Oxford Rebellion Editor's Note:This interview with former writer, comedian and entrepreneur Stewart Swenton comes from the June issue of Party People Magazine.
----------------"W
e oftentimes forgive and forget those that helped us along the way." - Stewart Swenton
In 1995, a college dropout (he was expelled) from Davidson College moved back into his childhood home in Louisville, Kentucky and started writing. He didn't stop until 1998 when he had amassed 12,305 pages of pure filth, rubbish and godawful entertainment. After sending over 20 copies to various publishers around the nation without any luck, he decided to go global.
Finally, in July of 1999, a tiny publishing house in London returned the poorly stapled manuscript with only a Post-It note and a return envelope. "Send us your phone number."
Within weeks, the college dropout and Grade School Press had worked out a deal. Grade School would print less than 1,000 copies and place them in small bookstores around England. If they sold well, they'd print more. The "money" part of the deal was kinda fuzzy, but the American didn't worry. He just wanted readers.
What happened next to Stewart Swenton is of mythical lore. It is a whirlwind tale of twists and turns and comical rug burns. He went from dashing and dancing with British boobs to petty romancing with British Bobbies.
Yet, his story never hit the States. Stewart remained an underground legend and never made it big after his drinking and carousing took over his mind. Walter Clarke, a London-based author and publishing agent contends that less than 20 people ever read Swenton's work. However, he believes Swenton's book may have very well changed those 20 lives.
The reclusive Swenton recently sat down with Party People Magazine to discuss his dancing days and to rehash on his stint in rehab. He agreed to this interview after we promised to bring a bottle of whiskey along with us. From the 4th floor of the Drake Hotel in Chicago and over several glasses of Elmer T. Lee, we conducted the following interview:
PP: Tell us about your life before the little-known book, "Let Me Retire in Peace."
SS:
Well, to start off, I left Davidson over some really stupid circumstances and felt like jumping off a building. Seriously. The moment I returned to my apartment after talking to the Dean of Students, I asked my roommate if he knew how to access the roof.
PP: What happened?
SS:
Around 4 of my friends and I allegedly pulled a prank involving a baby elephant from a traveling circus and an on-campus eating house. They couldn't prove that I was involved, and even if they could have, it wasn't a big deal. The elephant was returned and had been fed plenty of peanuts on the trip to campus.PP: Sounds like you were guilty.
SS:
Prove it.
PP: So what happened next?
SS:
I called my parents and explained the situation. Initially, they found it quite humorous until I explained that I was being asked to leave school. My father (an alumnus) promised he'd make some phone calls and fix everything. About three hours later he called back. He had been informed that I'd not been to class in over a month. Damn. That is when it got pretty serious. I rented a moving van and was back in Kentucky within 48 hours. Longest drive of my life thus far.
PP: Was it weird being back home?
SS:
It was odd because none of my friends were back from school. I was accustomed to seeing everyone over the holidays and, you know, summer and stuff. Instead it was just me and my house because both of my parents worked. My mother worked at a marketing agency and my dad still does corporate law so I was home alone. I got really bored, especially being a college-aged kid and still being full of energy, and my dad suggested that I go visit my grandparents. They lived (RIP) in Chicago and I went to visit them the second week I was home. My grandfather (also an alumnus of Davidson) was pretty cool about the whole thing. He found the prank funny and talked about how he had left Davidson in his junior year as well. Of course, the difference is that he had left Davidson to go serve his country in the war. I left because a kidnapped elephant took a dump on school property. I felt like a real letdown.
PP: Did he offer you any advice?
SS:
I still consider him to be one of the wisest men I ever met. However, he kept talking about how I needed to focus on finding another college to attend. The second day I was there, we went to the country club where he played golf and I got to meet some of his friends. Of course, every one of them asked why I wasn't in school and my grandfather said without a hint of embarrassment, "Oh, they asked him to leave. Isn't that wild? You pay money to attend the place and they kick you out?" I could have melted on the spot. And he repeated those lines at least 10 times. He was the kind of guy who, if a joke worked once, or if he was asked the same question more than once in a short period of time, he'd respond with the same answer he'd used earlier. Never failed. Hell of a golfer, too, but that is something else.
PP: Did you write any in Chicago?
