“Look on the Bright Side – You Might’ve Been Noticed”

"Tut-tut, what language!"

Look at me.  Fucking look at me.  I’m not sure if I’ve quite mastered mind control, but it’s a decent attempt.  There she sits, iPod buds in her ears and polar blue eyes looking at the ceiling, the seats, out the wide side windows; anywhere but at me.  C’mon, bitch.  Look at me, just once.  Nothing.  I’m less than nothing, just a thing to not acknowledge like a lump of shit or a dribbling pile of vomit.  But I’m handsome.  So look at me.

              It’s impossible to meet anybody in this city.  I try, God but I do.  Maybe it’s just me, maybe I’m just too old-fashioned a kind of fashionable.  C’mon, everybody likes a guy in a polo.  It’s a fucking Lacoste.  Look at these Ray Bans on my head.  Look at me.  It’s not like this stuff comes cheap either, I’ve got money.  I’ve got money, if that’s all you really want.  She’s not looking.  Maybe she’s just being coy, or can’t help being stuck up, or maybe thinks she’s a dyke.  I can’t make odds or ends of it.  All the girls in town are like this.

            I’m checking my collar – still popped, standing upright.  Hell, nobody seems to do that anymore.  What happened to style?  What the hell happened to cool, to partying?  Nobody parties anymore.  C’mon bitch, I know you like to party.  Beneath that knit scarf and those funky leggings there’s a little girl just aching to party hardy.  I used to be able to talk like that, and girls liked it.  At least, they reacted to it.  They fucking well looked at you, for one.  I can do fifty chin-ups, no sweat.  I can go all night if you like.  Just look at me.

            Fucking bus.  I need a car again.  Three more months and I’ll have that license back, be able to rescue the Mustang from the Admiral.  Fucking Admiral.  Never been on a boat in his life.  Never lived a day, that tight bastard.  I’ve lived.  I’ve lived, baby.  Look at me:  Mister Life Experience here, the goddamned article.  It’s these hipster cocksuckers that are spoiling my game.  It’s been a few years in the making, but the little shits that used to be all Emo took off the makeup, grew shit beards, put on shit flannels and read up on making beer.  I know their game, fucking phonies.

            Fucking phonies, girl.  I bet you like them, yeah?  Bet if I had a beard you’d look at me.  Christ, is there shit on my face or something?  Am I so out of touch?  I’m still me.  Same guy everybody loved in college.  Fuck, the Greeks couldn’t get enough of me.  Ol’ Brother Dawg Rawlins.  D-Raw.  The Rawster.  The fucking article.  I didn’t need to change, still don’t.  Look at me.  I voted for Obama – I didn’t really have a choice in it, but hey!  He got Osama, that’s something.  Last time I vote Democrat, weak bastards.  Last time I do anything just to be popular.  Maybe I should flex an arm muscle, pretend it’s all achy.  Yeah-

            That’s got her attention, just for a second.  You haven’t really changed.  Nobody has, bitch.  Five years ago I put all the girls like you to my sword.  D-Raw.  Back when whey protein and a Bowflex made a guy into a god.  Look at these; do you remember?  You were in a sorority – every girl was once.  Every girl that mattered, except for those Tri-Delts.  The Dairy Farm, we used to call that one.  Man, this sucks.  Just now going over the bridge, ages before we get to my stop.

            She’s turning, sitting sidesaddle with her face against the window so she doesn’t have to look at me.  Pretending to take in the river, the cityscape.  It’s nothing, all man-made.  I’m the real article.  Look at this, this perfect specimen of cool.  Look at me, you slut.  This is starting to piss me off.  And now I think I spy some skinny bearded faggot at the back looking away too quickly, checking me out.  I remember you guys too, punk.  I remember having to get a little physical, keep the gyms clear of you boys and your wandering eyes.  I hate you.  Look at me again and I’ll come back there and squash you.

            What’s wrong with this world?  Gays in the military, married in some places.  Girls chasing after bearded queers, the economy all to shit and Iran building a nuclear arsenal.  And weed still isn’t legal!  I’m glad I haven’t changed.  Shit, I’m glad life is all cyclical.  Give it a few years, and we’ll be back – people like me.  I don’t know where my bros have all disappeared to, but they’ll be back.  And I’ll be their fucking king, the guy that never stopped being real.  Dawg Rawlins, King of Cool.  Look at that, bitch.  You and all the bitches like you’ll be crawling back, standing in a fucking line for my bread.  Then I’ll get to yawn, act all nonchalant and look out the window while the begging begins.

            My stop’s coming up.  Fucking city.  The park is still blocked off from those commie occupiers, probably because it’s a biohazard with all their piss and shit.  That shit wouldn’t have flown five years ago.  There would have been more sane people like me to send them home.  Fuck, send them to a fucking hospital!  Whiney protesters and thieving bums, nothing but hipsters.  But my day’ll come.  Just you wait.

“The Debate”

"Mind the minors, plea-uzz!"

So the five of us {being myself, B-dawg, Short, JK, and Blitz} sat around B-dawg’s room at the Cappas, smoking the shisha.  I’d been with them for most of the afternoon, sipping back on cold lagers and taking a brief leave of absence every forty minutes or so.  I’d just returned from one such constitutional as their discussion {i.e. the superior children’s cereal mascot in a ‘battle royale’ setting} was reaching its conclusion.  Short was discoursing to Blitz on the inescapable versatility of Lucky the Leprechaun’s magical powers, to which the latter did retort “Naw, but Tony’s a fucking tiger!”  Hear-hears were proffered round the room and B-dawg made a motion for an end to that particular conversation.  The motion was carried by all and lagers liberally spread.  The hookah was passed to me, I recall, as JK struck up the next topic.  He posed to the group two questions, viz:  is it homosexual practice for a man to handle his own genitals?  Resounding nays flowed from the group, to which his second question was given:  whether it was similarly manly, non-homosexual practice for a man to fellate himself.  I love those moments when a body of intellectuals pause thoughtfully to ponder a thing; it is as though one can hear the thinking process through the common silence.  “Depends on what you’re thinking about,” Short at length quipped.  I believe I wondered aloud whether it would be possible to imagine a woman on the one hand, while not likewise visualizing the penis in one’s mouth.  Various ideas were shared, and differing opinions voiced with no real conclusion to our little paradox being made.  Finally it was B-dawg who took our discussion on a different tack.  “Can anyone here do it?”  Another thoughtful pause, myself wondering why I’d never tried the thing before, hoping I hadn’t unwittingly missed out on a whole new level of masturbatory exercise.  I was mentally running through the possible mechanics {while likewise still mulling over our earlier paradox} when Blitz finished off his lager and stated “I can.”  The claim seemed dubious enough to be disbelieved by all.  Ever the inquisitive one, it was B-dawg who suggested he “Prove it.”  And ever rising to the challenge, Blitz punctured a new can of lager and quaffed it down {called ‘shot-gunning’ in such circles} and proceeded to remove his pants.  What followed was the proof in Blitz’s pudding, an academic triumph for the evening.  However the performance raised an additional question as to whether, gay practice or no to perform such a thing, is it a particularly homosexual thing to watch.  “No more so than if he were masturbating,” JK stoutly argued.  We were all in hearty agreement, and in that spirit ventured out to go {as B-dawg so enthusiastically put it} “bash some real queers.”  We grabbed our cudgels from the door pledge and sang our way into the darkness of the campus, little realizing that these halcyon days of college would someday come to an end.