The journal of Timothy Porrell

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Tuesday night / Weds morning

Just in from the bar. It’s weird that I can go now, and that in less than six months, the novelty has worn off. Now it’s just a place I go to hang out with my friends. The thrill of buying a shot dissolved with the quick realization that it usually cost twice as much as a bottle of the Rock or even Light. So now it’s just a hangout spot.

Lots of people were there tonight. I saw Brittany and Julie. They’re both so very cool. I’m still an undergrad, and they’re starting their grad work, but they still talk to me. It’s nice. They’re both pretty cute, too. Well, I could go into more about Julie, but it’s just not smart to think like that… she’s a lot older. Well not a lot. She’s only like 26. Seems like an eternity, though. Anyway, I’m glad I got to know them. Some other people were there, too. Dreadlock Dan, the kung-fu pizza delivery man. Shannon and that guy who was in the Gulf War… the one with the shaved head. Big John and all his brothers. Theodore the visiting professor—I think that dude lives in the bar. It was a good night, but no where as interesting as when Ethan came in.

He seemed agitated (which, duh, big surprise with Ethan—for someone so freakin’ laid back, he’s a basketcase half the time if he’s been watching CNN). He bought a beer, and just kept looking around and checking the doors. He also didn’t seem to want to sit too near either end of the bar, or the bathroom. We stayed at the bar and pulled up stools. I figured we could go sit with all the cool kids eventually, but first I’d better find out what was wigging him out so much. I bought us both shots, and sipped mine while he tossed his back and started talking.

He told me he’d just come from the next town over. Apparently, he’s been going to this strip club there for like the last year or so, just to get away from the college scene. I get that, really. Ethan finished school, maybe? No, wait, that’s right, he’s got like 153 credits, but still needs two classes to actually get a degree. Anyway, he’s older than most of us, except the grad students, and he’s way more townie. But he’s smart enough not to want to spend time with all the big-haired grit girls at the townie bars. He can talk shit with the best of them, but the problem for Ethan, I think, is that he believes all the shit he talks. So he’s been going to this bar, just because they have cheap beers and it’s pretty close, and just a change of pace. For such a weirdo, Ethan is really aware. He watches people all the time, and seems to like talking to all kinds of folks.

But Ethan is like the most asexual person I know. He’s not androgynous by any means… I think I saw a picture of him when he was like 17 once, and maybe he was androgynous then, but now he’s very obviously a guy, all the way, all the time. I mean he just never seems to be about girls, or about dating. That sounds like he’s gay or something, but that’s not it, either. He isn’t some kind of homophobe, either, though. He talks to David and Laura and Juan all the time, and gets along with them fine. But Ethan is not someone I can even imagine asking a girl out. He doesn’t do any of the standard things that I would associate with guys and how they interact with or talk to girls. It’s kind of cool, I think, on the one hand. Everyone is just a person, all the time. But on the other hand, he’s kind of odd.

So Ethan is talking about being at this strip bar. And I’m a little surprised that he’s going to a strip bar at all, but like I say, it also doesn’t seem any weirder than anything else Ethan ever does. And he’s getting into some really weird stuff about men wearing black, and government agents, and Alex Trebec. I don’t get the last bit of that, really, but Ethan doesn’t slow down much. So I figured out that that’s why he kept looking at all the entrances and avoiding the bathroom. He’s freaked about these mysterious guys showing up, and he thinks that they’re maybe following him for some reason, maybe linked to these weird dreams he’s been having.

Ethan’s dreams are doozies. I’m amazed. The guy needs to write screenplays or something. It’s some crazy stuff. The one about the talking wrench makes me laugh, because it might be true. I’m not one for smoking pot very often, but Ethan’s never done it (another thing that just stuns everyone else, but seems to make sense to me, given his paranoias), and geez, if anyone ever needed to get baked every so often, it’s Ethan. So he explains some of the dreams and then, I’m wondering just how many shots he’s had, because he’s linking all this stuff together in some pretty crazy ways. But I listen. And then he starts talking about Buck being missing, and I had to slow him down and just get him off this tangent, because it was going nowhere, and it was making me kind of antsy.

So Ethan changes the subject, almost like lightning. And here is where it just got totally bizarre for me. As if conspiracy theories about aliens and talking tools aren’t weird enough. Ethan starts talking about a girl. And not just any girl—a stripper. It was like he’d just watched a sunset for the first time. Or like he’d spent the day in the Louvre or the MOMA or someplace, just looking at one painting or sculpture. It was the most focused and lucid he was the whole night. He started talking about this dancer as if she was from another country or planet or something. He just sat staring at the mouth of the bottle, not drinking, and he went on and on about this dancer. It was amazing. I think he’s got it for her, bad. But then he told me that he didn’t even stay to see her strip. I don’t get him. But I’m repeating myself.

But the freakiest part, completely, was when Ethan told me about the dancer that came on after his favorite. He was on his way out of the club, and he said this second stripper made eye contact with him as he was passing the stage. Get this, though: Ethan could describe everything about how she looked as if he were looking at her picture right in front of him. And he described her for me in detail: tall black boots, tight black miniskirt, black tubetop, red leather jacket. She was built, he said, and she knew how to move it around and use it. She had long reddish hair, in curls, but not tight curls. He made it sound wavy. I just couldn’t believe it… but it’s not like that’s a totally unique look. Just a weird coincidence, I figured. Then he told me that she danced to a techno remix of “Am I Evil.”

And that her stripper name was Barb Wire.

What the f-?