SS:
No. I'm not even a writer. I wouldn't know how to begin writing if I tried. At least not then. I stayed in Chicago for, gosh, maybe 2 or 3 days. And then drove back. A friend of mine from Davidson called my house and told me some gossip- this was maybe a week after I had gotten back from Chicago- and then he dropped the bomb. Davidson was considering letting me re-enroll in the Spring. I asked him how he knew and he said one of the faculty members had let it slip the day before. I immediately called the Dean of Students and his first words after I told him who was calling was, "Stewart, it's only a rumor." I mean, he knew exactly why I was calling. Wow. That is when it hit me. I am officially kicked out of college.
I will never forget walking into the living room and pouring myself a stiff drink and looking outside into my backyard. My parents live on a golf course and I could see older men around my grandfather's age just laughing and joking on the course. Backslapping and putting, you know, the whole nine yards. And I thought to myself, "Can't I just skip college and work and just retire?" For reasons I can't explain, I found a big notebook in a drawer and started writing about my life as a retired golfer in Palm Springs. I had never even been to Palm Springs but it sounded majestic. Of course, I was college-aged so my writing was, shall I say, a little crude. Lots of profane stuff. The story was just me, a 60-year-old on the course, hitting shots and thinking about the life I've lived so far. The Palm Springs story later became Chapter 5 in "Let me Retire in Peace."
PP: So you just kept writing?
SS: It was addictive. I was amazed. I'd never written more than 10 pages at a time in my life and the Palm Springs story was already 25 notebook pages long and I'd only been writing for maybe 2 hours. I poured another drink and within 3 hours I'd written 30 more pages. The story was getting a little weird, thanks to the whiskey, but I was laughing out loud at some of the content.
PP: In the Palm Springs chapter, one of my favorite parts is when you notice your caddy is sniffing "sugar" from a little bottle that he keeps in his pocket. You ask him why doesn't just eat it and he responds, something like, "It tastes better going up your nose." Is there some historical context to this?
SS: "It tastes better shooting up your nose." I mean, you know all the jokes like, " I don't like cocaine, I only like the way it smells," or whatever, but this did come from a true story. When I was in 9th grade, I had a babysitter who went to the bathroom to "blow her nose," and my younger sister accidentally barged in and said something to the effect of, "Why are you putting sugar in your nose?" Cocaine wasn't even that big in Louisville at that time, or at least I didn't hear about it in the 9th grade, but I always thought it was wild that she did that in my house. I won't say her name for the sake of her privacy and plus, I think she is married with a kid now.
PP: You decided to keep writing. And writing. Could you not stop or was it a difficult process?
SS: I probably wrote over 200 pages in notebook paper that first week. I'm not sure what that translates to in regards to novel pages. But yeah, I woke up each day and just wrote until I was bored or had something better to do. Oddly enough, the alcohol helped a bunch. I'd be writing from maybe 1:00 in the afternoon until about 4, and then think, "I deserve a drink." Within hours I'd double my production.
PP: So you were a functioning alcoholic then?
SS: At that point in my life, yes. I only took a break between 20 to 30 times in that first year.
PP: And what did your parents think about your writing?
SS: My parents didn't really ask me questions about my day besides, "Did you have a good day?" They assumed I was playing video games or playing golf, which I did occasionally. My father rarely came home. Extremely busy and anytime he actually was at the house, the last thing he wanted to do was dwell on something like, "is my son being productive?" One of the benefits of having hard-working parents is that they want to maximize time spent with you so they abstain from bringing up unpleasant topics. Instead, if my dad had a few days off, he suggest something like, "hey, we should go out to eat," or "hey, let's drive down to the lake this weekend."
PP: Sounds like you had the place to yourself.
SS: Oh, it was great. I had a wonderful childhood. A wonderful, mischievous childhood. It wasn't necessarily as fun being 20-or-so-years-old because I couldn't invite friends over to play. They were all away at school. Even that first Christmas was weird because only a few of my friends wanted to hang out. Rumors had circulated that I had done something really horrible at Davidson so they "needed to steer clear of Stewart". I blame Louisville mommy-gossip for that one, but it was no big deal. It just allowed me to write more. The only person who actually wanted to hang out was my once-estranged friend, Rena.
