Three texts from an unknown number.

I got this text out of the blue -

Thanks for coming by ;)

- and I texted back saying I didn't know who it was, then a few days later I got this -

Hey u! Hope ur having a great day.

- and when I texted back saying I didn't know who this was, I finally got a reply -

Uh oh...hope I didn't say something wrong.

- to which I replied asking them who they were, but I never got another answer.

I showed the texts to my one lawyer friend from Missouri, and she says the texts sound like something a girl would write.

My one Dutch friend, who's living in Israel, had a new baby w/his Israel wife...

...and so he emailed me that he won't be able to give me feedback on my article draft for a while.

So, I wrote him:

Read it late at night over Manischewitz, when the new baby's crying has kept you up.

- to which he replied -

Manischewitz you don't drink. You pour it into crying babies.
Here is the baby with brother..

- and attached a picture of the new baby with he and his wife's older kid.

Modernist Chilean epic.

For the last book of the term, the instructor under whom I teach writing chose to have the class read this Modernist Chilean epic from the early 20^th c., about a parachutist who falls through the sky and dissolves into pure sound, over the space of 7 cantos.

The 1^st day the book was discussed, this one very bubbly (blonde) freshman who’s from NYC and had a publishing internship in high school and always talks about her own personal reactions to everything, raised her hand at the beginning of class well before any discussion had started.

“I just want to say,” she was like, “My boyfriend had mopping duty at the frat, and I began to read this there, and all the guys were playing XBox and popping brewskis, and I just sat on a couch in the corner, and I just cried and cried and cried.  I love this book, it’s so beautiful.”

“Really?”, the instructor was like, touched.

“Yeah,” the one (blonde) freshman was like, “I just sat there curled up on the couch, and I couldn’t stop crying, tears just streamed down my face, page after page after page.  I love this book”

At that, the instructor paused, and swallowed.

“Now you’re going to make me cry,” she was like.

Sharting.

I've sharted like twice in the past month.

The first time, I let out a big fart just as I was leaving school, and it felt a bit moist, but I thought nothing of it. 

Then, biking home, I realized that my boxers were a bit wet, but by that point there was nothing I could really do about it but keep on biking home.

When I got finally got home like twenty minutes later, I kicked off my shoes and went to the bathroom, and sure enough, I had let fly a small piece of shit, and then riding home had rubbed it into my boxers and the shitty moisture even soaked into the back of the jeans.

I wiped my ass down and then took a shower, and scrubbed my boxers and jeans with soap while in the shower, and then I put the boxers and jeans out to dry in front of my gas heater vent.

The next day, the boxers turned out okay, but the ass part of the jeans smelled a bit like a nursing home when you put your nose up to the denim.

In any case, I then threw them both in my laundry bag, and I hope a good washing will make them okay again.

The 2^nd time, I was talking with my mom on the phone, and let out a fart, but I hadn’t realized that my shit that day was super liquidy, and I felt this spurt of warm water curl down my left ass cheek, and saw a single line of greenish-brown shit juice start slowly extending down my left leg.

“Hey, someone’s on the other line,” I was like, “I’ll call you back in ten.”

Then, I hightailed it to the bathroom, and extracted myself from my boxers to minimize smearing the shit juice around, as I also put toilet paper up to my ass cheeks to soak up what was there.

Then, I took another shower and washed the boxers, as well as my left sock, since the line of shit juice had just reached the top of the sock and soaked in a bit there, in a few greenish-brown drops, when I had begun taking off my clothes.

I really have no idea what I was eating both days that caused that to happen.

If I knew, I’d change my diet.  That was simply unacceptable.

An evening with my one lawyer friend from Missouri.

Me and my one lawyer friend from Missouri had both had crazy hectic workweeks for over a month and hadn’t been able to hang out though we had touched bases to do that a few times, till one Friday evening when I was downtown for a talk and she was able to meet up for a couple drinks afterward, which led to us both dressing up and hitting up some (new) bars in the ritzy part of town.

