Most reputable sources agree on the fact that adulthood is something you gradually grow into, like your older brother’s clothes, or… you know… a cock ring. I’ve always thought that notion is bullshit.

Adulthood snuck up on me and jumped from behind a dark corner screaming bloody murder and waving its arms around like that annoying aunt you always find at family reunions who keeps squeezing your cheeks for no good reason (and, as of late, has taken to squeezing your buttcheeks instead).

One day I was drinking my ass off, taking bets on whether my liver would actually burst with that 30th beer (it didn’t), and the very next day I was at my best friend’s wedding, listening as he vowed eternal love to his bride and facing the fact that I was growing up (come to think of it, that may have been the same day).

One wedding paved the way. One kid was followed by another, and suddenly everyone around me is married, has a mortgage and our usual drunk Fridays have been rescheduled to Saturday afternoons to accommodate the sleeping habits of blathering, raging bundles of joy (what the fuck is with that phrase, anyway?)

All the while, I’ve kept my usual pattern of getting involved in pointless, codependent relationships with mentally deranged women.

Slowly but surely, I’ve become the single guy, and everyone is starting to ask (some more loudly than others) if there’s something wrong with me. Or worse: They give me the look. If you’re a single person trapped in a group of married people you know what I’m talking about: Quadraplegics have got nothing on us! It’s like suddenly one developed a golf-ball sized raging boil of hardened pus in one’s face and as soon as people see you they start patting your shoulder and tell you condescendingly: “Don’t worry, dear, it will pass”.

So, this is a shout out to the couples from table 19 in Hilda’s wedding reception, pesky friends (you know who you are), and you too, mom —

I’m either:

• Gay.
• On drugs.
• Secretly a midget.
• A necrophiliac.
• Mentally fixated on my (or your) mother.
• All of the above (And yes, I am aware that that would make me a gay junkie secret midget with an oedipal complex who buggers dead people, and quite possibly the best party entertainment ever).

Take your pick, and stop trying to set me up, thankyouverymuch.

— sergio at 03:27 PM  

One week ago: we’re discussing women matters at a gathering, when I decide to mention that I don’t actually *have* any female friends. Pat, a friend’s sister who’s known me for about 14 years, jumps in:

— “What do you mean you don’t have any female friends?”
— “Well, just that. There are no female friends. Just girls you never got into bed with.”
— “You mean you’ve never relied on a woman like you do on a man?”
— “I mean I’ve never had a relationship of any meaningful form with a girl I was not interested in shagging.”
— “That’s bullshit! What about me? Are you saying I’m not your friend?”
— “Oh, that’s not what I meant. I was talking about girls I ask to go out with me, to bars… or movies, you know?”
— “You used to take me to the movies!”

Foot, meet mouth. Mouth: All these years, and you have not learned ANYTHING??

— “Um… Pat… about those times…”
— “What about them?”
— “Er… I was kind of… hitting on you.”

She stares at me wide eyed and slackjawed. Her husband erupts in raucous laughter and her twin kids are running around the house screaming and poking at each other.

And I have just found another subject I should not discuss while drunk.

— sergio at 06:22 PM  

She messaged me again. To let me know that she was busy that weekend (surprise, surprise), and that a new Nick Cave album was out (she hates him, but she knows I light scented candles in the man’s honor).

I didn’t answer the message.

Monday. She calls (yes, an actual call this time). Wants to know why I didn’t answer the message (this is pretty much standard fare with her), and set up a day for us to meet, so she can give me the CD. I’m pretty much starting to hate Norah Jones by this point, but we agree on Wednesday.

Tuesday. She calls again, to say that she’ll be late but does not know by how much, so I gallantly tell her to pick me up at home instead of me going to pick her up. She agrees.

Cue Wednesday (i.e. today). An hour before I leave work, she calls yet again. She can’t make it.

— “you’ll see, what happens is…”

And with that, she launches into a gordian knot of an excuse which is so multilayered, so mind-numbingly complex, that it would make an excellent plot for a subnormal south american soap opera with dismally low production values. I don’t recall the specifics, but I believe a halibut, flying flowerpots and a loofah played key roles in it at one point or another.

