up and make like I’m out on the patio because my friends don’t smoke and not because I’m lonely or depressed, and a couple drags later I wish I had a cell phone to pretend to be talking into, which I know wouldn’t make me cool, actually annoying I’m sure, but at least I would seem like I had friends or something, so I take more sips of my drink, stare at the pavement, and then I hear a female voice ask me if I am from the east coast and I look up at the owner of the voice who is a semi-cute girl who kind of looks like Sarah Jessica-Parker with the exception that her eyes are half closed, obviously already hitting the wall from a night of boozing, but that doesn’t stop her from drinking some obnoxiously big, red, fruity drink, and yeah, I tell her, excited that A GIRL is talking to me, how’d you guess, and she points to my shirt and says it’s good to meet a fellow east-coaster out here and wow, I think, the clothes work, first night in the new clothes and a girl is approaching me for conversation because I am a smart, cool person, not fat, my upper body just looks big because my rib cage is permanently extended outward from 21+ years of sucking in my gut 24 hours a day, and my new mantra is: the clothes do make a man, and when the girl tells me her name I instantly forget it as I have a bad habit of doing that, but I think of her as Sarah, so Sarah tells me where she’s from, I tell her where I’m from and we both give vague descriptions of what we do: she’s doing some news anchor-internship-thing, I tell her I’m a screenwriter, which I know is a mistake, but I can’t resist because next week I have a big meeting with Fox Searchlight about my script and maybe that will impress her, and because I mention this she tells me she met a screenwriter this week at the beach and she’s supposed to meet him here, but he’s late, and when she says this I of course have to ask if he’s done anything I would have heard of and she says he was one of the writers for Goodfellas, but wasn’t credited and my movie-geek encyclopedia explodes into full gear causing me to vomit out that Martin Scorsese and Nicholas Pillegi wrote the script for the movie, based on Pillegi’s book WISE GUY, and that surely they were the only two writers on it, not a twenty-something guy she met at Venice beach and I catch myself getting very agitated and hyper, so I shut up, hoping that I didn’t just blow it, but by now Sarah looks around bored, I stare at my shoes, and finally her sleepy gaze wanders back to me and she asks me if she can bum a cigarette, which I hear a lot in L.A. because everyone smokes or is trying to quit, but will bum one the minute they see some poor rube who actually pays money for cigarettes, but I give her the cigarette because she is a girl and I have no balls to refuse, plus for a bonus, I get to make a point of telling her I smoke American Spirits, which are not that black-tar-shit called Marlboro lights that everyone seems to smoke these days and I rationalize this to myself that if I seem different, maybe I will seem cool, or at least that’s the plan, so we smoke and in no time the conversation dwindles down and Sarah puts out my cigarette after a few puffs, which I find affronting since they’re five bucks a pack out here and she tells me that she’s gonna go inside and look for her friends and see if that guy’s shown up yet and I get riled up again and tell her to introduce me to the supposed-writer-of-Goodfellas-guy when he shows up so I can pull back the curtain on the Wizard, not to mention show that I am a total fucking jerkoff that I’m letting it bother me, so I spend the rest of the night wandering around, smoking, drinking my drink and a second one, all the while keeping my eye on Sarah, watching her hang around a group of girls who all obviously think they are hot shit, girls who will never talk to me, and I see no screenwriter-ish guys around her at all and it gets me upset because I want to call bullshit on this douchebag who makes up incredible lies to unsuspecting girls on the beach, because I’m a fucking screenwriter with a big, important fucking meeting this week and Sarah should be excited about seeing me, a nice guy, so unable to stomach my solitude, I make my way across the bar and tap her on the shoulder and when she turns around it’s obvious she has forgotten who I am but a couple seconds later she remembers, unable to hide her disappointment, and over the bar noise I ask if that ‘writer’ has shown up yet, and in doing so I actually have the audacity to put finger quotes around the word “writer” and when she says no, he didn’t, I retort with that’s because he’s a fuckin’ liar, told you so, and it’s become very apparent that the vodka speaks for me now which leads us to an awkward silence and the truth that I know this situation is all so very hopeless, and Sarah just wants to run out of here before I dig myself a deeper hole so I say nice meeting you, good luck with your internship and she says thanks, smiles, and leaves, forgetting to wish me luck for my big meeting, but I’ll show her one day, and now I’m pretty drunk at this point, decide it’s high time to walk home so I take the three mile walk down Sunset as best as I can, and am sweating a bit when I get home and as I lie in my inflatable bed and masturbate, I close my eyes and think about Sarah begging for my dick, the dick of a nice guy, the dick of a guy that wouldn’t lie to her, and when that doesn’t do the trick, so I switch my mind over to an ex-girlfriend who will never talk to me again, and I come instantly.  When I open my eyes, I realize I just jizzed on my new Coney Island shirt.

SoNowThen

That's fucking great! Ha!

