A few weeks ago I met a Thai girl at a bar called, oddly enough, Thai's, and she spent the night at my place. She then stayed over until like 3 o'clock the next day, and she told me, in broken English, the story of her life. She's 28-years-old, she's one of 6 children, her mom died when she was 20, and her dad quickly remarried someone twenty years his junior. I will say, for having not spoken a lick of English when she moved here about a year ago, her English is pretty darn good. When I was driving her home she decided that we should stop at the Thai restaurant she works at. I didn't plan on calling her, so I really shouldn't have agreed to do this, but I'll be damned if it wasn't the best Thai food I ever had, and for only like 6 bucks a plate. I was kind of bummed because I knew I couldn't show my face in there again, but I did recommend it to a lot of people.
I didn't ever call her, but last night I found myself at the same after-hours bar in which I met her, and who should appear but Broken English Girl. We went back to my place again, and this time she stayed until five in the afternoon the next day. She wouldn't let me have sex with her this time around, which was probably a good idea, although it felt like a downright shitty idea at the time, but I did, however, get the best full-body massage of my lifetime. I'm talking, hands, feet, standing up to walk across my back, and best of all, some deal where she sat Indian-style, with my head in her lap, doing something flipping incredible to my temples.*
This time I learned that living in the states opened her eyes to some of the things in Thailand that now seem archaic to her. For example, men typically expect their wives to be virgins when the marry them, they are shunned by all if they cheat, yet the husbands cheat lefty-righty without any judgement. So, when she went back, she was not too thrilled when her ex-boyfriend proposed to her. He didn't like hearing no, so he hit her. Things like this make it hard for me to do an all-too-typical Gancer blow-off/phase out. I certainly don't want to be her boyfriend, but I do want to look out for her, for some reason.
I then agreed to help her move some items from her apartment to the place she's moving into. During this process she couldn't work the keys to get into two separate doors of the new place. That is what I'm talking about when I say I feel some sort of responsibility when it comes to her. She really is a sweet girl. After the moving was done she made a point to get my number, and she left her watch at my apartment, so I am going to be hearing from her. That's alright with me, but I just want to be a friend to her. Do friends lie in bed, listening to Pink Floyd's Obscured By Clouds and massage one anothers naked bodies? God, I hope so in this case.
*No there was no happy ending, before you make a comment like that, but I did educate her on that expression.
No, that's nothing dirty, you perverts. I work at the John Hancock center, taking pictures of tourists at the base of the cock (ground floor), then I try to sell them the pictures with different Chicago backgrounds at the top of the cock (94th floor). I hadn't worked that location for some time, and I was less than thrilled to see it on my schedule, since it can be, at times, boring, depressing, and sometimes the house music, no lie, is a disc of Michael McDonald ruining Motown standards, one after the other.
However, I had not until this point passed the time away by chatting up the African American ladies who sell the tickets, run the elevators, etc. I wish I had discovered this earlier, because these gals are a hoot! One gets off the phone and says, "Oh, he's getting his balls waxed." I said, "Huh?" She said that a coworker was very secretive about the "appointment" he had to go on for his lunch break, so she filled in the blanks. Later, we were talking about if we wanted kids some day, and the one had decided that she was going to have kids at age "41." I asked her why that number, and she said that at that age she didn't care what childbirth would do to her body, stretch marks, etc., bring it on. I then brought up how I heard breast feeding can deflate a pair of perfectly nice breasts into a pair of deflated balloons. 41 Girl hadn't heard that, so she asked her friend, who was involved in another conversation, not at all listening to our conversation, "Did breast feeding fuck up yo' titties?" I chuckled about that for the remainder of my shift.
Here is another random thing I learned from a feminine, Southern guy I work with who is in between flight attendant gigs: In Ireland they call flight attendants "trolley dollies." Cute, huh?
There is one more thing I learned recently, but this was something I learned Saturday night. We were having a few drinks at a friend's place, and some of the ladies were modeling their New Year's Eve dresses for my buddy and me. I was shocked how candid they are with one another, like, "Your boobs look great in that, but your belly is poking a little. You'll have to wear spanx." What? Spanx? Have you heard of these? Apparently they are like stockings/spandex, only they go around a girl's gut to tuck it in tight. My buddy and I were wondering how it is we've never seen any of our girlfriends put one on, nor had we, to our recollection, taken off one of these in any of our other encounters. My buddy then speculated that this is why they often step out to slip into "something more comfortable." However, after the topic had moved onto something else, he suddenly remembered seeing one. We all had a good laugh as he told us about how he remembers wondering what in the hell it was.
