MeetingZ - Part One

Explaining relationships formed through blogging, to people that don’t blog, can be touchy. Many don’t get it – they don’t understand how a complete stranger can become a dear friend.

Even with the boom in online dating and social networking sites, there’s still a stigma attached to internet-born relationships – especially, for some reason, in relation to blogs. It’s oddly more acceptable to jet off to meet a friend of a friend of a friend on Facebook, than it is to spend time with a person whose life you’ve been reading and commenting on for years. Blogging, for me, is far more personal than a daily status update and a handful of pouty faced photos.

I’ve trusted a few close friends, that I knew would understand or at least be accepting, with the truth about my online dealings. Some read my blog and some only know about it, but what they all have in common is that they realize the relationships I’ve made here are no less valid than ours. Different, but no less valid. The ones that read it see it first hand – in how comfortable I am being honest and in the way people respond in the comments: relating to my current situation, being compassionate whether they understand or not, laughing with me or simply letting me know they stopped by. The ones that don’t read it simply know that it makes me happy, and that’s good enough for them.

I’ve been writing here for over six years and I’ve made a lot of friends, but up until two weeks ago I’d never physically met any of them. I’d made plans on several occasions, but for one reason or another they always fell apart. This year I was determined to make it happen and with some long overdue luck, a no nonsense attitude and the help of my completely oblivious father’s yearly gift of a plane ticket...I met three amazing people.

The first was Jerrod, who writes the blog Breaking Awkward (some of you may be more familiar with his old blog title, The Yellow Factor).

We’ve been friends for a little over two and a half years now – talking so frequently that he became one of those people I contact immediately when something notably good or bad happens. I don’t remember who found who first, but we began good-naturedly insulting each other and the rest, as they say, is history.

Jerrod just so happens to live in Oklahoma a half hour away from my stepfamily, who I visit every summer. After weeks of planning it was decided that we’d not only hang out while I was in town, but we’d also take a weekend trip to Kansas City to visit another blogger, Paige.

However, just because the plans seemed to make themselves and everything was already arranged, from the hotel to the road trip play list, doesn’t mean the execution was entirely easy.

See, the only person that knew I hadn’t actually met Jerrod was my sister...and she was sworn to secrecy in order to avoid rioting. I knew that none of them, especially dad, would understand or approve. All they were told, before I got there, was that I’d be spending a weekend in Kansas City with friends and bumming around Oklahoma City with them too. And, before I got there, dad was completely fine with it. He didn’t press me for details.

We went straight to sleep when we arrived at their house around 1am Thursday morning. I was supposed to meet Jerrod Thursday night and had arranged for my stepsister to drop me off in the city. But that afternoon my dad suddenly decided that I was 12, not 26, and I wouldn’t be going off for the weekend with someone he didn’t know...especially a man.

We were sitting on the patio glaring and occasionally shouting at each other, neither of us willing to concede defeat, until he pointed out the obvious.

“I’ll be taking you into the city to meet this motherfucker and if you don’t like it, you can stay your ass here...where he’ll have to come get you and then I still meet him. Period.”

Poor Jerrod was going to meet the infamous Jimmy, whether either of us liked it or not.

I was terrified and, knowing Jerrod, I was positive he would be too. I’d long since gathered that he isn’t used to people like Jimmy.

I’ve only ever introduced three men to my dad, with embarrassing results, and though Jerrod wasn’t a boyfriend the scenario actually seemed worse to me because we’d never met before. I didn’t picture my first blogger meeting including my drunk, obnoxious father telling stories about his dick.

But that’s exactly how it went down.

He rushed me out the door that evening, interrupting my makeup routine every few minutes and making me furious in the process, because he had to drop off some air conditioners (don’t ask, I don’t know) at his “brother’s” house. I made my sister come along because she’s usually a calming influence, but he’d been hitting The Crown all afternoon and there was no controlling him.

He spent the ride to his “brother’s” deliberately scaring the shit out of me by telling me the horrible things he was going to ask Jerrod and by insisting that he wouldn’t meet him anywhere but at a biker bar called VictimZ. Yeah, Victims with a fucking Z.

“Tell him to get his ass in there and have me a beer waitin’.”

Of course I didn’t. It was bad enough I actually had to type out the name to that ridiculous biker bar and have Jerrod reply with, “I put VictimZ in and Google maps laughed at me.” I was mortified.

