Red Fog Lady

I had myself an experience last year that affected me to a deep and scary degree and I've been meaning to write about it for some time now but it was not until recently that I was compelled to do so. I met someone.

I KNOW! THAT'S FUCKING TERRIFYING ON IT'S OWN!

But it goes far beyond that. I met someone I'd met before, last year. Not only did I meet her again, I met her in an entirely new light, the likes of which I never thought I'd see her under, nor a light I ever thought I could find anyone else beneath.

Make no mistake, ladies and gents. The girl I'd known not seven months ago was a monster. In fact, as the record has it she was a bonafide villain traipsing out in the world with nary a care for who or what she assaulted. When we'd initially met I thought "good God, please let no other woman be like this" because I do so love women and their diversity but what I saw that day was less of a woman and more of a womonster. I mean, she actively, and fervently thought about the next time she might run into a poor soul to abuse and devour, THAT'S HOW FUCKING MESSED UP THIS CHICK WAS!

I admit, in my own fucked up way, she kinda turned me on, being so free and twisted like a drugged up leaf on the wind that boldly told the wind to do cocaine and the wind FUCKING DID because she had that sway over it. She stayed with us for a good fucking awful spell and then went on her way with her boyfriend called "Cheese" and finally the roommate and I could get to knowing what the word "peace" meant. Quiet too. We re-learned that. It was totally rad. Remember rad? We were that.

When she and her cheddar man left though, I started noticing the environment I was in. It was shit. So shit in fact that these two crazies would leave, but we'll get to that soon.

Cut to January of 2013. This lady comes back into town and says she's stopping by. I shit because I never wanted to see her again, but I figured "fuck it, life's an adventure and at least I can write about whatever happens next some day." But then, she shows up, and I am taken aback. She is calm, courteous, respectful. Regal even. Quite in fact, this fucked up bitch is a legit lady. I am flabbergasted. I am sitting in my room pondering the ways of the world because of this when she bursts in my room saying "Hey Derf, do you mind if I hang out in here with you? This weird dude out there is creeping me out" The weird dude being a guy she wouldn't hesitate to fuck not 6 months ago. I say "sure, me casa su casa" and we sit. We then get into a lengthy discussion over a bottle of Peppermint Schnapps and I am taken way WAY aback.

I understand people do grow and more ore less, change. Maybe for the better, maybe the worst. But they do. At least, I do now. She tells me her tale. We talk for 5 or 6 hours, sharing laughs and smiles and frowns at where we've been, where we are, and where we might end up. I look at this woman who I once hated and suddenly, she changes. She'd been through hell. She'd suffered that of a lesser collective and found a way back to decency. I find myself thinking "God, if I only knew you like this, I would love you so much."

Time wears, we reach our goodbye under the red sky of sickeningly early winter morning. "You're fucking awesome Derf" she says "How are you so fucking awesome?" I look her in the eye and say "It's because I'm not trying to fuck you." She laughs so heartily that I'll never forget the sound. We hug, so tightly that I wished I knew her like this before. I miss her so much in my arms. We lock eyes and I say "Never end up back in this mess, lady" and she replies "I promise I won't, and if I do please hit me upside the head." I agree and wave as she walks into the early morning red mist.

"I love that lady" I think to myself as she fades away into the fog. "I hope I never see her again"

It's both the most selfless and hopeful I have ever been to date. 

Stream of Consciousness Fictional Semi-autobiographical Material

The dog came on. Yapping. I was terrified. I must have been four years old. Could this be the source of my fear of dogs? If so, what happened to my fear of dogs? I feel as though I had one, once. A fear of dogs. Click.

new memory: I stand at the beach, squelching and re-squelching my toes in the wet sand. The dying rush of another flat wave foams in, muddy colored with brilliant surface bubbles, the reflected sun pushes streaming warm water around my ankles and then - slow, stop, reverse - the tide drags itself back, its suction pulling the foundation from under my heels. I thrill to the sensation of the wet sand and mud disappearing out from under me. My feet are unsettling, making weird pits as the waves wash in and out. Click.

new memory: I stood there, in front of the candy store with my colored fluorescent chalks. Or were they crayons? Pastels? Some sort of colored tacky things they'd given me to draw on their window glass. It was the summer before eighth grade, and they were paying me to draw on their window. I was drawing a clown. I don't recall now if I had been asked to draw a clown, or simply to draw something. I was drawing a clown. Click.

