Part Deux

I have a horrible secret to tell you all - I may lose my "guy" status and be reduced to 'traitorous wuss" for admitting this, but....we don't get it. You have to spell it out for us. Hinting, clues, all that, not gonna work.

I do not think Alex likes Kate all that much. It's just a feeling I get.

Kate says Alex seems quite nice, and got really sniffly about the fact that she doesn't think Alex liked her. This was in the middle of dissolving into a pile of tears because thanks to various snafus her business thing got delayed, and she'll be here much longer than she wants to, and she's pushing 50 and still doesn't own her own personal island....ok, that was a little crazy, but by that time she was really letting the waterworks flow.

Argh. I give up. I'm not even trying to understand what went on over my head there. They talked, I'm not sure what they said, (there was some exchange about my hair that had an accusatory tone) and the end result is I'm fairly sure they're both annoyed at me for something. Until someone explains it to me, I'm playing dead-in-the-head.

Like I said, sometimes Kate is quite fun. I did not mind throwing the painting out of the window. It was mildly therapeutic. She reads a lot of the things I do, or stuff I'd like, and vice versa, and so if we keep to that, it's fun to argue on a light level. In fact, art and literature and film sometimes feel like the only things worth arguing about. 100 years from now, who cares what the political scandals are? They just repeat themselves. Social problems? There'll be all new ones. We and everyone we know will be dead. But people will still be going over The Illiad and Birth of a Nation.

She also rubbed my temples and neck muscles when I began getting one of those godawful headaches I get. Let me tell you, during one of those, I would let a rabid grizzly massage me if it knew what it was doing. Of course, it was dealing with her little students' questions that gave me the headache...

She still thinks I could be a travel writer if I felt like it, even though she knows I hate traveling and writing. On that note, she did help me walk a mile to a pharmacist once, during an incident that led to my resolve to NEVER go on a group trip again.

Buy anyway, besides the awkwardness of getting grilled by crazed art students, viewing the postmodern destruction of my new decor, being plopped down between the current and the ex in what looked for a moment to be the next cold world war, seeing what she did to the bathtub, and the shouting matches and the crying jag, it was perfectly fine.

Oh, and the surreal bits. Here's two -

Kate: "So now, he's just shoving it in there, and I'm encouraging him "You can do it! Just crush it, it's ok!" The woman behind me goes "It'll fit! Come on!" and finally he stuffs the last bit in. I couldn't believe he got it all in there. I can show you; it's back in the bedroom because I just had to let people see this."
She was talking about groceries. I'd never seen $65 worth of groceries shoved into one bag - it really was impressive, considering it wasn't horribly expensive stuff, either. This was including cereal, bread, and frozen pizza, which are cheap and take up a lot of room. Thinking back on it, it did sound kind of risque, though, didn't it?

And Fido.
We're sitting around and it comes waddling up. It gives me a beady-eyed glare like I'm the intruder. I rub my eyes, and it's still there.
I ask, quite reasonably, I think, "Kate, why in the f*^@king hell is there a skunk in my apartment?"
"Ooh, he's my new little guy!" She picks up the thing and starts feeding it grapes. "I was thinking of calling him Mike, but I already know one big skunk by that name." The thing squeaks, but continues eating and giving me the evil eye. "Only kidding, and I have a permit, so don't start. I was thinking of naming him Fydor Mikleovitch."
"Oh," I say, "Fido." The skunk perks up.
"No," she says, "Fydor."
Just to tick her off more, I say "Here, Fido" and the beast waddles over to me.
"Dammit! First you corrupt Tuesday Minor..."
"You mean Fishbreath BeerBuddy." I inform the onlookers, "That was her cat."
She says I can't rename other people's pets, and I say I wouldn't have to if certain people wouldn't give them deranged names in the first place. We go back and forth and never get back to the point that there is a goddam skunk in my apartment.

Phew. Oh, and I have to ask Alex if I can stay, or go back to plan A, the breakroom. Or I guess it might be safe to sleep on my own couch. I mean, I know what I prefer, but...