VILE SMILES

“I got a twenty dollar advance on my credit card. Haha how about that?” No no no—not me you pee hole - rather the version of my dad if he didn’t stop using heroin and breaking his hands on the back of people’s heads 20 years ago sitting on the barstool next to me. He looked like he rolled around in dried up poop and bought his clothes from the Flintstones. These are hard times and the economy is blah blah blah, unemployment is at its highest rate since the Coolidge administration, affirmative action is being such a massive asshole, and your wife has a penchant for licking the milkman’s taint, so I know there is nothing better then putting back a few to make it all hazy and forgettable. But seriously dude? Twenty dollars? Cash advance? While we are at it let’s give Alex’s Lemonade Stand a little run for their money and have you set up shop out front of the bar hawking your blood, semen, and retinas.

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I have a general contempt for the majority of people I come across so one would assume that I was adept for keeping my disgust somewhat subtle just out of politeness as to not offend……which now that I think about it is kind of ironic. Not today. Apparently I had a “Oh my God—if somehow there was a way for a bucket a vomit to be a person and if that person came strolling into the bar right now, I would rather talk about Bud Dwyer and the apocalypse with him than have you sitting next to me, blabbering about your awfulness” look on my face. Because this went down:

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20 dollar advance guy: You got a problem?

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Me: Actually it’s “Do you have a problem.” And no, I do not have a problem. I think I just swallowed a bug and got Tabasco in my eye at the same time.

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20 dollar advance guy: Don’t get bad with me motherfucker. If it comes to fisticuffs, it will be the last thing that you do.

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Me: Fisticuffs? Is that a new shot? Maybe you can take that twenty bucks you scored and buy like four of them. Go home to the wife and kids and tell them instead of the staple Dominos Meatlover’s that you usually get on Wednesdays, daddy took the money to go be a shithead.

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20 dollar advance guy: Listen you little shit; you are very close to getting your ass handed to you. I could buy this whole bar. I could buy you.

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Me: I don’t think “years of my life I spent being a bulbous cancer on society while blowing guys for meth” are an accepted currency in these parts. Furthermore, stating you can buy me is helping the validity of your threats. Do you want to beat my ass or eat it? Make up your fucking mind guy. Lastly, please forgive me but that potato sack-ish wardrobe doesn’t really scream the aesthetics of a fiscal juggernaut.

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20 dollar advance guy: (starts to advance—haha-get it?.ah whatever—-towards me): Listen if you want to do this we can….

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Me: Do what? Check it out—If you were going to do something, it would have been done before the first inarticulate syllable left your lips. You probably never saw anything through that you set out to accomplish and I really doubt that you are going to start today. Listen Tom. Can I call you Tom? You look like a Tom. So Tom, when you tell the story to all your friends at the tattoo party about the asshole at the bar who’s ass you almost kicked, make sure you correlate it with the day when you went borderline-homeless-person and took out 20 bucks from your credit card. So right when you start to feel all bad ass and such, you start to remember that your are as relevant as the neon gravel in a fish tank.

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20 dollar advance guy: Fuck you. You’re not even worth it. (walks to the door)

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Me: Good talk Tom.

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Hey is this a variation of some sort of snobbery? Sure as shit it is. But you know what? I was thinking the other day when I was driving down the street—you see some goofball walk in front of you and you go, “Check out this strap on” I know the same thing is going on when I am strutting my fairy ass around some times; people in the car are all like, “Is that dude wearing a fucking bandana?” “How old do you think he is Marty?, 24, 25?” “No way that guy is easily 27. Holy shit, check out those jeans-I think I just saw his shit move” then in unison they go—“Hahahaha get over yourself bro. You’re about as cool as our friend Jenny’s little brother Sam who got shot down for the prom by the chick with those gnarly titanium crutches.” So the point being that we all put ourselves out there, so we should all expect it.

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So what am I doing now? Watching the Thomas Crowne Affair whilst ironing my week’s worth of bandanas. I’m not into curvy chicks or poor people. I like gin and gently caressing my ego. Many will attest to my toolness. But I will always be able to find twenty dollars. Hold on—one two three—okay-just wanted to get it over 900 words.

I never got into hunting. I knocked a rabbit’s eye out with a rock and broke a seagull’s wing with a slingshot on separate occasions. Both times I threw up. Both times I cried. Both times my grandfather was looking at me with utter contempt and a “Did this kid grow up in a pussywillow cabin on licorice lane?” sigh on his face. I could just never get into it.