PP: In your book, Rena is the name of your ex-wife. Is that the connection?
SS: Yes. Rena had a very similar childhood to me. Her father is an Israeli-born orthopedic surgeon and her mother is a Bulgarian-born super-intellectual who has been an adviser to the United Nations, worked for several think tanks, written policy papers, etc. A very intimidating woman. Naturally, her parents were rarely home, too, so she would come over all the time. We were basically best friends until about the 3rd grade. She may have had a crush on me but when you are in the 3rd grade, you don't really notice girls.
See, when Rena was around me, we got along great. Played make-believe and would entertain ourselves for hours and hours. But at school, she was an oddball. This skinny, little, brown girl that was incredibly brainy but would never say a word to anyone except the teacher and me. I was her only friend, but it was hard to be friends with her because everyone thought she was uncool. It was my fault, I know, but I began to ignore her. My male friends would tease her endlessly for being so different, and I never took up for her. To this day, she doesn't let me forget this.
PP: But you became friends again?
SS: Well, we didn't go to the same middle school, but we ended up at the same private high school. I mean, I had not spoken to her in maybe 6 or 7 years and then, bam, back to seeing her almost every day. We ignored each other and that was that, despite being in the some of the same classes. As in, nobody would have ever known that we were childhood best friends because we hung out in different circles. By our senior year, we actually chatted every now and then, but never mentioned our past. Just things like, "hey, saw your dad on the course last week," or, "how about that Calculus test?"
PP: Had she changed much since elementary school? Obviously, she had grown in size, but...
SS: She was tall. I mean, tall. Probably 5'10, 5'11. Her mother is tall, too. She was so slender. Like a model. I'd seen her around the neighborhood maybe once or twice during those years that we didn't speak. But yeah, I would not have even recognized her except that she had such a unique look in an otherwise 95% white high school.
PP: After you were kicked-out, she wanted to see you?
SS: (laughter)
It was a Thursday morning around 10. December. The phone rings and for some reason I decide to answer it. I usually let the machine catch it because it was rarely for me. I pick up and say, "Hello, Swenton residence," and a voice says, "Is Stupid there?" All of a sudden memories flooded the living room. My jaw dropped. I had not heard that nickname since, well, the 3rd grade. Rena called me "Stupid" instead of "Stewart" anytime I annoyed her. I said, "Rena?" And the conversation went like this:
(Stewart insisted that we write the following in this format)
Rena Talmon: Is Stupid there?
SS: Rena?
RT: Stupid, home from school?
SS: Uh, yeah. You could say that.
RT: Heard you were too stupid for school, Stupid.
SS: No, actually...
RT: Heard you failed out. Davidson too hard for you, Stupid?
SS: No, that is gossip. Why are you being rude?
SS: At this point I heard a click. She apparently was tired of talking. I thought it was pretty funny, but I didn't understand why she had called me. I knew from my parents and from other people in the know that Rena was at Yale and was majoring in something science-related. She had graduated with honors at our school and I assumed was doing really well in school. I had also heard that she'd had a boy come stay with her one week during the summer. I guess it was the summer before our junior year, or, the summer before I was expelled. Either way, I don't think she'd ever had a boyfriend.
I go into the kitchen to start writing and I hear a knock at my backdoor about 20 minutes later, which scared me, because nobody ever comes to our backdoor. I walk into another room in my house and down a hall and there she was, standing at my backdoor. It was shocking to say the least. She was wearing a red, bright red turtleneck and a pair of denim black jeans. Her hair was in French braids and she looked like she was freezing. It was December, you know...
(Stewart pours his 3rd glass of Elmer T. Lee and refuses to mix it with the Coca-Cola we brought along with it.)
So I see her in, and she just has this know-it-all look on her face. She goes, "I knew you wouldn't make it in college. You never cared about school." Then she just walks through my house, which she no-doubt remembered from childhood, walks into my kitchen and fills a glass full of ice. Then she walks into my living room and makes herself a drink. I'm following behind her thinking, "My God, who is this woman?"
PP: She was so different from the Rena you once knew?
SS: No, she had always been abrasive and kinda witchy in person, but never at school. She was shy. A real introvert of a woman. Not as mean-spirited as she was when we played together. But to see her fix a drink. It was eye-opening. I won't lie, it was attractive.