Some of you won't be too surprised that I came up with a solid name for the male version of spanx: Hankz.
Hey, readers, have you heard of spanx? Any good spanx stories?
I've been taking pictures of people at the mall to the sounds of the same God-damned Christmas songs over-and-over again, and if you know me at all, you know that I can't tune out music. It burrows into my head and pushes out everything that may be useful to me like where I left my car keys, my mother's birthday (only kidding mom, it's in October), or how to walk upright. Because I was left with no choice but to listen to this crap, since I can't tune it out, I figured I'd use my time to come up with some funny, I hope, insights about some of the lyrics. FYI, although they are both brilliant, I'm not going to go with ones that have already been done, like "Walkin' 'round in women's underwear" or "Check the balls on that big collie."
1. During We Wish You a Merry Christmas, it's way funnier, instead of saying figgy pudding, to say friggin' pudding. "Now, bring us some friggin' pudding. Now bring us some friggin' pudding. Now, bring us some friggin pudding, and bring it right here! You can also insert Bill Cosby's favorite, "friggin pudding pops," to the same, if not heightened, effect.
2. Does the guy in the 12 Days of Christmas give his main squeeze five golden rings, for example, each day he gives her items five through 12, because that's what it sounds like. If so, she'd get 40 gold rings, and that's a lot of bling. The bad news is she'd also get 40 ladies milking, and that's a lot of lactating. That could be really messy, and does she have to house these wet nurses and whoever they're giving milk to, or are they taking milk from something, like cows? If so, what does she do with all those damn cows? If you ask me, this guy doesn't know shit about buying gifts. At day two she should have said, "Okay, now I have two partridges in pear trees, and the turtle doves don't sweeten the deal. What's more, Danny and Keith keep bugging me to get them out of the trees and they're repeatedly demanding of me to, 'Come on, get happy.' Take all this shit back and just get me the stuff I pointed out when we were at the mall. Weren't you listening? I know I didn't point out no damn birds!" Always just buy the shit they point out guys. Women like surprises, but only if they are predetermined, non-bird or wet nurse related surprises.
3. In Santa Clause is Coming to Town, when they say that "he knows when you've been sleeping, he knows when you're awake;" I wonder if he also knows when you've been playing with yourself. If so, I'm surprised I got any gifts.
4. There is a version of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas that plays at the mall where it really does sound like the lady is saying: "Here we are as olden days Happy golden days, up yours." That really sounds like a mixed message, like she's wishing me happy golden days (whatever that is, but it sounds nice), but then she says, "Up Yours!!!" Hilarious. Nobody says up yours anymore, which seemed to go out with "eat me." This is a shame, in that both are still effective in terms of their imagery and directness.
5. In every one's favorite Christmas carol, Whoomp There It Is!, by every one's favorite Christmas crooners, Tag Team, when they speak of their man Steve Boland, who in the hell is that? What throws me is that it's not a rap name, like I could see if it were Stevie B., but I suppose there already is a Stevie B., who sang the 1991 shit ballad*, Because I Love You. No rap name, just regular, old Steve. Actually, I looked it up, and evidently he says, "And my man Steve Roll'n," so it's kind of a rap name. I wish I knew that the other day before blurting out "my man Steve Bolan" 300 times in front of all my coworkers and customers, who must think I was rapping about some insurance agent, since that what Steve Boland sounds like to me.
Speaking of Stevie B., how bad is this video? Nothing happens! He just walks around his spacious, but sparse apartment, lamenting in his disheveled tuxedo and Afro-pompadour hairstyle. I just coined that term, and I'll never get to use it again, except those rare occurrences when Stevie B. is brought up. Such a a shame.
6. I noticed the other morning, when the holiday favorite Caribbean Queen came on the radio**, that Billy Ocean may have been ahead of his time when he sang, in 1985:
I was in search of a good time Just running my game Love was the furthest Furthest from my mind
Running his game? Who was saying that in 1985? Then again, he does say "painted on jeans," which does bring him right back to 1985 as fast as his delorean will take him. As far as Billy's "game" is concerned, I don't know what kind of game he's running, because he was prone to saying: "Hey, you! Get into my car!" That's not too suave if you ask me, or is he really a genius? Oh, Billy, you sly dog you . . .