My first sexual experience. I am simultaneously penetrating and being penetrated by myself. But something is wrong. I have only half the necessary genetic material for a human being! Wait, okay, the other half is in wiggly me. That complements and completes the half in round me. The nuclear boundaries are dissolving, releasing two halved double helixes into a shared cell chamber. Drawn to each other, pulling and whirling as if in a dance, the two incomplete sequences combine into one - complete! A new organism! Unique in the history of the world. Straight, white and male. Click.

End memory retrieval sequence.

Love Stories Are Better When They Don't Work Out In The End

Let me start this by saying that it has, at one time or another, worked out for me for a very long time so don't think I'm just jaded or anything because while that's not an inaccurate description, it is also not why I feel the way I do about love stories. That said, onwards we march.

I'm the youngest of three siblings with the elder siblings being sisters, and both of these sisters gave birth to daughters who were left in my care on occasion. With this in mind, it's not terribly surprising that by now I've had to sit through a smorgasbord of romance flicks in my day and considering the fact that I'm one of the worst romantics out there, I still find many of those flicks to be utterly awful. I know my being a male may dilute the argument I'm about to make but seeing as I'm also a part-time obnoxious jerk face, I'm gonna carry on with this.

So. Love stories. I find a lot of them to be shit, and here's why. They start out pretty average as is humanities custom, by introducing the characters who, despite all odds, will meet up about a third or so into the story.

He, the die hard Die Hard fan who just does not respect the sanctity of marriage or the female vote or just doesn't understand how miniature pigs can be considered cute. Maybe he's a gigantic nerd who spends more time arranging action figures on the shelf than he does on personal hygiene or it scares women to be around him after they see him watching that sports game because he has a blood curdling scream whether his team is winning or not and that look in his eye is just fucking terrifying. Or maybe it's the exact opposite and women are put off by him because he's just so whiny and sensitive and they want a mans man and why does he have so many miniature pigs? That's fucked up.

She, the independent business woman who, while firm handed and business savvy, seems to always be dating I guy that is a total contradiction to everything she feels and believes but hey, he's not living with his parents or cosplaying on the weekend so why not? Maybe she has a seemingly never ending bad luck streak in dating or just doesn't understand the point in having swords lying around the house "just in case". Or maybe it's the total opposite and she loves LOTR and can knit the fuck out of a big nice costume and  knows ninjas or zombies can burst through the windows late at night and that katanas are a vital home necessity, but the men she happens to meet are looking for "more of a girly girl" and why doesn't she have a miniature pig? That's fucked up.

Whatever the case, they meet and it's awkward and maybe they don't like each other initially but they keep running into each other and it's funny because look, fate seems to be driving them together. They start hanging out and any complications there might have been are cleared up. They smile. They laugh. It becomes a part of them. Then, OH NO! Something has happened and there's a falling out. Nick Drake, Nico, Dar Williams and Elliott Smith burst onto the soundtrack and we watch them sit and stare and shuffle papers at work. They look out the window and it's raining. It's an ocean side city but fuck that, it's raining because this thing is happening to them.

Enter the fat comedic sidekick to say "oh hey, that thing that happened that was the big OH NO? Yeah it didn't happen, or it is totally justified and you should go see that man or woman" but they sometimes don't and just naturally run into each other anyway because I don't care how big a city is, that's gonna happen. They talk and have hugely emotional speeches to one another and holy shit it's raining again because let's kiss. Cue whatever love song is exploding that year and roll credits.

On the face of it, it's really sweet. The idea that things can work out despite all odds is an appealing notion to anybody and you go home feeling like a million dollars and it's great. Fantasy. It's a great thing every now and again. But though you feel like a million dollars now, that sum is spent all too soon. It's with this in mind that I submit to you that things not working out in the end is OH so much better and I'll tell you why. It's a much more grounded sensation after watching such flicks because it's easier to identify with the characters and situation. I'm sure some couples may be in love now and you're happy together and it worked out and YAY! But I also know that more often than not, even those couples went through the "it didn't work out" ending at some stage in their lives. And you know what? It's better because it didn't last. You get those fleeting moments of pure joy and it never gets dulled down by time, you don't get complacent and see it as an everyday thing. Sure, it ended and that sucks but nothing can ever diminish that one fine day, week, month or year because that's all it ever was and it will always be perfect. Because you will always remember it. It doesn't happen to you everyday like it would in the "happy ending" so it never loses its luster.

I'm gonna stop now before romantic comedy critics sharpen the knives too much. It doesn't get much sharper than razor sharp, y'all. Derf out.

