THE ART "EXPERIENCE."

I’m terrible when it comes to face-to-face social interaction. I really am. I’m awkward and weird, and I generally make people feel awkward and weird because of my awkward weirdness.

Did hearing me admit that make you feel awkward and weird about what you’re reading?

It did, didn’t it?

The proof’s in the pudding.

My ability to bring a party to a halt isn’t exactly a new development. I’ve been this way for a very long time and the chances of me ever being anything else are slimmer than, Calista Flockhart’s thighs or the idea that, Katy Perry will ever write a song that doesn’t make me want to chop her head off and store her boobs in my freezer.

Wait just one cotton pickin’ minute.

Did I just make a Calista Flockhart reference?

Wait one more cotton pickin’ minute.

Did I just say I wanted to chop off her head and store her boobs in my freezer?

Wait one last cotton pickin’ minute!

Did I just type the words “cotton pickin’” three times?

I bet you’re feeling pretty damn awkward and weird now.

Anyone that knows anything about me knows how utterly useless I am when it comes to situations in which human beings gather to do the things human beings do. It’s common knowledge. It’s also the reason I was so taken aback when my wife said the following to me over dinner one night:

“So…we’re doing this silent auction thing at school and I signed you up for an art experience with some of the kids.”

I nearly chocked on my fork of spaghetti. “What?”

“Oh, it’s nothing, Steven. You’ll meet the winners in the classroom and give them an art lesson. You can show them how to paint, or something. It’ll be fun. You’ll love it.”

I jabbed the fork into my brain.

Okay, I actually didn’t do that. I wanted to though.

It’ll be fun? I’ll love it?

Was this broad insane? Who the hell did she think she was married to? I don’t even have fun and love doing the things I actually have fun and love doing. I’m practically a Vulcan. I’m incapable of such emotions.

“Are you nuts? I’m not doing that.”

Instantly the expression on her face changed. It twisted into something ugly. It coiled and morphed into that angry wife-thing that wives everywhere do when they mean business. If you’re a man and you’re married, you know what I talking about. You’ve seen it before. It haunts your dreams and makes your genitals run for cover.

For some reason the name, John Bobbit popped into my head.

This was going to suck.

Two weeks later, I found myself in her classroom after school, waiting for the winners to show up and the art “experience” to begin.

Unlike John Bobbit, my penis remained firmly attached - loosely actually. Maybe dangly would be more appropriate? Whatever. What I’m basically trying to say is that it hadn’t been chopped off and tossed into the woods by a crazy woman.

I’d made the right choice.

Less than ten minutes later the kids arrived. There were four of them – all girls and all under the age of ten. My wife gathered the group around a table at the rear of the room and I proceeded to kill time by filling a few glasses of water for them to dip their paintbrushes in.

After I filled them once I poured them out and filled them again.

A quick glance at the clock told me I’d only wasted three minutes.

I emptied and filled the glasses again.

That killed another sixty seconds.

Damn it.

Why was I so nervous? They were just kids – snot-nosed little kids and nothing more. I was twice their size and in at least one case, three times! I couldn’t allow these kids to get the better of me. It was time to stop being such a sackless weirdo and grow a pair! It was time to knuckle up and be a man!

My hands were sweaty and my face flushed. I could feel their tiny little kid eyes watching me from across the room – staring at me and wondering why I was constantly refilling the same four plastic cups. They were talking in their little kid voices to each other – whispering. One of them laughed and another joined in.

Were they laughing at me?

I bet they were laughing at me.

Those, little punks.

That’s it! I’d had enough! I’d show them! I’d experience the crap out of that art “experience!” It was time to step up and knock this thing out of the park! It was time to point to the bleachers like, Babe Ruth and swing for the fences! It was time to channel my inner Kirk, and take on the Gorn despite being grossly overmatched!

It was time to stop making nerdy Star Trek references that were in no way helping my cause!

With my fully filled plastic cups I strode across the room with my chest puffed and my chin pointed north. I reminded myself once again that I was a grown-ass man and that my fear was idiotic. I needed to take charge! I needed to take control of my stupid brain and let it know exactly who was controlling whom!

