when the ink starts to itch then the black will turn to red

I'm thinking of moving.

got a long line of heartache, I carry it well

Into a house.

the list of lives I've broken reach from here to hell

Address 1408.

they just gave me the number when I was young

How deliciously disturbing.

I pray you don't look at me, I pray I don't look back

Wish me luck?

Orale? No. No orale.

So today I'm rocking out on the toy drums and I get an instant message form one of my xbox live contacts. Now, I don't know who these people are, necessarily, because everyone has a pseudonym. I'm going to recount the conversation for you, now, and you tell me if this gets very weird by the end. I'll put quotes only around the phrases I remember clearly, otherwise I'll be paraphrasing.

R:"hola" (Spanish for "hi")
T:"como te va" (Spanish for "how's it going" I'm a polite guy, even if I have no idea who you are)
R:bueno y tu como estas (Spanish for "good and how are you)
T:"podria esar peor pero mi espanol no es bueno" ("could be worse by my Spanish is not good")
R: a bunch of Spanish I understood very little of
T:Spanish for I didn't understand that at all
T:"quieres jugar rock band" ("do you want to play rock band" One track mind, here, no?)
R:"orale" (I've no idea what this means, I'm going to look it up, hold on...

From the urban dictionary :

	orale
	Spanish word used among Mexicans meaning 'right on', 'hell yes', 'okay' and 'alright'; usually said enthusiastically. There's going to be tons of free beer at the quincenera, want to go? Orale!

Oh, so that was cool, I guess.

t: some Spanish that I hope approximated "have a nice day, but i cannot continue in Spanish"

Wait for it... this is where things go all kooky on me.

R:"bye"
R:"i see you soon"
R:"I love you"

Hold the eff on! "I love you?"! "see you soon"! I only know one person who might say they loved me and speaks anything close to this level of Spanish, so i say:
t:"i'm nosure who you are" (yeah, i spelled "not sure" as "nosure" texting from drum set is hard, so step off.)

But wha wha wha wait it gets worse...

R:"it's your daughter consuela" (OK, "consuela" is a pseudonym. but putting names up here is against my policy, so I substituted her pretty name for another.)

I stared at that for thirty seconds trying to wrap my head around it. Then I typed:

T:"i don't have a daughter"
R:"yes you do. you have three of them"

At this point all I want to do is wake up from the obviously drug addled nightmare I've fallen into and kill the person who slipped me a mickey. Of, course I'm sober and this seems to be really happening. Clearly what we have here is a case of mistaken identity, but my name shows up when I text so we're looking at a pretty big coincidence, here. Anyway, onward!

t:"OK. have a nice day" (what the hell did you expect me to say? I just want to go away, by now.)
R:"bye"
R:"i see you soon"
R:"you are the gentle man in the world"

What?!

R:"I love you"

OK, what the hell was all of that?

If someone here is the other end of this conversation, I'd like for you to come clean. This is weirding me out.

Not for those uncomfortable with the fringes of society.

I warned you once, this is twice. Don't worry, you won't be the only person who doesn't read it... And you may be happier for it.



Just when you think life cannot get any wackier... you meet your brand new girlfriend’s husband… with a massive, and fresh, hickey on your neck. Uncomfortable? Right, that does not even begin to cover it.

The bright side is that the poly-amory appears to be for real and not just a smokescreen. I kinda figured that was the case, but this much more visceral evidence certainly settled my mind on that niggling concern. You know, the one that your friends and family are nearly required bring up when you begin to share this sort of information with them. This is in addition to the other reservations they will have on your behalf. They’re not trying to quash your fun; they love you and do not want to see you get hurt.

So here I am, past thirty, once married, a father of a pre-teen boy, semi-professional employee. For all intents and purposes a grown up, but still I look like I was making out with a vegan vampire. I have this purple stippling covering a two inch by three inch section of my neck.

