A New Pitcher! And Evidence of Caucasian Stupidity

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Sorry for not writing in awhile, but after Vampires and Cellular Pearl Harbors, my life has been relatively calm. HKW is still as flaky as ever, making any chance of returning to that cyclic routine impossible and promptly hurling my life into boredom.

But hey, some fresh news…A new target!

Her name is DL, because like a pitcher on the DL (Disabled List), I don't know if she's going to be able pitch or just languish while getting tons of attention and the name extends to the other meaning (Down Low) as no one really knows about her (shh!). When I try to sign a pitcher, I ask everyone for advice, which gives me a broad spectrum of ideas to choose from, but usually gives me an excuse for inaction as I wade through everyone’s conflicting opinions.

This time, there was no such thing. Everything is completely different.

First off, I can’t ask people for advice because no one knows who she is. Unlike previous girls, she’s from outside my circle of friends, which leads to no suggestions except the generic ones such as, “You should go on a few dates!” (girls) and “You should fucking rail her!” (guys). Which is about as helpful and relevant as having antlers to defend yourself from high-powered rifles.

But though I’m strangely insecure and hesitant when chasing girls for relationships, I think it’s for the better. I call the shots. I do things my own way. For the first time I’m pretty much flying solo.

Second, she’s an Asian girl like all the others in the past year or two…but that describes only her skin tone, knack for numbers and slanty eyes. She’s born and raised in Canada so she does all the Canadian things really well (smoking up and hating on America) and none of the Asian things well (studying a lot and loving America). Unlike any Asian girl I know, she actually gets social hints, can throw down barbed witty jokes and doesn’t give a fuck.

In many respects she’s just like me. An Asian who doesn’t really fit in with the others because we happened to have assimilated in the 20+ years we’ve been in North America.

Third, and somewhat troubling, is her physical traits. Look I’m not as shallow as most guys (this is coming from a guy who refers to girls as pitchers). I actually value emotional attachment to a girl and assessing a girl’s character is important to me…right after I’ve mentally calculated bust-waist-hips, their “fit”-ness and their face.

I mean, I put a lot more stock in what a girl means to me rather than her body. For example, that whole rating girls on a scale from 1-10 (“Hey Brody, a 7 at 10 o’clock!”), makes absolutely no sense to me.

C’mon, not only is it shallower than a kiddie pool in the Sahara but when will the rest of the world realize the Metric system sucks? When people start using the Standard (or as I like to call it, the Freedom) System of rating girls, I’ll be all over that shit. “Hey, that girl was a bangin’ 13/16!”

Anyway, all joking aside, I usually don’t care too much about looks but naturally, I’ve noticed almost every ex-girlfriend and every ex-pitcher has been relatively hot, or at least, exceptionally cute (most fall in between 11/16~15/16). It’s not that hard to find cute, smart girls especially if Asians happen to be around.

However, I don’t find DL physically attractive for some reason. She’s cute for sure…but there’s something strange about her. There’s something flawed and unlike the picture perfect Asians I’ve gone for in the past, this imperfection makes her more…attractive?

I know my literary sense is trying hard to describe my emotions and failing but realize this is the first time I’ve found someone not physically attractive, attractive. This is why there has been a huge delay in my entries this past month and a half...I wrote this entry two and a half weeks ago, ripped it up, tried again, ripped it up and the process has continued for about 15 days until I finally I did some chron and when on a huge, nonsensical writing binge form midnight to 3am (which is this entry). Anyway, I can't explain why I like her...or rather why I'm fatally attracted to her. It goes against all science, against all logic, against all the female objectification I’ve learned…I’ll do the easy thing and blame Jews and the media, but that’s redundant.

I’ll take the easiest route and explain it by saying she’s without doubt one of the most likeable girls I’ve met. In fact, if she were a guy, I’d quickly be friends with her. She parties hard, socializes well and has the stories and jokes needed to keep a conversation moving at a nice clip. She’s even a bit of an asshole.

In other words she’s perfect. Perfect because she’s everything that’s not perfect.

However, it’s hard to hype something up that “just happens”. We met at a mutual friend’s dinner party (I would find out later he was actually setting us up), innocently exchanged phone numbers and then we hung out a few times and now we’re close friends.

We’re friends on a level of real friends…not “I met you at a party and your name reverberated through my hangover the next morning so I Bookface friended you the next morning”…more like she’s one of very few “real” friends I wouldn’t mind hanging out with at anytime, anywhere and I could talk about everything from the mundane to the serious with.

And this is the tipping point.

