Here, verbatim, is the voice message just left for me by Pablo Sweetness:

“Heeeey, Kelly Luvabeans, it’s Pablo. I hate to call you this early, but I just got off my graveyard shift, so I just figured I’d give you a call. I was gonna call you last night after we got home, uh, but we just went to bed. Uh.

We love you. We love you so much, my wife and I love you SO FUCKING MUCH. Uh. Can’t wait to see you again. You’re the best. Um … Weeee’re gonna be best friends AAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

Give us a call if you get free time, like, I dunno? Hopefully we’ll get you out this way. As soon as we get free time we’ll be back in the city and we’ll see you aga --- YYYAAAWWWWN. Augh.

It’s really … wha … we love you so much. We had such a great time last night, we love you so much and we can’t wait to see you again. We had such a good time. You got a hot ass, and we love you to death. Bye-bye.”

We actually went out two nights ago, not last night, but I’ve heard that working the graveyard shift can really fuck with circadian rhythms and any grasp on linear time, so we’ll let that slide. Poor Pab. As of this morning, he probably hadn’t slept since Monday night.

The following was written yesterday, when I was still hung-over from the night out with Mr. and Mrs. Sweetness. I’m fine now, if not a little tired, and still trying to digest the heap of Mediterranean food I ate last night. It was legumicious, as Mediterranean tends to be. Yum.

THWA-BAM!

I'm encrusted with whiskey residue, and realized this morning that most of the skin off the roof of my mouth had peeled off last night during an ugly altercation with a molten jalapeno popper. (Which I totally almost mistyped “jalapeno pooper.” Ouch!) I emerged from the battle, scathed but victorious.

And how are you?

(Okay, as it happens, this whole account turned out to be seven pages long, single-spaced, typed in Word in 12-pt. Times New Roman. I’m so sorry. Just for a little incentive, I put some irrelevant photos at the bottom. Sally forth, lads and lassies.)

Like I said the other day, I reunited with an old friend, loveable lunatic Pablo, last night. I met up with Pablo and his new wife for dinner, drinks, and six solid hours of reminiscing, catching up, and forging on. I don’t remember the last time I had such a fantastic night. It couldn’t have been better if it had been scripted from beginning to end.

Lists are a-comin’. Just like Jesus!

1. Pablo Sweetness, my friend from a turbulent Vermont summer, whom you’re probably getting sick to death of hearing about.

2. Me, who, for some reason, you’re apparently not yet sick of.

3. Kitty, AKA the new Mrs. Sweetness.

4. Bill, the sweet, rotund, middle-aged divorcee whom the Sweetnesses befriended while working at a bar. He met up with us a couple of hours into the evening and paid for everydamnthing, and all of our servers seemed to assume he was my personal sugar daddy. He was, in fact, more of a communal sugar daddy.

5. Recurring roles by our two servers at the pub, one a tiny Polynesian girl who nodded in agreement when I proclaimed that we were the best customers in the bar, the other a tall blonde guy who joked with us about gator wrestling. Our servers loved us, as recurring characters often do when you ask them to recur, and recur, and recur.

6. Cameos by two strange men who blatantly swindled Sugar Daddy out of $50 in support of a 5-mile “AIDS” walk that totally doesn’t exist. Sugar Daddy supported them nonetheless, reasoning that if he had been ripped off, the crook would be getting a huge karmic thumb-squash soon enough.

I met up with Pab and Kitty in Little Italy, and hugged Pab for about five minutes before turning to meet his totally gorgeous new ma’am. We all went to get drinks, talking and laughing, stopping every so often so that Pablo and I could tackle each other hysterically like a couple of dorky bear cubs.

In previous posts, I think I unfairly made Pablo out to be some kind of clown. Sure, he can be a jackass, and is quite often “That Guy,” but I was wrong about his frantic flitting about. He’s spontaneous, but it’s not so much that he’s running from or chasing anything, he’s just following something. He lives the way most people only wish they could, doing whatever makes him happy at the time within the realm of reason, and without hurting anyone.(Maybe Pablo’s realm of reason is a bit more vast than that of most folks, though, perhaps because of all the hallucinogens he used to do.) And after having met Mrs. Sweetness, seeing the two of them together and hearing of their life, (the more stable aspects thereof I do not include in this entry, because they're not as fun,) I think he may have found True Love along the way. Awwwww.

Pablo never, ever lies, he would readily throw himself on the train tracks for any of his close friends, and while he’s made a couple of choices he’s not proud of (and who hasn’t?), I haven’t ever known him to do anything malicious.