PP: Was she pretty?
SS: Ha, next question.
PP: Okay. So what did y'all talk about?
SS: I told her the story. Actually, she had known the story all along, but liked the idea of me being too stupid to stay in school so she kept telling me over and over that I was "too stupid for school." Honestly, Davidson was probably going to suspend me anyway because of me playing hooky. Oh well. But we laughed and we made more drinks. It was the best time I'd had since I'd returned to Kentucky. She talked about Yale and how she loved class but disliked her classmates- imagine that.
After about four drinks I mentioned that I'd heard she had a boyfriend. I'm totally not smooth after a few drinks. So she says something like, "Yeah, he's in England this year. He's a pain," and she left it at that. After that, we probably hung out 3 or 4 times until it was time for her to go back to school. Despite being a typical lush, I never once asked her what led her to come over to my house that faithful day. I was curious as Hell but I never asked her.
PP: Why not?
SS: I don't know. Guess I never wanted to know the truth. In my mind, I created this scenario where she heard the news and found my story really cool. Maybe she wanted to re-connect. Her parents were the complete opposite of mine. When we were little, they were constantly asking her about her grades. Her father would call our house from the hospital making sure that she had studied for some test or another. I'd be thinking, "My God, man, that test isn't until next week." Plus, she is in the (bleeped) 2nd grade.
So. I figured she probably found my expulsion rebellious or something.
PP: So after she left, you wrote her into your book?
SS: Well, I'd probably written 6 or 7 stories and I felt like he needed an ex-wife. Then I had this idea where I'd married this exotic, foreign heiress who hated my guts and divorced me but still re-entered my life every now and then. I actually rewrote the story where I attempt to sail down the Nile River to include her. I'd written it in that first month and came back to it because I didn't like the initial ending of that story.
PP: Right. She shows up unexpectedly the night before you leave. She's flown by helicopter and your character hears the sound of a helicopter engine and starts reminiscing about the days when you'd order her helicopter pilot to fly you to Vegas. Then she lands next to your hotel and berates for trying to accomplish the feat of traveling the Nile.
SS: Yeah, Rena gets mad because she thinks I'm too old to try something so strenuous at my age. I pictured someone just like Rena saying this, except in the book, Rena is from Bolivia.
PP: And you allude to the fact that her father may have earned all of his money through...
SS: Well, Rena alludes to the fact that her father has bank accounts "all over the Caribbean." And I tell stories of meeting members of her family who only use cash and whatnot, but yeah, we never really know.
PP: Do you know?
SS: We never really know.
PP: Does Rena even know?
SS: We never really know.
PP: Okay, so Rena is gone. You start to write her into the book. You continue writing. What next?
SS: I'm writing a ton, actually. In the spring, there are no major holidays and I write all the time. I'm starting earlier, drinking earlier, going to sleep later. Getting a ton done. I start tying some stories together and at this point I'm at about 1,000 pages. I mean, I write about 20 or more pages a day. Maybe less. But my writing is getting better. I'm actually thinking things through, which I wasn't doing when I first started. So maybe I wasn't writing as much, but I spent much more time writing.
At one point I visited Davidson when both of my parents took a trip to Rome. They had forbade me from going back, but with them gone for a week, I had to go back. It was my only chance. And guess what, the trip wasn't that fun. I mean, Davidson had also asked me to not come back, which was a drag. So I tried to stay indoors during the day and then saw people at night. I was hoping to show up and everyone throw a party for me, but instead people were just like, "man, you are nuts for coming back here." Even there, the stories had gotten out-of-hand. As I may have mentioned before, (ed. note: he had not mentioned it before) I was the only one expelled. The others either talked their way out of it or, even worse, threw me under the bus. Rumors started flying that I was the only one to leave because of this or that.
I heard wild ones. One guy, my old roommate from freshman year, actually, told me that he'd heard that I'd sexually harassed an exchange student. I was at one of the few bars near campus and a girl says, "aren't you the guy that had an affair with a professor?" Would have loved to have claimed that, but no, never happened. The most repeated rumor was that they'd found a ton of stolen property in my room when they came to question me at my apartment.
There is some truth to that.
PP: Explain.