When we pulled up to drop off the stupid air conditioners, he made us get out of the truck to meet the guy. He was about seven feet tall, wearing overalls with no shirt and had a bandana wrapped around his long hair. After unloading the cargo, they immediately started laughing and punching each other in the sides like children.

“C’mon man”, dad said while jabbing at him repeatedly. “Ride with us! My daughter comes down here to visit me, then thinks she’s going to take the off to Kansas City with some motherfucker I haven’t met! Oh hell no. I told her to have him meet us at VictimZ.”

His brother stared at him for a moment and then, to my absolute horror, they both burst out laughing. “Oh shit”, the guy said, looking at me with a mix of pity and amusement.

“Aw, I’m not going to help embarrass your daughter, Jimbo”, he said.

But dad talked him into getting in the truck anyway. I sat in the backseat with my sister, silently panicking.

When we pulled into the parking lot fifteen minutes later, I saw Jerrod’s car across the street. Dad didn’t even look around – when I hopped out he locked my things in the car so I couldn’t leave until he allowed it, and they immediately disappeared around back into the “beer garden”.

I waved at Jerrod, who was still hiding in his car across the street (not that I blame him), and he drove over. I walked around to the driver’s side, he got out and that’s how we first set eyes on each other. In the parking lot of a rundown biker bar with my father waiting for him in a beer garden, which was actually nothing more than a dirt-packed backyard with big wooden spool tables and rusted chairs made of scrap metal.

He looked worried, but accepted my apology for the oddness of our first meeting and followed me around the corner. Dad’s brother had parked himself at a table a respectable distance away with my sister, who wasn’t allowed in the bar.

“Where’s dad”, I asked.

“He went in for beer.”

A moment later he came wandering out the door with an evil grin on his face, clutching a bucket of beer. I introduced them, watching as my 5’7 father looked up at Jerrod and shook his hand...and it was apparent by the flash of tendons that he was squeezing the shit out of him.

“Drink a beer with me”, he said, shoving one into his hands.

I reached for one myself, twisted off the top and turned it straight up.

Then other than a few “motherfuckers” (in reference to other people this time, not Jerrod), a few embarrassing remarks and a demand to know if Jerrod could “fight”, they proceeded to have a relatively normal conversation. They talked about what they did for a living and where they lived and how long they’d been there. But even so, I knew my dad and I was going to be keyed up until we got out of there.

Jerrod, who was apparently no longer worried, laughed at me for being so visibly nervous, sucking down the beer and lighting a cigarette when I’d planned on not smoking at all. “Relax”, he said.

And I’d just about managed it because we’d finished our beers and I felt as though escape was just around the corner.

But no – dad insisted that we weren’t going anywhere until we went inside and met his other “brothers”. Apparently they’re all in the same biker gang or something – they wear one spur on one boot or some such nonsense so they recognize that they’re “related”.

As we both trailed reluctantly behind dad Jerrod said, “I thought you said we didn’t have to go in...”

“Sorry”, I mumbled, “I didn’t think we would.”

The ceiling was completely covered in bras, except for a small square of removable tile where a stripper pole was shoved inexpertly through a jagged hole.

“I put the pole in”, dad told Jerrod proudly. I shook my head and sighed.

He tried to call over a long haired old man that was absorbed in some sort of game, but the guy was taking his time. There were a few tables of degenerates (mostly really ugly women) that were giving us the stink eye. I wasn’t sure if they were simply unfriendly or plotting to kill me and take off with my Coach bag.

While we waited for the old guy to grace us with his presence, dad decided to tell Jerrod a lovely little story.

“This is my hangout, man. One time I got so drunk that this woman drew a smiley face on the head of my dick and I didn’t even know it. She called my wife and told her she did it, so when I got home she said, ‘You’re not getting in this bed like that with a smiley face on your dick!’ I woke up the next morning and was like, shit, man!”

“Dad! That’s enough! Don’t ever talk about your dick in front of me again. Ever.”

They both laughed and I glared at Jerrod. “Don’t encourage him.”

The old guy chose that moment to make his way over and we were introduced, though I can’t remember his name, and he hugged me uninvited...as all dad’s weirdo friends seem to do.

“This is my daughter’s boyfriend”, dad said, launching into his complaint about me taking off for the weekend again.

“He’s not my boyfriend”, I interjected, feeling a fresh wave of embarrassment.

They all ignored me and dad launched into his dick story again for the benefit of our new companion. “Hey remember the time...”

“Yep”, old guy said, “it was my old lady that did it.”

