I just got a bunch of film processed from my Diana and Holga. Some of the pictures are from Warped Tour and even though it was only a month ago, it makes me feel happily nostalgic looking at them. That day was the last time I felt happy and accepted.
Now I just feel like that chick sitting on the curb.
Henry and I took Chooch to Round Hill Park yesterday since the sky took a day off from blanketing us with seasonal depression. We let Janna come too, because sometimes we try to make her feel included. Plus, I knew she’d keep an eye on Chooch so I could take stupid pictures with my Holga. Probably, everyone there thought she was the mother, and that’s OK. Probably embarrassing for Chooch though.
On the way out there, I sat in the back with Chooch (he freaks out if anyone else does) and played Backseat DJ. Then, forgetting that Henry had just adhered one of those lame pull-down sun shades on both backseat windows, I put the window down and the bottom suction cup is now lost inside the car door and the window got stuck in the down position, causing Henry to pull over and manually yank it up and seethe, "Do not touch the window!!!" because now the window is broken. I denied that it was my fault. I’m still denying it. It wasn’t my fault.
Continuing our slow cruise around the winding park roads, I told Henry to pick a sublime pavilion. Leaning forward between the seats, I asked, "Do you know what sublime means, Henry?" and he scoffed to show that I had really insulted him. Passing by well-maintained picnic plots with sparkling swingsets and bright yellow slides, we stopped at a really sad pavilion with splintered picnic tables and a depressed swing set, proving that Henry really doesn’t know what sublime means. We then tried to accomplish one of those picnic things that normal people are wont to do, but we usually fail and wind up eating bitter words and break-up threats instead. Then I made the mistake of complaining that Henry put yucky stuff on my sandwich, so now he claims I’m going to have to start doing everything for myself, but he was just trying to look tough in front of Janna. Chooch threw most of his food over his shoulder, and I flicked the unfavorable portions of my sandwich underneath the table (except for the cookies which Chooch and I were enthusiastic about) and then we proceeded to the petting farm portion of the park.
I don’t know why I get so excited to come here. Maybe I’m secretly hoping that one of the hens will lay a golden egg full of crack cocaine while I’m visiting, or that I’ll get to see a kid get its hand bitten off by a dragon, but it’s always the same thing: bitchy hens, a feral cat, petrified duck shit, stinky hogs, and lots of shitty mothers with organic cookies and condescending sticks up their mom-jeaned asses.
While Janna held my son’s hand and taught him things like, "The sheeps go BAAA" (which is probably good to balance out my serial killer teachings), me and some other kids took pictures with our plastic cameras. Mine will probably be much better than theirs, because kids suck and I rule.
Chooch liked the pigs best, probably because their snorting and grunting reminded him of his oft-slumbering father. They smelled like him too. Janna made sure Chooch bathed in Purell on the way out of the pig pen.
While checking out the cows, I left Henry’s side for a SECOND to take a picture. In that short amount of time, some whorish mother with a nasally voice and ugly kids sidled up next to Henry. Her stupid kid was like, "MOMMY IS THAT COW A BOY OR A GIRL???" and she was all, "Oh I don’t know. It has horns. Do girl cows have horns?" She looked at Henry innocently, crinkling her slutty nose and punctuating her flighty inquiry with sex-glazed giggles.
Henry was all, "Oh my God, a real life broad is talking to me," to himself, and after flexing his muscles and rippling his poorly executed tattoos, he disguised his voice to sound like a real man and said, "Why I don’t know, let’s ask my dickie, he has the answers to everything," and then he pulled out his dick and wagged it around like a limp pinkie and the two of them giggled together like two fucking assholes and I want to murder that dumb douche now (both of them).
Really, Henry said nothing at all because he went into shock at the idea of another woman acknowledging him, and I took that as my cue to attach myself to Henry’s side and shout, "HEY, HOW’S IT GOING WITH THE AIDS?" so that she would fuck off and die. Then after she left I said, "Ew" and quickly took five giant steps away from Henry.
Meanwhile, Chooch — who thought that the other kids there were part of the attraction — kept trying to poke some little girl in the butt and then got all excited because her jacket was pink satin with a glittery Barbie patch on it and the girl’s parents were laughing and I kind of died a little and started whispering things about King Kong, tits, and machine guns in his ear because I might kill myself if he develops a Barbie fetish. And not even because of that whole "Boys should like trucks and blood and shooting and killing!!" bullshit, but because Barbie is really fucking stupid.
