The ticket story.

[Ysobelle@aol.com]

Okay, yeah. The ticket. I mean, this is as good a time as ever to post 
the fragment of a story I never posted to the list after the Taft show in 
2001. I've meant to all this time, but I never finished it. I never got 
to the car-horn symphony in the tunnel, much less the blissed-out parts 
of the concert, or the extra poignancy of "Mother, she's not dead. she's 
only sleeping."

But I did get this much done, and as it all makes me laugh now, I'll 
share it.



Oh, and as for the ticket, binksnort gave me a slightly off-time Channuka 
present, so all was well.





12/11/01

So. That was the weekend that was.

I don't know what there really is for me to add, now that everyone's 
added their two, three, four, dimes, nickels, quarters. But I think the 
most important thing for me that happened this weekend was more 
personal-- but I'll get to that later.

I should have known this weekend-- I will consistently say weekend, 
despite the fact that it began Thursday-- would be fraught with 
challenges when I woke up Tuesday with a cold. Blind, vicious optimism 
didn't defeat it; neither did echinacea and Dayquil. Great. Just what I 
needed.

We-- David A., Liesel, and I-- were set to meet at my place, bop over ot 
the airport to pick up our rental car, and hit the road about 5. Famous 
last posts. I weaseled out of work an hour early, went home, grabbed my 
dog, ran into town, dropped her at Mom and Dad's, raced home, finished my 
packing, and was all set by 4, only to get a call that my cohorts were 
running a little late. So I put my waiting time to excellent use: I hit 
my own couch running. Er, sleeping. 

After a confused dream about dancing cream cheese and salsa that danced 
the merengue (guess I was hungry?), I woke to hear voices at my door. The 
door I apparently forgot to lock. No sooner do I get to the top of my 
stairs than my front door pops open and David is bellowing up for me. 
Ghee. Hi, honey. Glad you could make it.

My first impression of Liesel is that she's completely not what I 
thought, and that she's staggeringly gorgeous. My third thought is that 
if I actually DID steal her hair, she'd be very unhappy with me aside 
from looking rather funny without it. None of these impressions changed 
during the course of the weekend; I was only able to add that she's 
beautiful inside, as well. As for David, I've met him before, but he has 
a way of starting out fun to hang with, and only getting moreso. The 
absence of facial hair threw me a second, though. Jury's still out, love. 
But you're still handsome, either way, so fret not.

We stood and chatted a few minutes in the wreckage that was once my neat 
apartment-- okay, I'm lying, it's rarely what everyone would consider 
neat-- and then decided to get on our way. Which we did. To the wrong 
building. Yes, folks, never trust the Hertz booking agent in Iowa who 
tells you yes, the Hertz building you need is the one right down the 
street. (Did I mention I live in Philadelphia?) So after being held 
hostage by the security guards outside what turned out to be the 
_maintenance_ building, we went back on our merry way like the trusting 
souls we were to the appropriate automotive hive of Hertz at the airport. 

Then things got really bad.

See, the guy on the phone _assured_ me that I could use my credit card. 
He made a point of telling me that if it doesn't say "Check Card," which 
mine does not, that it'd be fine. But I suppose I should have known after 
the whole maintenance-building-armed-guards-slavering-dogs thing that 
they just grow 'em sneaky in Iowa. Or something. So Liesel gallantly 
whips out HER card, and we start all over. And then the guy behind the 
counter gives us a sickeningly evil grin and says, "Well, I can't give 
you a AAA discount," (I'm the one with the AAA membership, see) "so the 
rate will be higher."

