You Smell Like Urine!

this'll be quick. i don't know what made me think of it just now, but i must share this anecdote with the interzone regardless. what day was this, maybe last wednesday? doesn't matter. so i'm sitting in the cafeteria/dining hall place area at my pathetic excuse for a school (close examination led me to the conclusion that it looks more like a 1970s minimum security prison than an instution of higher learning) with a couple of friends, surfing the metaweb on one of the compooters that flanks the eating area.

facebooking like a nerd, looking at pictures/videos of cars i can't afford, reading the news, all the stuff i normally do on the interweb, save for stockpiling pornz. so i'm minding my business, and that's the key here, cuz it's my business and i'll mind if i want to, ya know? so like i said, fucken minding my business real casual like, when i hear this voice, faint but still audible of the din of eating and mindless conversations elsewhere. "Suh! Suh! Suh!" over and over again, about once every five seconds or so.

now don't ask why, but i turned around. come to think of it, i know it's probably because my name's kasai, and "suh!" sounded like someone was calling me at the time. i know, stupid. but wait, it gets worse.

so i turn around to find that the person beckoning to me was truly a pathetic specimen. weighing in at no less than 450lbs, she had fucked up, misaligned cornrows, bloodshot eyes, three, yes three fannypacks and about five layers of outerwear on, despite moderate, early spring mid-atlantic temps outside.

unbelievably, i stand up, and walk over to this person, completely outside of myself as i respond to her request to help her with something. i have no idea what it is she wants help with, but i get up and am carried by some transient force over to her. upon closing the gap, i notice that her face is covered in the stuff that forms in the corners of your eyes overnight. nast! but i don't turn around.

"you eva gotta you?!!??!"

i feel sorry for this person, which is a selfish thing, that pity. but i do honestly, so wincing at this barrage of unintelligible gibberish, i try to decipher her question. she's not necessarily frowning, so i feel more comfortable with this crazy than say, your street variety, the type that poses serious threats to safety and one's daily agenda in an urban center such as my hometown fuckpit of baltimore.

"you?" i ask politely.

"yeah you eva gotta you befow?!"

somehow, after about 30 seconds of silence and shoulder shrugging, i figured out the meaning of her foolishness.

"like the letter u?" i calmly inquired.

"yeah yeah, you eva gotta u befow"

trying to avoid direct eye contact lest i be turned to stone, my face feels like it's melting, on account of crack breath, hotness i can feel despite the five feet of distance between us.

i'm determined to navigate through this conversation, even if it's not me behind the wheel. and in regards to this individual in particular, let me just make clear that i regard myself as highly empathetic, sometimes to a fault. it's hard to turn a blind eye to the striking poverty prevalent in this country ("they must starve so that others may eat" bullshit), and i especially feel for the homeless. whenever i see a guy or a girl begging i immediately fish out cash if i have it, even if i sense they're going to buy rocks with it. hell, that's what i was going to spend it on. the point being that i'm not one of those "get a job homeless" assholes, all apathetic and shit. big pat on the back for me, huh?

so back to this woman and her letter u.

"my teacher gay me a u!?" she declared, clutching the pink grade report in her hand. "what that mean?"

"probably unsatisfactory." my honest answer "Yeah, i don't know, probably an unsatisfactory." a guess, but a good one.

somewhat mollified by my reply, she shut up long enough for me to be steered back to my seat to continue facebooking/youtubing/googling my day away. my friend asks why i even got up in the first place. to this day i don't know. back to the interweb.

but she just won't give up. i hear her rambling to noone in particular about how fucked up it is that she got a "you," rationalizing what went wrong. out loud. before long: "i know! he wanna have sex wit me?!?!! uh huh, he wanna have sex wit me!?!"

at last revealing herself as that most intriguing type of crazy, the megalomaniacal rambler, i hardly felt bad about exploding into laughter at the drop of this truth bomb. she repeated her revelation out loud, with the conviction and satisfaction not unlike that of watson and crick upon their bustin up of the helix. i suppose anyway. deduction and calculation paying off.

after about 10 minutes of sharing her conclusion with the corner of the eating place, she began to call me again. "Suh!" what could there be to talk about? i began to become irritated. i mean reading wall posts and favoriting music videos is important stuff. farbeit for bums to interrupt that shit. but nonetheless, i started feeling the heat in my face, the accelerated heart rate that come with an impending rage out.

yeah, i wanted to go all patrick bateman on a bitch, all guns of brixton. real in your face, ya know? kinda like, "you're a drain on the morale and resources of modern society, and i don't give a fuck if you can't help it, figure it out!" kinda like, "you smell like urine! fuck off, don't talk to me, eyes to the floor!"

but i didn't. coulda but didn'tna, as i don't really share mr. bateman's intense hatred of the homeless. restraint for the day. she ended up running off to some cashier in the eating place. that's the end. great story, huh?