So, last night I was going out the door to meet my one friend from the masters program at the black neighborhood bar, when my neighbor from my building who I went to Indiana to campaign for Obama with texted me that she and her friend were down at the white neighborhood bar and to come join them for a pitcher, so since that bar was closer, I decided to go down and have just one glass, and then go on to go meet my one friend from the masters program.
Anyhow, when I arrived at the white neighborhood bar, my one neighbor from my building who I went to Indiana to campaign for Obama with's friend, who also goes to law school and has very short hair and pixie-ish cheeks but is not a lesbian, was for some reason talking about all the gender-transgressive thing she did in her childhood growing up in the outskirts of Valparaiso, like pee standing up which her brothers made fun of her for when they accidentally opened the bathroom door one day and saw her doing that, and read boy-books like "Where the Red Fern Grows" and the Hatchet series, and be sexually aggressive to her teachers and in third grade be upfront with her male teachers and ask them to kiss her, and how since she wanted to be a native American, she'd wear nothing but a loin-cloth around the house for years, even till she was like eleven or twelve and her older brother would start whining to their mom about how he was embarrassed to have friends over since she was going around topless, and she'd confront him and be like, "Well, I don't have breasts yet," and stuff like that.
"It took me a long time to sort through things," she said, "since all along I was attracted to men, but I hated fucking women and the way they behaved and talked and the things they thought about."
She then said that during her first years of college, her dad at the goading of his girlfriend who has a gay son, took her aside and started off on this long talk about after his dad (her grandfather, who she never knew) died in his fifties, her grandmother kind of wandered emotionally for a few years, and then moved in with her long-term best friend, and they shared a house together, and went to functions together, and for all practical intent and purposes were a couple.
"And...?", she was like, to her dad.
"Well," he was like, "I don't know how to put this, but --" and he paused dramatically, "They were lovers," and then he explained though it was never articulated, everyone knew it. Then, he was like, "And I want you to know that that's okay by me," at which point she had to tell her dad that she wasn't gay, and he was like, "Well, I wanted you to know that anyways."
After this, somehow we segued into how her friend at law school was doing a research paper into bestiality and animal consent, and we all started swapping horse-fucking stories as well as a few livestock insemination ones, and then she started talking about this one documentary she saw about men who liked getting fucked by horses, and then somehow we started talking about fetishes and how they deveop in youth, and then out of nowhere my neighbor from my building who I went to Indiana to campaign for Obama with, who was raised in southern Illinois by hippie parents and who always looks stoned though she's not and has never tasted meat in her life, said that when she was a kid, she had a genocide obsession, and how she couldn't stop reading "The Diary of Anne Frank", but even more than that, she couldn't stop reading the more-recent "Zlata's Diary", about whatever the fuck war that was from a few years ago where there was shit going on in Sarajevo.
After that, there was an awkward pause and it was about time for me to get going, so I told them about how I talked to my mom that evening on the phone and how she was telling me about the recent visit of the Yooper girlfriend of my brother's one friend from high school...
(I didn't even know she was visiting and staying with my parents; I guess my mom had went to write this to me in an e-mail when she was at work this past week, but she was like, "I pressed the wrong button, and the next thing I know, the entire e-mail was obliterated, and I wasn't going to write out the whole goddamn thing again!")
So, the Yooper girlfriend of my brother's one friend from high school repairs cars, and she had met a bunch of people over the internet who really like used Kias, so she drove down to stay with my parents and then the next day was going to meet this weird guy from a shitty-ass small town near us to drive down a couple hours to another part of the state for this impromptu Kia rally, only she flaked out at the last minute and didn't want to meet up with this guy, so she was basically hanging around our house a lot, and since my mom had a few days off of work and realized that this Yooper girl had never really been anywhere since she had been born and raised in the U.P., my mom decided to go with her on a couple daytrips around the northern lower peninsula, the first one being to this pleasant summer-town on Lake Michigan with a yuppie-ish downtown.
Anyhow, they enjoyed their day there, and on the way out of town, this Yooper girl asked really casually, "Is there a 7-11 around here?", and my mom was like, "Yeah, actually a couple blocks up, we're going to go right past it, why, do you want to stop?", and the Yooper girl was like, "Could we?", and the next thing you know, as they pull up and are sitting in the car and just before the Yooper girl opens the door, she starts kind of staring wistfully, and is like to my mom, "I've always wanted a Slurpee..." -- since, as it turns out, the U.P. gets a station or two from northern Wisconsin media markets and 7-11 ads are on all the time, but there are no 7-11s in the U.P, so this girl had all her life wanted to go to a 7-11 and try a Slurpee.
So, after finding this out, my mom, who wasn't going to go into the store at all, went into the store with this Yooper girl to show her to help her operate the Slurpee machine, and while my mom was showing her that, she mentioned to the Yooper girl, "You know, [me] and sometimes [my brother] used to always mix the different Slurpee flavors, it would look so disgusting that it would make me sick," and the Yooper girl, once she heard this, was like, "No way!", and made a mixed Slurpee. She didn't sip it right away, but after they paid and got back in the car, as soon as the door was closed and the Slurpee was put in the cup holder, the Yooper girl gave a big "Yessss!" with her hand, and started stomping her feet on the car floor and squealing.
And, as it turns out, she really likes Slurpees, and has had six this past week.
"Sounds like a keeper!", my one neighbor from my building who I went to Indiana to campaign for Obama with said.
Besides that even, the next day they went to a more major city in my area, and on the way out of town, the Yooper girl turned to my mom and was like, "[my mom's name], is there a Dunkin' Donuts around here? I'd like to buy you a coffee."
"You know, I actually don't feel like a coffee," my mom said - "Oh," the Yooper girl said right away, and seemed crestfallen -- "But -" my mom continued, "We can go to one anyway, would you like to stop?", and immediately the Yooper girl said "oh!" and was like, "Could we?"
So, they pulled up the Dunkin' Donuts, and my mom waited and waited, and finally the Yooper girl comes out with her coffee and a donut, and as soon as she gets in the car, she was like, "That kid in there was so nice, I tipped him real good. There were so many donuts, I didn't know what to do, and he was real nice and explained them all to me!"
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