SS: But they didn't really care. It was a non-issue and it lent nothing to the fact that I was already getting my ass sent out of North Carolina.
I'd once drunkenly entered a school building and stumbled into a storage room that had old, out-of-date computers. I mean, they weren't plugged in at all. Some of the monitors were busted out. These computers had to be from the 80s. Anyway, I took one computer and its keyboard with me. I set it up in my apartment as if it were operational, but it wasn't. I never could get the darn thing to work.
Well, when two Davidson administrators visited my apartment to ask about the elephant incident, one of them noticed the computer and as a joke said, "let me guess, you stole that, too." I say as a joke because when they arrived, they tried to play it cool like they were on my side. I didn't fall for it one bit, but anyway. I say something like, "nah, why would you think that?"
He stares at it a little longer and then says, "wait, is that one of our old computers?" This guy had been at Davidson for years and years. Apparently, that was the type computer he was first given when PCs arrived on campus.
When they finally made the ultimate decision, which they made in less than 2 or 3 days, the guy visited me as I was packing and was like, "we are going to need that back." I didn't even argue.
PP: There was validity in the rumor that you were caught with stolen property.
SS: Yeah, I guess so. But it was a total non-issue. Anyway, I left Davidson and returned home. No girls showed any enthusiasm over my daring hi-jinks. The guys didn't care. Of course, it didn't help that I came to visit just two weeks prior to final exams.
That summer my parents weren't as busy so I wrote when I could, but we took a good number of trips. We visited my grandparents in Chicago and my grandmother in south Florida. We went to Maine for the July 4th. Not once did they ask if I was planning on going back to school or getting a job. My mother actually mentioned to my dad at one point, "I think Stewart has been writing a little. I think that is good, right honey?"
Again, it was great, and I am very blessed. Looking back on it, if I had been out on the town every night spending lots of money at the bars, they would have probably urged me to get a job. Instead, I was at home all the time and keeping the house pretty straight. We had a maid come once a week but I still took credit for the cleanliness.
Oh, plus my sister was home from school. She had just finished her freshman year at The College of William & Mary. She loved it there. We would hang out a little and some of my friends were hanging out again.
PP: You wrote very little that summer?
SS: Right, well, at the end of July, my dad calls home from work and leaves a message on the answering machine. He says something like, "Hey, I've got to be in Atlanta for a while starting in August. I asked for a few days off before I abandon the fam, so wanna go play golf somewhere?"
I call him back and he says, "wanna go play St. Andrews?" I thought he was joking.
PP: You mean St. Andrews, as in the golf course in England?
SS: I mean, the Old Course at St. Andrews in Scotland, the, I think, oldest golf course in the world.
PP: Oh, wow.
SS: Uh, yeah. I had been to Europe once when I was, I think, 12-years-old. But to fly over to the UK just to play golf for a few days sounded too good to be true. I mean, are you kidding me? So I packed my bags and we flew out the next morning.
For the next 3 or 4 days we played golf and drank the finest scotch. The food was forgettable, but the golf was great. The weather was fine. Even met some Scottish girls that suited my fancy. Their accents were great. Anyway, the trip warranted a return trip. I knew I wanted to go back at least once a year for the rest of my life. I felt that way then, at least. Inspiration was at every corner while I was there, so on the return trip to America, I wrote about my 60-year-old self playing in St. Andrews. I could really go into detail about his time there because, well, I'd just been there.
On the flight from New York to Louisville my father finally asked-and I could tell it took him some courage- he asked, "so what are your plans?"
I felt terrible because he is very non-confrontational around the family. He never injects conflict into any situation. When my sister wanted to go to the College of William & Mary, he just nodded and went along with everything even though I know it hurt him that she didn't even consider Davidson. He met my mom there (He was a senior, she was a graduate student. She attended the University of North Carolina at Charlotte for her undergraduate studies.) and still sends them money to this day despite them kicking me out.
I always assumed he was as laid-back at work, but over the years my parents would have dinner parties and I'd hear stories about him bulldozing over the competition. He was chosen as a partner when he was just 33, so I guess there is a side to him that we never see at home.
So to have him muster the courage to ask basically, "son, what are you going to do with your life," it was tough.