I was close to hyperventilating at that point and, thankfully, none of dad’s other friends seemed to be there so he was ready to go. We were finally off the hook.

We said our goodbyes at the truck, with Leigha sitting unhappily in the driver’s seat ready to cart dad and his friend off to “church”, which is what his biker group calls sitting around drinking and talking about their penises.

As I climbed in the passenger side of Jerrod’s car, dad may have said something to him like “take care of my girl”, but I was so relieved to be getting away that I wasn’t really paying attention.

He got in a moment later, looked at me and smiled. “It’s ok”, I think he said. My nerves were still jangling a bit as we drove away, sure that any moment he would turn around and take me back, wondering what in the hell he was doing taking off with a relative stranger whose father was a drunken biker not above breaking his kneecaps just for lifting an eyebrow the wrong way.

Instead he seemed amused by how unsettled the whole thing had made me. “I think that helped make it less awkward, don’t you?”

I couldn’t help but laugh a little. “Yeah, I guess it did.”

I wasn’t entirely sure if I felt that way or not, but later, when I could laugh about it, I realized he was right. It had.

What I was sure about at that moment, though, was that there had never been a first blogger meeting even remotely similar to ours.

But maybe that was a good thing because, after all, our friendship began unconventionally. And there was absolutely nothing wrong with that.

I'm never going to live this down, am I? Part one

I’m no stranger to memes as most of you know. I’m an attention whore and when any sort of award or recognition comes my way I take that shit and run like a convenience store thief. But just like stealing, recognition always comes with a price.

Mr. London Street has named me one of his Bloggers to watch for 2010 and I’m greatly pleased. The only downside is that I have to follow in his footsteps and write a post including 10 things you stalkers don’t already know about me. The man that doesn’t do memes has set the bar high. There’s also the little fact that I’ve already shared so much of myself with you, I’m not quite sure what’s left. But I’ll give it my most valiant effort.

Let’s do this.


1) I might be a lesbian.

When I was a kid I would stay home alone in the summer while my parents went to work. Being surrounded with family for neighbors it was hard to get in trouble, but somehow I always managed. My cousins lived next door and we were forever sneaking around the neighborhood causing mischief.

One afternoon my sidekick Ben came over. We were sitting in the living room watching TV when he noticed the big, white child lock on a low cabinet. “What’s in there”, he asked.

“I don’t know. Some breakable junk of Mom’s I think.”

“Let’s open it!”

If Ben suggested it, it was as good as done.

He opened the lock designed to keep my little sister’s grimy paws off things, set it aside, and threw the doors wide. Sitting Indian style in front of the cabinet, we started digging through odds and ends.

There were vases, candlesticks, pictures – all manner of uninteresting plunder. Then Ben stuck his hand into the dark recesses and hit pay dirt. A collector’s edition Playboy magazine…featuring none other than Ms. Marilyn Monroe.

Of course I knew shit about Marilyn Monroe back then. The only thing I knew was that I was holding something forbidden and if Ben’s attitude was any indication, something really cool.

Silently flipping pages, we stared in openmouthed fascination at naked skin. I was every bit as absorbed as he was.

“Let’s take it to the clubhouse”, he said.

“Why?”

“We can pull the pictures out and put them on the walls.”

And once again if Ben suggested it…

We had an old camper hatch that we called “The clubhouse”. There wasn’t enough room to stand up and you had to climb through the sliding glass window to get in. That afternoon we took the magazine, pulled out the pages, and taped them all around the metal walls.

It took my dad about two weeks to realize it was gone. I forget how he found out the magazine’s fate exactly, but find out he did. That might have been the worst ass whipping I’ve ever had in my entire life. Of course Ben walked away scot free. He was a boy, after all. He was just doing what came natural. I, on the other hand, not only stole something worth a great deal of money and bragging rights, but I ogled naked women’s bodies. My dad was a bit of a homophobe.

Looking back on it now, he should have beaten me harder. I probably would have inherited the magazine since I’m the closest thing to a pervert there is in our immediate family. As I vaguely recall those glossy pages full of delicious curves, I want to smack myself.


2) I was a very active kid…mostly by protest.

As most of you know, the only activities I find worthy of excess movement are swimming and sex. It’s not that I’m lazy per say, it’s more that I’m uninterested. Why should I chase after a ball or run around a track when I can watch someone else do it? Not only that, but I’m inherently clumsy. My mother just couldn’t grasp that concept. She wanted me involved in sports and groups, bodily harm to myself and others be damned.

