..:S...P...I...D...E...R...B...I...T...E...S:..

Monday, October 13, 2003

"Dream on white boy, dream on black girl,
and wake up to a brand new day..."
-INXS


so my step-brother was in town this weekend with one of his friends and, in spite of my sinus infection and throat infection or whatever the hell is making me cough up gallons of snot, we went out exploring Pittsburgh with some interesting results.

to protect the guilty, my brother, who is named after a city, will be refered to in this story as "Moscow," even though that ain't the city. and his friend i'm going to call "Tommy Vercetti" or "TV" because he was driving like Grand Theft Auto all night, especially coming out of the Liberty City tunnels...

so we hit the road with some Q-Tip "Amplified" blasting on the speakers and head for the waterfront area of the city. we get out of the car and this is where i start to notice some of the differences between black people and white people (oh yeah, i forgot to mention, my step-brother is black) i mean, obviously there's differences in appearance, like when i first climbed into the back seat on the drive there and looked around and started thinking "who turned out the lights!" but i'm talking about personality traits here. and, of course, all these sweeping generalizations are going to be based on one night and about 4 people. here's some things i found fascinating:

first off, these dudes talk to strangers. this might seem minor but me? and most white guys i know? we never talk to anyone. it's almost painful to talk to strangers, it almost makes me angry when i'm forced to do it. in fact, the only spontaneous contact i can have with a stranger is when i walk past two of them throwing a football back and forth and i hold out my hands for the universal sign of "toss it here." they toss it. i catch it. i toss it back. not a word is spoken and i never stop walking past. that's the limit of my interaction with strangers.

not these boys. they stop at the 7-11 on the way there and have a long laughing conversation with every person inside. of course, lots of information was gained. i learned how, in Pennsylvania you can't buy beer from a gas station (?) you can't buy alcohol after nine (!) you can only buy a six-pack in a bar (?!?) you can't listen to loud music...no wait, that was in "Footloose."

and when we get downtown, we step out of the car and they walk straight up to some black dudes leaning against a wall and start talking to them like they used to build Lincoln Logs together when they were nine. hey, i was just trying to think of the name of a common toy and "Lincoln Logs" jumped into my head. think there's a deeper meaning there?

time out for a theory. you know what? now that i think about it, i don't remember hearing or seeing any black kids torturing small animals or doing bug autopsies as kids. maybe that's the problem! me, and all the white kids i knew, spent all day frying ants with magnifying glasses and setting Lincoln Logs on fire and god help a fucking Stretch Armstrong if we got a hold of it. five seconds out of the box and Stretch would be tied to a table for his autopsy (he's full of syrup by the way) so maybe that's the problem. i see a bunch of white guys leaning up against a wall and i don't want to talk to them because maybe we DID grow up together and...(guilty eyes darting around)...we don't want to talk about it. am i saying black kids were more normal that white kids? i'm i saying it's no coincidence that all serial killers are white males with "Lord of the Rings" in their back pocket instead of "Catcher in the Rye?" all i'm saying is, black kids growing up in Detroit (like Moscow and Tommy Vercetti) probably came out more sane than all the crazy white kids i was running around the woods with in Millbury.

now i forgot what the hell i was talking about. oh yeah, these guys leaning against the wall steer us towards "The Boardwalk" and "Tequila Joe's" or something there on the water, (all the while eyeing me and clearing thinking "who's the white boy? these guys know there's a cop following them around?") and we don't know where we're at so we decide that bar is going to have to do.