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To this day I don’t think I have really ever held a gun, lit an m-80, or taken a girl on a four wheeler to go drop acid in the woods….or whatever you people that grew up eighty miles from the nearest building over five stories do. However the Darwinian itch sets in and in an attempt to avoid my testes retreating back into my abdomen to transform into a vagina, I go to extra lengths to get all-hunter/gatherer whenever given the chance. It has nothing to do with being in my mid-twenties and realizing I have to get all drastic and fetch me a grizzly’s index claw to make up for the fact I never came home with a scalp. (Wait, do you scalp animals? See?-I don’t fucking know. I try to talk about hunting and end up sounding like a serial killer) Rather I keep it to the confines of my apartment and has mostly to do with smaller game.

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I had a totally mice infested apartment in Manayunk three years ago. It started with me being a lame-ass and setting up the mouse traps around the place which did prove pretty effective. Being the freak that I am, I deemed that this was not nearly exciting enough. One night about half way into a bottle of Bombay— by myself I might add, I saw one of these little jerkoffs scamper across my kitchen floor. As is frequently the case when I drink gin, I was totally naked except for a blue bandana on my head. I went to my bedroom and grabbed an air gun that I have had since I was fifteen and set up camp in a corner of my kitchen to wait for him to come out from under the refrigerator. After about a minute and a half I got impatient and started talking shit…..to the mouse- “Come on out asshole! I already killed your whole family! What a bunch of dumb asses!”—I swear there is psilocybin in gin. When he wouldn’t come out I would fire a warning pellet at the fridge. I clearly had underestimated my opponent and advanced tactics were in order. From my corner I hopped up on top of the island so he couldn’t see me and fired pellets all over my kitchen for the better part of two hours. I never saw him.

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Next morning I go to take out the trash and my neighbor Katie is out on the porch.

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Katie: What’s up Ry Ry. Long night huh?

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Me: No I actually stayed in and just laid low. Had a couple drinks but kept it rather gentlemanly.

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Katie: Haha right. You know you should probably keep your blinds shut. But if your idea of being gentlemanly is screaming to yourself and running around your apartment with a semi dangling around, then you pulled it off pretty well. Jesus Christ Ryan it was like you were reenacting Lord of the Flies.

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Me: I had a semi? Weird. No actually I was trying to catch a mouse. Sorry about the blinds but I just got a little tipsy and…

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Katie (interrupting): You know what- I really don’t need to hear the rest of it. From the day I moved in and your idea of conversation was to tell my mom something about your ex girlfriend having to crush up Valtrex and put it in her Cheerios. So now nothing really surprises me.

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Me: Oh c’mon. She asked me if this is a nice neighborhood. I just made a point to highlight the low crime rate but that some of the people are shitty or just complete whores. Whatever-she laughed.

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Katie: Right. Well good luck with the mouse. Later

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I caught the mouse a few days later when it walked into one of the traps. But there is something to be said about getting all nude, going on a vision quest in your own home, and shooting shit. It makes you not feel as much as a half man.

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Fast forward to last night and I have a mouse. I don’t want to act like too much of a freak by slipping myself a mickey and grabbing an axe out of my closet as to totally creep out my girlfriend. So I try to act somewhat like a human being and set up a couple of those sissified traps. You can imagine my elation this morning when I wake up and the traps are still spring loaded but the food on them is missing. This could quite simply mean that I have cockroaches as well but I am going to tell myself that I have met a true opponent—He is the Houdini-mouse who can pull off death defying mouse acts like and acrobatic backflip over the trap and eat the peanut butter whilst in mid-air……or I have roaches.