Are there some holiday lyrics that always threw you off over the years?
* This is not to be confused by Woot, There It Is. Why do two similar things like that always seem to come out at the same time? For instance, why did Antz and A Bug's Life both come out within a week of one another? One seems to always suck too. Was Antz or Bug's Life the shitty one? I don't know, because I've never seen either, but I'm pretty sure one or the other was the Woot, There It Is of the animated bug world. ** Okay, fine. I kind of like that song. *** Okay, fine. It came up on random on my iPod. Okay, fine. I sought it out and played it.
I was straining, struggling, and damn-near sharting* my way through a set of a mere 50 push-ups, that quite sadly, had to be broken up into two sets of twenty-five, and it occurred to me that in high school I could do 50 straight without a problem. I used to be late to gym class daily, opt for doing push-ups rather than receiving a detention, and I'd bang them out like Mitch Gaylord. Um, perhaps a metaphor with the words bang and Mitch Gaylord was not a well-thought-out simile. Anyway, my next thought was, and who the hell else would think this(?), but I wondered if High School Gancer could kick Modern-Day Gancer's ass?
Let's go to the tale of the tape . . .
In this corner, at 6'1", and weighing in at 175 pounds, a skinny, pimply, two-sport athlete**, wall-flower in a flannel shirt with a professional fighting record of 0-0-0. 0-0-1 if you count the times, and I don't see how you can't, when his older sister held him down and tickled him until he couldn't breathe as a collective loss. He has crippling shyness and social awkwardness, but if there's heavy metal music playing by the likes of Suicidal Tendencies or Pantera, his heightened suburban, white-boy teen-angst may give him a slight edge. He also boasts a maximum bench press of 205 pounds.
In this corner, at 6'2", and weighing in at 195 pounds, a 30-year-old frustrated writer who drinks more days out of the week than he exercises, except in the summer when he bikes a lot, or if he has more than 2 sports leagues going at a time, which is rare.*** Again, a professional record of 0-0-1. However, maybe both should have records of 0-0-2, since she used to, again, while pinning me down with her knees, spit hanging loogies, and then suck them back up at the last minute, sometimes waiting, alas, too long. The edge would go to the kid in a long fight, since 30-year-old Gancer would surely get winded, but confidence and poise has to go towards the veteran. However, as savvy and cunning as he may be, although his maximum bench press has not been put to the test in many moons, it probably falls at around the 135 pound mark. This number is not arbitrarily chosen, since any less would mean not being able to use the big-boy plates, and the veteran's pride would lead him to risk serious injury and/or days of soreness rather than get out the wussy plates.****
Overall, if I were a betting man, I'd lay money down on the Modern-Day Gancer. What do you think? How about yourself? Could you kick your own ass even when you were in better shape?
*Sorry, Cherry. I swear that's the last time I reference your shart. **Not at one time, mind you. One sport, basketball, came during my freshman year and the other one, track, came during my senior year, just to break the monotony. ***Then again, I usually go out for drinks after games, so it kind of cancels out. ****Did Ronny steal my jumpsuit?
I didn't ever call her, but last night I found myself at the same after-hours bar in which I met her, and who should appear but Broken English Girl. We went back to my place again, and this time she stayed until five in the afternoon the next day. She wouldn't let me have sex with her this time around, which was probably a good idea, although it felt like a downright shitty idea at the time, but I did, however, get the best full-body massage of my lifetime. I'm talking, hands, feet, standing up to walk across my back, and best of all, some deal where she sat Indian-style, with my head in her lap, doing something flipping incredible to my temples.*
I then agreed to help her move some items from her apartment to the place she's moving into. During this process she couldn't work the keys to get into two separate doors of the new place. That is what I'm talking about when I say I feel some sort of responsibility when it comes to her. She really is a sweet girl. After the moving was done she made a point to get my number, and she left her watch at my apartment, so I am going to be hearing from her. That's alright with me, but I just want to be a friend to her. Do friends lie in bed, listening to Pink Floyd's Obscured By Clouds and massage one anothers naked bodies? God, I hope so in this case. 
