Dirtbags, part 1

[Doktor Howl]

Saturday Night™

No rest for the wicked, they say, so I was wandering around down in the legal district.  It's a good place for people-watching late at night on the weekends, as everyone from the crazies to your garden-variety drunken college student is out on the street, moving from bar to bar or vomiting or preaching the word.  Or, in some cases, a combination thereof.  My last trip down here led to the brutal beating of 2 male college students who were busy tormenting - and perhaps planning worse things - for a young female college student, over in the roofed-off sidewalk area in the construction zone.  I wasn't being a hero, I just wanted something to beat on that wouldn't cause moral qualms.  And those kids were Bad News.  I could feel it, right through the toes and heels of my engineer boots.

I have a stressful job, especially right now, and I believe exceptions to the moral compact should be made accordingly.

I have noticed that I have gone through a distinct shift in values over the last couple of years.  Some of this may be mere age, some may be association with the Science Gestapo.  I am unsure.  In any case, I was feeling like rolling in some filth...Though it's hard to do Tom Waits properly if you don't smoke anymore, and if there is a practical limit to the number of bourbon neats you can pour down your throat.  But being a dirtbag isn't just about cigs and alcohol, you know.  There's also drugs and poor behavior.

"Hey, Dok!"

I turned around, and saw a leggy young brunette lady smiling at me.  Slightly pocked face.  Very familiar...Just when it was becoming awkward, I remembered her.  A young student I knew from around the way.  One of those kids that are born at age 40 in terms of maturity, and permanently 22 in terms of having a good time, and who will spend their life from 18 to 60 looking like they're 30.

"Hey, Katie, how's things?  You graduate yet?"

"Years ago, old man.  Almost done with my doctorate, as a matter of fact."

I offered to buy her a drink so we could catch up, and she agreed.  We walked down to the Hotel Congress, past all the brand new actual clubs that I am too old for, and Katie wouldn't be seen dead in.  I rounded up a bourbon for myself, and a whiskey sour for Katie, and we went out back.  The weather had been threatening, so there wasn't the usual horrible hipster act/band, but hadn't actually started raining.  Perfect.

We sat down, and she started telling me about her graduate work, something concerning botany that I couldn't have understood stone cold sober.  I nodded and made agreeable noises when she seemed to want feedback.  It never fails to dismay me how far behind I've fallen in the sciences, really, though I'd always been hopeless in messy sciences involving life.

A woman screamed, very near by.  Everyone in the area froze up, looking around like dormice that have just heard a coyote.  The scream broke into smaller screams, and continued.

I looked toward the sound of the scream, and two tables away I saw a young lady screaming and pointing.  At me.

"OHGODHESTHEGUYHESTHEGUY..."  The young lady dashed out of the Hotel Congress enclosure via the wrought iron gate opposite from the main drag.  Her companion, a skinny guy with a ridiculous attempt at a beard, glared at me, looked after his fleeing date, glared a bit more, and then chased after her.

I knew that young lady.  She was in fact the young lady that had been bothered by the two male students a few weeks ago.

Katie was staring at me, so I told her the backstory, and expressed puzzlement as to why I terrified her.

"Men are dumb," she said, "You say she hid behind you, rather than running away?"

"Yeah, which was kinda silly on her part.  If I'd lost, she'd have still been in arm's reach of them."

"Yeah, but she stayed.  So her memory of the trauma probably wound up focusing on you.  She had felt that she might be raped.  Violence did in fact occur, and you did it.  Quite thoroughly, according to your description of events.  So you became the monster."

"That hardly seems fair."

"What's fair got to do with it?  In the front of her brain, she knows that you came between her and those goons.  In the back of her brain, you were the promised violence.  There's no logic to it, and for what it's worth, she probably doesn't hate you.  You're just the trigger now, the reminder to access those memories of being terrorized not once but twice."

"Story of my life, Katie.  I bring this on myself."

"Naw.  You're just a trouble magnet.  You're the kind of guy the world happens to."

"You ain't ever lying.  You should see what's happening at my job, these days."

She ordered two more drinks, and looked across the table at me.

To be continued.

[LMNO]

Good thing you're married.

[Sung Low]

This chimes in my brain.

For both the action and the insight.

[Eater of Clowns]

Shit, yeah, totally possible her head would twist it around.

[Doktor Howl]

Good thing you're married.

???

Katie doesn't do guys.  She makes KD Lang look like Tallulah Bankhead.

[Doktor Howl]

You know what?  Fuck it.

[Reginald Ret]

Excellent start, sorry to hear the rest won't follow.

[Doktor Howl]

Excellent start, sorry to hear the rest won't follow.

Well, apparently the go-to response to a story I write these days is either a moral judgment on me (which is fair enough), or some fucking weird comments involving my marriage, which are then left unexplained.  I'm so fucking pissed off I couldn't continue if I tried.

[Reginald Ret]

I don't think there was any bad intent.
He just read romance where there wasn't any.

Give him more of a chance to get back to you, it has been only a few hours since he could have noticed he hurt you.

[POFP]

I don't think there was any bad intent.
He just read romance where there wasn't any.

Give him more of a chance to get back to you, it has been only a few hours since he could have noticed he hurt you.

Seconded

[Doktor Howl]

I don't think there was any bad intent.
He just read romance where there wasn't any.

Give him more of a chance to get back to you, it has been only a few hours since he could have noticed he hurt you.

Point.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Although I've never experienced it myself I can imagine someone having that kind of reaction, for those reasons. Association conditioning can be a hell of a bitch.

I am looking forward to the rest of the story, whenever you feel like getting to it.

[Doktor Howl]

Although I've never experienced it myself I can imagine someone having that kind of reaction, for those reasons. Association conditioning can be a hell of a bitch.

It makes sense a couple of days later.  I was honestly shocked at the time.

I am looking forward to the rest of the story, whenever you feel like getting to it.

Yeah, Regret got me to reconsider walking off.  I really need to stop reacting so strongly to people being judgy, especially about something so unlikely as me being unfaithful to my wife or even acting inappropriately with respect to my marriage.

I was simply blindsided by the idea that everything has to be about sex or romance, especially with someone 20 years younger than myself.

And this is the work saga, so I really want to tell it.

[Richter]

Definitely gone funny in young college lady's head.  I think there's also a strain of getting spooked by encountering actual grit there.  It's one thing to see the idea of it on a screen, very different animal to meet in person. 

[Doktor Howl]

Definitely gone funny in young college lady's head.  I think there's also a strain of getting spooked by encountering actual grit there.  It's one thing to see the idea of it on a screen, very different animal to meet in person.

Yeah, its been made clear to me that most young people these days have never seen a proper horrible beating.

I can see how it might leave an impression.  And I wasn't doing it to hero, I was doing it for reasons of my own.

Still.