American Spirits and Marlboros

it started a couple weeks ago, the stuff that lead up to my phone call yesterday afternoon. I answered, and the voice said:

"Hey, is this Adrienne? Oh wait, sorry, Sabrina?"

"Uh, great start, man. It's Sabrina..."

It was Mark, one of my boys from Starbucks. He had just gotten my number from Art's girlfriend, Adrienne. Art had insisted Mark call me to go to their house for dinner with them. The other night, Art had insisted Adrienne get my number for whatever reason. Before that, Art had pulled me outside to tell me he thought his friend and fellow Starbucks employee Mark would be the perfect guy for me. Strangely enough, that was about five minutes after I had texted Ajna that I had decided to break up with Brandon. I don't want to go from a 32 year old server to a 31 year old pot smoking barista; but Art planted a fucking seed in my head cause somehow I got this little crush on Mark after that. I can't help but think that Art talked to Mark too, because Mark was surprisingly nice and attentive the next time I saw him.

Anyway, that's the cute little side story on how I ended up on the porch. You can't really call it a porch, it was small, concrete and cracked, a tiny trellis on one side and the plywood front door, when open, almost took up the whole thing. Adrienne and Art were sitting out there, smoking. The entire street is super dark except for this little porch with the little light above their heads.

There was no dinner, they pulled up a couple chairs for us, we chatted a little.

This guy rode up out of the middle of the yard on a bicycle. He was old and fat. Art said he used to be one of his roommates before he got pregnant and pointed in the dark somewhere to indicate the place they had shared, on this street.

The old man defended his ghetto bike and weak legs by saying he wasn't as bad as pegleg who was wheeling over.

Two minutes later, in the pebble driveway, I saw the reflection of a wheelchair, someone was actually wheeling up to the front porch in a wheelchair, this kid. The wheelchair got kind of stuck where the pebbles me the grass and concrete, and the kid jumped up and kicked the wheelchair and repositioned it on the sidewalk, plopped himself back in, and rolled up the the porch. He hurt his knee at work and is collecting workers comp for it; he said they might be watching him, so he's staying in the wheelchair so they wouldn't get him for fraud.

Two more minutes later and a poor farmer from Huckleberry Finn strolls up, I mean, he's white and skinny and too tan and wearing these jeans (no straw hat or anything) but he comes up and just starts on talking too. Another one of Art's old roommates from another place on this street.

So fucking weird. This place cracked me the fuck up--or was it the crack house across the street that I was told not to go to cause they sold some bunk shit?

And then Art and Adrienne's actual roommate comes out of the house. He's topless and older and too tan and has a beer belly. Didn't say anything though, he just smoked and went back in. Art said he was like a dad to them.

So this was the cast of characters for the evening. Art, Adrienne, Mark, Old Roommate #1 (looks preggers), Old Roommate #2 (topless Huck Finn farmer), Pegleg (ghetto kid in wheelchair), and me (current roommate is negligible.)

 Pegleg became a victim even more so. He didn't know how to defend himself and Adrienne was a harsh critic of all people, especially men. She made fun of him for not getting laid and being too awkward to get laid. She tells us about one time when they told him to make a move, so this girl he was hanging out with said she was getting in the shower. He asked to join her. Or another time, this same girl texted him she was in bed alone, and he said there was room in his for her. I quipped in that it was funny that Adrienne kept track of his sex life for him, or lack there of, and asked if she kept reports of his activity. Art then chimmed in that with this girl, Pegleg would need to be in a bedroom with her, shut the door, and just tell her to take her clothes off. Art said he knew this girl, she wanted to get laid but didn't want all the bullshit that came with it. His method was foolproof. Adrienne scoffed at her boyfriend and asked why he didn't do it himself before then. The conversation had moved on, and after a pause, he cuts back to it saying that it would have been weird since he found her kind of annoying and she lived across the street from him at the time, so that's why he hadn't done it. Pegleg was saying he was picturing it in his head, how it would go with him. I said I was too...that his wheelchair would get caught in the doorway or something like that. He didn't like that one bit and went off, with more detail, about how he was perfectly capable of walking or even doing cartwheels out in the field (he pointed) but didn't want to in case he was being watched.

