This is a rant about something that happened 15 years ago. It’s offensive and misogynistic. The memory is still vivid. I’ve asked myself why do I attract this kind of woman. At the time, I thought they were normal. Her type is what surrounded me growing up. It’s representative of my experiences with American Women but not of women in general. In contrast, my experiences with foreign (not Americanized) women in the US and abroad have been positive overall.
In his autobiographical novel “Women”, author Charles Bukowski paraphrased Hemingway: “Write what you know,” he advised. Hemingway wrote honestly about his life experiences to create fiction stories. Bukowski took the advice further than what seems to have been intended and ran around Los Angeles having dysfunctional relationships full of psychotic episodes with countless women and then wrote stories about them.
Door
Grace Jones was playing on the bar’s sound system. The lighting was dim and the ceiling was low. The interior was the same as it was 100 years ago when it was built. It had white plaster walls and lot of dark, plain woodwork. Wooden bench seats were built against the walls. 19th century photos of Minneapolis decorated the white walls. Twenty tables filled the floor.
I was the dungeon master. I worked odd jobs to help pay for college, and this was one of them. I worked the door at a basement gaybar. It was getting crowded. The usual gay leather dudes were there drinking vodka tonics.
Pitcher Pete, a stout old man, had been sitting alone all evening with his famous pitcher in his usual spot in a dark corner. He was already drunk. You could tell because his bald head swells on account of the steel plate in his skull. Years ago, a flower pot fell from a third story window and landed on his head. He has never formed a cogent sentence and has spoken in “word salad” ever since then. One time, he said goodbye with the phrase “Hold onto your lettuce and don’t drop the salad.”
Psycho Tom and his tweaker roommate Billy with the long blond braids and gold plated front teeth sat at the table across from the door. Billy was twenty something and had already been in prison long enough that he spoke a harsh sounding prison slang.
I was excited because my new girlfriend of one week was arriving. She had just turned 21 and could finally come in. Under 21 were not allowed to enter. (Despite the increasingly high rate of violent crime in the city, local law enforcement spent a lot of its limited resources enforcing underage drinking laws.) Even though I controlled the door, the manager knew her from the LGBT support group on campus and knew how old she was. She wasn’t truly gay but I suspected she was “bi-curious” and had been going through her college girl lesbian phase that was the cliché of the 1990s.
Some frat boys lined up outside the door to come in. I don’t have anything against fraternity members when they behave, but when they’re drunk, I can’t stand them. While they waited, they sang lines from a TV commercial jingle that advertised pickup trucks. “Like a rock,” the group of boneheads chanted in unison. From five feet away, their cologne burned my eyes. This was the only gay bar within an hour’s drive. The bar, and by extension me since I was the doorman, has the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason. Some townies had recently beaten and raped a gay student. The house policy is to be gay-friendly and make sure gays, theater majors, and artfags have a comfortable place to hang out. There were 9 bars dedicated to YUPPIES within two city blocks. YUPPIES, when they come in, order $1 cups of Natural Light beer, yell, sing commercial jingles, don’t tip the bartender, stink up the place with their cheap cologne and perfume, and take up valuable real estate. I looked at their IDs. They looked OK, but I said they looked fake and asked them all for a second form of ID. They whined and left.
My new girlfriend Courtney arrived. We kissed on the cheek. She was pale and her blond hair was almost white. It was cut straight across her eyes and, again, cut square across her shoulders. She was wearing a summer dress. She looked slightly rockabilly but mainstream.
She sat at the table beside the door next to PsychoTom’s table. A number of people came in and many smiled and greeted me by name. My friends Chris and Rick from the band AIDS Faggot arrived. AIDS Faggot was a local “homocore” metal band that was popular then. They were wearing matching biker jackets, biker hats, biker boots, and extremely short Daisy Duke jean shorts.
Each time somebody knew me, Courtney got quiet and stared at me with cold eyes and tight lips. I didn’t know yet what this look meant. I took a break and got us drinks.
Courtney: So Mr. Robin, you’re not seeing other girls are you?
Me: No of course not
Courtney: Are you sure?
Me: of course
Courtney: Don’t ever lie to me. I do not tolerate lying. If I ever catch you lying, you will be sorry. Don’t keep any secrets from me.
Me: ok
Courtney smiled with her lips but not with her eyes. She leaned over and kissed me. Then her face shriveled, wrinkley and puckered. She looked like an angry baby.
Courtney: Who was that girl you were talking to in front of the bookstore?