If I get any closer friendwise, I get a really good friend but no chance at a relationship. Or I could try for a relationship (albeit a fleeting, 2 month one), and risk losing a friendship I would put up there with Teddy and D-German.

It’s a hard decision.

The pros and cons of both decisions were about equal. She would be a good friend for life with me always wondering “what if”, or she would be another bullet point under the long list of “Failures” I’ve begrudgingly gotten accustomed to.

I mulled over it and just ended up getting stressed. It didn’t help that I’m graduating in two months and I have no idea what the fuck I’m doing and I have the usual onslaught of work raining down on me like an AV actress in a bukkake scene. And now the gung-ho, “I’m doing this all by myself!” attitude taunted my indecisive nature.

I needed to clear my mind.

---

When I need to clear my mind, there is only one way.

As a single college male, I guess there are several ways: batting cages, drinking or smoking up. But in this case, it would only heighten my problem—considering it was a Saturday afternoon, all three would be solitary endeavors that would only amplify my solitude. The Batting Cages would accentuate my need for a girlfriend (and some random girls might mess up my swing by calling me), drinking would make me introverted and smoking would just muddle my mind and make me do something retarded.

No, when I need to clear my mind, there is only one respite.

Punching something really fucking hard.

Ever since I was a wee lad, I would rush into any problem head on with my fists. Bully me for my small size? Stomp you out. Make fun of me for my race? Knock you out.

But the problem in question now wasn’t manifested in a person (well, actually it was, but I have no desire to knock her, either out or up). So I went up to the gym and started coldly destroying the punching bag.

Jab, Jab, Hook. Jab, Jab, Straight. Hook, Hook, Upper. Jab, Hook, Jab.

I gradually felt all the stress bleed out through pain in my knuckles and all thoughts vanish into the rhythmic thuds of my punches and muted creaks of the chain.

I attacked the bag with grim, pinpoint precision, always slamming the center of the faded white Everlast logo.

Bang, bang, bang. Squeeeeeaaakk….Ba-Bang, Bang. Squeeeeaaakk.

I was so focused that I didn’t realize I had an audience until a hand thudded onto my shoulder. The right I was about to unleash stopped an inch short and then it slowly came down. I turned determinedly with a scowl laced across my face.

The intruder stared straight into my eyes, unfazed by the look I threw him for interrupting my reprieve.

He kept staring, hands in his pockets, waiting for the bag to stop creaking.

It was taking a while for the bag to reach an equilibrium and my scowl slowly faded into a muted question.

Who was Mr. Silent?

The bag finally settled.

Mr. Silent opened his mouth…then clamped down hard, and in one motion, pivoted both feet, shot his hands out of his pockets, spun his hips and drove his right hand into the bag, smashing it into the wall.

My jaw dropped.

I turned to the bag, now swaying like a 100 pound Asian girl after power hour. Bloody specks glistened over the white logo. Rotating back to Mr. Silent, I saw his hands (now dangling at his sides) were weathered over the knuckles with cuts, bruises and calluses unlike the rest of his smooth skin.

What the fuck?

His voice snapped my head up from his hands.

“You punch pretty well.”

Coming from someone who had just Holocausted the punching bag, I could only offer a meek, “Thanks.”

He spun on his heel and walked out.

“Follow me.”

I snapped my mouth shut and quickly scurried after him.

---

I walked a respectful two feet behind as he led me through a maze of hallways in the gym.

We passed the squash courts, the basketball courts, the aerobics room…not once did he look back to acknowledge my presence, not once did he try to make small talk.

Who was he?

A boxing trainer?

Like every kid, I once had a dream that I abandoned due to feasibility and reality. Mine was to be the pound-4-pound champion of the world…swaggering into a jam packed MGM Grand in Las Vegas to blaring rap music, knocking some huge black motherfucker out after ten up and down rounds and then getting carried around on jubilant shoulders with the belt around my waist.

I casually shadow box for this very reason…I still believe that somehow, somewhere, my dream might be realized if I keep at it.

This guy was a trainer…and after seeing potential in my punches, he had decided to take me under his wing.

But no, he was too young to be a trainer. He was probably around my age. So who was he?

Wait, wait. First off, where the fuck is he taking me?

He had led me to some deserted wing of the gym.

The usual babble of voices was missing, replaced only by the thuds of our footsteps and the soft swish of my shorts.

I looked around for a bearing of some sort, but we were somewhere on the 2nd floor, a place I had never been to.

He suddenly veered off to the side into an emergency exit and the blast of frigid air told me we were going outside.