I started with karate, which I actually enjoyed. But like most good things it came to a premature end. She didn’t like that I was the only girl in the class and that the fathers of the other students were picking fights with dad because I was kicking ass and taking names. Getting your ass handed to you by a girl is, I gather, a tough pill to swallow, but it sure made my dad proud.

Then there were dancing lessons. It started out with jazz hands, soft soled shoes, and spandex creations of horror and continued with cowboy hats and tassels right up until my senior year in high school. It was a closely guarded secret and for all my independence, I never could quit until after I graduated. My dance teacher and her family became close to me and mine. The ties that bind and embarrass are hard to break.

I also played soccer for several years. I was the kid no one wanted to pass to, the flower picker daydreaming down field. I didn’t set out to be bad at it, but I was all the same. My cousins were on the team too so I had plenty of ribbing at home as well as at practice. During that time, I started wearing glasses. Huge, round, red affairs that made me look like an even bigger nerd.

There was a guy named Geoff that I had the biggest crush on. He was gorgeous so of course I didn’t even come across his register. He only really noticed me twice. The first time was when my mom packed me a t-shirt with a pink cartoon elephant on the front for practice. Doing warm up laps around the field in that get up was probably one of the most brutally embarrassing moments of my life. She might as well have written “Point and Laugh” across my chest.

The second time was when the coach insisted I play goalie during practice because “sigh, it can’t hurt to try”. Translation: “You suck at every other position and this is the only one we haven’t tried.” I was absolutely terrified when everyone lined up to take a shot. I don’t remember how many I blocked/caught and how many got past me, but I’m sure the numbers weren’t in my favor. Then Geoff came up. He was one of the best players on the team and I knew he’d try to smoke me.

I’m not sure if I wasn’t paying attention like I should or if the ball just came at me too fast, but it popped me directly in the face WHAM! and knocked me out cold. When I came to my face was stinging and throbbing. For a minute I thought it had affected my vision, but no, my glasses were knocked off. Everyone was crowded around me, a blurry Geoff the closest.

He was apologizing and the coach was trying to shoo him away. They decided I was fine, but should sit out the rest of practice. After the initial shock had worn off and everyone could tell I wasn’t brain dead or suffering any serious injury, Geoff wasn’t very contrite anymore. It became yet another team joke.

I then dabbled in a bit of softball, which I was pretty decent at and would have played it longer if it wasn’t for the whole running thing. It was the batting I liked. Aggression issues and all.

But yeah, sports and me...not so much.


3) I once shaved off my baby hair.

Everyone knows how irritating those pesky baby hairs across your forehead can be, right? They don’t lay the right way and they make you look like you decided to grow bangs and changed your mind.

I have no patience. If something isn’t going my way immediately, I sometimes act less than rational.

One day I was attempting to fix my hair and I couldn’t get those fucking things to cooperate. They were behaving way worse than usual, not even allowing themselves to be covered by a deep side part. (Which was attractive, let me tell you. Deep side parts are the coolest. Like tie dyed scrunchies and hot pink taffeta.) I used all the hair products I could find, but I just ended up looking like I had a horizontal forehead mohawk with a comb-over.

Frustrated, I looked around the counter for something else to use. That’s when the little trimmer my mom uses on her eyebrows caught my attention. Without even thinking I picked it up, held back the rest of my hair, and started shaving all the baby hair off at the hairline. And it worked. Once I was finished, I was completely satisfied with my appearance.

It wasn’t until a few days or so later when my mom said “What the hell is wrong with your head” that I realized what I’d done. It looked like one of those military buzz cuts across my forehead. It took months for my hair to look decent enough to wear pulled away from my face and YEARS for the baby hair to grow back out to a normal, non-freakish length.


4) I’m kind of a murderer.

Living in a house with only women for five years (with the exception of the past few months), you can imagine how silly it can get. There are times when one of us has to “man up” and take care of something that we feel just isn’t a woman’s job. (And I don’t want to hear any shit from you feminists. Why don’t you go out and split a few logs, Paula Bunyan, and quit bothering me.) I don’t consider myself a girly girl, but I cannot stand a bug, lizard, or small, hairy undomesticated creature of any kind. For some reason, I’m always the one elected to deal with any unwanted invasion.

“Al! There’s a bug in here!”
“Al! Get the vacuum and suck up this bug!”
“Al! Al! Al!”

Listen bitches, I’m not a dude, no matter how you say my name.

