As you all may know by now, Travel Man–who is one of my two best friends, as well as a superhero–is in town visiting. As of late, he has been crossing the country by car, stopping in exotic locales such as Columbus, OH and St. Joseph, MI. He is on his way from Pennsylvania to California and is, along the way, staying with couchsurfers. This is the back story. And now for the real thing:
On one of his first stops–in Pittsburgh, PA (which, SIDENOTE, happens to be one of my favorite east coast cities), he stayed with a young man whom we shall call Puppy Dog. The reason that we’re calling him Puppy Dog is because of the Girl Next Door, whose complete and stunning beauty caused him to follow her around like one.
Another of Puppy Dog’s friends was a man whom we shall call The Talker because he says whatever is on his mind. Filter or no filter. I probably should leave some mystery to this tale, but I do feel the need to tell you that you have just been introduced to THE VILLAIN.
So, Travel Man, Puppy Dog, Girl Next Door and The Talker went out for drinks that night. While Puppy Dog was busy following Girl Next Door around with his tail wagging and his best puppy dog eyes on, our hero was left to deal with the eloquations of The Talker.
“Um, stop that, you’re annoying me…” The Talker said to an unknown woman as she took pictures of a birthday party two tables away.
“No, you’re just fat,” he told a man at the table.
And so on and so forth throughout the night.
Finally, Girl Next Door returned to the table (and, by default, here comes Puppy Dog) and the group headed toward home, running through a rain storm and arriving drenched to the bone.
After drying off, Puppy Dog and Girl Next Door went upstairs so that he could plan their long, lustrous future and she could get some. The Talker took the couch and Travel Man took a small one-person air mattress. And this is where the villainy begins.
Drifting towards sleep, Travel Man was suddenly awoken by a loud, strong thud beside him on the air mattress. A thud which turned out to be The Talker, not wearing clothing.
“Kiss me,” said The Talker.
Uhhhhh, thought our hero.
And here I will interject a quote from our hero regarding the one article of clothing that The Talker still retained: “And they were like…not Speedos…but boy shorts…something girls should wear and not guys.”
Finally, regaining his wits, Travel Man replied “What? No.”
This should have been the end of it. But, no, The Talker tried again: “Kiss me.”
“No.”
“Kiss me.”
“Not going to happen.”
At this point, our hero heard a strange noise beside him. A noise which turned out to be sniffling, coming from The Talker. Not knowing what to do, Travel Man remained silent for a few moments and allowed The Talker to compose himself, at which point, The Talker rebounded with:
“Make out with me.”
Travel Man was stunned: “what makes you think that I am going to make out with you if I don’t want to kiss you? You need to respect yourself.”
The Talker paused–which was a moment very much like the eye of the storm–and Travel Man thought it would be safe to scoot over, close his eyes and attempt to sleep. Alas, this was not true.
THUD.
This time, instead of propelling himself onto the air mattress, The Talker managed to propel himself on top of our hero and request to be F-ed, while lauding the merits of his beautiful nether regions.
He was, of course, thrown off and rejected. But, as we now know about The Talker, rejection is not something that needs to be heeded or considered in his mind.
Another long pause followed this rejection, in which our hero stayed still, uncomfortable and ready to inflict damage if The Talker should see fit to jump back on top of him. But Travel Man could never have anticipated what came next.
“Hit me,” said The Talker.
Travel Man’s only response was a shocked stare.
“Hit me. You’ll feel better.” Said The Talker, all the while sniffling.
This is the point in the story where we will reveal that our hero is not entirely perfect. There was some very serious consideration that went into this request.
Instead of acquiescing, however, our hero took the high road and used his words: “you’re really damaged, The Talker.”
The Talker began to cry harder, “I don’t know what game you’re playing!”
“Whoa, I’m not playing any game. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Why are you being nice to me–I don’t get this!”
So our hero decided to stop being nice and said “dude, you have no idea how unattractive this is.”
And as suddenly as it began, said villainy was over. The Talker stood up in a huff and removed himself back to the couch where, in between sniffles, he managed to berate our hero for calling him unattractive and explain that it took YEARS and YEARS for him to feel attractive and know that he is beautiful and WHERE IN HELL does our hero GET OFF telling him he isn’t attractive.
A moment later, soft snores wafted from the couch.
Our flabbergasted hero took this opportunity to wonder at the fact that self respect and shame did nothing to save him from this situation. But ego–ego was the way out all along.
The last thing our hero did before drifting into an uneven sleep was look at the clock. Five A.M. A whole night stolen. And by stolen, I mean totally worth it for this blog entry.
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