Jason Rodriguez - The Moose in the Closet: CCF Poster, New Project and A Decade of Dancing: The Challenge

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Washington DC Counter Culture Festival has a poster:

The poster features Matt Dembicki on pencils, Jacob Warrenfeltz on inks and Evan Keeling on colors. Speaking of Jacob, he’s putting together the DC Conspiracy’s next anthology, Shear Terror, in which I’ll have a story illustrated by Chris Piers and inked by Jacob himself. Every 8-page story will incorporate a pair of scissors and the story we’re working on is sort of “Tell Tale Scissors” – should be a good time.
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We would go out dancing twice a month in Boston, sometimes more (especially Junior year when we started swing dancing). At the time I was still with R and about half of the time I went out dancing with her and her friends – the other times I went with my friends.

This particular night R and her friends were drinking heavy at her place before we hit the clubs. We were getting a little silly, having a good time, when at some point I told R to make out with her best (female) friend and to my surprise she did. It was – very, very, very, very hot. And I just sort of sat there stunned watching it all go down, mouth agape. I silently thanked God for this perfect moment and he reminded me that homosexuality is a sin and I said, “God – if these two chicks making out is a sin then I don’t want to be righteous.” He sort of took a step back and watched for a minute and blessed it as “righteous times tubular”, admitting he was misquoted on the whole “sin” thing anyway. The actual Leviticus quote, it turns out, is: “You should not lie with a man as with a woman; it is an abomination. After homosexual sex you should talk sports and politics instead of mumbling something about work tomorrow and turning on your side.”

Going to the club that night I was like a five-year old kid, glowing with excitement. One of R’s friends (who didn’t witness the glorious kiss) asked me why I was so happy and I shouted “R and so-and-so made out!” loud enough to get R turn around and give me a nasty look. I didn’t learn my lesson, however, instead telling R’s friend that R doesn’t like to get her exit-hole licked (R’s friend, on the other hand, loved to get it licked). Now that little exchange REALLY pissed R off and she just gave me the look of death – the coldest, hardest fish-eye any man has ever seen. I was upset, thinking I totally killed whatever might have happened between me, R and her new make-out buddy, and R’s friend had to console me and tell me that at some point, she’s sure I’d get it on with two girls. To this day it remains one of the most surreal and retrospectively humorous conversations I’ve ever had.

We get to the club, pay the crazy high cover charge, and get some drinks with the fake IDs we own. The positive energy is back and we get to the dance floor and start having a good time. Whereas I am a bad dancer, I always had fun and that sort of made me a good dancer to have around. R’s friends where boring dancers. They all wanted to look cool and sexy and never really seemed to have fun. They all did this weird dance that made them look like they were riding a horse. In order to spice up the night a bit and keep the sexual energy high – I made a challenge with R.

I picked out a guy and she picked out a girl – the challenge was to get the person to dance sexually with you first. Being drunk, this seemed like a perfectly fair challenge. It also seemed like no bad come from it. She accepted the challenge.

Within five second she was grinding with the guy – I don’t think I even talked to the girl yet. I admitted defeat and took a seat in the corner while R had her victory dance. About five minutes later, her friend (the one that consoled me earlier) came up to me and told me I should “save” R. She had this dire look on her face that I’ve seen many times before – when you’re the lone guy in a group you get called on to “save” a lot of your girl friends – risking a punch in the face for a kiss on the cheek and a thanks.

I figured R gave her “the look”. Maybe the dancing was getting a little too close. So I walk over to them and she has her ass pressed against his pelvis and she’s smiling at me. I reach my hand out to cut in and she says, “I’m fine.” I think I would have been ok with that, really. I love to dance and I dance close with all the ladies – still do – so I’d be an asshole if I had a problem with my lady dancing close with someone else.

I would have been fine.

If he didn’t smile at me and say, “Yeah, just go away.”

And you know what, I probably would have been fine there, as well, if R reacted like a girlfriend should have and stopped dancing with this guy. But instead, she kept dancing. While smiling at me.

Maybe she wanted to me to get tough? So I grab her wrist and try to pull her away to which she coldly tells me, “I said, I’m fine.”

And the guy says, “Don’t you listen?” I’ve never been in this type of situation before – do I punch the guy? I’m actually quite fond of punching people when I have a good excuse but will that just piss R off and ruin my double team action? So I did what any man would do – I stormed into the bathroom and bummed a cigarette off of the first person I saw.

I was fucking fuming. I wanted nothing more than to go out to that guy and drop him. Hard. But instead I sucked down my cigarette and calmed myself down. By the time I got out of the bathroom R was off the dance floor and acting as if what just happened was no big deal. I tried to explain to her that it was an insult to my manhood and if I had any less self control I would have broken that kid’s face. She just sort of laughed it off.

And when all was said and done – I never got double teamed by R and her friend. A couple of months later we broke up.

Labels: mitc

CCF Poster, New Project and A Decade of Dancing: The Challenge

Wednesday, August 31, 2005

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