I huddled into my shorts and T-shirt, clumsily exhaling into my fists as I staggered behind him.

He strode purposefully ahead, never once altering his stride or glancing back as I slogged through the snow, ice and mush of Canadian winter in flimsy sneakers and shorts.

We were now somewhere underneath Molson Stadium, the huge shadow cast by the bleachers and the 6pm twilight feebly being warded off by flickering orange safety lamps.

He suddenly stopped, and I nearly smashed into his back as I tried to mimic his abrupt halt with tennis shoes on a nasty patch of ice.

I gained my footing and waited, my body folded inwards, shivering from the bitter cold as he slowly turned around.

He eyed me for a few seconds, hands crossed at his chest.

“Are you ready?”

“Yes!” I replied. A little too loudly, as it reverberated beneath the concrete bowl.

He turned on his heel, went right, down a ramp and in a dingy, dead-end alleyway lit by a single flickering orange light, bordered on one side by a service entrance and the other by a solid wall of concrete, stood a ring of men.

I turned to my guide, the question evident on my confused, and somewhat excited, face.

“What is this?”

And in the first display of emotion he had shown all night, he smirked, not bothering to face me.

He bellowed, “The first rule of fight club is…”

“DO NOT TALK ABOUT FIGHT CLUB!”

---

I stood there, mouth agape.

He quickly ran through the other rules of fight club, with active participation from the other members.

I was still staring at him.

They formed a ring, two people entered and started circling.

Mr. Silent started talking to me.

“So, the sixth rule of fight club is no shirts and shoes but, like, it’s obviously cold right? So we decided to make an exception. And we couldn’t find a place to do it other than Alex’s house but, you know, that wouldn’t have been the right setting…I mean in a house? So yea…”

I stood, still staring.

Not out of bewilderment, or excitement, or ridiculousness…but at the sheer fucking lameness of it all.

Look, just like any other testorone pumped male, the movie Fight Club was a part of my highschool movie list due to it’s easy trigger of adrenaline and a storyline that’s “deep”. And I watch it occasionally when a group tries to decide a movie to watch and all the guys band together behind Fight Club because the other choices are Moulin Rouge and High School Musical.

But this, this was lame.

Not only had Mr. Silent dropped all cool, all mystery and all darkness that had made him initially attractive, but he had transformed into every other douchebag white hipster form Toronto and the rest of the assorted cast looked like a New Jersey nightclub.

I could count 3 Guidos, a Jew and a Middle Eastern guy, all squeezing their Creatine enhanced super-muscles into form fitting “Affliction” t-shirts and Diesel jeans and taking thuggish poses that didn’t look so thuggish when they were trying not to shiver in their flimsy t-shirts in the frigid tempartures.

The two guys fighting in the middle were locked and rolling around, their actions representing more a homo-erotic mating ritual rather than a fight.

And there I stood, my arms now retreated into my T-shirt, skinny body openly shuddering from the cold with triple the intelligence and quadruple the street cred these guys wished they had.

I turned to leave. I was going to catch a cold, and probably get some stupidity rubbed off on me if I stayed any longer watching this shit.

But Mr. Silent stopped me.

Apparently the homosexual love embrace had ended with Guido #1 somehow choking Guido#2 and now Guido #1 was rampaging about high fiving the others like some pumped up baboon and Guido #2 was staring forlornly at his ripped $300 Diesel jeans.

Mr. Silent spoke up again, “Remember the eighth rule…” he rolled his eyes up as he searched through his miniscule array of memory, “if it’s your first night at fight club…um...”, he bit his lip, “…um…you have to fight.”

I stared at him incredulously. “Sorry, um, bro. But I got better things to do with my fucking time.”

I turned to leave again, but was stopped by his voice.

Whispered, but loud enough for everyone to hear. “Fucking pussy.”

I spun around.

No one, absolutely no one, gets away with calling me a pussy.

Call me anything: Chink, Jap, Faggot, Bitch, Bastard…but never, ever call me a Pussy. This comes from way back, when I was in elementary school and my favorite movie was Back To The Future. Because Michael Jordan was reviled in New York for his annual dismantling of the Knicks in the postseason, I applied the phrase “Be Like Mike” not to his Airness, but to Michael J. Fox. If you travel back to long forgotten memories of Mikey Fox (before he started shaking like a vibrator), he always got into fights in Back To The Future because people would call him “coward”. But in this day and age, coward doesn’t hold the connotations it has, so to prove I will do all I can to “Be Like Mike”, I’ve replaced coward with its present day form, Pussy.

