Methods of Mayhem

I thumbed my quarters into the dryers and set them up for thirty minutes apiece. As I loaded my clothes in, some young guy was talking loudly to a college student in a white t-shirt. The student ignored the guy, and kept loading his laundry. I walked back to my washer and started folding up some wet clothes that I planned on air drying at home.

I had just tucked the neck of a t-shirt under my chin when the loud guy walked up to me.

“Hey man,” he said at a normal tone, “I um… I think I… um… shorted myself and I don’t have an extra quarter… I…. need it for my clothes.”

Great, I thought, some other alcoholic looking for some change or some hooch. I looked him up and down. He seemed my age. He had a thin line of a red moustache, a beige fisherman’s cap with a scraggle of red hair poking out underneath and a pair of large, somewhat dingy glasses. He seemed nervous but not anythign like a bum.

“Sure,” I replied, “Hold on.” I dug in my cargo pocket and groped for a single quarter among the pile sitting there. “Here you go.” I watched him, half expecting him to walk out, but he went over to another dryer and plugged the last quarter in. I turned back to my laundry.

Footsteps. “Here, have one.” He was holding out a pack of cigarettes with a tan tip poking out. He wanted to repay me. I looked at the cigarette, thinking about accepting and what it would mean for my health, as I’m not a regular smoker, as well as what it might mean regarding more conversation with this jittery kid. The cigarettes were Basics, not quality smokes as cigarettes go.

“No… thanks though,” I replied. He shifted weight and slowly withdrew the pack. He stood there for a second. I looked to my wet laundry pile. The kid wanted to be nice, and I wouldn’t mind a bit of a buzz. “Alright.” I took a smoke and asked if he had a light.

“Sure. Let’s go smoke.”

We went outside. The air was slightly muggy and warm. The four-car parking lot had oil stains, flies and strange hovering beetles all around it. We sat on a parking curb. I lit my cigarette with the lighter he gave me. He lit his. I thought this the perfect time for an introduction.

“My name’s Collin. What’s yours?”

“They call me Crazy Carl.”

I shook his hand, thinking the name odd, but only appropriate for the regular summer inhabitants of Madison.

He went on to relate to me where he lived and what was happening in his life. “Man, I had a crazy night last night.”

“Oh yeah,” I asked, interest piqued.

“Yeah, man. I left the Caribou, it’s this bar, with this girl I met. Her name’s Janet. Well, her and I left, then she had to leave, but I’m supposed to meet her today. I walked down and talked to some people where there was supposed to be a party, but there wasn’t one. Someone gave me $5 and I went to Taco John’s and got food. Then, I went to another house and I knew there was a party going on on the second floor, so I popped out a plastic window and broke in. I got up to the second floor, and since I broke in, they said I deserved a beer. I drank that, then went home. I got there about four o’clock. Man…”

“Wow, sounds like you had a crazy night last night,” I said.

“I only had three beers.”

“Yeah, but it still sounds like you had a crazy night.”

“Yeah, I guess. I have a lunch appointment on the corner of Mills and Regent today after laundry.”

“What’s on the corner of Mills and Regent?” I asked, curious once again.

“McDonald’s. I’m meeting witht eh people I used to live with.”

“Oh,” I decided not to pursue that avenue in our parking lot conversation. Crazy Carl flicked his cigarette into the lot, and I snubbed mine on the curb, then poked it in a hole in the concrete, noticing a small weed growing from the hole.

He initaiated conversation again. “Susan got angry at me because I didn’t take my medications on Friday.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, Susan’s my shrink. Her office is in my house… that one down the street.” He pointed, and I knew the one. “Man, I just bought groceries and this carton of cigarettes. That was $91. I have $110 to last me the rest of the month since I’ve already paid my rent. Do you think that’s enough?”

It was the fourth of June. That left him $110 for at least 26 days. I knew that wouldn’t be enough for me, figuring I had paid my rent and groceries enough for the month. “Are utilities included?”

“Yeah, they are.”

“Then I think it could last you… if you don’t run out of food.”

“Yeah,” he pondered, “I think so, too.” A pause. “I get $560 a month because my dad died. That’s what I’m living off of right now. I need to pick up an application at Taco John’s.”

I was staring at the oil-stained parking lot. An ant reared up and grabbed a fly three times its size. The fly struggled for a minute, then gave in the the ant. The ant began its tread back to its colony, undeterred by the twitching fly.

“That’s good that you’re looking for a job,” I said, “You need that.”

“Yeah, I know.” A longer pause. “You know what time it is?”

I clapped my pockets. My mp3 player was in my right pocket with a wire connecting it to headphones around my neck. The change jingled as I wrestled with my cell phone. As I pulled it out, a $20 bill fell out. Crazy Carl sat, still waiting for the time. I slowly grabbed the bill, then hastily stuffed it in my pocket. I looked at my color screen Nokia phone with no small amount of guilt and announced the time. “It’s 1:38.”

He continued to relate to me about a road trip he had taken out west where he began smoking. He was sixteen and was taking the Greyhound from South Dakotah. He bought a pack of crappy cigarettes and had a small bottle of liquor. He said that after smoking a few cigarettes he was vomiting up spit. He said the bus driver suspected him of being drunk, so he tried to stop throwing up and controlled it until each stop. He said he could finally handle them when he got to the Saint Cloud, Minnesota stop. By the time he got back to Madison, he was addicted.

“Hm,” I muttered, not knowing what to say. I said the only think I could think of. “I was going to take the ‘hound out of Minneapolis to here, but my grandma and grandpa gave me a ride instead.”

“Oh…” he sat with his head down for a minute. Finally, he spoke. “Well, I think my clothes are almost done.”

“Right,” I said, “Mine, too.”

