Prologue and Intro

Warning: This is usually where I'd place a slash warning. Granted, I've never written slash before in my life (yes, what a sad cruel world I live in), but this is, nonetheless, the place where I'd put a warning of slash, if there was any in this story to begin with. One might ask why not… well -- this is Weasel, as in Olhado Weasel. I'm not going for any ambiguity, here. You'll just have to read Ol if you want to find out.

Greetings. This story is a birthday present for my good friend Olhado, who is currently entering her twentieth birthday, bless her. And we all know that anything in relation to Ol herself must have a bit of a tweak, just a smidgen, of Forge in it, correct?

Well. Let's just say that she won't be disappointed, and hopefully, neither will you.

This is a tribute to a tribute, a birthday present tribute to a birthday present tribute, a Forge/Weasel tribute to that of the greatest gal I know. May God look down and smile in advance, for what you are about to read is something incredibly strange and… well, strange. I don't remember what I started out with and I doubt you'll even remember anything, and its confusing and I doubt you should be reading this in the first place. Thou hath been warned.

On with the show.

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I'm not a tightwad. I don't despair at buying things that I can't pay for at the time. I don't stare at magazines late at night with a flashlight and a sad, sad expression on my face under my sheets, wishing I could be different and have a different outlook on life. I replace that which I break. I go to fast food restaurants quite often. I order cheese fries every time I order, and pay extra for that little bit of pepper smudged on the top.

That doesn't really excuse the fact that I'm staring at the lady in front of me who's looking quite pitifully at me, with this expression that is basically tearing my insides up. Notice that this is definitely despite the fact that I'm pretty sure the look I have on my face is nothing of the kind.

"Um… ma'am," I say, trying terribly hard not to laugh hysterically, "I… I don't need your money."

"Nonsense, dear." She's waving the wad of bills in my face, now. Oh, boy. Cash. "I insist."

Um, no, lady. See, actually, I'm somewhat of a legally happy person. I'm not a beggar, I'm not a tightwad, I lie somewhere in between, I'm actually just a middleclass bastard with a happy-happy life and a happy-happy outlook on life. I have friends, I have a healthy complexion, my doctor can't find anything wrong with me, I wear sunscreen to the beach, I don't go to tanning salons, I watch Queer Eye every Tuesday night at nine. I dunno, its just something about five gays redoing a whole straight man thing that just gets me, you know, old lady?

"No, really, I must insist, ma'am. I'm fine. Really." Please go away. Please leave me to my peaceful, chaotic self. Never mind that I just contradicted myself. Just please, please just leave, dammit. "Please, ma'am. I'm fine."

She frowns. Oh, she's got such a look on her face. Am I dead, or am I dead? This should be one of those reality shows on Bravo, seeing as they certainly need some more, right? See how long young people last when faced by angry crows in old-fashioned skirts and pinafores! Tweeenty five dollar bets! STEP ON UP!

Come to think of it, what is she wearing? Some kind of giant butt enlarger? Or is she just going to a reenactment of the Victorian ear? Or was it really the Victorian era in which those giant butt things were popular? I can remember seeing that wicked stepmother in the Cinderella movie wearing that kind of thing…or maybe she just had a really fat butt. What's the difference?

OK, so the lady in front of me looks exactly like the stepmother except she lacks a purring affectionate evil cat lying in her arms beside her rather out-there chest. Same heart hair do, same hooking nose, its the same gosh-darn everything, right down to the ever-so-natural glaring look of the majorly evil eyes. Except, she's handing me three twenty-dollar bills and glaring at me hard.

Do I really look that bad? I stare down at my clothes. Nope, no, just some ratty jeans and a rather disposed of Northwestern sweatshirt, which I found on my doorstep one Friday night smelling of beer and rot. I've washed many times since and yet it still calms me to smell the scent that won't go away. Reminds me of a bar, which seems to calm my senses somewhat without having drunk anything, and without ending up drunk myself. Drinking calms me somewhat. Maybe I'm just jumpy regardless.

I'm like Johnny Nolan in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, in that way; people think I'm drunk when I'm sober and that I'm sober when I'm drunk. When I'm drunk I'm serious as hell and tend to not talk to anyone; when I'm sober I'm sarcastic as hell and tend not to talk to anyone. Now I feel like I'm gonna give myself a three like in those old school organizing sheets; I'm not organizing my thoughts, I need to be chastised.

Old Lady is being herself, actually, from what I can tell. She's just staring at me while I stare at her, my hands by my sides, her arm still out and the money still holding out while I shake my head. She's still there and no matter what I do I have the feeling that I won't be able to shake the image of her standing there straight as a board. Will isn't something I've been able to twist into anything, actually, so its no better that I can't get rid of an old person who's insisting that I give her the happiness that accompanies that which comes after giving to grand charities. Like helping young souls out in the middle of a street sitting by old graffiti with their torn sneakers pointing up towards heaven as they just sit out in the rain listening to a man in an upper apartment scream at his bride with their arms crossed in front of chest and fake smile plastered on while a song choruses through their head.

Maybe I do look sad. That wasn't my aim.

She's withdrawing. Heaven on Earth with a bag of tea. Shaking her head, she flips the money back into her purse with a curt nod and blinks at me. I blink back. Another nod. She stands up. Moves quietly, lays the silk black umbrella she's carrying by my side, against the painted and crumbling brick. Another nod, another blink, and she's gone, the receding figure drawing lazily through the wind and fluttering sopping leaves that is downtown.


Great. I'm in the middle of the nowhereness that is my town, my town, the town I was born in, the place where I've lived and loved and Goddammit I need, to not to feel the memories but to just feel all that is right in the world. I sat on this sidewalk when I was less than five years old. It doesn't feel any different, except for the fact that now my feet reach the end of the pavement, just about to the point where the grass begins and the slight indentation that signifies the rift between concrete and dirt ends. I sat here, on this sidewalk, when I was five years old, innocent of all crimes.

And I did not just lower myself to this, did I?

"Greetings."

This is usually the point where I'd say that I saw an old forgotten bookstore across the street, a restaurant, a long lost relative, a carpet depot; if I were a poet I'd describe the feeling of needing to write to someone, but its not something to be communicated. It's the understanding of the thing that really matters.

But no, instead of a bookstore, instead of a restaurant, there's a shabby guy in front of me, wearing naught but a smiley face tea shirt and a pair of ratty, ratty jeans with long black hair and a long face and circles under his eyes, all soaking from above. And he's smiling, and my eyes are watering from the puffiness that is the rain, and I know something about it right now. And I need to write, even though I've never written a poem in my life. But I need to, right now. Like an urge that one can't ignore. Like smoking. Like alcohol.

"Do you know where I can get some good, cheap coffee? With chocolate?"