Needless to say, I’m a bit peeved by now.

— “I see.”
— “So, I’m really really sorry, can we leave it for another day?”

We can fucking well leave it for another day. In fact, I think it’s even in the Bible somewhere… Has to do with air conditioning being installed in Hell…

And here is where I let down all the male readers who are expecting a swift and vigorous sendoff:

— “Yeah.”

You see, the thing is: guys like me… We don’t tell a girl to fuck off. It’s right up there with “fucking livestock” in the list of things you just don’t do. It’s how we’re raised, I guess.

Now, uploading the whole conversation to the interweb for the amusement of dozens of strangers the world over, that’s a whole other ballpark. I’m pretty sure motherly advice never covered that one.

I think at this point I must clarify that this was no sawed-off, puny “Yeah”. It was a true beast, made out of hate and ill will. It was a “Yeah” crafted in the very bottommost pit of hell out of knife sized chunks of umbrage and rancor. I fucking scared myself with that “Yeah”. As much as one can project such elaborate layers of meaning through one’s voice, it kind of went through with the desired intent, too:

— “Umm, you’re not angry, are you?”

Whatever gave you that crazy idea?

— “No.”
— “Oh, you’re angry, I can tell”

Someone give the girl a prize! Sherlock-fucking-Holmes was never this keen!

— “Mmhh”
— “Please, don’t get angry, tell me you’re not angry”
— “I. Am. Not. Angry.” — ‘Cause, you know… I’ve always found that talking like William Shatner really gets the point across.
— “Umm… ok… so, can we leave it for another day?”
— “Yeah.” — You remember that “Yeah” up there? This one is his older brother. The mean one.
— “Are you available tomorrow?”
— “No.”
— “Umm… ooo-k… I’ll call you, then.”
— “Yeah.”
— “Uh… Bye.”
— “Bye.”

*click*

I don’t think she’ll call again.

— sergio at 10:20 PM  

There are a myriad mysteries in the universe that we may never uncover. “Why are we here?” “Is there a God?” “Who is the fat naked lady we awoke next to in that seedy motel last Saturday?” (What? Like it’s never happened to you). However, there is one particular mystery that has been driving me insane for a week now. The mere utterance of the words brings a dread to my soul the likes of which I have never experienced, such is the depth of the illness it’s spreading through my psyche:

Tree poking girl.

Here’s what happened: Lately, I’ve taken a liking to carrying out a daily evening stroll. Since I spend about 14 hours a day sitting in front of a monitor (first at work, then at home), this is the only way to keep myself from mummifying. Now, one week ago, as I walked, I saw a girl standing next to a tree by the road, poking it with a fallen branch. Just that. Poking it. She seemed quite entertained by it.

I stared at her and she stared at me and I walked by, and by the time I reached the next block I decided that I just had to know what the hell she was doing (you may be aware by now, that I am not obsessive or cling to things like a monomaniacal lamprey… at all). As you may have successfully guessed already, when I retraced my steps, she was nowhere to be seen.

I have been coming back to that spot every day since, and I have yet to run into Tree Poking Girl again. This thing is eating me inside with a passion. Now, when I came back, she was gone but the tree was still there, so it’s a safe bet that she was not trying to bring it down or make it disappear by any sort of magical or ethereal means (Or, if she was, she wasn’t doing a very good job of it).

In my endless search for enlightenment, I discussed this matter of utmost importance with Kitta (Unfathomable fountain of wisdom that she is) and she suggested that Tree Poking Girl was perhaps engaging in some weird form of tree raping, and that she had moved on to another tree by the time I came back. It is a theory that has a certain sense to it, I’ll be first to admit. It also presents horrifying implications:

If the branch she was using was from the tree itself, would that mean that she was performing some sick, twisted sort of sadomasochistic self flagellating/mutilating ritual on that tree? Was she part of some secret society that graduated from tree-hugging to tree-raping millennia ago? The world needs to know!

