The Best Weekend Ever? And The Peanut Gallery: Mormon Josh

Robin and I went out for some Fondue at this hoity-toity place she likes for dinner, followed it up with “Walk the Line” which was an enjoyable flick. I’ve been a fan of Cash since senior year in college, I was a bit of a late bloomer, and I’ve been excited about this flick for some time. It wasn’t perfect but was worth it for the music alone. Saturday I went out to get a new camera but instead got a 42” plasma HDTV, Philips – the one with that Ambient Light technology thing. So, yeah, Super Bowl at my place this year. Went to Silver Diner and spent about four hours there writing, put down about 5,000 words for the novel (up to 38,000 words - over the past six days I got back on track by writing around 18,000 words). We watched the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory remake which was horrible so I played online poker while it was on and won first place in a 45 man tournament. Slept in on Sunday, got brunch at Mango Mike’s, took the dog out to Roosevelt Island, watched some football while eating this fantastic Swiss cheese coupled with this amazing salami, got some more writing done and did a little reading (caught up on my comics by reading Jonah Hex and Loveless, started reading the first Losers trade as well).

Now, I talked to no-one but Robin all weekend. Regardless, I think this might be one of the best weekends ever. Do you know the ones when you just do whatever the fuck you want (including buying a TV that’s worth more then your car)? That was this weekend – whatever the fuck I wanted to do.

Now I just need to pay my bills.

___________________

I’ve talked about Mormon Josh several times, but I think we should do the definitive Josh post.

Josh was, obviously, Mormon. Freshman year he roomed with Max who was, obviously, a big friggin stoner. I think it’s safe to say Max supplied me with 95% of my dope in college – the dude just knew where to get it. Josh and Max got along for the most part, mainly because Josh wasn’t allowed to show anger or aggression and Max was nice enough not to fuck with Josh’s lifestyle too much.

There was this one fight, however, which came during Josh’s “destruction”.

Josh started dating this chick Emily. She was nice enough, pretty, Mormon so she didn’t put out (i.e. not my kind of girl but good for Josh). The two of them were obviously getting frustrated about the fact that this John Smith dude’s teachings weren’t really jiving with their raging hormones and college’s influence. They started drinking at some point and Josh was an angry drunk, mainly because he felt like he was going to hell every time he touched the sauce.

He got into a huge fight one night with Max. He was drunk, yelling – I don’t even know what it was about but he dude totally hulked. He ended up storming off; Max didn’t want to talk about it when we asked him what was up. Josh didn’t get drunk much after that, Emily ended up transferring to some school in Utah, I believe.

Josh was just – too nice, a bit gullible. Do you know those people that come up to you on the street and give you the song and dance about their car being broken down and their kids are in it and they have no cash? Josh gave one of those guys two-hundred bucks. When he told us that story, we tried to tell him he got scammed, but he didn’t really want to believe it. A couple of days later he tells me, “I’ve been thinking about it and I think I was scammed.” He was embarrassed about it and we didn’t really talk much about it. He sort of came to the conclusion that “Either way, I did the right thing.” And that was Josh.

When Emily left, he was pretty heartbroken. He got back into his religion more, went straight-edge again. Most of us were kind of cold towards Emily but they kept their long-distance thing going for all of sophomore year. On Valentine’s day he wanted to do something special for her so we took my video camera and made her a “Virtual Date” tape. Josh took the camera out to “dinner” (we set up the common room to look like a restaurant), took it for a walk on the Commons, took it dancing (we set up the common room to look like a dance floor, complete with disco lights) and, finally, had some private words with it that none of the “film crew” ever heard. It was honestly one of the sweetest things a Mormon could do. He claims she loved it but, who knows…

He would have problems with her, obviously. Long-distance relationships rarely work out. I would always tell him that there were plenty of other little Mormons out there, he would tell me that she was the one. It was like a high-school relationship but during sophomore year in college.

When he decided to go on his 2-year mission I was trying to convince him to change his mind. I didn’t want to lose my boy for two years, chances were he was going to end up in some third-world country and basically completely lose touch. By the time he was dude to come back to BU I would have already been gone. He was adamant, though, said he needed to find his way again.

I told you the first email I got from him, the one were he basically compared my morals to that of a heroin addict, albeit not really knowing how bad it sounded. I don’t remember many emails between that email and the last one I got from him. It came after R and I broke up, he wrote me to tell me that Emily broke up with him and she was either married or getting married to someone else. While the dude was on his Mission, doing his sacramental duty, she ditched him and wasted no time moving on.

He told me that I was right, that there really are more people out there and Emily wasn’t as perfect as he thought she was. It really was a nice email and a departure from the other one.

I saw Josh once since he left for his Mission. It was in a car, he was in the lane next to me. We exchanged words before the light turned green and that was that.

It’s funny how people who were so entrenched in your life can just drift away.