Generally, he’s so sweet and good, I can’t even explain it other than with the cop-out, Valley girl expression, “I can’t even explain it.” It’s not even funny. You don’t even know. I can’t even tell you.

I love my Pablo.

So, what did we talk about all night?

1. So many nights in Vermont, out on the porch drinking wine and pretending to hear ghosts.

2. That picture taken of Pab, Anita, Cheryl and I, in this grotesque, amorphous, 4-headed huddle, all clutching each other in a way that exhibits our individual personalities. Little Anita has her arms spread around Pab and I, her eyes closed peacefully and a wreath of flowers on her head. Pab has his arm stretched around Anita’s shoulders and his hand clutching my face and squishing it towards the middle of the clump, and I’m pretty sure he’s biting my head. The towering Cheryl in the back, arms around Pab and I, staring right at the camera and grinning in a demonic way that, at the time, we didn’t know to see as prescient. I’m in the middle, basically being squashed, trying to figure out where to put my arms, with this crazy, smiley look on my face, like “GAH! FUCK!” Because Pab is biting my head.

Oh, wait … here it is:

Cute? Oh, yes.

3. The huge party where Anita, Pablo and I broke away from the action, laid on the flatbed trailer in the field behind the main party house and stared at the stars. We then went inside and hung out on the couch, where our friend, Jimmy found us. Jimmy collapsed on top of us and started BITING MY HEAD. I was quite delectable that summer.

4. Oh, God. Jimmy. We loved Jimmy. The most beautiful man I’ve ever met in real life … so, like, I can’t measure him against, say, Keifer Sutherland, who I once dreamt was a really, really bad lay. Though I must say, objectively speaking, Jimmy is far more beautiful than Keifer would have been even if Keifer had managed to rock my somnambulistic world.

Jimmy was a gorgeous, dark, country-boy with SO much talent and a heart big enough to compensate for his occasional, abrasive lack of social skills. As far as he was concerned, my main purpose in life was to make him laugh every time he saw me, a goal I didn’t have to put too much effort into achieving. He’d just look at me and laugh. Awesome. To this day, on the rare occasion that I talk to him, Jimmy still calls me “Silly.” But, I’m sure he means “Sexy.” He’s Canadian, so there might be a language barrier.

“Silly.” Bah. OH, FUCK MY LIFE AND MY ASEXUAL BUDDY-VIBE!

Jimmy and I were very close for a while, and it turns out he’s kind of crazy-dependent and high-maintenance when it comes to relationships, so whatever. I’m (almost) satisfied to leave it at the head-bite.

5. The remarkably self-conscious, needy young prettyboy, upon whom Pab bestowed the unfortunate nickname of “Johnjack Hollywood.” You may not have guessed it, but there couldn’t have been any moniker more damning to poor Johnjack’s shaky grasp on masculinity.

6. When Pablo and I worked together, he was Master Carpenter at the summer theatre. One day near the end of the summer, every single one of the theatre techies got pissed at Pablo for being an unprofessional dickweed. I don’t remember the specific situation, but though he was doing his job and doing it well, he really was being an unprofessional dickweed.

It was towards the end of the work day, and all of the staff was trickling out of the theatre, getting into their cars, and driving home. They were too busy hating Pablo to pay him any notice as they passed him on the loading dock, where he sat and quietly seethed. I took a seat next to him, took off his stupid green trucker’s cap and put it on my (tasty) head, leaned aforementioned (delicious) head on his shoulder, and took a drag off of his Winston while the rest of his colleagues showered him with silent nastery.

7. The awful night when my good friend Anita, who was in love with Pablo, found out that Pablo had slept with Cheryl. Last night, Pablo confessed that he still felt terrible about that, which was the first time I heard him own up to having broken Anita’s heart.

So, that was the way past, which Pablo and I recounted when Kitty and Sugar Daddy were talking. Before Sugar Daddy arrived, though, the Sweetnesses and I filled each other in on what we had been up to for the past three years.

They told me of the house where they lived in Florida, and of the various hellish roommate debacles they experienced. There were the ex-convicts who the Sweeteness tried to help get back on their feet, but one of the convicts ended up stealing another guy's car. There were a couple of violent alcoholics, including one who came home one day with a gun, which he held to his temple and which he had to be persuaded to release. That guy planned to go to rehab soon thereafter, but when he got to the airport to go to the rehab center, he wasn’t allowed to board the plane because he was too drunk.

