The first Kate?

I thought maybe I'd tell my first date story. First, some preliminaries. I got to see my college friend Kate for the first time since graduation yesterday, and that was a big treat. We hit an improv comedy show and she spent the night on my couch before driving to New Hampshire today. Here are some of the highlights from our time together: *I got to hear numerous Kate Stories. Kate Stories are a breed of true tales so outrageous and exciting that you immediately suspect that the narrator is full of shit. I always enjoy crazy people, and for the longest time I liked Kate's company because I could count on hearing about some wild adventure or other, and was pretty sure she was functionally insane. It was nice to sit back, put my legs up, suggest a word or phrase, and just wait for the fireworks. At a certain point, I considered her a genius for the unreal ability to concoct incredibly detailed accounts on the spot. I'm not sure when exactly I realized that she wasn't a pathological liar, but it slowly dawned that she was on the level, and probably had the most fascinating life of anybody I've ever known. I have a habit of calling her when I'm drunk, and I always love asking about her life, because it's common to hear responses like: "I'm thinking of about going to Hawaii and doing some work with dolphins." "I drove to Virginia to take a basket weaving course." "I'm trying to get to South Africa, but my contact is having a ton of issues with the Visa." By the way, I'm not fabricating any of these details to be funny. They're all actual true tidbits. Talking to her is kind of like reading a Calvino novel, in the sense that she's pretty mysterious, and it'd be impossible to ever pinpoint her exact location. The only sure thing is that you'll be surprised. The best part of her stories, though, is the delivery. The insane details are always mentioned in offhand responses, as in: Me: Do you feel like pancakes? Her: I used to love pancakes, until I ate them almost every day when I took a year off after high school to work at a ranch in Texas. Now I'm kind of sick of pancakes. We took a walk around my neighborhood when she arrived yesterday, and I asked about her upcoming interview in California. Turns out, she might be making good money doing child care, and have her mornings off so she can concentrate on horse-riding. This would replace her current job, which entails video-conferencing with a west coast doctor who is trying to establish a new paradigm for re-growing clearcut forests. Anyway, one of my main life goals is to go on a road trip with Kate, because she might be the only person who gets into more fucked up situations and meets more strange people than me. She's the kind of person who visits LA and finds herself in a party where fruit is served off the naked body of an actual human female model, or who travels with a friend wearing only a wet towel because they've decided to skinny dip in every lake in Northern Maine, or who has an 80-year old friend who was threatened with a gun in his shower by his second wife, and who has a standing offer to let her live in his rent-controlled, 70 dollar per month West Village apartment. When I mentioned an idea I'd had about taking a road trip from the US to the southern tip of South America, it shouldn't have surprised me that she knew a guy who'd made the jaunt with his wife in the 70s. More highlights... *Because I took all my clothes to the laundry earlier, I was out of gym shorts and slept in the natural state. At about 5am, I had to use the toilet, so I was presented with a conundrum. The bathroom door is kitty (not catty) corner to my bedroom door, so the dash is quick. Normally, I wouldn't bother with clothing, but as I mentioned, Kate was on my couch. So I could either risk her being awake and seeing my naked body dart between doors (something people usually pay good money for), or I could dig up some kind of easy clothing to slip on. After some deliberation, I chose the latter, and proceeded to turn on my light, drop several clothes from the shelf, make a ton of noise, and settle on a noisy pair of windpants, which were literally the only available item of bottom-half clothing that weren't made of denim or khaki. The overall sound impression was of a clumsy 15 year-old being attacked by a super-villain made of paper. I held out hope that she hadn't woken up, but the first question she asked this morning was why I'd donned a poncho in the middle of the night. *She urged me several times to call into work and tell them I had testicle cancer so we could hang out. According to her, you have two testicle cancer days every year, one for each testicle. I was skeptical, but I checked company policy today, and she's absolutely right. Unfortunately, you have to provide subsequent visual proof of a lost testicle in order to qualify. I'm still deciding if it's worth the trouble. Anybody know where I can get a testicle? I've got a bootleg copy of 'Norbit' if anyone's interested in a trade. *She violently insisted that I see the movie "Night at the Museum" starring Ben Stiller. When I told her I would unequivocally never see that movie, she accused me of being out of touch and demanded that I name the last movie I'd seen in the theater. My answer was "The Lives of Others," a subtitled German language film which seemed to prove her point. However, I read this morning that it won the Oscar for best foreign movie, which reduces its overall obscurity. Now who's out of touch, Kate? Pardonnez-moi if I maintain a certain artistic cordon sanitaire, precluding the intake of cinema's more fatuous pilules. And really, isn't the content of such farces déjà entendu, at best, and chiefly déclassé? If I felt a yen for coarse burlesque, I'd procure footage of Gypsy Rose Lee in Stage Door Canteen. QED, I believe. *Before the show, I made her eat a Bob Marley burrito from Burritoville, which is objectively the best food item you can find in all of New York City and the whole world. *I experienced the beginning of two possible Kate Stories, the first coming in a Starbucks when she flashed a winning smile at the "Barista," who proceeded to flirt and try to strike up a conversation before we left. The second came when a crazy person approached us on the subway, and Kate made the crucial New York mistake of answering his questions without being brief and rude. We found out his dad was a biologist, and he chastised Kate for not asking her own geologist father (degree only) about what kind of light blue stone sat in the bezel of her ring. This is about 800% more detail than you ever want to go into with a subway nut, but the best part was when our stop came, and I eagerly said "this is us!" Kate looked at me, puzzled, and said "Is it? Are you sure?" I was sure, having lived in the neighborhood for over a year, but her question created the unmistakable impression that I was lying about our stop in order to avoid further conversation with the crazy guy. Which, needless to say, is the exact wrong idea to convey. Luckily, we didn't die. *I got to watch a video of her mother impersonating a gorilla. So overall, a great time, and guess what story I'm not going to tell? The story of my first date! Instead, this blog will be my tribute to Kate. In fact, the title of this blog was originally "The first date?", but now I'm changing it to "The first Kate?", because that's fucking hilarious. It would also be a good crossword clue, if only we'd ever had a first lady named Kate. Alas, America comes up short again. I think I fucked up the comma use in that sentence with all the quotes and question marks. If anyone knows the proper form, please let me know. Dustin Fact of the Day: He once ran a half mile in snowpants. It was only moderately successful. Blog post-script: I jinxed the shit out of my g-mail spam filter with the last entry. It turned from an efficient monster into a porous milquetoast border guard, reminiscent of the Roman Empire when they stopped giving a shit about the Visigoths.