I think it was at this point, already tired and frustrated, that 
something snapped. There was a sudden cold breeze to my right, and I 
turned to find not Liesel at my elbow, but The Queen from Snow White, 
with her long black robes and glittering crown, only I don't think Disney 
had the Clanging Chimes of Doom circling her head but it's been a while 
since I've seen the movie so what do I know. With perfect composure, she 
begins readying this troll for his imminent death when he squeaks that he 
is indeed but a troll, and we must see his manager. Before I can even 
draw breath, the Almighty Presence that was Liesel is filling the 
glass-enclosed cubicle where sits this poor man they call manager. In 
less than three seconds flat, he is incoherently gibbering on the floor 
at the feet of the Dark Tower-- who, I must state for the record, had 
perfect manners throughout-- and assuring us that he would willingly give 
his life to get our AAA discount. At once, our charming Liesel is back 
with us, and she smiles at him serenely. So back we troop to the troll at 
the counter, who has been watching this exchange with drool on his chin, 
but an evil glint in his eye. Shiftily, he takes our cards and ID once 
again, does something mysterious with them, and then pops up with a 
triumphant, sickly leer on his face.

"Sorry!" he chortles in his demented troll voice, "Can't rent to you!"

Seems we forgot that whole minimum age limit thing. The maniacal laughter 
that followed us out the door will haunt me for the rest of my days.

I'll spare you the endless hours of running around in circles to other 
rental places, traversing long lines of moving cars as if we were in some 
industrial-age, sodium-lit video game, having a long discussion in front 
of the guy at Budget (while his head snapped back and forth between us 
like he was watching a three-way tennis match) wherein we decided we 
didn't actually need his cars, anyway, and finally piling everything 
(except one little thing we-- er, _I_ forgot, but I'll get to that later) 
into David's car to drive all the way back to West Chester to get 
Liesel's car. When we finally hit the turnpike, it was 9.17pm.

Cut forward a few hours, mercifully. We had some fabulous conversation, 
and I introduced David and Liesel to VNV Nation, and told them the story 
of getting a private "tour" of the tour bus from the band's singer, 
Ronan, he of the delectable lips. We talked about music and religion and 
even, briefly, astronomy. (I couldn't even find Taurus, though, Don, so I 
officially suck.) But then it grew later and later, and I tried to burrow 
down into the pile of blankets and pillows in the back seat and nap, and 
that was my major mistake. Encouraged by the partial shut-down of my 
synapses, my cold medicine kicked in, and my brain flew out the window, 
to lie forlornly somewhere by the side of the road around Breezewood. I 
don't mean to say I was mildly ditzy, I mean I was STUPID. Knock-down, 
drag-out DUMB. If you'd asked me what two and two made, I would have 
said, "Fish." I was groggy and staggering and cow-eyed, and somehow found 
myself in the ugliest, most aggressively mind-numbing, 
depression-inducing rest-stop I've ever had the misfortune to stumble 
into. When I say it was hideous, I mean it would have made Marcia Brady 
CRY. Relentlessly brown tiles the colour of dead grass, with accent tiles 
the colour of bleached ketchup. Summer-camp, economy-grade, no-frills 
ketchup. The kind that doesn't even have the decency to make good fake 
blood. 

So it was fitting that here, in this cold, echoing Bastion of Bad Taste, 
miles from home, three in the morning, somewhere in the wilds of Ohio, I 
finally remembered exactly what it was I'd left at home.

My ticket.

Liesel caught me staring at the walls, catatonic, and asked me what was 
wrong. In a choked, stunned voice, I told her. Her face went completely 
blank.

"You're joking. Please tell me you're joking."

I staggered out to the car again, shellshocked and blind, occasionally 
twitching. David couldn't believe it either. I crawled back into my nest 
in the back seat, stifling the urge to pitch myself in front of the car. 

Full of blind optimism, numb butts, and gritted teeth, we resigned 
ourselves to the last stretch of road between ourselves and Bru-Say. I'd 
previously been worried we'd wake him up after he'd gone to bed; now I 
was worried we'd miss him before he left for work. It's difficult to time 
your arrival to hit that vaguely-defined period between waking your host 
up and before he goes off to pursue gainful employment. By this time, 
however, it was pushing 6.30 in the morning, we'd just passed the 
fifteenth of twenty-eight exits for Galbraith Road, we were tired, 
hungry, and out of Doritos. It was time for drastic action. 

It was like that scene in "Airplane!" when Robert Stack talks Robert Hays 
through landing the  plane. Except Bru-Say on his cell phone, barefoot in 
his driveway, was a far, far more welcome sight to three grumpy, weary 
travellers than ever rolling credits could be.








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