inside it was like the poor man's "Coyote Ugly." a line of at least twenty girls dancing on the bar, but, in spite of the DJ's attempts to get some high quality grinding out of them by mixing 50 Cent's "In The Club" and Nine Inch Nails "Closer" (no bullshit, those two songs actually fit together perfect. try it. it's like when they told you to watch "Wizard of Oz" while playing "Dark Side of the Moon" except this shit actually works) the girls just kind of swayed and contorted and every minute or so...sat down and got up real fast! that dance move cracks me up. the old, pretend-like-their-squating-on-a-dick mime. funny shit. if someone actually did that during sex, i'd toss that tease headfirst out the window. and there was this one naaaaasty one right near the end of the line (my boys know who i'm talking about) holy fuck was she nasty. gut hanging over her jeans, a thong sticking out of the back, but all twisted and crooked like she'd caught it on a doorknob on the way in, and i swear i saw a C-section scar on that stomach. bless her heart, she thought she was hot though. and she did the sit-down-real-fast move like 100 times. i couldn't take my eyes off the monster. i think everyone thought i was in love.

don't get me wrong though, there were some girls that knew how to dance up there. exactly six of them. and i could have stared at them through ten Def Leppard songs. here's the key i think: you got to know the song. you know the words, and the breaks, in whatever song (or songs) that's playing and you own the room. this one girl was singing along and stopping for the breaks and POW hitting every moment when the song speeds up and slows down and that was a pleasure to watch. she was at the top of her game and it's girls like her that made "Coyote Ugly" seem like a good idea at the time. they're rare as a good DJ though.

so back in the trenches, Moscow and TV run off to dance, because that's apparently what black people do. i'm still staring up at that bar waiting for someone to wipe out and fall off (two girls eventually did, one of them while she was "backing that shit up!" WHAM! right on her face. she danced right out the door next to me and stood outside where the boats were docked and i saw her waiting for an appropriate time to show her face again) and my crew happily dances their way out into the masses, drinks up above their heads like "The Big Lebowski."

another observation: black people dance with drinks in their hands. black people enjoy dancing with drinks in their hands. my step-brother can dance up on some girl's back while simultaniously drinking Tequila, writing down a phone number and counting out exactly three orange Tic-Tacs. i saw it with my own eyes.

eventually i lose sight of their drinks cutting through the crowd on the dance floor like a couple of shark fins and go back to my people watching. then, about 15 minutes later, Moscow runs up with a bloody towel wrapped around his hand and beer all over his shirt. turns out some kid threw a bottle into the crowd and it cut his finger. TV went up to the kid who threw the bottle and the kid tried to get all hard since he was surrounded by females and Moscow ran up and did the crazy-black-man-routine on this kid (face close enough to engulf the enemy's nose, head tilting and orbiting around the enemy's head like a moth looking for a way into a lighbulb, all the while yelling over and over, "i will KILL you dog!") and apparently he dropped a load in his shorts. security threw the kid out (and outside the shame must have been sinking in because he tried to pick a fight with someone else) and everyone around TV and Moscow bought them drinks.

so now the fight stuffs out of the way and it's time for them to concentrate on the females. because, when you go out, it seems like a waste of time if you don't do one of two things: talk to a girl or talk shit with some guy. this club is only about 4% black (just like my high school!) but somehow my boys manage to find the other 2% and start chatting them up. Moscow explains to the one girl that i'm his "brother, not his 'brother brother' but his BROTHER brother." he likes to do that to people to see how they react and i like to watch him do it. eventually it won't be such a shock because, like Public Enemy said, "white man, black woman...black baby! black man, white woman...black baby!" i also get a lot of looks from dudes in the bar because of who i'm with. but the thing is, they clear out of my way whenever i move around and smile a lot and it's weird but there seems to be this assumption that the one white guy in a crowd of black people must be Eminem. no, fuck Eminem. more like Christopher Walken in the "King of New York." this is because (another observation) black people don't need the dance floor to dance:

we're all leaning back against the bar, calmly surveying the scene, and a song comes on that my boys like and BAM! they're dancing away, drinks high above their heads and i'm standing in between them motionless, arms crossed with a big smile on my face. chicks dig that shit.

i remember a plan earlier in the night where i said i'd find them white girls if they found me a black one. that never happened of course. maybe in a more perfect world.