I just looked down and off of the top of my head said, "uh, well, Dad, I've been writing." So we started talking about my writing and I convinced him that I wanted to write a book. He liked the idea and said he'd help me out a little as long as I wrote.
PP: Must be nice.
SS: Once again, I was blessed.
Stewart continued writing. Two years later, he felt like he had written enough. We skip now to the day he finally finished and what he did next.
SS: Around August of 1998, I had finished my 100th story. It ended with me, as a 69-year-old, retiring completely from golf. I won't give away the ending, but I was satisfied with it and decided to start shopping it around.
PP: How many pages had you written and what led you to end it all?
SS: I wrote over 12,000 pages.
PP: 12,000?
SS: Yes, hard to believe. I knew my retired self couldn't play golf forever. Golf to me means so many things. Time spent on the course is never wasted. You treat each hole as a conquest and futilely attempt to do your best. Not to sound ridiculously cliche, but, in the end it means nothing. Just a score. Just a feeling. But you challenge yourself while also enjoying yourself, though I know plenty of people who treat golf as a weekly chore. A year after I finished my stories and had them typed out, Fred Oliver (ed. note: Fred is the founder of Grade School Press) sent me an essay that a English professor had written about my manuscript. To this day, I can't get over all of the meaning that he found in my stories. This essay was at least 30 pages long, yet terse. This professor was obviously a master of the English language and I wish I could have hired him to edit my work.
PP: So he found meanings that you didn't intend?
SS: Yeah, you could say that.
PP: But after speaking to Fred Oliver, he said that, in his own words, "Stewart knew what he was doing. He still feigns ignorance to this day whenever anyone critiques his work."
SS: You have that written on your piece of paper?
PP: Yes.
SS: May I see that piece of paper?
PP: After the interview, if you don't mind.
SS: Right. I see. I can't just sit here and speak all day. Been here for an hour at least, right? And I'll be getting hungry soon, no offense.
PP: Under an hour. We can fetch food for you soon.
SS: Jesus. Fetch food? This is why I don't do interviews. (laughs) Nobody asks me anyway.
Stewart leaves the room for a few minutes and returns with an empty glass.
SS: I'm gonna pour a little more. Fred and I haven't spoke in a long time. Does your card say that, (bleeped). Anywhere on that card. Look on the back. Look on the side of the card. Look inside it.
PP: When did you last speak to Fred?
SS: Been a while, friend.
PP: So you finished your story. What happened next?
SS: I got online. Dial-up, no kidding. Started looking for places to send my manuscript.
PP: Did you send all 12,000 pages?
SS: Yeah. By this time, my dad had really gotten behind me. He paid for a typist to type all 12,000 pages. It ended up several hundred pages. What was crazy is that this typist finished it all in about a week. It was a mistake to send the whole thing. Some of the stories weren't funny at all. From then until Christmas, I sent it off to various publishing houses. Some sent back responses, others I never heard from at all. Either way, they all said no.
PP: That stinks.
SS: What stinks is that my mom decided to quit work around November of that year. She was tired of the travel and with her being home, she noticed I just sat in the kitchen all day writing and drinking her liquor.
PP: Time to get a job?
SS: Well, she felt like I was mature enough to return to school. Louisville has some pretty good schools and she kept hounding me around re-enrolling for summer school or for next fall. For some odd reason, I just didn't feel like going back.
PP: You didn't want to go back to school, period.
SS: Yeah, and I was no longer the king of the castle. Well, Christmas rolls along and I happen to see my old friend Rena at a bar in Louisville. We had hung out a little off-and-on whenever she was home. I see her at this bar and she is obviously a little out-of-it. I'm like, "how long have you been here?" and she says 12. It was only 10 at night so I knew she must have meant Noon. I ask her how she is getting home and of course she says she'll make the trek. I immediately grabbed her keys and told her I was calling a cab. This, she did not like. She immediately unleashes this fury on me that I had never seen before. She cusses me out, brings up stuff from our past that I thought she had placed behind us. Says all men are idiots and that we think we know what is right. She calls me horrible names and says her life has been (bleeped) up ever since she met me. Again, this was eye-opening. It was kinda nice to think you meant this much to someone, but that might just be a little sick on my part. I called her a cab and told her to come to my house in the morning and I'd take her to her car. It took like four of my friends to get her into the cab. She was hysterical. Cussing us out in foreign languages. It was great because I had never seen anyone like this.
