Belated realizations

I was thinking about Lisa (see yesterday’s post) a little more last night, and I remembered/realized something.
When I first arrived in Minnesota I was living on unemployment. In exchange for letting me stay with them, I helped out my friends with groceries and stuff, but for the most part I had no real expenses, so most of my money was spent on booze and strippers.
I started making a habit of hitting the strip club on Wednesday nights fairly early on, since there wasn’t much else for me to do with my time or money.
Anyway, sometime in July Ozzfest ’99 came to the area, and that happened to be on a Wednesday.
My friend Eric, with whom I was living, and I went and didn’t make it back home until the early hours of the morning, so I missed my usual trip to the strip club.
On the following Friday, Eric and his then-wife Sally had plans with another couple, so I was left to my own devices. Naturally my “devices” ultimately led me to the strip club.
When I got there, one of the dancers, whose name (and stage name) I don’t remember, commented on my presence, and then on my absence on Wednesday.
I explained that I’d been at Ozzfest, and she told me that someone had been asking about me on Wednesday, wondering where I was.
I was sort of hopeful that it might have been one of the dancers, but she told me that it was the bartender.
At the time, I hadn’t actually begun talking to Lisa, or at least, I hadn’t yet taken much notice of her, and the only bartender I’d ever noticed there was this woman who…well, some of you might fault me for this, and say that I am picky, but I don’t feel that there’s anything wrong about not being attracted to a woman who outweighs me by a factor of two.
What actually made things worse for her was that, beyond the weight issue, nature simply hadn’t granted her much in the way of looks, so she tried to build her own through the liberal use of cosmetics. Essentially she used industrial strength cosmetics to draw an entirely different face over her own. Unfortunately, nature didn’t give her much in the way of artistic talent either.
It also hadn’t made her a blonde, but through the miracle of peroxide she managed to transform her hair into a color vaguely akin to platinum blonde, but it was closer to what you might find on a woman in her late 90s. It was pure white and thin, but she tried to shore it up with enough Aqua Net to destroy three ozone layers.
If you’ve ever seen the John Waters movie “Cry-Baby,” imagine the character of “Hatchet-Face.”
Only not as pretty.
So when the dancer told me that the bartender was asking about me, that’s who I thought of, and so I was no longer intrigued, as I had been initially when she told me that someone was asking about me, so much as I was horrified.
Now, the thing to remember is that my brain is frequently as lazy as the rest of me, and sometimes, if it can, it will go for years without working.
At the time, the dancer, who was working as a waitress that night, as many of the dancers did when they were having their periods, since it was an all-nude restaurant, mentioned that the name of the bartender in question was Lisa.
Actually, this is pretty much how the entire exchange went:

Dancer: Oh, you’re here tonight.
Me: Yes.
Dancer: (Pointing at my Ozzfest T-Shirt) Did you go?
Me: Yes.
Dancer: Oh, so that’s where you were on Wednesday? We were wondering what happened to you. Lisa was asking where you were.
Me: Lisa?
Dancer: Yeah, you know, the bartender.
Me: (To indicate that I still didn’t know who she was talking about, I shook my head and shrugged).
Dancer: Umm, you know, blonde, sometimes she works at the Harbor (another bar in town). She’s not here tonight.
Me: Oh. (Picturing the other bartender, who also wasn’t there that night either, and whom I’d seen at the Harbor.) OH. (Stifling the urge to say “Eww”) Okay.

Then she asked me about Ozzfest, and I told her that, inasmuch as I could remember anything, it kicked ass, and I went about my business.
Not knowing Lisa, at the time, and based on the almost non-existent description the dancer provided, my mind filled in the blanks and I assumed that Lisa was the name of Hatchet-Face’s evil twin.
Even after I got to know Lisa, I didn’t make the connection until much later.
“Much later,” being, specifically, yesterday.
So while it obviously doesn’t mean anything now, and apparently didn’t really mean much back then either, it is sort of interesting to belatedly note that to some extent Lisa had taken an interest in me before I even noticed her.
Ah well, it never would have worked out anyway.
For one thing, she was too young. For another, she seemed to be able to get pregnant just by someone having a sexual thought about her, and ultimately we probably would have ended up in competition with each other for the title of “Most Depressed.”
Besides, at the time she was actually still involved with the guy who’d fathered at least the one she was carrying, and possibly one (or both) of the others, but as he was one of the principal things she complained about, I had been willing to overlook that detail.
Actually, he was pretty much the number one topic of complaining.
In any case, the working week is once again closing in. I was really pathetic this week in the accomplishment department: a couple of so-so drawings, two mediocre attempts at cooking new, a loaf of banana bread, and no writing.
Hell, I didn’t even exercise.
I did make more peanut butter cookies, though.
In fact, I went out into the world and bought some accoutrements specifically for my cookie-making ventures.
One thing I bought was a “cookie dropper,” which is basically an ice cream scoop. You squeeze the handle together and it has a little metal bit that sweeps along and forces the cookie dough out.
I also bought a new cookie sheet. Actually, the cookie sheet was part of a package consisting of the cookie sheet, two round cake pans, a 9x13 cake pan, and a muffin pan.
Now I can make muffins!
Or cupcakes, for that matter.
The question is whether or not I will.
Actually, I’m sure that I will, it’s really more of a question of how often. I would guess once, and then not again for a very long time, if ever.
But considering how much cookie sheets seem to cost on their own, $12 for the whole package wasn’t too bad.
Today I discovered that my rent will only go up $75 a month if I renew my lease.
Since I really didn’t want to have to bother with moving, and I could (comfortably) afford up to a $100 a month increase, that’s good news.
Well, it's not really good news in the way that, say, hearing that I just won a bunch of money would be good news; it's good news in a relative way.
But in any case, the end result is that I’ll be staying put for at least another year.
Maybe by then I’ll have repaired enough of the damage I did to my credit back during my drinking days, and saved up enough money that I can seriously look into buying a house or a condo by the time this lease expires.
But given the exorbitant cost of housing here in Northern Virginia, my buying a house doesn’t seem like a real possibility.
Even with my credit repaired, it’s unlikely that my income alone would be enough to support a mortgage, or anything beyond the mortgage (like food, for example), so unless the real estate market crashes, I get a tremendous raise, or I get married or something and no longer have to rely only on my income (which is probably the least likely of all the available possibilities), it’s pretty likely that this time next year I’ll be either looking for a new apartment or renewing my lease yet again.
In any case, I think that pretty neatly wraps up this week.
Enjoy your weekends.