How Christina Aguilera Changed My Life Forever

Fade in.
The year: late 2002. 
Location: Earth.
The questions on this young mans mind: What have you done to yourself, Christina? And how can I do it to myself?

Alright. Full disclosure here. The initial response to Christina's performance that year was admittedly less life changing and more...eye opening, in a very physical and lustful sense. For a solid month I just did not know what to do with what I was seeing from this seemingly innocent pop princess, shaking the dirt off in a way that actively begged for more dirt to be thrust on for shaking off. As a recovering romantic, it blew my goddamn mind! That the human body can move in such a way that I could forgive the horrifically catchy, yet ultimately irritating noise this creature produced was simultaneously impressive, and depressing to behold.

You have to understand I was on a very different path at the time. I was a scholar, a son, an artist; torn between living the life I wished to live, and the life that was expected of me. I lived off a single bottle of Gatorade and a small bag of crisps a day so that I might put what little finances I had toward art supplies without revealing the fact that I had been indulging in "meaningless endeavours".  After all, a future Electrician shouldn't be wasting his money on such trivial things. At the time, I could accept this premise. Free thinking hadn't occurred to me yet and Electricians do make a substantial income, so it wasn't an entirely unappealing punchline. Certainly not a satisfying one, though.

I walked the halls of a fine institution with a quiet contempt for the provocative, because what was that worth to a young man in love with love? For him, this girl with bizarre taste, style, and a massive brain on her shoulders was far more sexy than any tube top or micro-skirt would ever be. It may well still be to be honest but it's a pretty close race now. I had a sense of propriety, of integrity, of dignity. and anything else was anathema to who and what I thought I was at the time.

Enter the "Dirrty" music video.

Suddenly it was all so disturbingly clear. Base desire kicked in with a vengeance and what once was considered unthinkable was immediately a simple and unavoidable truth.

"My God" I thought. "I am exactly as easy as the type of guy I thought I wasn't."

The social barriers that I had invested years and years of time on went down like fucking card houses, and existence itself seemed to transform before my very eyes at the sight of this princess diving headlong into controversy and "self expression". From that moment on, everywhere I looked there was a very different play taking place, and even the stage itself seemed to be manipulated by it with ease. This went on for about a month, as previously mentioned.

Then I started becoming desensitized to the whole shebang and began thinking about an entirely different aspect of the matter. Why did this hit me so hard? Why hadn't I seen this of myself before? Why did it take this once innocent young lady weaving and swaying just so for me to see it now? The answer was in the very question. It never occurred to me that Ms. Aguilera might not have wanted to churn out the music she had before then. That perhaps it was all just another path lined out, not by her but by some other external force, driving her to be everything she didn't want to be. Maybe that isn't at all the case, but at once I knew why I was so enchanted with her dance. Freedom. And boobs and ass. But mostly freedom.

In a mere 5 minute video, this woman had lived more freely than I had in my entire life up to that point. Even with that endless animal bleat hounding my brain saying "good lord, would you look at them stems", I couldn't help but love the stark beauty of what she might really be doing. Who she was becoming. Who she may well have been the entire time, but for all the wrong reasons decided to hide. I still didn't care for her music but that's beside the point. She was setting herself free, and it was amazing to witness.

So here's to you, X-Tina. You're as dirrty as you want to be and while it may not have been your intention, it has made all the difference to this former depressed Electrician to be, now happily starving artist. BRAVO, NAUGHTY GIRL!

unauthorized movie posters #1: THE ORIGINAL STAR WARS

untitled work of art #3: not called "SAD"

untitled work of art #2: not called "run"

Woke Up New

There are some mornings in which I wake up feeling new, not in body but in soul and sight. I look out to the mountains lining the horizon and think "You're a stone cold fox, world, and I'm going to fuck you good and sweetly today" not yet realizing I've just said it aloud and the neighbour is taking out the trash. Normally I would get terribly embarrassed by this and probably dive headlong into an entire deluxe pizza for breakfast, then proceed to watching Kung Fu flicks until the "WAH!"s and "HIYA!"s drown out that voice in my head saying "Christ, Derf. What the fuck?" and maybe that's best on those days. But on those special mornings I smile a giant smile right back at their looks of confusion and worry and say "YEAH, YOU HEARD ME! GIVE HER A GOOD TIME, NEIGHBOUR!" and we laugh and laugh and set upon our respective days.

Today is one of those days. Give her what for, people. For all or none of our sakes. Give it real smooth like. She just might return the favour.