So when Mr. Silent let that 5 letter word fly out of his lips, I spun around and got up in his grill.

“What the fuck did you call me motherfucker?”

He was momentarily taken aback but quickly regained his douchebag state, “I called you a pussy. A pussy…who doesn’t wanna fight…”

I smirked up at him, “Put me up against anyone. Anyone of your Guido motherfucking friends. And I will knock them out, you motherfucker.”

He smirked back, “Let’s see you put your money where your mouth is.”

---

He decided to put me up against the smallest guy in the “Fight Club” for fairness. Mr. Silent and the rest of the bodybuilders clearly dwarfed me so they had me fight “Jimmy”. Now this Jimmy character looked like a fucking trash can: short, thick, solid and ugly as fuck.

I couldn’t help gaping at this stupid motherfucker I was put up against. It looked like the Kiebler Elf and a Guido had gotten an offspring and the result was a hulking Mini-Me in a perpetual ‘roid rage. And to top off this unbelieveable image was a ghastly spray-on orange tan making him look like a carrot had collided with a Smurf in a blender.

‘Roid Elf entered the ring grunting and heaving, then uttered some midget warcry from deep within his chest and threw his shirt off. This guy looked ridiculous, he was ripped with pecs the size of textbooks and a fucking 12 pack bulging out from his stomach…his stats must’ve been 5’3”, 200 pounds with a 400 pound bench press.

Already breathing hard from fury, he started pawing the ground with his feet…I just stood, staring at him incredulously…this was like some absurd circus match between a raging Pumba and a baffled Timon.

He suddenly uttered another one of his midget warcries and then shot forward. The ten foot gap between us was suddenly closed…

…extremely slowly. I tried hard not to bust out laughing…his feet were so short that a distance a normal human covers in two steps was taking him about 15 strides.

He finally made it to six feet, five, four…

He was building up a ton of momentum and he was barreling straight towards me…

Three feet…

I shifted my left foot forward and shot out a straight jab right into his face

Two ounces of small, skinny Asian arm collided with 180 pounds of solid, orange colored muscle and the result was disastrous.

He flew backwards, skidding in the snow, a welt already forming around his right eye.

‘Roid Elf sat there, a dazed expression clouding his ugly features. Then he shook his head and cajoled by the ring of his followers, uttered yet another midget warcry and barreled forward…

…to be met by yet another stiff left jab…

…and yet again, he landed right on his ass, now a solid bruise adding some blue to his orange features.

I was already getting bored, this fight was already over…I had an insane reach advantage on him and ‘Roid Elf didn’t seem to have the mental capacity to change his tactics…

I jabbed…

…and jabbed…

…and jabbed…

Pretty quickly, the right side of ‘Roid Elf’s face resembled an orange with herpes and the crowd was murmuring in dissent.

Some were trying to gracefully tell ‘Roid Elf to give up but his testosterone addled mind couldn’t allow him to give up to a skinny Asian kid half his weight…others were heckling me for being a bitch and not fighting head on.

Mr. Silent was one of the hecklers, “Bitch! You little bitch! C’mon, why don’t you face him like a man! Stop being a little bitch!”

I jabbed ‘Roid Elf down again.

“C’mon, face him head on, stop being such a little bitch!”

I jabbed ‘Roid Elf down again.

“C’mon, you little pussy.”

I jabbed ‘Roid Elf down again.

And then swung my hips 90 degrees and hurled my body into a picture perfect right into Mr. Silent’s chin.

“C’mon pu—“

He collapsed into the pavement, head bouncing off the ground. Once, twice.

The whole crowd hushed.

I glanced at ‘Roid Elf, who was now furiously backing away on the ground.

I spun on my heel and walked off.

“Wait…hey…Asian kid!”

I turned and glared back at the voice, one of the nameless beefy Guidos.

He swallowed and then summoned his courage. “Um, yo…um, you broke the fourth rule of fight club.”

Everyone else looked up, glanced at each other and nodded eagerly. “Yea...um...only two guys to a fight…”

I stared at them for a bit as they mentally high fived each other in their coup. I exhaled and shook my head.

And then to their crestfallen faces, I told them the truth.

"You know, Fight Club isn't real."

---

Photos

A Random Party
With my friend Matchmaker, who set up me and DL

Shots of Whiskey
And yes...I love Sex

Me and DL
I try to introduce DL to the crips vs bloods conflict pervading America

Me and Matchmaker
Also introduced to ghetto culture

Comments

[wqgd]

EWETT
YOU FAKE

[generationk]

?
who is u? and what does ur comment even mean?