It was in my sister's site. Oh that makes sense.

I was still living with Tucker at the time. We were together in this stinky little row house with Maxie, Skippy and D-Rock, which smelled of fish, fresh fish, baked fish, and worst of all: rancid fish. D-rock had OCD and penchant for Salmon. He would bake a whole fish every night at 6pm on the dot, and then leave the remnants in his bedroom to fester for several days, and though I had always connected a sort of romance to the creature, what with the noble upstream deathbed swimming and all, I found this practice to be repellant. I began to spend most of my time in my room. When this got depressing, I moved myself to the local Starbucks, writing, farting around, fucking with the staff, trying to pick up chicks. It was around this time that I discovered how to steal drops of Tucker's cologne to give me "the edge" with the ladies, and had some success garnering phone numbers I wouldn't follow up and call. I suppose I wouldn't call because breasts out of sight are out of mind. I wanted them right then and there, on the spot, in the Starbucks, but my game wasn't quite good enough to do on-site action.

Skippy, like D-rock, was a bit OCD, and thus had his own obsession. But unlike D-rock, his obsession did not leave us gagging for anything but sex, as it was the television program, The OC, which stands for Orange County, or that little place thirty minutes south of Glendale I'll probably never go. He Tivo'ed every titty-packed episode, watching them with much fanfare in the living room, volume at eleven.

He was there when I returned from Starbucks, eating a bag of microwave popcorn, bopping up and down in his seat on the couch, black hair flopping around. It was puppy cute. He was making "ooohhhs" and "aaahhhs" at different points in the dialogue, whispering commentary on the intricate plot structures of this crappy show, which for all its shortcomings, was riveting. Tits here, midriffs there, pecs abounding, girls making out with one another, poorly, but still making out, and all of it acted well enough so that we viewers could watch such pap and not be ashamed of ourselves. Over the next few weeks, I became hooked, and my daily responsibilities (1-walk Maxie, 2-masturbate) were rescheduled around this program.

Weeks in, Tucker began to join us in the watching. He would sneak up stairs in a bathrobe stained with female ejaculate, computer in tow, and pretend to hammer away at the keys and not pay attention. We all knew what was going on. He was a fan. Twenty minutes in, his hammering would slow, cease, and by the end of the program, he'd be screaming at the television "TAKE IT ALL OFF, WHORE!!" tiny hands flailing with delight, little appendages dangling from a ham hock of smelly shoulder muscle. He's like an oversexed T-Rex.

D-rock began to schedule his fish baking at a later hour, so as to be in the living area when the OC fanfare would take place, and so we were one big, dysfunctional, stinky, tit-loving, OC obsessed family. Fights would break out as D-rock grumpily moved from fridge to counter to stove, preparing a salmon and making unpopular statements in his usual way with Maxie underfoot, begging for fish.

"Mischa Barton is not remotely attractive."
Tucker: "What?! Motherfucker, I've seen her in person, in PERSON, and she is totally good looking, like five-star good looking."
Skippy: "Shhhhhhh..."
D-rock: "Max, the girl is not even passably attractive."
Tucker: [tossing a beer bottle cap on the floor] "Motherfucker, she is hot. I've MET the girl."
Skippy: [bouncing] "Would you guys just shut up?!"

A new season of shows had begun. Mischa Barton/Marissa was an alcoholic again, and as she lounged by her rich stepdaddy's pool in a string bikini with a tumbler of vodka watching a specimen of a gardener shirtlessly trim a bush, our little fish family discovered she had been secretly fucking the specimen all summer long. Cliché, yes, but the fish family exploded with appreciation for the plot twist.

Skippy: "Ooohhh."
Tucker: "YOU LITTLE WHORE!"
D-rock: "Not attractive."

And then I said it. I wasn't prone to making comments about the relative sexiness of men at the time, but the specimen was, well, a specimen. Without thinking first of the repercussions I said:

"God dammit, that kid is hot."

Skippy: "What?"
Tucker: "WHAT!?"
D-rock: "Not attractive."

Bunny: "Nuh uh. He's smoking hot. I'd do him."
Tucker: "Are you serious? Are you serious? Look at his fucking beady little eyes and shit? Look at his nose. That fucker is ugly, and he's probably, like, 5'2."

That's the way it was in our fish family. Only a handful of worshipable male sports stars, Rangers, Delta Forcers, SEALs and Green Berets could be considered handsome, and all other men fell into the category of "ugly fuckers," indisputably, and sometimes violently. Tucker bagged more pussy than he could shake a stick at. D-rock fucked half of Chicago. Girls were scheduled to come fuck in sessions, morning, noon and night, but the fish family man phobia was established and likely not going anywhere, no matter how much ego boosting took place. Good looking non-sport/military guys were "ugly fuckers."

Bunny: "Um. I'm lookin, and he's hawt."
Tucker: "What do you know."
D-rock: "Not attractive."

--

I suppose it was just hours ago that I was sitting in a sticky booth at a place called Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles somewhere in Hollywood. It's a genius combination I'd never thought of, fried chicken and waffles. I'm loading a chicken/waffle bite onto my fork while the specimen sits across from me doing a spot-on Borat impression.

"In my country we have problem,
And that problem is transport..."

His girlfriend sits across from me, and I cannot look at her, for she is like the sun. Here is the center of our solar system before me in a booth at Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles, daintily eating her macaroni and cheese for shits and giggles because she is immortal and does not need food. It's an uncomfortable yet thrilling waffle experience.

I've just been to an advance preview of a really bad movie starring the Specimen as a Navy SEAL, a straight-to-video sequel of the Owen Wilson vehicle "Behind Enemy Lines." Specimen was good in it, particularly so in a torture scene, during which a North Korean officer runs a rusty nail through his hand. Sadly, Peter Coyote's take on Bill Clinton, a Condoleeza Rice who couldn't remember her lines, and a lazy set decorator made the rest of the flick a farce. This was compounded when the SEAL team ran, guns a blazin' into a Korean village for no reason other than to create drama in the middle of the movie, one forced to utter "I don't want to die in a godless land." Later this guy gurgled on the ground with a hole in his neck, and we, the viewer, were comforted by the fact that a misty Korean shaman was there with his pet tiger to lead this boy into the tunnel of light. Yay for Korea!

Specimen is a good sport about the movie, more interested in learning technique from real SEALs than anything else. He enthusiastically teaches us how to hold a pistol in a gun fight, while his girlfriend lightly yawns beside him, her gossamer lashes drooping low, signaling time for sunset. Sweet Christ, she was hot.

When its time to leave, I say have a good night, its nice to meet you, and other things I actually mean. As I drive home I think how much the fish family would like Specimen, silly boys.

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