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Nevertheless all Friday plans are off as I have to get out of work and go track down some war-paint

Holy freakin’ Jesus I enjoyed not writing in this thing—-seriously thank someone that I don’t fancy myself some writer of important prose and feel the need to constantly show you how talented I am—-Doing this can be a total pain in the pee hole and I wholeheartedly didn’t miss it.  Anywho, I went to Cyprus for two weeks—that was the vacation. I swear to Christ that even if I wanted to write in this thing, there is something so backwards about Europe that despite the fact that the Euro is hot shit while making the dollar look like a red headed step child of a currency, the collection of those countries as a whole still seem to be stuck in 1998 on so many levels. I just think it’s retarded that no matter what country I go to in a part of the world that is considered the west, there is no such thing as wifi in a hotel. Internet cafés smell like cigarettes and suicide bombers, plus the keyboards are usually caked in foreign people sludge—-I just can’t do it. There were only so many cultural anecdotes (like not being able to put toilet paper in the toilet—-no, you wipe your ass and put the dirty toilet paper in the trash can. Then your cousin does the same thing. Then you sleep in late every day so housekeeping never gets to come in. Then there is an overflowing trash can with shitty toilet paper. This region is the hub of civilization right? Ok—just making sure) worth mentioning at a given time and keeping my concentration amongst aspiring jihadists really wasn’t going to happen.

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I consider myself a pretty savy traveler having spent a decent amount of time abroad and have curtailed myself into being the best un-ugly American I can possibly be. The best way to do this is just denying being American altogether. I went as far as to get an Irish passport and pass myself as an entirely different nationality. This works remarkably well with non-native English speakers. However when you run into the real deal there is no hiding it. Like when hanging out with the blotchy drunk Londoners or Lodonites or whatever at a bar…

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English Guy—You know, I generally hate Americans but you are the coolest one I ever met.

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Me: Well thanks I guess

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English Guy: No c’mon. You’re absolutely brilliant. Usually Americans are all, I don’t know. You know? You know what I mean right?

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Me: Sure that’s great. It’s like me saying that I have a couple black friends.

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English guy: What?

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Me: No you’re equally awesome. Keep up the good work.

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I used to let shit like this get under my skin. I was on some God-awful long bus ride in Spain a few years back sitting next to a Swiss university student who insisted on lecturing me on the ignorance of Americans and how our country is raping the world. I ended up calling him a fag and said I refused to argue with a person who’s country’s army was made out of Legos and fights with pocket knives. Stepping off that bus I realized I gave him exactly what he wanted. I then went on Wikipedia and learned every fact about the entire world. I hope today a Swiss person accidentally calls my phone and I can blow his socks off

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Hypothetically Swiss guy: Hello. This is Franz and I am a homosexual. Is Rupert there?

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Me: Franz, It seems that you have the wrong number. But for your own pleasure, I will have you know that your country’s GDP in 2007 was $300.2 billion

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Hypothetical Franz: Why thank you. Now that we are on the subject, how about that Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf? Traitor huh?

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Me: Franz I beg to differ. I believe that the Swiss People’s Party had overreacted and should have embraced her victory. But this is a discussion we can have some day over a slice of Nusstotorte and a few laughs.  And maybe we can have that next conversation in your awsome abrasive native tongue; Swiss-German. Good day Franz

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Hypothetical Franz: Good day my intelligent American friend

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Oh again I jest. But in all seriousness, I toned it down and did attempt to learn more about the world than just the CNN stuff. People from other countries are impressed when you can tell them who the Prime Minister is in Whogivesafuckistan is. I like it when you know how smart I am. But eventually this wears off and what has set in is a smooth nonchalant-ness of the ole’ icouldgiveashit’s. I simply do not care anymore and you can blabber and blabber away, tell me about napalmed babies and how Israel is the 51st state, and I’ll just sit there and nod my head. If I’m in the mood to entertain, I might just start having some fun with you as well. Like on my plane ride home….

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Cypriot lady: Ahh American huh? Not too many of you coming to Cyprus huh?

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Me: Yeah it was pretty crazy. I don’t think we met any other Americans the whole time we were here.

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Cypriot lady: Yes yes. Some fun times in America no?

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Me: Yes that’s what I do. I actually don’t work at all. I start my day with a bucket of French fries before I pray to Satan and do my best to have a healthy dose of premarital sex before I go drop ecstasy under my money tree.

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Cypriot lady: Yes. Many pretty trees in America. So what you be thinking about the Bin Laden huh?

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Me: Holy shit lady no foreplay? Well if you must know, I’m more of an Eagles fan but don’t tell anyone. I try to create this whole persona of a dude that is way too cool to like sports. Kind of like Dylan from 90210 but less sedated.

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Cypriot: Huh? No the bombs and the buildings huh?

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Me: Oh that old thing? Yeah I’m over it.

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Cypriot lady: huh?

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Me: Can’t talk. On ecstasy. Leave me alone you ding dong.

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Yeah neat trip.