Nap time's over.

This whole damned zine is kinda depressing, what with my tendency to dwell on the negative, so here's something a bit different. Riding the train into the city, I found a yellowing Chronicle under a subway seat (don't they ever clean BART?) with some good news in it:

A man climbed into a suburban home through the bathroom window, just like in the song, and then he attacked a 12-year-old girl in her bedroom. She struggled and screamed, he dad came running to see what's the ruckus, and Dad and the intruder started swinging at each other, grappling, rolling around on the floor.

So the girl ran to the kitchen and came back with two frying pans, a sauce pan, and a glass casserole dish, all of which she walloped onto her attacker's head. She hit him so hard, the paper says, the glass dish shattered, and two of the pan handles broke off.

"Well-wishers — most of them strangers — have sent the family cards, checks, and more than enough kitchen pans to replace the broken ones," says the paper. "A Farberware representative who recognized the dented pans on television has promised to deliver exact replacements."

The report is mostly about the perp's court arraignment, where he wasn't able to get out of the wheelchair the county has provided him, and he had bald spots on his head where his scalp had been shaved and stapled together after treatment for his head woulds. Says here, he was moaning incoherently as he waited for his case to be called.

Well, you go, girl!

But now comes an expensive trial, followed by not enough jail time. In a few years, inevitably, that burglar and wanna-be rapist will be released. 

Not to seem too bloodthirsty, but wouldn't it be a better world if that girl had found a gun in the kitchen, and blown the man's head off?

♦ ♦ ♦  

On my Monday gig at the sex magazine, Black Sheets, it was just Steve and me in the office. Bill is on a business trip, or at least that's what he calls it. Actually, it's an S&M conference in Chicago. One can only wonder what happens at an S&M "conference," but calling it a business trip makes it tax-deductible.

Bill and Steve have been friends for years and years, and usually they banter all day, barbing each other with playful insults. I don't know him well enough to insult him, so today Steve had to insult himself.

"I've been thinking," he said absent-mindedly at one point, and then there was a long pause, because that's when Bill was supposed to interject with a wisecrack, probably That's not easy for you, is it? Eventually Steve said it himself: "That's not easy for me," and we laughed.

Hurry back, Bill. We miss you.

♦ ♦ ♦  

On the BART back to Berkeley, the train was standing room only, but a bum was sprawled across two seats at the back. Several people were standing nearby, but nobody wanted to wake one schmuck taking two spaces?

It's a long ride under the bay and across Oakland, and I wasn't willing to stand all the way if it wasn't necessary, so I gently kicked the bum's feet out of the way, and sat down.

"Huh?" he said groggily. 

I said, "Nap time's over, Sleeping Beauty," but it wasn't. He sat up a little straighter, put his feet on the floor, leaned his head on the window, and almost instantly he was asleep again.

It's OK to sleep on the train. The roar of the rail can be very soothing, so lean back and dream. But spreading yourself across two seats at rush hour? That's just bad etiquette.

From Pathetic Life #21
Monday, Feb. 19, 1996 

This is an entry retyped from an on-paper zine I wrote many years ago, called Pathetic Life. The opinions stated were my opinions then, but might not be my opinions now. Also, I said and did some disgusting things, so parental guidance is advised.

Pathetic Life
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