The Talented Mr. Brody

Though he only reads Suite 3100 to satisfy his narcissistic cravings, the infamous Brody's heart grew three times on Monday. Upon reading my last post, his strange and unpredictable mind was stirred into action. He expressed concern at my mounting distress and, learning that I had completed a week's worth of homework in a single night of bitter solitude, he set out looking for ways to hinder my productivity.

I was sitting, my chips and dip before me, when my phone rang. It was Brody. He wanted to know if I was busy this afternoon. I, expecting him to have something fun and, knowing Brody and his suitemates, potentially intoxicating planned, told him I was not busy. And that was when he sprung the trap.

"Good," he said, "you're coming with me to the activities fair."

"But why?" I pleaded.

"Because you've been moping around for two weeks, and you're too far ahead on all your homework. And because I said so." The click of his phone was his only salutation.

Well, I went to the activities fair with him, and submitted to his demand that I sign up for six clubs or groups that I have some intention of going to. We surveyed every table, but I came away with only four of the required six. It was then that it struck me that going to events might be just what I need to start dating again, so I scrolled back, in memory, to the tables being run by attractive and alluring females. Upon recalling their location, I moved without hesitation.

Something that I neglected to mention at the time, but will share now with a larger audience, is something that has happened to me twice in recent history : sending out the vibe.

The first time it happened was during the last week of Winter break, when Carl and I took his kitten to PetsMart to get a new litterbox. I, with my shoulder length hair and pudgy softness, carried the kitten. Carl, lean and commanding in his sharp looking blue-stripe collared-shirt, sought the litterbox. Both of us did everything we could think of to send out "No, we're not a gay couple"-vibe, but the situation was more powerful than our combined psychic abilities. Sometimes, the harder you try not to put out the vibe, the more you resonate with it. Middle-aged women throughout the store would look at the kitten first, then at the boys escorting the kitten, "aww"ing both times. It's even harder to not put out the vibe when you're bisexual (there, I said it. Readers beware!).

So, today, I found myself dragged by the collar to various tables, mostly manned by women (hah!). Once we approached a table, if I hesitated in signing my name, Brody would begin to explain how I'm depressed, antisocial, and a week ahead on my homework. Invariably, I would sign my name and retreat directly into Brody, who made a point of standing too close behind me. I'm sure the image of me, storming out in embarassment, trailed by the chuckling duckling Brody, did nothing to help what they had already decided. Gay couple. No two ways about it.

I made a point not to fight it, this time, curious to see what would happen if I acted ambivalent to the vibe. I can say, from today's experience, that it doesn't matter what you do. If the vibe is there at all, it's there in full-force.

I hope this doesn't hurt my chances at dating some of the people running the tables, though. Many girls get that "aww" reaction when they see what they think is a gay couple, but it's a whole different story when they have to--God forbid--touch you, or think about you in a romantic context.

But the real point of this post is... well, Brody can be a surprising fellow, sometimes. I'm sure that the next time I see him, his first words to me will be unforgivably rude, but that's just the age-old 45-55 theory at work; the theory, one that's been around since Brody's high school days (at a rival high school, I might add. Go War Eagles!), is that he's actually a good guy to know 45% of the time, and a complete pain in the ass the other 55%. Even so, I think today's act of kindness may have tipped the scales a little.

-Alan

Creation, Destruction, Creation, Destruction....

I seem to have this habit of taking the things that I have made most important in my life, placing them in the upturned palm of my left hand, and bringing my right hand down upon them with as much force as I can muster. The results vary greatly, depending on what thing it is I'm smashing, but whether it's ketchup (a very important part of my life, which produces a wet slap when pressed between palms) or Bridget (almost as important as ketchup, though she only loses patience with me when I squash her), the result of this practice is almost always regret.

I realize that Suite 3100, my contibution especially, has steered away from the realm of personal and serious life-drama. If I posted for no reason other than to inform the world of my naive and uninformed forays into human interaction, then I'd be better off just finding friends with faces I can see. I think any consistent readers know that I post a certain part of myself--a part which I have specifically allocated for this purpose--that is no more representative of who I am than a splat of ketchup is representative of the plant it came from; perhaps the color is the same, and the lycopene content remains formidable, but the differences surely outnumber the similarities. So, that being said, I steer, self-consciously, towards the blinding sun of personal and serious life-drama. Save our ship, the captain has gone mad.