"so I push past the crowd around the mechanical bull, I would stay and watch if it were a cute girl on there because simple things like that get me off"

that's my favorite part. i'm so exactly like that...
Those who say that the totalitarian state of the Soviet Union was not "real" Marxism also cannot admit that one simple feature of Marxism makes totalitarianism necessary:  the rejection of civil society. Since civil society is the sphere of private activity, its abolition and replacement by political society means that nothing private remains. That is already the essence of totalitarianism; and the moralistic practice of the trendy Left, which regards everything as political and sometimes reveals its hostility to free speech, does nothing to contradict this implication.

When those who hated capital and consumption (and Jews) in the 20th century murdered some hundred million people, and the poster children for the struggle against international capitalism and America are now fanatical Islamic terrorists, this puts recent enthusiasts in an awkward position. Most of them are too dense and shameless to appreciate it, and far too many are taken in by the moralistic and paternalistic rhetoric of the Left.

aclockworkjj

I gotta have a drink with this guy!!..haha

..being a fellow chump that actually buys his own cigarettes too.  Really tho, your story is a great example of why it is that I tend to stay clear of that scene.  Though fun with friends, I can't go out around hollywood and take a lot of people serious (everyone knows someone or does something, yet they still work a shit job...ok?).  It's the "cool" place to be though...piff.

Weak2ndAct

Wow, glad you guys enjoyed it.  I was worried the length and the fact that 99% of it was a run-on sentence (intentional) would prevent anyone from reading it.  

Yeah, I used to do that shit every night, go to all those clubs and bars-- haven't done that in a looooooong time.  The only time I venture down there is to watch Browns games at Dublin's on Sunday mornings.

MrBurgerKing

Nice autobiography, Weak2ndAct. Good job showing the bimbo who's who. How did your meeting with FOX SEARCHLIGHT go?

Weak2ndAct

Yeah, I really "showed" her what's what.

As for Searchlight, this was a couple years ago.  They liked my script, wanted us to get 1 of 2 directors they wanted to work with.  We got one of them right away, but they still ended up passing on the project (deemed not commercial enough and they were worried about similiarties to 'Election'-- the only one I see is that both are set in high school).  But it still worked out in the end, b/c I remained in touch w/ the director and still work w/ him now.

ono

Could you, like, "paragraphinate" that so I could, like, read it?  :-D

EDIT: Never mind.  Sort of.  I see that you meant it to be some kind of crazy run-on sentence that you expect 99% of people to never read.  Yeah ... sounds interesting, but I can't read it.  That paragraph thing -- or the lack thereof -- yeah, it's a bitch.  ;)

coffeebeetle

Weak, you're hilarious dude.  I thought your story was great, and the run-on style lends itself to the frustration you're feeling...I plan on moving out to the West Coast (I'd like to move to San Diego); your story seemed so spot on to me (as far as how I imagine people and places to be out there) that it actually gave me pause to moving out there.  
Anyway, nice job.
more than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. one path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. the other, to total extinction. let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
woody allen (side effects - 1980)

Ghostboy

Quote from: OnomatopoeiaThat paragraph thing -- or the lack thereof -- yeah, it's a bitch.  ;)

You're missing out on some good literature if you don't like really long paragraphs...

ono

Quote from: Ghostboy
Quote from: OnomatopoeiaThat paragraph thing -- or the lack thereof -- yeah, it's a bitch.  ;)

You're missing out on some good literature if you don't like really long paragraphs...
Oh, I've read a lot of literature with long paragraphs, so I have an idea of what I'm missing.  Still doesn't mean I have to like reading it.  This, though, is just a big clump of text.  And I've read whole stories that are like that, too.  And stories written in second person that are like that.  Now that's scary (well, depending on who you ask).

And generally, it doesn't help when an artist of any sort alienates his audience.  The idea is he should try to make his work at least welcoming enough so the person experiencing it will be sucked in and want to stay with it.  Or so I've been told.  Me, I'm the type of writer who would write long paragraphs as well, but then people'd bitch about that, too.  So it goes both ways.

Gsus4

hmm
there is nothing ghey about powder blue
its my fav kind of
cotton candy

i tried punching the clown, once
to my ex girlfriend
her and her boyfriend were very upset
as i had promised to stay quiet
in the corner
in my chair
but i did not
he is recovering quickly
my condolances
sorry david

my bad

perhaps
(played 3X0013)

Thrindle

Quote from: Weak2ndActwhen the girl tells me her name I instantly forget it as I have a bad habit of doing that

I have a bad habit of doing this too.

I thought your story was brilliant.  Perfect ending, and you added details that really allowed for Realism.  

I hope you weren't completely capturing yourself, because that would make me a little sad...  but hey, even if you were, who hasn't masturbated to the thought of an ex that you no longer speak to?  :-D

Fantastic dude... well done.
Classic.