I needed to fail miserably despite my bravado!

Wait. What?

Forget that last pat.

Barely five minutes into the “experience” and I was already a blubbering mess. I was sweating more than, John Candy in a, latex John Candy suit. Every sentence was a contradiction. My words were bumping and sliding into each other like drunken assholes in a mosh pit, molding and melding like glue and spurting from my mouth in mostly nonsensical grunts. Suddenly my hands wouldn’t work. For the first time in my life I couldn’t even draw.

Hell, I could barely hold my pencil.

Not only were these kids getting the better of me, they knew something was wrong. The puddle of perspiration on the desk below my head was a dead giveaway. The little girl with the wide eyes and confused look on her face across from me wasn’t helping matters any.

Her face was slimy. She kept smacking her lips and scratching her head, and dropping flakes of dandruff into the still wet paint below. Every once in a while her tongue would peek out from between her lips, extend upward and try it’s damndest to find its way into her nose.

She really needed to stop doing that.

In between my jittery pencil strokes and awkward burp-speak I could hear laughter coming from elsewhere in the room – from behind me. Though the muscles in my neck had stiffened to the point of being utterly useless long ago, I managed to spot my wife and one of her teacher friends standing in the doorway with wide smiles on their faces.

They were watching me suffer and they seemed to really be getting a kick out of it.

Wait one final cotton pickin’ minute.

This was all a set-up wasn’t it?

The little girl sitting beside me broke wind.

Being married is fantastic.

I JUST NEEDED A RIDE TO THE ZOO

"Fuck you, Chris! Fuck you! What the fuck am I supposed to do now, you stupid fuck? Who's going to watch Casey? What the fuck are you thinking, you fuck?"

"I don't know. Call your mom, maybe she'll look after her?"

"I don't want to call my mom again! I fucking ask her to help out too fucking much as it is!"

"Well, what do you want me to do? I can't miss another class. If I do, then I fail. Then what? All this for nothing?"

"God damn it! God damn it, I am so fucking sick of this fucking shit-fuck. Fuck you, fuck! Damn it!"

I was sitting in the living room on the couch of a complete stranger, scratching at a stain on my shirt with my index finger and desperately trying to pretend that I couldn’t hear the argument going on between him and his wife.

I was failing.

The dead could hear these two. Beethoven's corpse could hear them, and he's buried in Vienna—which is nowhere near Ohio—which is where we were. Plus, he was deaf before he died. Plus, corpses can’t hear anything.

So how in the hell did I end up in this most awkward of awkward situations?

Let me explain.

You see, when I was in college I was pretty much invisible. I’m not talking about being invisible in a cool sneak-into-the-girl’s-locker-room-and-watch-them-undress sort of way, either. I was invisible in a far less cool weirdo-loser-who-never-talks-to-anyone-and-has-no-friends sort of way.

A week prior, the instructor in one of my drawing courses told us that we’d be spending the next couple of classes at the Columbus Zoo, sketching various animals.

This sucked for a number of reasons:

1. It just plain sucked. Drawing animals at the zoo? Really? This was seriously what I was paying twenty grand a year for? This was supposed to help prepare me for the real world and land me job and secure me affordable insurance? Sketching monkeys?

2. I didn’t own a car—which meant I needed a ride.

For a dude with no friends of which to speak and no prospective friends on the horizon, who also had most of the student body believing he was a serial killer, finding a ride proved a far more difficult task than it really should have been.

Thankfully, when the instructor asked everyone willing to offer rides to those of us without one to raise their hands, the other weirdo in class raised his.

We were stuck together.

My new carpool pal was a tall drink of water—maybe 6’4. He had dark hair, he was skinny, and he wore glasses. He was dorky in a harmless, greasy sort of way, and his name was Chris.

We always come in pairs. We’re just like boobs. Weirdoes, I mean.

No one else in the class was willing to get into a car with Chris, and no one else was going to let me get into a car with them.

We were a perfect fit.

