Weird Dudes Want to Chill With Me

It's true.

I really don't know what it is. I'm really unfriendly, especially around people I don't know. It's exceptionally difficult to befriend people when you are as xenophobic and misanthropic as I am, yet I run into situations where weird dudes latch onto me and express to me the desire to "chill" in different ways.

There have been a slew of these instances and I don't like any of them, to tell you the truth. I enjoy my own very little circle of friends. I don't have any current openings nor am I interviewing, so if I go somewhere for a beer, or to a party, or to a store, I expect to be left the fuck alone. I don't invite people to engage me in conversion by rattling off such witty ice-breakers to strangers such as:

"How 'bout them Sox."

"Sick of the rain yet?"

and the ever-popular...

"Does this look infected?"

I'm really not a mean person. I just don't like talking to people I don't know. OK, I am a mean person. Big deal. Go frig.

One instance, a few years ago, my buddy Joe and I decided to go out for a few beers and we hit a few local bars. Our last stop was a place called the Busy Bee. Well known for pouring a good pint, having outstanding chicken wings, and featuring one specific roided up member of its clientele who poured his heart out to me and shed tears on my shoulder.

Look. I've been there. I know it sucks. I've even spouted off about women who broke my heart to people at a bar, but I KNEW them. I paid for their beers! This Hulkamaniac never met me before yet felt that I was a nurturing kind of guy and spilled his guts out to me. I'm not Dr. Phil. I have my own shit to deal with. That's what the bartender is for.

So, Joe and I are at the bar and this dude starts talking to us. You might ask me, "Dim, why didn't you ignore him?" Well, because the broken-hearted son of a bitch looked like this:

All of a sudden, I was more of a get-my-ass-kicked-aphobic than xenophobic, so I tried lending an ear. This guy went on and on and on and on and on and on about some chick to really stuck it to him. He really had a voice that sounded like Hulk Hogan's and spewed such rhetorical questions as "Have you ever had your heart stomped on?", "Have you ever loved a woman so much and she just totally fucked you over", "Does this look infected?", and "Who put the bomp in the bomp-sha-bomp-sha-bomp?"

Whaddaya want, the guy was friggin blotto!

Well, after a few minutes of soothing his ego by agreeing with him that this woman that he loved was a complete and total bitch (a slippery slope if there ever was one, because a drunked up WWE-wannabe can very easily turn on a dime and incredulously ask "Who are you calling a bitch? I LOVE her!!!" and the next thing you know, Dim is writhing in pain on the barroom floor having suffered a clothesline, 2 German suplexes, and a "sleeper hold"), he started tearing up.

I took a deep breath and a sip of my beer and turned around to Joe who was nowhere to be found. In fact, I think he left the bar all-together. After more ego soothing, I lyingly stated that I needed to go and started to leave. Roid Man gave me the ol' hand clasp and lovingly, in a not-knowing-his-own-strength kind of way, sort of hugged my neck, shooting a pain down my body which made me totally relate to Raymond Babbitt's "squeezed and pulled and hurt my neck in 1988" diary entry against his asshole brother Charlie.

With tears still welling in his sunken eyes, he bid be a fond farewell. I left the Busy Bee and called Joe names that would have made Andrew Dice Clay blush.

Fast forward a few years and we are at a cookout at my friend Muj's place. Muj is a pretty easy going guy, but his upstairs neighbors were considerably younger and equally irresponsible and threw loud parties featuring really horrible music at all times of the night. This not only interferes with Muj's beauty sleep (he hits the hay around the same time that Jeopardy! signs off), but also unfortunately exposes him to the latest Kid Rock, which undoubtedly sucks.

Muj had to take things up with the landlord, which didn't sit very well with the loud partiers, lovers of horrible music.

So, Muj decides to offer these idiots an olive branch and invite them to a very low-key 4th of July cookout that he was throwing. Not sure if they declined or accepted, but they were there at some point, giving Muj the business about throwing a party...basically shoving it back in his face and saying that his party (which involved wine coolers and listening to The Police) was disturbing them. Things got a little tense and then the head asshole comes up to me (I was sporting my long hair, drinking a beer) and says:

"Hey man. Want to go upstairs and burn?"

"Uhh..wha?"

"Want to go upstairs and burn?"

Now, I'm not up on the latest reefer lingo, so I thought this degenerate was a friggin pyromaniac. Now, it's fun to sing about it, but not so cool to actually do it.

"Watch the night go up in smoke...rock on!"

Come to find out later, I guess "burn" is code for "Go upstairs and smoke marijuana cigarettes". They say "burn" in case there are any narcs at the cookout. They might like shitty music, but they sure do know how to run some interference.

Then today, Xteen and I are out running errands and we went to a CD store. She was interested in getting the latest Keane (thanks Road) and I was checking out a Johnny Cash CD I wanted as well as contemplating getting any Scorpions disc that has "No One Like You" on it. Hey...fuck off. You haven't rocked until you heard Klaus Meine scream, Schwartzenegger-esque, "Caleeeefornia!!!!!! There is no one like yeewwwwww!!!!!!" And trust me...I know how to rock.

Off in the distance, I heard some dude getting kinda loud, which automatically makes me nervous. Especially if we are in a place where it's a little out of place to be loud. I give up my quest for the Cash CD and, most regrettably, Der Scorpions, and find Xteen. Just when I do, the loud kid and a friend of his pass us by. He says "hi", presumably to us, but I ignore him, because I don't know him and, thus, he should not be saying such things to me.

But he persisted.

"Hi."

So, I swallowed hard and said:

"What's up man?"

He then went on this diatribe about how one of the clerks thinks he is harrassing people, blah, blah, blah.

It was about this time that I smelled a second friend of his that I couldn't see. His name is Herb. I think we went upstairs and burned him.

So, we decided to chat him up for a few minutes and basically get him out of trouble with the clerk (see? I'm not a TOTAL asshole).

He asked what we were looking for and Xteen showed him her shiny new Keane CD.

I don't think he was impressed.

She asked, "What are you looking for?"

To which he replied, "Conversation".

And then I said, "Go to a bar", which makes no fucking sense, because if this guy started talking to me in a bar, I would get the tab and just leave without saying a word.

Then, he said his favorite band was some band I have never heard before. I asked what they sounded like. His previous silent, visible friend, Teller, piped up, "they're hardcore".

Fucking great.

Whenever anyone describes their favorite band, which happens to be hardcore, it involves a growl eminating from their bowels which instantaneously changes to a bizarre operatic few syllables and closes with the disclaimer, "but they're melodic".

This conversation was no different. In fact, it was exactly the same.

Xteen, acknowledging the fact that I was starting the sweat profusely and breathe in a shallow manner, expressed to Reefer Madness and Teller that we had to go check out.

The chatty dude asked my name, which I stupidly told him and supplied his own name as "Uhhh...Dave....or Bill...or"...and he turned to Teller and asked if he was "Dave or Bill". All of a sudden I felt like the last single guy at Jake Ivory's at closing time who asks the last girl who isn't hooking up with someone what her number is. "Uhh...555-...."

What the fuck? I'm getting the runaround from a guy I don't even want to be talking to???

Yet, he closed the conversation with a compliment to me.

"Yeah, you remind of someone. I could chill with you..."

So I got that going for me.

Which is nice.

- D.