We stepped back inside, he to his dryers and I to mine. He folded his laundry quickly and left before I could say goodbye.

Malcontent

     Well, I’ve run into my first ever true bout of financial troubles, and I’m feeling a little bad about it. I’ve been hit with several bills at once, and suddenly it’s a bit overwhelming. I had to borrow from the parents, which is something I’ve always dreaded. It’s not a matter of having to owe them but of being a leeching son.

     I’ve avoided borrowing sums of money from my parents greater than $20 at any time because I figured I’ve received enough from them in my lifetime. Christmas gifts alone add up to an amount I’m definitely not proud of. What have I given to them? My love and being the best son I can be, that’s for sure. But I haven’t found a better way to pay them back (and maybe there isn’t one). Still, I feel like a bit of a bum.

     My dad made the point that, yes, I’m in school, and I’m not staying at home, so the borrowed money is very little compared to what they’d be paying to support me there. My dad’s already making loan payments that I can’t make, and I feel horrible about that as well. Money’s nothing to get super-stressed about, but it’s something that requires responsibility. I told Dad I’d pay him back, and he was like, “Yeah yeah.” I know what that means. He knows I can pay him back, and I know that about him. He doesn’t doubt my financial ability (stupid paycheck coming a month after I start working). He just doesn’t want me to pay him back. He loves me, and is giving me money not wanting to be paid back.

     That’s why I don’t get these prissy college kids who don’t work, who take tons of money from their parents with little thanks, and who have no set standards gradewise for keeping their tuition paid. Daddy just wants them to finish college so they can get a “real” job. Who knows? Maybe they’ll go and fuck that up, too! These people have no skills and bitch about school like it’s the end of the world.

     Maybe a taste of 40 hours a week could help them? If it was such a shock for me, I can’t imagine how they’ll feel when they won’t be able to take leisurely lunchs, midday naps and “exercise breaks”. Working, period, could be a pain for them, too.

     What kind of job can they get with their mass communications or sports medecine degrees? Probably a decent one if they hadn’t jacked off all six years of school. Now they’re working for good old pop because the fact that Donald Trump, Bill Gates, Mark McGuire, and Mr. T were all in their fraternity didn’t help them succeed at all. “But Delta Iota Kappa promised me a good job!”

     I can’t say there’s much more for me to bitch about on this topic right now. (“Thank God!” you say.) I’m just flabbergasted at the fact that people think college is a joke, homework always sucks, and binge drinking is an intramural sport. If they’d wise up, maybe they’d see that there’s an unfathomable number of things to get out of school that have nothing to do with classes whcih could benefit their entire life and make them more marketable/likeable.

     Oof. One final word on that: I rant a lot, and I’ll tend to put it foremost because it’s on my mind. Ignore if you like, since it’s more a matter of my opinion and mental health. ;D Now on to more pertinent personal reflection. We all love the juicy stuff, right?

     I ran into my kickass house fellow Curtis from my most recent stay at the wonderful UW housing. My buddy (also from my floor last year) and I hung with him and his friend. We got food and sat on a little benchy area facing the street and listening to a very good four piece band.

     As we were eating, we people-watched, which is a great hobby when you’re on State. We saw four girls walk by on the other side of the street and they stopped and looked around. They saw us (three guys, one gal) and come across the street. They were cute and seemed nice.

     They stopped right in front of us, still standing in the street, and one of them asked if one of us would like to take off our shirt for a scavenger hunt they were doing. The girl who asked was pretty much looking at me. They needed a picture with me to prove it had happened, too. I, being the smart man I am, said, “Hah, well, I’m not sure you’d want to see me with my shirt off!”

     I was smiling, and thought I was lightening up the situation at the time, maybe being funny. In hindsight, it was light enough, and I was just being insecure. I keep thinking to myself, Smooth move, dumbass. The girls were super-nice, and I was just putting myself down. The same girl tried to loosen me up as I was considering. “You have a really cute, smile,” she said, smiling herself.

     “Alright,” I said, “I’ll do it.” I took my shirt off and all the girls “woo!”ed at me. The first girl put her arm around me, and they took a picture. They then needed someone else to have whipped cream sprayed on their arm and licked off by one of them. My buddy BJ obliged, and they snapped a shot of that, too.

     After the girls thanked us and walked away, I cynically told my friends, “She was really buttering me up, telling me I had a cute smile.” Why did I think that? The girls seemed around freshman age, and it wasn’t improbable that the girl who asked me might have been attracted to me. Maybe I have a self-confidence issue… no, scratch that. I definitely have one. I didn’t realize that as much until now. I’m fairly in shape, but my body doesn’t necessarily show it, and sometimes I worry about what people will think. Whenever I hear people say, “You have to have confidence,” I assume that any guy with “confidence” is probably more than a little cocky. Now I think I’m getting a better idea of what they mean.

     I should be introducing myself to girls, not letting my friend do it. I should be proud of myself, regardless of what people say. I should take compliments which rarely come from members of the opposite sex and thank them, instead of thinking the worst about them.

     This is something I think of as a fairly valuable lesson, and I plan on meditating on it when I leave for Wyoming. I think a lot of good could come from it, and it might help me make the best of this lazy summer.

     Speaking of: I’m heading to Wyoming from the eleventh to the twentieth, so hold the parties ’till I get back. I’m going with a class for field work, and we’ll be heading to the whole eastern part of Wyoming and much of the Black Hills. On the way back, we’ll be hitting up some of the Badlands as well as the illustrious Wall Drug. I plan on having a blast with all eight people going, and I know we’ll  hit up every tourist trap on the way. The campgrounds we’ll be staying at are Bearlodge, Curtis Gulch and Hanah in the Black Hills.

Till next time, keep your stick on the ice.