They tell me I'm quieter than before. I spent a good deal of my winter break with Bridget, who asked me, again and again, why I seemed to refuse to converse in a deep and meaningful manner. In the face of such conversations, I only got quiet. When pressed for an answer only slightly, I said that I didn't know why I was being so quiet. When pressed somewhat harder, I found myself asking, bitterly, what all there was to talk about. A conversation seems like an organic thing; something that needs two people to progress, but only one to exist. It seemed, to me, that I was expected to dredge up a conversation out of the ether, and for what? To entertain? Was my physical presence not enough to reassure her that I was at her disposal?

It's the same problem we've been having for years. I pull the strings and I work the jaws, my fingers so far inside that not even she knows that she's being worked. I do this for days, weeks, months sometimes, until my little fingers start to cramp up. I get tired of the puppet show, the displays of magic, the stand-up routine, so I reclaim my hands and sit down for a while. It's as though nobody knows how to make interesting words of their own, honestly. All the little wooden jaws go slack, and the little puppet eyes all turn towards the exhausted string-puller.

I'm resting, for God's sake. Silence, or relative silence, is a legitimate form of rest. I regret that my active state and my resting state are so different from each other that all the people who care about me blow a coronary when I decide to have a little time off. It's unfortunate, I know, but it's just the way I'm set up.

I would do well to figure out what it is about me that makes people so readily expose their puppet anuses to me, beckoning to be stretched by my forearm. Too many of the people I find myself intimate with turn to jelly when I lay down for a rest. Chickens, with their fucking heads cut off. As though panicked clucking serves to console me.

Sometimes I just wish those uncertain of what to do would just shut up instead of flooding the world with their frightened sputum.

And yet, I say all of the above, while I've spent the majority of my hours, this semester, alone and lonely in my room, muttering curses at my suitemates and anyone who comes close enough for me to smell their fear. It seems that I can't stand to be a real person with real relationships, yet I spend all my time craving them. I'm lost, a disgusting mess of contradictory wants and needs and self-interest.

I keep hoping that all of this will just go away, and I'll go back to being normal and social and happy and entertaining and enjoying it, but I can't even get the first layer of cards to stand up for more than a few days at a time.

Maybe something will change by my birthday. I'd like to end this second decade on a good note.

-Alan

Suite 3100, Season Two

Perhaps I've been watching more "The O.C." than is healthy for a growing mind, but, as I return for a second semester of community blogging, I can't help but to think of this as our second season. A not insignificant factor in this is my desire to make more of this semester than last; I want to get out more, see more places I've never seen, and spend more time with people I've never met before... in essence, do exactly the sorts of things that television shows do in their second seasons.

If I have a New Year's resolution, it is that, and to not eat so much fast food.

In Suite news, Alfonzo and Chaz were back before I was, but Vlad is nowhere to be found. I figured, yesterday, that he might not have any classes on Tuesdays, but there isn't a soul on this campus that can escape all academia on Wednesday. If he's not aroun by tonight, we'll have to shine the Vlad-Signal (the image of a full, unopened bottle of Stolichnaya) and hope he comes a-runnin'.

As for me, my 90 minute class only lasted 20 minutes today, so I've got about 80 minutes left to kill until Intro to Linguistics. Any other time, any other day, I'd sit here and write for you; but nothing has happened to me yet.

I'll keep y'all posted.

-Alan

On The Sudden And Unexplainable Popularity Of Grocery Stores

Folks, we here at Suite 3100 have been doing lots of work behind the scenes to determine what makes you laugh, what makes you cry, and what makes you tune in every time you sit down at your computer. Anyone with a website will tell you that the three purposes of the internet are : 1. To sell you things. 2. To corrode your mind with poorly targeted advertising. 3. To reallocate your time and concern away from reality, and to the Internet.

In the pursuit of numbers two and three, we've been monitoring the popularity of various posts, and we've found our honeypot : Grocery Stores.

You might remember a classic Carl post (one of S3100's most popular and revisited), "On The Pleasure Of Shopping," in which Carl, beckoned by a coupon for free GoGurt, embarks on a store-hop to redeem it. This post, in particular, has recieved more attention (readers and commenters) than any other on the site. Our top men have discerned that this has everything to do with the number of grocery stores involved in the story : two.