I know that it probably sounds like I’m complaining; I’m really not. I had a very nice time earning those broken blood vessels in my neck, thank you very much, but I did have to go to work today. So I did what you would do for any bruise: I iced it down last night to keep it from getting any worse and put a hot pack on it this morning to try to get the coagulated blood to liquefy and move back into its proper place. Unfortunately, it was so cold out this morning that I brushed off the heat of the water as being exaggerated by the ambient temperature. The end result? By the time I arrived at work, I had covered the hickey with a three by six first degree burn… that failed to hide the hickey! There is a gradient of pasty white (my natural skin color) to pink to red to purple stippling to red to pink to pasty white stretching from just under my ear nearly to my Adam’s apple.

That definitely makes the hickey less glaring. Now, I might as well have taken a Sharpie® and drawn arrows to it. Oddly, though, I’ve been at work for three hours and nobody has said a thing. Yet.

Thirty seconds. I swear, thirty seconds after I typed “Yet.” I walked out of my office and one of the guys points over to my left so I look and he points at my neck for everyone to see. He is one funny mofo.

I’ve never been one to “play the field”, as they say.

Even in my wild and woolly, Johnny Appleseed days, it was one girl for a time and once her time was over, there was no returning or overlap. Well.. except for that one time... uh, those two times.

OK, so the above is only valid in my head, but this space is like a small window into my head. Therefore, it only has to make sense in here. Welcome, my friends.

Now I find myself with five female friends with strong possibilities.

Who am I kidding? The only kind of female friends I have (outside of work and family, and I don’t really get to choose those) are the ones with possibilities. I actually don’t believe in the efficacy of inter-ender relationships. The biological tension is too much to trust. I’ve been on two actual “first dates” and I've a strong line on number three.

These facts do not reflect my normal modus operandi.

Luckily, I’ve got my sights set on a more abnormal first date. This would actually be a more normal sort of first date for me, though, so it’s likely to have a strong comfort factor. I'm not opposed to the way things are going, but it'll be nice to set my feet on familiar ground, for a time.

Generally I find one woman, get to know her a little as a friend, then move on to “more than friends” (sorry to be coy, but my mom reads this stuff, too), maybe then we will go on something like a date. All of that happens in a one woman, focused sort of environment in my head. There are never multiple prospects during the process.


Actually, I kinda like to be coy, but I also like to be coy about being coy.

So this is all new ground for me. Emotionally and ethically. Is it wrong to have my feelers open? None of these ladies have given me any indication that they are ready to move on to a “you and me” sort of thing as opposed to “you and me and him and her, etc” thing. Hell, one of them is still a phantom in my world.

There you go, I’m a stranger in a strange land and things are only getting…more strange.

A quick shout out to a new reader: Hey, Eddie! Are you sorry you asked for the address, yet? Yeah, I said, “shout out”. It’s my blog and I’ll dip into the Ebonics dictionary any time I please. Now, step off.

It's that time of month... time for a post, that is.

I’ve decided that I’m going to learn to dance. I know, I know… most of you already know that I’ve been going to the free sessions on Thursdays. This is going to be different.

I’ve gone four times. Twice I took a partner. Twice I went alone.

The first time I went with a friend’s wife. We’d met once before, briefly. Dancing that night was fun.

The next time I went alone. And that’s very nearly the full story. There was a pair of couples, one male instructor, me, and a nice old guy named Don. As the lesson began, Don looked at me and said, “I can dance backward.” I swear, you can’t make this stuff up.

The next time I went with a complete stranger. Dancing that night was fun and exhilarating. We may become fast friends, she seemed to get nearly all of my jokes. Either she's sharp or I was less obtuse than usual.

The last time I went alone. There were at least two dozen people. I was abandoned by two, count ‘em - two, partners. Between those fleeing I was turned down by a potential partner who said, “Oh, I have a partner. She’s dancing with that guy. I have the guy part down, but I cannot really dance the girl part.” She then began to converse with her friends on the dance floor, very clearly done with our conversation.

So, now I’m done fooling around with the vagaries of free lessons and random partners. Don’t they say random partners are dangerous, anyway?

Now, if I just knew where to find a steady dance partner…

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I’ll get back to you on that.