The following week, Chris picked me up outside my apartment around seven in the morning. His car was a piece of junk. The bumper was bent. The paint was peeling. The back window didn’t work anymore, and there were three or four crumpled up McDonalds bags on the floor of the front seat. There were fifteen more scattered throughout the back.

The dude really liked McDonalds.

He was sicker than I originally thought.

"Hey, if it's okay with you, I've gotta stop at my place before we head to the zoo."

I really didn't have any interest in going to Chris’s apartment. Scratch that and revise—I had absolutely no interest whatsoever in going to Chris’s apartment.

             What was I supposed to say, though? “Stop at your apartment? I think not, nerdlinger! You drive straight to the zoo or I’m out of here!” Maybe I should have slapped him on the back of the head or coiled up my fist and popped him right in the ear?

             The guy was doing me a favor and keeping me from failing by agreeing to give me a lift. He didn’t have to. It wasn’t the forties, he wasn’t my servant, and I wasn’t Ms. Daisy.

I said the only thing I could. "Sure. No problem."

       Looking back on it now, I realize I should have punched him in the ear.

Twenty minutes later, we arrived at his apartment. The inside was a sty. It was messy like an anus—the sort of messy that could never truly be cleaned—messy like Russell Brand.

Also, it smelled a lot like a twelve-year-old boy’s bedroom—you know, kind of like ejaculate and crusty gym socks. Spread haphazardly across the floor were at least thirty more crumpled up McDonalds bags. On the dining room table there were three more and on the kitchen counters more still.

             Chris pointed me in the direction of his couch and grunted “Give me one second," before heading out of sight and into another room.

Wedged between the cushions beneath me, I found another McDonalds bag.

Was he really eating all this McDonalds?

For a moment, everything was quiet.

On top of his television, I noticed another McDonalds bag. Underneath the bag was a videocassette with a piece of brown piece of tape on the side. Written on the tape in a thick black marker were the words, "KELLY'S GIANT TITS."

Okey dokey.

"Fuck you, Chris! Fuck you!" A thin twenty-something girl came storming into the living room area with her fists clenched. She was pissed. She was really pissed. My new pal, Chris, was right behind her. He had his hands pressed tight against his head. It looked like he was trying to keep his brain from exploding.

"What do you want me to do? I don't have a choice!"

"Fuck you, Chris! Fuck you! What the fuck am I supposed to do now, you stupid fuck? Who's going to watch Casey? What the fuck are you thinking, you fuck?"

"I don't know. Call your mom, maybe she'll look after her?"

"I don't want to call my mom again! I fucking ask her to help out too fucking much as it is!"

"Well, what do you want me to do? I can't miss another class. If I do, then I fail. Then what? All this for nothing?"

"God damn it! God damn it. I am so fucking sick of this fucking shit-fuck. Fuck you, fuck! Damn it!"

The thin girl snagged hold of a crumpled McDonalds bag and whipped it in Chris’s direction. It hit him in the face, bounced off, and ended up wedged in the metal of the crummy chandelier. Before he could react, she grabbed another, reeled back like a major league pitcher, and chucked it at him. This time Chris was ready. This time Chris got his hands up.

The minute his hands were in front of his face though, she charged and kicked him in the shin.

She was smart—despite her McDonalds-clogged arteries.

"AGH!" Chris keeled over, reached for his leg, and stumbled sideways. Trying desperately to keep his balance, he grabbed for a nearby chair, missed, and ended up flat on his face. Satisfied with her attack, the girl immediately marched back into the room from which she came and slammed the door behind her.

I’d seen something I shouldn’t have seen. I was sitting on a couch, next to a crumpled up McDonalds bag that I shouldn't have been sitting on.

I wanted to leave.

I wanted to be anywhere but where I was.

I envisioned myself charging at Chris, knocking him over, and running all the way back to my apartment. Once there I’d pull my hair out in clumps, cut open my head, tear out my brain, and throw it in the dishwasher.

Chris hobbled to his feet, stuck his fist in the air, and screamed, "Damn it, Kelly! What’s the matter with you?”

Wait—that was Kelly?

Her boobs weren't that big.