Carlow University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Saturday, May 7, 2005, 12:23 AM
Jody Roberts
Age 19, freshman at Carlow, women’s studies major. Costume: pre-faded tight maroon FERRINTOWN HIGH—HOME OF THE BATTLING WOMBATS baseball jersey (Gap, $19.99—Ferrintown High does not exist); pair of tight blue jeans (Wal-Mart, $12.99); pair of green high-top sneakers, no socks (Wal-Mart, $9.95). She arrived at her dorm room eight minutes earlier with a flaxen-haired male (see below) she had met Friday, May 6, 2005, at 10:37 PM at Club Cochlea, a Pittsburgh concert venue (formerly an industrial waste storage facility). She had immediately looked at his forehead (as she does with all the males and females she meets) and found it appealing, as in flat, as in similar to her father’s before his barbecuing accident. The flaxen-haired male and she are sitting on her the edge of her bed, discussing the habit certain Pittsburgh residents have of using folding chairs, traffic cones, etc., to reserve streetside parking spaces. “Why not a velvet rope?” she asks. “Then you can park your Caddy and the rust chips can fall off of it in style.” He chuckles. She will commence foreplay at 12:29 AM through one of her favorite methods, by brushing the Liquid Paper-daubed fingernails of her right hand up the back of his right hand, a foreplay method (sans the daubed fingernails) she had learned four years earlier from watching a videotape of the direct-to-premium-cable motion picture Carnal Crime 2, an erotic thriller starring the shaggy-chested actor from the late-1980s syndicated television program Shorecop Hawaii: The New Recruits.
Carlow University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Saturday, May 7, 2005, 12:23 AM
Austin Crain
Age 19, freshman at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, media arts and animation major, specializing in anime-style science fiction/fantasy. Costume: beige bowling shirt with pink elliptical patch reading WILBUR in cursive stitching above right nipple (Hot Topic, $19.99); pair of green carpenter’s pants (Gap, $13.99); pair of white sweatsocks (Dollar General, $5 for six pairs); pair of early 1980s-style Nike brand running shoes (Famous Footwear, $24.99). He is the flaxen-haired male Jody Roberts has invited into her dorm room. He had run into her inside Club Cochlea, between the first and second sets of a three-band neo-grunge rock concert. He had immediately looked at her breasts (as he does with all the females he meets, excluding most of the elderly ones) and found them appealing, as in medium-sized, as in similar to his first stepmother’s. He has decided to commence foreplay in five to ten minutes through one of his favorite methods, by contending she has something stuck on her mouth and brushing his right thumb slowly between her lips, a foreplay method he had learned a year earlier from watching a videotape of the direct-to-videotape videotaped motion picture Filthy and Fifty: Part 6. He hopes he looks interested in Jody’s remarks, which he will refer to on his blog, Austin Power!, two weeks after the breakup four weeks later of the relationship Jody and he will fall into following tonight’s imminent copulation, as “banal conversation about the foibles of yinzers.” (Yinzers: Western Pennsylvania slang, usually good-natured, for nonwealthy and/or poorly-educated Caucasian residents, after a common word of theirs, “yinz,” the equivalent of “y’all.”)
Club Cochlea, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Friday, May 6, 2005, 10:36 PM
Kent Greenwald
Age 35, owner and sole operator of Club Cochlea, a concert venue specializing in 1970s-1980s heavy-metal revivalism, sample-based spiritual European techno-Muzak, and synthesized upper-income hippiesque folk jams. Costume: black ballcap with HAPPYLAND XPRESS in white wispy letters on the front and a white drawing of an ovoid pill on the back (record label promotional item, free); oversized eyeglasses with padded bridge and dark brown frames (LensCrafters, $149.95); white sweatshirt with a thin yellow vertical stripe down the length of each sleeve, on top (Old Navy, $24.99); pair of baggy black jeans (Fashion City, an African-American clothing store in the concert venue’s predominantly African-American neighborhood, $19.99); pair of black socks (Kohl’s, $7.95); pair of puffy gray Adidas running shoes (Foot Locker, $59.95). He runs into Austin Crain, a simulacral acquaintance of his, after the first set (which ended five minutes earlier) of that night’s three-band neo-grunge concert. (Neo-grunge: a new musical movement Kent has touted in his album reviews for the local weekly arts, entertainment, and sex-worker advertising vehicle, the Pittsburgh City Paper; he wants the distinction of being the first music-industry participant in Pittsburgh to embrace 1990s nostalgia. “Hey Kent, thanks for having the concert start on time!” Austin says jovially. (The first band—a Brookline, Massachusetts, group called Bumflap—had started playing at 9:55 PM, 55 minutes late, punctual by the club’s standards.)
“Don’t blame me, buddy,” Kent says. “I just schedule the shows. Blame the band for being late. If you want professional bands that never start late, go to a fucking MTV concert during spring break. You like frat-rock, right? With bikinis?”
“Thong bikinis,” Austin says as he turns his head away at 10:37 PM, sees Jody Roberts for the first time 9.4 feet away from him, and walks toward her, his penis already slightly turgid.
Written in 2006
DAVID V. MATTHEWS 