Over by the duck pond, some frizzy-haired douche-mom scolded me for letting Chooch come close to touching baked duck poop that was coating one of the benches and it was totally Henry’s fault because when I saw it, I asked, "Is that duck poop?" and Henry sounded very positive when he assured me it was a very sanitary natural bench cushion made of nature’s love and children’s giggles, and then he immersed himself in fiddling with the camera because he thinks he’s a professional photographer or something.
Then I realized that Round Hill is really fucking gay and we left.
“Henry?! Hi. I was just calling to tell you that Christina and I might be about to get our asses kicked.”
“Yeah? I’m not coming to get you.”
It all seemed so harmless when the notion came to me on Sunday evening.
“Best idea ever: let’s walk down Brookline Boulevard with my Holga and take pictures of the assholes who live in my town.
”
Henry did not agree that this was the best idea ever, but Christina, always afraid of defying me, went along with it. I grabbed the camera and my cell phone and we embarked into the wild frontier of Brookline.
Walking down the main drag, we came across few pedestrians. Apparently, one of those Steelers games was on, so most of the population had taken refuge inside their homes or local bars, eyes glued to TV screens. I secretly felt proud knowing that I left a house where The Game had not taken over the television.
An older man slowly passed by, one hand clamped firmly upon his young daughter’s arm, keeping her upright while she clomped along on roller skates. He tossed us a furtive, sidelong glance and picked up his pace, dragging her along. I suspect he perceived us as being suspicious, just because we were giggling nervously and I was trying unsuccessfully to camouflage my large chunky plastic camera behind my back.
Really Awesome Idea Part 2: “Ooh, let’s go into the bars on this street and take pictures of unsuspecting drunks.”
I could tell that Christina was fighting hard to ward off the angel on her shoulder and after a few moments of consideration, she gave me a feeble and unconvincing answer of, “OK yeah, that sounds like….great….fun.”
The first bar I decided to crash was the Lockerroom, which could very well be an example of Brookline’s seedy underbelly, where an opulence of cocaine and menthol cigarettes can be found amongst gun-toting wife beaters (the men, not the shirts, although they’re probably wearing the shirts). The door to the bar is found at the bottom of dimly lit cement steps, the door itself unmarked and dark metal, giving the impression that what you might find on the other side could quite possibly be the ear-cutting scene from Reservoir Dogs.
I cracked the door enough to glimpse a sliver of the darkened bar, inhaled some of the stale air (possibly tinged with meth fumes), and promptly bolted back up the steps.
We continued to skulk down the sidewalk, looking like we were ready to hold up a mini mart, I’m sure, when we happened upon Gordon’s Lounge.
“Oh, this is it. This is the bar we have to go into,” I said lustily, imagining the awesome photo I could steal of the run down patrons. I lingered before the door, flip-flopping. “Here, you do it,” I commanded as I thrust the Holga into Christina’s chest. She later confessed that entering the bar under the pretense of undercover paparazzi was not on her Good Time Sunday Night agenda, but she did it anyway. Because that’s what friends are for — serving Erin unconditionally.
In her own words:
i went into the bar, (which by the way was no bigger than most people’s living rooms), acting as if i were looking for someone. this made me look like a complete moron since the bar was so small to begin with, and my over-emphasized room scanning was unnecessary. i made a big display of my disappointment in not finding whoever i was “looking for” and headed for the door. as i opened the door, i gave one last look and placed the holga up by my shoulder… aimed it at all the bar patrons and snapped a quick photo. using my high school basketball skills, i turned 180 degrees and ran as fast as my fat ass would allow.
While Christina did her thang, I ran away and ducked into an alcove next to a bank, a spout of mad giggles threatening to launch from my mouth, not to mention the urine that was surging through my bladder. I was employing controlled breathing tactics to steady squash my impending wet pantied-laughing fit when Christina burst through the doors of Gordon’s and came barrelling toward me, just as the father and his wheeled daughter passed us by again.