There were a few other scary assholes who the Sweetnesses and their friends tried to help, but they all turned out to be ungracious bastards. There was money owed, and doors broken down, and lots of cigarettes stolen. They’re so glad to be out of there.

Oh! But there was also their friend, Martin, the PCP-addicted gang member who accidentally shot off his cousin’s thumb, and then tried to convince the Sweetnesses to hide the gun, or something. Pablo and Kitty said he was a nice guy, though, when he wasn’t all trigger-happy and hopped up on PCP.

1. I knew that Pablo was banned from New Hampshire, but I hadn’t heard why. Apparently, he was arrested for impersonating a police officer. He happened to have a badge in his wallet, just to be really cool, I guess. One day he and his buddies were pulled over, and Pablo, drunk as a lord, was in full That Guy mode. He was most certainly being drunk and disorderly, so the cop asked him to get out of the car. Pablo obliged, probably because he knew that once he was out of the car, he’d have a lot more space to act like a total asshole.

Pablo got outside and the police officer asked to see his license. Pablo opened his wallet, and the officer, seeing the license which Pablo was inadvertently flashing, asked him, “Are you a Massachusetts Auxiliary Police Officer?” Pablo, in his tie-dyed shirt and long, curly hair, which at that point in time reached down to his ass, looked at the guy and said, voice dripping with sarcasm, “Yeah. I’m a cop.”

So, he was arrested.

As he was being charged, talking to whatever officer was on the books for the night, Pablo took off his overshirt to reveal a the Grateful Dead t-shirt he wore underneath. The cop warmed up upon seeing this, and cheerfully said to Pab, “Oh! You’re a Dead fan?” To which Pablo diplomatically responded, “YOU’RE NOT A DEAD FAN, YOU’RE A COP!!! JERRY HATES YOU!”

After being charge, he was told he wouldn’t be welcome in New Hampshire until February of 2005. I think that when the big day comes around next year, we should throw a big “Live Free or Die” party for him.

(Total aside: I’m in the office, right? And I just fielded a collect call from an inmate from the state prison. No shit. Where the fuck am I?)

2. Pablo is also banned from American Airlines.

According to Pablo, he only fears two things: spiders, flying. (Sounds very much like a certain friend of mine.) So, before his very first flight, to Vegas, no less, he decided he wouldn’t be able to handle it unless … say it with me, now … HE GOT TOTALLY SHITFACED!

Let’s see if I can give you the short version of this, because I’m already at 5 pages, 12 point Times New Roman in Word.

So shitanky Mr. Pablo Sweetness blacked out mid-flight, only to awaken when the plane landed and told that he was not allowed to leave the carrier. Apparently, he had had an altercation with a flight attendant which resulted in him sitting in the middle of the aisle and throwing soda cans at her head. After that, he tried to follow her into the stewardess chambers or whatever, and ended up busting into the cockpit, where he was told to get the fuck back to his seat.

He was taken into custody at the airport, and because this was long before 9/11, he was let go and not strip-searched or doused with lye or whatever. In fact, the cops said that his was the funniest story they’d ever heard and told him to go have fun in Vegas.

Shortly thereafter, Pablo received a phone call from an American Airlines official, informing him that he would not be allowed on his flight home, nor would he ever be allowed on any American Airlines flight from then, until cold fusion had been discovered and mastered.

I just told them about my move to Chicago, about the friends I’ve made and a bit of the drama I’ve been to, and about various situations in which I defended myself or others. In the middle of it, and seemingly out of nowhere, Pablo reached over the table, grabbed my hands, and told me how very proud he was of the woman I’d become.

Okay, a part of me was a bit “fuck you, ya condescending dickhead” about that at first, but he went on to say how much he admired my having moved to a gigantic city all by myself, which he doesn’t think he’d have the balls to do, and how cool it was that I was taking risks to make myself happy. He kept repeating, all night, “I’m so impressed! I’m so impressed! I’m so impressed!”

And then he calls me to tell me I’ve got a hot ass? Now, that’s a friend.

This doesn’t really need further elaboration, but …

I don’t remember the last time I so immediately clicked with someone. While Pab spoke with Sugar Daddy about philosophy of life or something, Kitty and I talked about everything, everything, everything. There was a lot of really girly:

“Oh, I think [this way] about [this thing], because [this happened to me].”

“OH MY GOD! NO WAY! ME TOO! Except a little different. My thingy happened [this way], but I still totally relate.”

“NUH-UH! NO WAY!”

“WAY!”

“OH MY GOD!”

“OH MY GOD!”

“SHUT UP!”

"THIS IS SO WIERD!"