It was a very lovely and very chill evening, where we just chitchatted.

For one thing, she told me about this kid from her hometown who tried very hard to fit in.  He sold Jolly Ranchers in middle school, and then in high school he sold drugs.

For another thing, she told me about how a friend of her family’s son was clerking for Clarence Thomas in D.C. when she was living there, and they had had an awkward date that ended in him purposely mixing up their credit cards post-dinner so he had an excuse to call her up and suggest they meet again for another dinner if they had to meet up anyways to get their right credit cards back.

“It was so weird!”, she was like.  “And then I told my mom he had done something weird, and she was like, ‘What, did he try to jump your bones?’”, and she imitated her mother saying that in a very curt, matter-of-fact voice.  “Then, I was so embarrassed I excused myself and ended *that* conversation!”.

After the 2^nd of 2 bars, I walked her up the block to where she was going to catch a cab, and as we were half a block up from this ritzy hotel, she gushed that she had forgotten that this was the night of an important city shelter fundraiser, where people pay $500 to attend the ball and also have to get $500 tickets to bring their dogs along.

Then, as we get closer to the hotels main doors, there’s these 2 sloshed (older) (white) women with dyed blonde hair and in black and grey sequined dresses that show some thigh, and both have a half-full glass of white wine in one hand, and a cigarette in the other, and one has a leash in her cigarette hand that leads down to a very small chihuahua in a tux.

“Oh, he is so CUTE!”, my friend said, and dove down to play with the dog, and she and the woman talked dogs for a while.

“And that’s a nice tux,” I was like.

“Isn’t it?”, the sloshed (older) (white) woman who owned him said.

“Now did you get it just for the occasion, or did you already have one for him?”, I was like.

“I already had one,” she was like.  “He wore it last year...  But you should have seen the one I lost, she had a whole closet full of gowns.”

At that point, my one lawyer friend from Missouri was getting up from playing with the chihuahua, and we went to go. 

“It’s just like with humans,” I was like.  “Men can wear the same old bullshit year after year, but women can only wear a dress once.”

“EXACTLY!”, she was like, giving a hoarse smoker’s cough as she began chuckling and me and my friend walked away.

Guessing game among students.

For the 2^nd writing class I conducted, one of the break-out sessions for students to discuss each other’s papers had to be at 9am, since that was the only time that worked with everyone’s schedules.

So, I bought donuts for everyone, including these really nice maple donuts with crumbled bacon on top, that hipsters had commissioned from a long-time bakery in my new neighborhood.

To figure out the order of discussion, I have every writing class break-out session guess a number for an interesting or at least unexpected numerical question... 

For example, in past groups, I asked them how old I was when I 1^st read “Middlemarch”, how old I was when I read “David Copperfield”, what year my father was born in, etc., which is fun, though one kid thought I was 13 when I first read “Middlemarch”!  I told them it was like the old Dave Barry comment, that he was inside practicing trombone while all the other kids were outside learning how to French kiss.

Anyhow, for this group, I gestured grandiosely to the pile of donuts in front of them, and asked them to guess how much they all cost.

One (white) kid who’s from Manhattan and who is a bit intense and very competitive was way off, and guessed like $15, when the real answer was $7.40.

After I announced the rankings and he was last and I paused to transition to class, he then raised his hand, and I called on him.

“The reason I was off,” he was like, “was because I was thinking of New York prices.”

Conversation about the University President.

The other month I ran into this older (white) woman who I know who somehow studies at the University and who is a very lovely person and who haunts the library and who lives poorly, and who always tries to get free food around campus.

She asked me how my op-ed was going on the President, and when I told her some new details and figures, she was like, “He is bleeding this place dry!”, and then she went on for a few minutes listing all the ways he wasn’t doing well by the institution.

Then, she took a breath and paused, and started up again, and was like, “And have you been to a reception lately?  The food is terrible!”, and then started going on again from there.