Me: What bookstore? I wasn’t talking to anybody.
Courtney: Don’t lie to me. I saw you today in front of the Magus bookstore.
Me: Her? Nobody. I just passed a friend on my way to school and said “hello.”
Courtney: I saw the way she was looking at you. Who was she?
me: just somebody who comes to the bar.
Courtney: Mmmmmmm hmmmmm. Courtney knows. You’re lying, but I’ll let you off the hook this time because it was your first time, but only if you tell me who she is.
me: sorry
courtney: Now who is she?
me: it was just Kim. she’s in that Foo Fighters cover band you like.
Courtney: mmmmmm hmmmmmm
Me: Don’t worry about her. she’s happily married. And besides, I don’t like the Foo Fighters.
Courtney: I don’t want you talking to her any more.
Psycho Tom and Billy had been silent and started talking quietly again after we stopped talking. Courtney went to the toilet. Billy leaned over and whispered with a smirk, “I’d fsck her too, but it sucks to be you.”
Diving accident
She had invited me to spend the night at her apartment. She put the Foo Fighters “Fingernail song”, her favorite song from her favorite band, on infinite replay on her CD player. The whole time I knew her, she believed she had superior taste in music and never let anybody else choose what to listen to.
Foo Fighters is the Muzak of grunge. It became popular when the grunge band Nirvana, the mass media’s favorite band of the year, fell apart at Kurt Cobaine’s suicide. Its frontman, David Grohl, had played for Nirvana. With the media needing someone to step into the spotlight and keep it entertained, Grohl eagerly jumped in to fill the void and formed the band Foo Fighters.
His music is a mashup of grunge sounds altered just enough to fool undiscerning consumers of music into thinking Foo Fighters was something special. Like most heavily commercialized acts, the sound is generic and bland. He methodically copied and watered down the style and sounds of successful grunge bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Alice in Chains. It is the nasal whine of Smashing Pumpkins singing to the gratuitously angry guitar playing of a garage full of over-privileged teenagers. Grohl’s act totally avoided being innovative, experimental, complex, challenging, perceptive, or creative. Grohl created something so banal and so mediocre that it appealed to everyone from middle class “alternative”/emo kids to frat boys to jocks to schoolgirls looking for the next boy band to the corporate makers of TV deodorant commercials.
Foo Fighters is to grunge as the Dave Matthews band is to alternative rock. It has no soul, and I had a bad feeling.
In his autobiographical novel “Women”, author Charles Bukowski paraphrased Hemingway: “Write what you know,” he advised. Hemingway wrote honestly about his life experiences to create fiction stories. Bukowski took the advice further than what seems to have been intended and ran around Los Angeles having dysfunctional relationships full of psychotic episodes with countless women and then wrote stories about them.
Door
Grace Jones was playing on the bar’s sound system. The lighting was dim and the ceiling was low. The interior was the same as it was 100 years ago when it was built. It had white plaster walls and lot of dark, plain woodwork. Wooden bench seats were built against the walls. 19th century photos of Minneapolis decorated the white walls. Twenty tables filled the floor.
I was the dungeon master. I worked odd jobs to help pay for college, and this was one of them. I worked the door at a basement gaybar. It was getting crowded. The usual gay leather dudes were there drinking vodka tonics.
Pitcher Pete, a stout old man, had been sitting alone all evening with his famous pitcher in his usual spot in a dark corner. He was already drunk. You could tell because his bald head swells on account of the steel plate in his skull. Years ago, a flower pot fell from a third story window and landed on his head. He has never formed a cogent sentence and has spoken in “word salad” ever since then. One time, he said goodbye with the phrase “Hold onto your lettuce and don’t drop the salad.”
Psycho Tom and his tweaker roommate Billy with the long blond braids and gold plated front teeth sat at the table across from the door. Billy was twenty something and had already been in prison long enough that he spoke a harsh sounding prison slang.
I was excited because my new girlfriend of one week was arriving. She had just turned 21 and could finally come in. Under 21 were not allowed to enter. (Despite the increasingly high rate of violent crime in the city, local law enforcement spent a lot of its limited resources enforcing underage drinking laws.) Even though I controlled the door, the manager knew her from the LGBT support group on campus and knew how old she was. She wasn’t truly gay but I suspected she was “bi-curious” and had been going through her college girl lesbian phase that was the cliché of the 1990s.