After his smoke, current roommate went back inside to continue watching TrueTV. I said I wasn't familiar with it, and they said that it was shows with just facts, just true stuff, about murders and cereal killers and the court cases and shit like that. And anyone who watched it a lot would become crazy if they hadn't already. Art said that the mother of one of his ex-girlfriends used to watch it a lot and started talking to him about how she learned how she could kill her husband who was on an emphysema machine, and not get caught. Huck Finn then said it would be easy. He started going into detail about how you could do it and we said he was crazy. He said, no, that wasn't crazy. What's crazy is talking to a mobster's daughter for three hours and forty minutes about how to kill her enemy and telling her  what was wrong with her plan and what she needed to do to cover it up so she wouldn't get caught. That's crazy, he said.

Pegleg wheeled off, well started wheeling and then got up and fucked it, pushing the wheelchair and carrying it to his place across the street. We wished him luck on getting laid and he said he knew he wasn't getting laid tonight so he didn't need the fucking luck. Poor pegleg wasn't too witty or quick, and I felt a little guilty about how defensive he had been about absolutely everything, taking it all so seriously. Huck Finn said not to feel bad because Pegleg was an idiot and a one-upper. He always wanted to one-up you. (I realized that Huck Fin was actually describing himself at this point.) When we talked about how ghetto the neighborhood was, he said Detroit had it beat. Detroit beat everywhere he had been, and he started naming ghetto places around the US like someplace in Atlanta and Memphis. He said since he had been in Detroit in the eighties, and nineties, and even some of the two-thousands, it had been the ghettoest..and it was too ghetto for him to stand it now. This street was nothing. They all asked me about Miami but I said it wasn't that bad, I mean, I couldn't really contribute to the conversation since I hadn't been too many ghetto places.

We started talking about books, and how I lost The Boxman. Art went inside and retrieved the G.E.B. and I called it before I even saw it which he was excited about asking if I had read it or how I knew about it. I said he told me about it the other day at starbucks. He started talking about the artist, I said I knew who he was talking about and he asked how, and again, I said we had looked him up, together, on my computer at starbucks. Adrienne reiterated for maybe the third or fourth time of the night how Art had the memory of a goldfish. Art started talking about how it talked about derivatives and theorems, and how that was in calculus, and how calculus was in a lot of physics, and how there was a lot of physics (quantum) in the book. Adrienne then told him he wasn't talking to a group of idiots, that we all knew what calculus was. Art started reading from the book about Achilles and the Tortoise. After a bit, Art paused, Mark and I gave each other the look we had been giving each other the whole night, the sort of shrug your shoulders/what the fuck is going on? look. I think he felt a little guilty or awkward at times for bringing me to the porch for all this. Huck Finn looked at Art and said that was all well and good, but where was the Hare in the story? Art didn't shut stop with the book, which somehow segued into Tool, the band, and their song "4 degrees." He went on to describe everything as sublimation. I said I didn't get it, I didn't know what sublimation meant. He talked about how it was a very precise chemical reaction / perfect state of gas and liquid, a perfect balance. Somehow it had changed purpose, because he was describing himself and Adrienne at this point. She said he was going crazy and off, I said it was so cute and touching, and then touched his leg with my finger. Mark occasionally would chime in. He always looks tired and seems to have dark circles under his eyes which you'd think would make him ugly since I notice it and think of it all the time. But I am so attracted to him.

When we talked about who we looked like or whatever, I lamented how Michael McNeal at UT said I looked exactly at Rachel Ray so everyone would reassure me I didn't. They did. Adrienne, I realize, didn't have a person per-se, she just would cite Rocky when people fucked up her name. Art apparently got Ben Afflick (which Mark backed up mildly and Adrienne denied adamantly since Art isn't exactly thin). Adrienne looked at Mark and was like, we all know he get's Johnny Depp, and that was as far as talking about Mark got, no discussion. It's like this fucking light bulb went off in my head after that--like oh! that's why I think Mark is so fucking hot and I might like him more for looking tired and smoking the fucking cigarettes or whatever. Hmm.

The whole time we were talking, they were refilling my Grumpy water mug and smoking cigarettes. Oh, and at one point, Art had just called American Spirits and put them on speakerphone while he was on hold. He wanted to try to win something.

Art works today at noon at starbucks. It's Mark's day off, but he said he thought he'd be stopping in anyway and maybe would catch me if I was working there. I wanted him to leave with me, I wanted him to fucking say we could meet up outside of starbucks since it was, after all, his day off. I don't know if I'll go to Starbucks and/or see Mark. But this was, hands down, one of the most fun and entertaining nights I've had in Naples, ever.