“OH MY GOD!”

Yeah, I know, grody. I’m not proud of it. It was pretty awesome at the time, though.

Brief Disclaimer: Sugar Daddy was a really sweet, funny, completely un-sketchy, generous man. I don’t want to seem unkind by naming him Sugar Daddy, and I don’t want anyone to think that I often (or ever) find myself in a situation where a complete stranger is paying for my and my friends’ drinks, or that we were taking advantage of him. I don’t even assume that my dates are going to pay for my drinks. We weren’t actually expecting or needing him to pay, he just refused to let us take out our own wallets. Anyway? The dialogue.

Sugar Daddy: … For a time, I was in the monastery, but they kicked me out because apparently, monks aren’t allowed to have hookers over.
Me: Haha! You totally weren’t expecting to tell us this tonight, were you?
SD:Haha! No, not really.
Pablo: I love you, Kelly.
SD: Hm. So, [etcetera, etcetera] and I blew $400 at a titty bar last weekend.
Me: I can see why that monk thing didn’t work out for you.
Pablo: I love you, Kelly!
Kitty: I’m laughing so hard, my face hurts!

That was pretty much the whole night. We didn’t really drink that much, and ate just enough fried food and hot dogs to keep us sober throughout the night, so I’m sure that it wasn’t only alcohol, but the actual company that made the evening so great. We eventually left the bar, much to our server’s dismay. (No, I’m serious. We were so much fun.) We wandered to the parking lot, Sugar Daddy went back to the hotel, and the Sweetnesses drove me home. I was in bed by 1 o’clock.

It was like magic, in a way, seeing Pablo again, and feeling like it couldn’t possibly have been 3 years since we had last seen each other. Him being such a freak and all, he sometimes takes on character form in my mind, and I forget what a great friend he is. It is so good to have him back.

1. His huge, deep, raspy voice, his big, high-pitched laugh, and his fucking crazy, kind eyes.

2. The way he squishes up his face and flails like a retarded tyrranosauraus rex when he gets excited about something small.

3. The fact that he is such a good hugger.

4. His ability to engage any stranger in conversation, to the point where you literally have to physically remove him from the discussion and yell in his face, “PABLO! IT IS TIME TO GO!” I have more stories about this stuff, but I think I’ll tell you later.

5. His resilience and energy, which comes to him so naturally that I don’t think he realizes it’s a gift.

6. His ability to make you feel so utterly loved.

7. His opinion that I'm the funniest person who ever lived.

8. The fact that he, who is only a few inches taller than I, can easily lift me off of the ground. And I’m a sturdy girl.

At first glance, I totally seem like a shockable sweetheart that you bring home to have pot roast with your mom. I’d be all for that, I guess, but I have always gotten along most beautifully with people who are either coming from, heading to, or teetering on the brink of insanity.

Ha. My cell phone’s ringing. It’s Pablo. No shit.

PICTURES! AS PROMISED!

The following was taken at a friend’s birthday party back in April. I look freaky awful, but hell. You can't win them all, as they say.

Click here for the next photo, which is way too big for my template. But, god forbid I shrink it down and risk losing some of the GORGEOUS detail! [End enormous link.]

That’s C on the far left, me in the middle, and T on the right. C is doing her best impression of Ann Margret in “Kitten with a Whip.” T is stroking his beard and thinking, as he often does, “Why do so many people like the Beatles, when I find them so utterly boring?” I am trying to detract attention from my hair, which at that point had grown out into some awful combover-looking thing, by jacking up my tits using only my biceps. Ah, yes. The bicep clench. That old chestnut.

I feel the need to mention that I have gotten my hair cut since these pictures were taken, and it looks much better.

This was also taken in April, at a different birthday party. I think it’s the cutest picture, ever. That’s me with my friend D, who is one of the dearest, cutest little men you could ever hope to meet. I think I’m wearing the same thing in this picture as I was in the above. Ha.

Yes, yes, black, v-neck T-shirt. I trust you to hide my gut and hug my curves. I love you and will never leave you.

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~ Last Five Entries ~

Moths, and Relative Nonsense - 08.18.05

I Finally Have Internet Access in my Bedroom. But, No Ashtray. - 08.09.05

Here I Am - 08.02.05

One-Armed Paper Hanger Earns her Wings - 07.29.05

Sugar & Lemon - 07.28.05

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BUY JEN'S BOOK! BUY IT! DO IT!

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BUY DEAN'S BOOK, TOO! YOU KNOW YOU WANNA! SERIOUSLY.

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