Just today, in fact, a reader approched me online (see, number three is working) and wrote "Next time post your grocery list".
Art is as much about the veiwer as it is about the artist, but the truly brilliant ideas sometimes come from the peanut gallery. Who am I to say no?

Alan's Back-To-School Grocery List
-Toothpaste
-Floss (not for flossing, but for tying up those who enter my den of iniquity)
-Deodorant (same as above)
-12 pk of Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper (I've really fallen for this stuff, but I think I still like PIbb Zero better)
-Bag of salty snacks (for the drive up)

Kinda short, isn't it? Well, I do my best to supply the public with what they want. Let's see if it pays off.

-Alan

On Parallel Threads Pt. 2

While watching my Tivo recordings of Knight Rider (I don't see what's so great about it, Chaz), my mother threw the business section of the Atlanta-Journal Constitution at me. I read the headline and laughed.

I just want everyone to recognize this landmark in Suite 3100's history. You might have read, or glanced at, yesterday's post on Shoder Furniture and the parallel threads of reality. What this means is that Suite 3100 had this story, and brought this story to you, an entire 12 hours before the AJC. Could Suite 3100 become an underground news source?

Anyway, I've scanned some excerpts from the article. It appears that some of my farfetched conjectures were not really so farfetched.



Rooms-To-Go bought the remains of Rhodes Furniture, a 126-year-old company that was destroyed by poor commercial decisions and the economic recession. RTG has kept some of Rhodes' old locations, but sold the North Dekalb location to Ulrich, who, apparently, runs the store next door, All About The House. It's one of those stores that occupies a room much too large for its inventory; it used to be a Parisian, back in the day. There's some weird property of department stores, where you can measure the class of the store by how much of the rear wall is visible from the entrance. All About The House hasn't got a single rear wall shielded from sight, not a single display or divider stands between you and a full view of the whole store.

What's more, I was right about the sign. Rhodes is dead and gone, and Ulrich is just trying to save money.



I am filled, simultaneously, with admiration and disgust. I know I shouldn't balk at such thrift; after all, what's in a name? Regardless, it just calls the ALDI grocery store chain to mind.

Not that my opinion matters. I'm not exactly in the market for home furnishings, and I wouldn't be buying things in Atlanta, if I were.



Even if you don't cancel your AJC subscription, remember who brought you this story first.

-Alan

On Parallel Threads

"Remember when a new video game would save the whole Winter Break," Carl asked me. I do remember, and in a desperate fit of re-creation (and, incidentally, recreation), we found ourselves trudging down to EB Games to pick up the yet another Mario themed video game. We'd Partied with Mario, played Tennis with him and, by way of a very obscure import title in the used bin, we had gunned down enemy fighters with Mario. It was time for something completely different, fresh and action-packed.

It was time for Mario Superstar Baseball.

As we drove to the mall, we discussed the division of the Universal, all temporality and probability into an infinitely diverging series of threads; Carl contemplated the threads in which his ACL was never torn, and we both tried to assess the effects of a minute alteration to the world.

Carl pulled into the rear lot of North Dekalb Mall, one of the cleanest shitty malls in Atlanta, and we made motions towards the quadruple doors. I soon stopped to gaze dimly at this :

It has always been an oversized red sign; the size and color are not what tripped me up. There was something so very familiar about this sign, yet something fundamentally different. I looked at Carl, who appeared to be caught in the mental anguish as I.

"Hey, Carl. Didn't it used to be Rhodes Furniture?"
"Yup."
"You think it's a prank?"
"It's gotta be."

We walked up to the windows and peered inside. Alas, ladies and gentlemen, it was not a prank :

I've looked into the matter, in the hours intervening, and I discovered that Rhodes Furniture recently went out of business (damn recession). From what I can discern (read : from what I can Google), the remains of Rhodes Corporation was bought out by Rooms To Go. There is no mention of the mysterious "Shoder Furniture" anywhere on my Google (which should be your Google, if my understanding is true). So what gives?

It is my belief, personally, that Carl and I stepped sideways onto another Thread of Reality. I will look forward to meeting all of my new old friends, and determining the ways in which they differ from their prior-thread analogs.

Seriously, though, it looks like some extremely cheap company bought the old Rhodes locations, switched the R and the S on the sign, and started a new company. I wonder how long this upstart will last, given the success of its predecessor. My father seems to think that the letter-switch will work on enough people to keep the company going; I'd like to think I have more faith in humanity, but we'll see.

-Alan