Some frat boys lined up outside the door to come in. I don’t have anything against fraternity members when they behave, but when they’re drunk, I can’t stand them. While they waited, they sang lines from a TV commercial jingle that advertised pickup trucks. “Like a rock,” the group of boneheads chanted in unison. From five feet away, their cologne burned my eyes. This was the only gay bar within an hour’s drive. The bar, and by extension me since I was the doorman, has the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason. Some townies had recently beaten and raped a gay student. The house policy is to be gay-friendly and make sure gays, theater majors, and artfags have a comfortable place to hang out. There were 9 bars dedicated to YUPPIES within two city blocks. YUPPIES, when they come in, order $1 cups of Natural Light beer, yell, sing commercial jingles, don’t tip the bartender, stink up the place with their cheap cologne and perfume, and take up valuable real estate. I looked at their IDs. They looked OK, but I said they looked fake and asked them all for a second form of ID. They whined and left.
My new girlfriend Courtney arrived. We kissed on the cheek. She was pale and her blond hair was almost white. It was cut straight across her eyes and, again, cut square across her shoulders. She was wearing a summer dress. She looked slightly rockabilly but mainstream.
She sat at the table beside the door next to PsychoTom’s table. A number of people came in and many smiled and greeted me by name. My friends Chris and Rick from the band AIDS Faggot arrived. AIDS Faggot was a local “homocore” metal band that was popular then. They were wearing matching biker jackets, biker hats, biker boots, and extremely short Daisy Duke jean shorts.
Each time somebody knew me, Courtney got quiet and stared at me with cold eyes and tight lips. I didn’t know yet what this look meant. I took a break and got us drinks.
Courtney: So Mr. Robin, you’re not seeing other girls are you?
Me: No of course not
Courtney: Are you sure?
Me: of course
Courtney: Don’t ever lie to me. I do not tolerate lying. If I ever catch you lying, you will be sorry. Don’t keep any secrets from me.
Me: ok
Courtney smiled with her lips but not with her eyes. She leaned over and kissed me. Then her face shriveled, wrinkley and puckered. She looked like an angry baby.
Courtney: Who was that girl you were talking to in front of the bookstore?
Me: What bookstore? I wasn’t talking to anybody.
Courtney: Don’t lie to me. I saw you today in front of the Magus bookstore.
Me: Her? Nobody. I just passed a friend on my way to school and said “hello.”
Courtney: I saw the way she was looking at you. Who was she?
me: just somebody who comes to the bar.
Courtney: Mmmmmmm hmmmmm. Courtney knows. You’re lying, but I’ll let you off the hook this time because it was your first time, but only if you tell me who she is.
me: sorry
courtney: Now who is she?
me: it was just Kim. she’s in that Foo Fighters cover band you like.
Courtney: mmmmmm hmmmmmm
Me: Don’t worry about her. she’s happily married. And besides, I don’t like the Foo Fighters.
Courtney: I don’t want you talking to her any more.
Psycho Tom and Billy had been silent and started talking quietly again after we stopped talking. Courtney went to the toilet. Billy leaned over and whispered with a smirk, “I’d fsck her too, but it sucks to be you.”
Diving accident
She had invited me to spend the night at her apartment. She put the Foo Fighters “Fingernail song”, her favorite song from her favorite band, on infinite replay on her CD player. The whole time I knew her, she believed she had superior taste in music and never let anybody else choose what to listen to.
Foo Fighters is the Muzak of grunge. It became popular when the grunge band Nirvana, the mass media’s favorite band of the year, fell apart at Kurt Cobaine’s suicide. Its frontman, David Grohl, had played for Nirvana. With the media needing someone to step into the spotlight and keep it entertained, Grohl eagerly jumped in to fill the void and formed the band Foo Fighters.
His music is a mashup of grunge sounds altered just enough to fool undiscerning consumers of music into thinking Foo Fighters was something special. Like most heavily commercialized acts, the sound is generic and bland. He methodically copied and watered down the style and sounds of successful grunge bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Alice in Chains. It is the nasal whine of Smashing Pumpkins singing to the gratuitously angry guitar playing of a garage full of over-privileged teenagers. Grohl’s act totally avoided being innovative, experimental, complex, challenging, perceptive, or creative. Grohl created something so banal and so mediocre that it appealed to everyone from middle class “alternative”/emo kids to frat boys to jocks to schoolgirls looking for the next boy band to the corporate makers of TV deodorant commercials.
Foo Fighters is to grunge as the Dave Matthews band is to alternative rock. It has no soul, and I had a bad feeling.