Any theories?

— sergio at 12:13 PM  

Uncle Nacho was a cabbie for more time than most people are alive. He had a booming voice and roaring laughter that was felt more than it was heard. He was already an old man when I was a kid, and he did not seem to age one day until the end. I last saw him one month ago, three days before he died.

Cancer may have gotten the best of him, but sadness never did. He outlived his wife and daughter, and at the end, he’d fall asleep with his eyes open, and could no longer close his mouth, but he was still making jokes and telling us off.

In front of my house there’s a long, unkempt patch of land at the ridge between the lanes. An old elm that grows there casts a solid shadow on a soft spot of grass. Every day when I’m going back to work after lunch, there’s a cabbie lying there. I never see him pull in, but he’s always there when I leave. He parks his cab illegally in the middle of the road, lies down under the tree and takes a fifteen minute nap.

I have never talked to him, but as far as I’m concerned, from three thirty five until ten to four in the afternoon, that cabbie is the happiest man alive.

I sometimes sit by the window and watch him there, napping, and I like to think that somewhere, uncle Nacho has found a solid shadow by a patch of grass, and is lying there, with a smile on his face. Somewhere.

— sergio at 09:18 PM  

*BEEP* New SMS message for you from: Sofía

Background note: The latest ex, who finished a 3-year relationship right before starting another one with me, and later dumped me in order to be alone and feel miserable, which —oddly enough— turned out to be true, and not just an excuse. Hung out with her for a while afterwards, then lost contact when she started being “too busy”.

How are you?”

clicky → “Call this number”

connecting…

Her: Hello?
Me: Hey! How are you?

So you finally made first contact! I knew you would!

— Fine!, and you?
— Great!

Kind of wondering how much more it would take you, woman! How long has it been? A month? Two?

— My friends told me they saw you at the Halloween party on Friday.
— Oh, yeah, I talked to them for a while.
— How was it?

I ended up smoking apple-flavored tobacco from a bong at 5am and dancing tango with long-legged 16-year old Danish girl while entertaining highly illegal thoughts about her…

— Oh, you know, it was fine… same old same.
— What did you dress like?
— I went as “The crow”. You know me, I like simple things…

I was drop-dead GORGEOUS, woman! You should have seen it! You’d have been all over me! Totally!

— Cheap, huh?

fuckfuckfuck

— Yeah… I just dressed black and painted lines on my face.
— I thought so.
— So, what have you been up to?
— Oh, I’m taking English lessons. Did I tell you about the english lessons?
— Yeah, I kind of remember that.

Hope that means you still don’t follow my blog, ‘cause you know, I just got this sweet idea for an entry…

— So, anyway, I still have your CD, you know?
— Ohh, yeah… the CD…

That’s right! Play it cool, man! You’re Clint in “Few more dollars”, Sean Connery in “Diamonds are forever”. You’re oozing nonchalance out of every pore! Except for the fact that you have no idea what the hell she’s talking about…

— Yeah, it’s still at my house.
— What CD was that?

Johnny Cash? Leonard Cohen? Suzanne Vega? Rigo Tovar’s “Keep Dancing my rythm” with Rigo Tovar and the Grey’s?

— Norah Jones
— Oh, that CD…

Oh, man! Then who the hell has Rigo? Rigo is loooove!

— Yeah, so, we should get together so I can give it back to you

*Confident, aloof grin* (think Paul Newman in “Cool Hand Luke”) — note to self: tape video of self performing confident, aloof grin and send to Sofía so she fully appreciates moment.

— I see, so, when should we get together?
— I’ve been very busy. I’ll call you, ok?

Huh? Whatthefuck was that? Are you brushing me off? You don’t get to brush me off, woman! You began this goddamned conversation!

— Yeah, you do that… See you.
— Yeah, see you!

*click*

Fuckfuckfuck! Did she just brush me off? How the hell did that happen?

What do you think? Will she call?

— sergio at 01:06 AM