I was so humored by their need to skirt away from us (to the point of nearly walking off the curb) that I was inspired to snap a picture of their retreating bodies. The daughter noticed the flash and quickly spun around to look at us. The father sped up his pace and the two of them disappeared into the shadows of the next block. When I told him about it the next day, my work frienemy Collin said the man probably feared his daughter would be sucked into our lesbian cult, and I wanted to be offended by that but I laughed anyway.
I had grown tired of taking pictures, so I pulled the plug on the shoot and we turned to retreat.
“Wait — we have to walk past Gordon’s? You didn’t tell me that!” Christina looked slightly panicked, so I pacified her by suggesting we cross over to the other side of the street.
As we began our trek home, I peeked across the street and noticed that two people had emerged from Gordon’s. They stood on the sidewalk, looking left and right. I averted my eyes, wary of being spotted, but curiosity got the best of me and and I rubbernecked once more.
Now there was a throng of four patrons. One of them, a tall and bald man, spotted us.
“Hey!” he yelled.
He’s probably not directing that at us, I tried to assure myself. He’s maybe calling a taxi.
“HEY!” he shouted louder this time, causing a shiver to melt down my spine. The throng began moving, mirroring our steps from the other side of the street.
“Oh my god, he’s going to fucking murder us!” I tersely whispered to Christina. The man was still shouting at us. I looked around innocently, hoping that my body language conveyed that I wondered to whom he was shouting, because it certainly couldn’t be at the two sweet, demure women who were merely taking a nice evening stroll. Except that my harried motions all but screamed, “It was us! Over here! We’re the two you want!”
“What the fuck were they doing when you took that picture?” I cried, thinking that we know had photographic evidence of a bar-top virginal sacrifice.
“I don’t know, they were just watching the football game!” That explains it. Christina had a mask of fear on her face. “The worst part is that I look like a boy from across the street. What if they get as far as jumping me before realizing that hey, I have tits!?”
I stole another quick glance at the angry mob, cherishing the parked cars along the street that doubled as shields, and noticed that one of the women had pulled a cell phone from her purse and was dialing.
Holy shit, what if they’re calling the cops?, my inner voice added an extra punch pf paranoia. Or worse — what if they’re calling more drunk Steelers fans?!
“If they catch us, we’ll just deny it,” I blathered, attempting to shove the Holga down the front of my coat. I didn’t look obvious. Not at all. “Or…we can just fall back on the excuse I always use in times like this: we’re playing a photo scavenger hunt.”
The throng of pissed off photographic subjects gave up after a block and a half, probably not wanting to miss any heart-stopping plays during the game, so we slowed down our pace and tried to relearn how to breathe.
A block later, a skeletal woman with dark eyes and a husky voice stepped out from a stoop and said, “I’m sorry, can I have a light?” As Christina reached in her pocket for her lighter, the woman found her own and excused our services.
“Decoy!” I hissed at Christina, who instinctively spun around to see if we were being followed. Henry refused to come pick us up, and the rest of the walk home was nerve-rattling. Every time a car drove past, I considered diving into a bush.
That picture better be fucking awesome.
Later that night, we drove around, me in the passenger seat with the pig mask stuffed over my head. Now that was a Really GOOD Idea. At every red light, I’d stare into the car next to us. It’s funny how determined people are to not look twice. I scared one guy into turning left, I swear to god.The best was when I had Christina pull into the Denny’s parking lot. She idled next to a window, and I was going to get out, but just staring at the diners from the car ended up being effective enough. One man sat, burger halted in front of his gaping mouth, and stared at me in disbelief.We went to Wal-Mart and terrorized the shoppers in the parking lot for awhile, but it started snowing really hard. “Nothing’s better than bacon in a blizzard,” Christina ruminated, sending me into a five minute crack-up. (At that point, it didn’t take much.)
On the way home, flashing lights loomed ahead of us. “Motherfuck, it’s a roadblock!” I screamed in despair. “They’re on to us!” It ended up just being three cop cars with someone pulled over.
We ended the night without getting beat up or arrested, but we had fun trying.
My first attempt at using the Holga. This is Chooch’s boyfriend, Reynold. It’s unfortunate that the empty can of Milwaukee’s Best in his lap isn’t visible.
Downtown, by the Amtrak station.
A church, you know?
Bueno Mexicana’s visiting from Ohio, so we’re about to go and try to get arrested today.