so on the way out i find a ten dollar bill on the floor (score!) and we spend a little too much time looking for the car. maybe it was the alcohol, but people driving past us while we're walking around seemed to be staring a lot. and Moscow must have noticed this too because there were these two girls eyeballin' out the window and their boyfriends looked annoyed and speeded up and Moscow starts doing his "white guy" voice, pretending to be the boyfriend: "hey! what are you looking at out there, Julie! You like looking at them Julie! i'm tired of you doing this to me, Julie!" he explained that "Julie" was the whitest name he could think of. Julie looked straight ahead after that. it was so funny i about pissed my pants. oh yeah! i almost forgot about that other girl in the parking lot. while we were waiting to pull out into the flow of cars, TV puts on Ludicris' "Chicken 'N Beer" and, to the surprise of the five guys that were with standing with them, managed to get 5 girls who were around the car next to us to start dancing like a disco ball was just lowered from the sky. the guys looking all nervous while TV watches them watch him (observation: black people stare at you until you react) and after a moment, one of the girls dances her way over to the car. The song "Pussy Poppin'" is blasting and she's obviously not paying attention to the song she's dancing to because Tommy Vercetti begins to analyze and explain to her the deeper meaning and metaphors in those lyrics and she stops smiling. she sees me in the back seat and looks a little more confused. her boyfriend physically drags her away from the car and the dancing slows down. TV just keeps staring at them and i'm laughing again and saying "you want to go with them, JULIE???" and these dudes sort of form a wall against the corrupting sound of Ludicris' music.

epilogue:
on the way home there's a girl chatting away on her cell phone and TV matches speed, rolls down his window and starts yelling, "baby it's me!!! hey, remember??? it's me!!!" she's obviously scared but it is pretty funny because he's not threatening. she's looking over and playing with the phone out in front of her face, debating whether to call the cops or her boyfriend. and he's so insistent that she knows him that she eventually pulls over (!) in the middle of the freeway. he jumps out and runs back to her car and he so sincere she's actually wondering if she knows him. cars are flying by all pissed and he's standing out there in traffic, just like Tommy fuckin' Vercetti. of course it wasn't exactly like Grand Theft Auto or else he would have spun her out onto the road by her arm and yelled "thank you!" as he drove off. no, TV's trying a strange hypnosis tactic or something. he just keeps insisting "it's me!" and for a minute i think it's actually working, but after a while she gives up and drives off past us. now that i think about it, i'm thinking she initially pulled over because of me in the back seat. i was like that urban legend where cars are honking and trying warn the driver about the guy in behind them with the ax. except, in this case, it would be, "look behind you! a white man is thumbing through your CD collection! pull over! they're crazy!"

that's about it. other highlights:

-after a roadside piss, TV tears off in reverse and spins his car in a 360 that would have made Steve McQueen proud.

-there was an Issac Hayes looking dude in the restroom at that bar, with crazy battery-powered UFO earings, selling everything from gummy worms to cigarettes to sunglasses to peanuts. i was waiting for him to give me a piece of Big Red and go, "looks good on ya!" i looked around to buy a rubber chicken but couldn't find one.

-the Ludicris cd "Chicken 'N Beer" calls Bill O'Reilly a pussy. ha! i did that earlier the same day.

-it finally sinks in that this is my farewell to Moscow for a year, as he's in the military and being shipped over to Iraq for an extended vacation. i realize that this will put me on some sort of Secret Service list but, if something happens to him over there, i'm going to hold Bush accountable. either him or Busch beer because that's an easier target.

-me, i raid the cupboards for breakfast cereal after drinking but Tommy Vercetti? he busts out a two-foot slab of bacon for the microwave. no wonder his mansion was so trashed in Vice City.

However, at the end of the night, Moscow and i are content when he finally locates the Oreo cookies and we all stand there in the kitchen and eat while staring at each other. Oreo cookies? damn, i didn't realize it until just now. how symbolic is that shit?

::: david - 3:05 PM [+] :::
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