April 9 again,
Weather: getting hotter
Mood: still decent
Music: The Ramones - Sheena is a Punk Rocker
Dear Diary:
Why is it that whenever my life gets back into gear and starts getting normal, weird shit starts happening?
So it was after Doich class. That little green jelly mutant, Dr. Mungey, teaches it. He's funny, I can stand his perky attitude in small doses, and I needed a foreign language requirement, so it's not terrible. I learned that Doich is the same thing as German, by the way. It's also spelled "Deutsch," so I guess I'll totally forget that now and keep spelling it "Doich."
Anyways, today, to demonstrate a point, Dr. Mungey stood up on his desk and started singing opera. That should tell you what he's like. He's also brought doughnuts to class, lit smoke bombs and made one of us try to do his job while he pretended to be a student, just in the three class periods we've had so far. But I think he does it on purpose to get our guards down. I dunno.
So Mungey lets us out before the end of the period sometime. I would've had a two hour, ten minute break before history, but today it was going to be more like two-twenty. I went to kill some time and ended up sitting in a hallway in the Arts and Letters Building, doodling in my composition book. (Don't get jealous, Diary, I still love you the most.) And who should come pouring in through an emergency exit, but the coyotes from the Wastelands? All of them, smelling like butt and ass, in fact.
But seriously, I'm stuck with them. They made the journey from the Central Great Wastes on foot, found a den in the area, and they've sworn to protect me with their lives. Fuck.
Because I had to spend so much time talking to J.D. and his crew, my break went by like that. I went up to the third floor for history class. The room is in an odd corner of the building and I still sometimes take a few minutes to find the right hallway.
Why am I taking history, you ask? Two things: A: it's required and B: it's funny. It's funny watching this guy Dr. Toadman editorialize about things that happened way before he was born. I was there when the main tribe of humans fled the continent, and it wasn't for religious reasons. I was there when Peebs annihilated the Bathboys and it wasn't because she "hates men." So watching him make up this story about what happened, based on basically jackshit, is hilarious!
I asked Toadman about the "General Abadeer" who fought the Bathboys in the Mountain Siege of 2525, by the way. He said something like "According to some accounts, she was one of Bubblegum's wives or concubines, uh-huh-huh." He looked at me funny when I laughed my head off.
So I am required to watch two hours of standup every week, basically. I'm exaggerating, but still!
Anyways, it's funny that Toadman said "wives." It really is. As far as I know, Prub-Bubs's only been married those two times, and those were centuries apart. But it got me thinking about her. So I called her up after class, seeing as my new "subjects" were thankfully nowhere to be seen.
It was not a productive phone call. The tension wasn't there this time-maybe she's the lonely one today-but all she wanted to talk about was study this, study that, and for a second I felt like I was talking to a parent, not an old girlfriend.
So I made an awkward excuse and let her go. But romance was on my mind after that.
A writer that Simon was obsessed with, who had a funny name*, once said that "peculiar traveling suggestions are dancing lessons from God." Now, God, like Glob and the rest, is still out of my comfort zone, but I believe in fate, which may well be the whim of some higher being.
Coming here was a weird idea, and I guess Leaf suggested it to me in a way, so I guess the dancing lessons have begun. I just didn't think there'd be any actual dancing.
I mean, I can dance, but I prefer to just float around and play bass and biz like that. So when I heard there was a mandatory "Knight's Ball" on the twelfth, I've got to say I was a little nervous. The last time I did any ballroom dancing was...
Glob, has it been that long ago?
No, no it hasn't. The very last time was at a wedding and we'll leave it at that. But the point is, I can do it. I know how. You hold the other person like so, you step in a little triangle in time with the beat, one-two-three, you do it backwards, one-two-three, then you turn, one, two and three. Rinse, lather, repeat. There's other ones and they're all the same ideas in different time signatures. I could probably work it out in my head for seven-quarters time, eleven-eighths...
But with who?
(My mental projection of my Mom just appeared to scold me for that.)
Sorry, Mom. With whom?
I have to invite a partner, which is fine by me, because I want to make some romance happen, but I'm a little... okay, way the fuck indecisive about it.
Melissa Bankley, I'll ask to the dance as a joke, to see her reaction. Hell, throw in Sir Julian. He'll say "fuck no" and I'll say "but you'd look good in a dress." If he swings at me, I'll duck, then I'll have him put on report for attempted assault of a ranking officer. If he doesn't, I still get to piss him off that way.
But as for seriously asking someone to the dance, whom?
Death? Sue? That weird cat-faced woman from Inglish 101?
Well... I've got to go get cleaned up and ask somebody out.
* I think his name was Tirk Vogganut. Simon, or that other person in Simon's body, still reads his books to this day. I've read most of them too.