Inevitably there’s a lot of squealing, cursing, and the sound of someone’s feet dancing on a chair.

Years ago, I think I was about 16; we got mice. My dad was working out of town so mom put glue traps out until he came back and figured out how they were getting in. One night I was lying in bed and she started screaming for me. “Al! Al! Get the dust pan!”

I refused to get up, instead yelling back, “What do you want? Get the dust pan yourself!”

“I just saw it run through here! Quick! Get the dust pan and whack it on the head!”

“Are you serious?! You want me to chase down a mouse and whack it in the head with a dust pan?!”

“Yes!”

“Forget it.”

But she continued to harass me for the next 10 minutes. I knew she was never going to let me sleep, so I finally got up and went to my door. I peeked out across the dark kitchen, the only light coming from my mom’s room up the hall. I had to go to the laundry room at the half way point and get the damn dust pan.

I’d only taken two or three small, cautionary steps across the hardwood (twss) when I thought something ran over my foot. (I realized later it was just the tie from my bathrobe.) I jumped, screamed, and took off running through the kitchen. It was probably the shortest run in the history of runs, because I tripped almost immediately and went crashing to the floor. When I fell my right knee took most of the impact, but it wasn’t just with the floor.

There was a sickening CRUNCH and my knee was bathed in warm liquid. I knew what happened right away, but I kind of blacked out for a minute. My mom says that I was shrieking so horribly she thought I’d broken a leg.

She helped me to her bathroom where I took my first look at the carnage. Hair and blood and blech, gag, mouse guts were stuck to my knee. I wailed and cried while she cleaned it all off. I kept hearing that CRUNCH replayed in my head, over and over and over.

I’d barely calmed down before it turned into the new “guess what she’s done now” story. She immediately started calling people and relaying the brutal tale. It’s still, of course, a common joke among my family. “Did you hear about the time Alyson crushed that mouse with her knee?
BWAHAHAHAHAHA!”

Motherfuckers.

(In case you haven’t noticed the trend, there’s a long list of things I’ll never live down. The post didn’t start out to be that way, but whatever.)


5) I’m often tactless.

In the past several months we’ve been learning how to use a new database at work. This means we’ve been spending a lot of time with new consultants and calling them when questions crop up. We haven’t completely transitioned from the old to the new so everything has been a bit muddled lately.

About a month ago one of my bills was late, as usual. Of course they started calling my work phone every fucking hour. Of course I didn’t answer. Sometimes they get sneaky and call switchboard and it comes up without an actual phone number on the screen, but I’ve gotten wise to that. Ha!

That particular day I was feeling a bit paranoid, so when the phone rang with a number I didn’t know I debated on picking it up or not. I finally snatched it up at the last minute, deciding I just wouldn’t answer using my name and see who it was first.

“Name of company and department." Pause. "How may I help you?”

“Yes, I’m calling for Alyson.”

“Erm, she’s not here...can I take a message?”

“Yes, tell her this is So-in-So the consultant returning her call about the questions she had on blahbity blahbity blah.”

I REALLY needed to talk to him so I had a quick internal debate: I couldn’t call him right back because I wasn’t supposed to be there. I couldn’t pretend to be someone else and say “Oh! Here she is!” because he’d recognize my voice and have to pretend he didn’t which would make things really awkward. Or I could tell him it was me and I was sorry for misleading him.

“Um, ha, So-in-So? This is kind of embarrassing, but this is Alyson...me. Your number looked like someone’s that I’ve been avoiding so I...wait, I mean...”

He immediately burst out laughing.

“I’m so sorry...wow...um”

Still laughing, “That’s ok. Ha!” Then he started answering the questions that I’d left him a message about.

I’ve spoken to him twice since then, answering the phone correctly both times. The last one being this past Thursday:

“Thank you for calling Name of Company and Department. This is Alyson. How may I help you?”

“Oh, so it’s you today? BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”

“Yep, it’s me. Heh, heh. Funny.”

More laughing.

“I’m never going to live this one down, am I?”

“Probably not.”

“I’m so professional.”

More laughing.

Did I mention he’s cute and single? No? Well he is, damn it. We have a meeting at his office across town coming up soon. I’m hoping he doesn’t embarrass me in front of everyone, including my boss who I never told about my lapse in professional demeanor. She’d be shocked, I’m sure.


Obviously I’m going to have to split this into two separate posts to keep you from restless eyeball syndrome.

To be continued with five more things you don't know about moi and my top seven bloggers to watch for 2010.