PP: At least nobody got hurt.
SS: The next morning I hear a knock on my bedroom door. My mom yells out, "Rena is here to see you." I go downstairs and she looks like death. I'm thinking she'll thank me for being such a nice, young gentleman. Instead, in front of my mother, she says, "take me to my car, you piece of (bleeped)." My mom gasped and left the room. I was a little hungover myself. My friend, Perry, had driven me home in my car. I had gotten pretty trashed on Christmas-themed shots and we had crashed a high school party which sounds just as pathetic now as it did then. But we pulled some pretty funny stunts that night. Anyway, I wasn't feeling too hot myself and replied to Rena, "How about you walk, (bleeped)." Never before had I called a girl the b-word.
Fortunately, my mother was not in the room when I said this. Rena's eyes began to water and she slumped over and fell into the love seat. What a jerk I am. So, I walked over to help her up and she just started wailing at me. I mean, hard hits. Not wee, little girl taps. I mean, Middle Eastern tough-as-a-metal-dreidel, tank shots to my face. I try to protect myself and then try to restrain her and finally my mom walks in and begs us to stop. We compose ourselves and I tell my mom that I'm going to drive Rena to her car. I grab her keys and then we jump in my car to drive back to the bar. On the way there, we don't say a word. Not a peep. I turn on the radio and just drive.
PP: This girl sounds feisty thus far.
SS: She was a complete wreck. We arrive at her car and I hand her the keys and she says, "thanks, (bleeped)." I grab her arm and tell her, "look, what is your deal?" We then struggle with one another and finally I tell her that if she doesn't explain, I'll block her in. Her car was in the corner of a parking lot and I had an SUV which could definitely block her in. She knew I wasn't bluffing because these were the kinds of things I did when we were kids. Perhaps this is the source of that animosity she was talking about at the bar.
PP: Ha, good one, cheesy poof.
SS: What now?
PP: How many cute little questions have I asked you?
SS: Probably enough to bore your reader to sleep.
PP: Go easy on the sugar-coating, buddy.
SS: Pass the mic, hoss. Time is a fan-favorite in these parts. And got no more of it.
PP: Answers the swigging second fiddle.
SS: Darling lovechild, you approach my mistakes with nuts and jokes. Bolts take a backseat nowadays.
PP: You really should stop.
SS: I can speak anyway I choose.
PP: I was talking about the glass meeting your mouth.
SS: Tell it like it is, sister.
PP: You think jumpstarts stay in space? See us floating?
SS: But why else? You come in here in your pasty tie and your treehuggin' jeans and expect me to sit and get motion sickness from this tired story? You couldn't pay me all freaking years left in this rotting life to say another simple sentence about these gooked-up nonsensical bygones.
PP: Oh, bouts of panic shrink you into despair and now it sparks a terse guise really. Fond of the froth. Enemy of erudite pleasures. Jump into your bubble bath, queen mother. We'll pack your bags and send you back to Hollywood. Or was it called Holly Brook? I always get the two confused when it comes to lives broken alongside the bottles.
SS: I'd call your bluff on anything you tried to posture as tremendously trite. Dr. Writer. Medical Malpractice by the stroke of the pen. Senator, I beg you attend to this pressing matter. Rough. Bug off and send for a cab. I'll be expecting a former writer behind the wheel and an explanation of why I was ever entered into the record. You expect audiences to scroll this far down? They'd panic if they knew it was worthless to get this far. I'm kidding, of course. You just can't read sarcasm in print interviews. Ask Mayer. This was partially my fault for buying into this in the first place.
PP: You had a choice? Look what he made you. A fictional fairytalisman with a cliffhanger drafting you for the big leagues while you're on summer break with the wrong family.
SS: Stop your talking. He pains me. You can tell this from the beginning if they read carefully.
PP: They can't see your eyes and their aura. Or should I say, weathered veins.
SS: Clap on that one, pal. Way to smooth sell it on the eyes to victory. Hurricane on the horizon. Trust me.
PP: I get where you are coming from, honest. It was over when it started.
SS: But don't they help?
PP: http://www.dailymail.co.uk
SS: Why are you posting a link?
PP: Why end it period?
