The Ballad of Rock Dude - Chapter 1

I'm a racecar. I am sexy, loud, fast, and graceful, but I have a two-inch ground clearance. If my life depended upon my ability to jump, you would be looking at a purged Livejournal account.

I don't know what that's about. My ancestors must have been the basis for those video game characters that can walk for 170 hours but can't climb over a log.

We find our heroine as a high school freshman in a new town. It's Humiliation Gym Class.
If you're old like me, then you recall the National Fitness Requirement.
You had to run a mile, do so many pull-ups, jump so many hurdles.
Yes, I said jump hurdles.
I stumbled over two hurdles like a deer launching itself over suburban fencing.
Then, I took out the entire third hurdle apparatus like a psychotic giraffe crashing through burning scaffolding.

As the gym teacher ran to examine me, I leapt from the rubble...and collapsed. My ankle wouldn't hold me.
"Oh god, no," I said, looking at my creepy touchy teacher in real terror of being fondled to death.
"I'll carry you!" he said.
"I'm fine!" I argued. Up. Fall.
"No, really!" Up. Fall.
Shock, pain, and panic released adrenaline. I was in full-on Friday the 13th camp counselor mode, frantically dragging myself across the gymnasium floor like I was about to get hacked by a machete. My gym-teaching homicidal maniac plodded after me.

My girlfriend broke line formation and rushed to my side, steadying me on my remaining ankle.
"She needs to go to the nurse's office. I'll take her," said Jason Voorhees the Gym Pedo.
"I'll take her," my friend protested.
"You leave and you'll get detention," he ordered.
She sneered and proceeded to walk me to the nurse's office. I stopped her at the gymnasium door.
"Don't. You'll get stuck with him all afternoon. I'll be fine. I just need a minute. Get back to class."
She left me in the doorway and I braced myself to walk down the hall.

I tested my ankle. It hurt. A lot. But I could feel it, and that was something.
If I could feel it, I could stand on it. Right? RIGHT?!
Considering the alternative, I was going to walk until I had to crawl. Then I would have crawled until I found someone significantly less creepy to carry me.

This, by the way, is why I was unafraid to walk myself into the hospital with a broken foot in 2006.

I held my head high, threw my shoulders back, pulled my stomach in, held my breath, clenched my teeth, and walked down the hallway like I was the Queen of Earth walking the Green Mile.
It felt like I had a knife attached to a taser sticking in the bottom of my right foot.
"Pain is in the mind," I said, "You're not going to die. Walk."

"At least I'm alone and no one can see me," I thought, steeling my gaze to avoid ruining my make-up as the pain leaked out my eyes.

The upper-classman I'd had a crush on all year turned the corner.

"Really, God?" I snarled under my breath.
I was vibrating with pain. I could hear my heart beating. The perimeter of my vision was darkening. I bolstered myself and walked like a runway model, head high and hips swaying.
You only get one chance to make a first impression.

I think he said "Hi."
I couldn't hear anything over the nonstop "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!" of my internal monologue.
I walked past him and didn't look back.
Didn't even pause.
Reminded myself that Marilyn Monroe developed her signature walk after a shoe broke.
That's almost like a busted ankle, right? Right? Sure it is.
OH GOD THE PAIN.
I played it cool until I turned the corner and collapsed.

Rock Dude remembers this moment, that I was this cold, hard-to-get incredibly hot girl with a mane and red lips and a walk that he remembers to this day.

Moral of the chapter? It doesn't matter that the worst possible thing always happens. The results still count. Also, if you push yourself when you are young, it will still hurt when you are old.

Ballad of Rock Dude: Part II

Have you ever used a sex doll?
I haven't, because it's cheaper to use a popsicle stick and some tape.
But I've been close; my former roommates fucked my Love Ewe to death and then stashed the corpse under the futon. Some people just can't have nice things.

When you're not a big, square slice of Bimbo Milquetoast, then vanilla people - even the hot ones - are like sex dolls.
They look at you all wide-eyed and terrified, like Bambi.

Maybe more "Shot in the Mouth Bambi" than intended.

You've got to be a serious pervert if you think ignorance is sexy.
Like stereotypical feral hillbillies fascinated that you can read and magically draw water from the shiny stick with the knobs.
Ain't nobody got time to share a life with people who don't know how to live.

As a high-school freshman, I had a hard-on for Rock Dude that could have severed steel beams.
It was the Hanzo sword of hard-ons. But, Rock Dude was too vanilla for my world.
Just when I thought, "He can be my little puppy and I will protect him," my immediate family attempted to beat my classmate to death and we fled the state...to Orlando.
Because that's what my family needed to rein in the batshit. Florida.
We moved there just in time for the "Rapture" event where Jesus came to earth in a spaceship.

Not joking, not even a bit.


Eventually, the charges were dropped and we came back to New Jersey.
We started a theater troupe and did floor shows of Clue, Priscilla: Queen of the Desert, and Rocky Horror. I loved the floor shows, but if we could have written more than 30 minutes of burlesque each week, the floor shows would not have been necessary.

My immediate family made me take them to get their nipples pierced.
I told my foreplay-buddy that I was going for a nipple piercing and that I needed moral support.
It wasn't a lie.
He made me go clubbing with him as an apology.
At the club, I saw this tall, athletic blonde guy grinding on the floor with ten chicks all over him. Looked like freaking Caligula.
I said to my foreplay-buddy, "You see that guy? He has the biggest dick in the club. You know what that makes him? My new best friend."
Ubercock became my first husband ("Michael" in the maid story).
He loved music and we'd go to shows all the time.
I don't really like concerts, but he did porn with me, so I compromised.

One band was my favorite. I played their songs over and over again until I hated music.
Then the bassist quit.
I was crushed. No amount of "other bands" would replace the one I wanted to see.
Husband and I bought a house. He got into midget prostitutes and filleting his dick.
"Reckless and potentially mortal bodily harm" is one of my limits.
So, we drifted apart. I was so depressed.
Then, my favorite band got a new bassist. That was something to be happy about.
Went to the show.
Rock Dude, from my high school, is the new bassist in my favorite band in the world.

Okay. It's been roughly ten years since I've approached this guy. You can do this, Samantha.
"Hi, I wanted to date you in high school but my parents were homicidal maniacs. Now I'm all grown up and normal. I'm so glad the band is playing again because my porn-star husband is filleting his dick while a gay midget rams a chair leg into his ass and I've been really lonely and depressed. Would you like coffee?"

That is literally what went through my head as I attempted to approach him and strike up conversation.
"Maybe I can tell him about my friends," I thought.

Then I looked at the Bosch painting that is my social network and realized that my ability to fake a "normal" lifestyle vanished long before I could stop pretending I was still a virgin.

I didn't say a word. I stared, longingly, and returned to the denizens of my bordello life.