Wednesday, January 26, 2005

The pain. My left hand feels like I've been stomping on the tips of my fingers in cleats. But somehow, I will persevere and I will learn to play this guitar of mine. Because I want to learn how to play. And not just sit around trying to make up my own songs. I used to dislike people who played covers and other people's songs because I remember thinking, "oh that's real creative." Man was I ever wrong. The stuff people do on a guitar is amazing, and learning just to play those few things not only hurts, but its hard. Very hard. I've got a new found respect for those people who don't sit around writing and composing their own music. Wait did I just say that?

So I've been telling stories, which I believe I called indemnifying. Incriminating. In case you missed, my purpose in telling these stories all lies in trying to get these out so no one will be able to have any ammunition against me in a war of secrets.

This story focuses around "Signore". He is without a doubt, what I want to be when I grow up. I first met him, what seems like two (maybe three, maybe more) years ago, and being the insecure lad that I was (and maybe still am) I talked to him for twenty minutes, and assumed that he hated me like everyone else. Like I said, insecure. I do remember thinking, wow, he's way too cool to be friends with me, let me go hang out with that nerd in the corner. So away I went. Time progresses, its a year, maybe two later, and I run into Signore again. I'm older now, I think I'm in my "Everyone will be my friend, like it or not" phase or what not, and I recall walking away from that conversation thinking: "He's cool. He's my friend now." But I can't gush enough about how top-grade Signor is. He'll probably read this and within the first use of the word Signore guess that this is about him. He's that kind of fellow.

Like I said, he's a real stand up guy. But what we don't realize about Signore is that he holds a deep secret. A dark secret. Signore is a ninja. And not just any type of ninja. Signore is a terry-cloth wielding assassin. I think that last sentence alone should be the entire story. I wish it was. But no, its not.

I am under the belief that Signore could kill a grown man with a towel, without ever strangling the grown man. The things that man does with wet terry cloth should be illegal, and probably is in three or four states. "But Javann, how do you know this?" you may be asking. Well, because I have felt his terry cloth wrath more times than I care to admit.

Like many of the things that has happened to me, this one is a bit blurry. Things in my life tend to repeat themselves. Which means what I remember may have happened but not on that particular night. Which makes it hard to unblurrify (yes that is a word, or at least it should be) my memory. Either way, here's what I remember, feel free to correct me.

We were all at "RocketBoy"'s swanky bachelor pad, inducting a few members into the society of Booga Booga Boo. If you've not been inducted, send me an email and we'll see what we can do about induction. The benefits of being in the society are killer. Seriously. The induction was going down in RocketBoy's bedroom, and the rest of the party (already card carrying members) were out in the living room, doing who knows what. I was in the back room, can't remember what the heck I doing, I think laughing and talking, since that seems to be what I do, when I see Signore get up and head out front to "see what all the commotion was about." I hear a bit of silence and then I hear even more commotion. I walk around the corner and I see Signore snapping victims with TWO towels. I don't mean they were intertwined to make one terrycloth of doom, or that he would snap one and then use the other as he wound one, I mean he had both towels going at the same time. I'd say similar to a machine gun. Signore is a ninja.

A literal call to towels went out and we rushed about RocketBoy's house scrambling for towels. The participants? "Metro", "Biggun", "Youngun", "Jughead", "LadiesMan", and of course, myself. RocketBoy doesn't really have a lot of dish towels or hand towels, I mean he's a bachelor. You get all that stuff when you get married. Pretty much all the good towels were gone, and I ended up with a full size bath towel. "Great. I'm just basically cannon fodder," I thought to myself while I juiced that behemoth towel up. Little did I know. Big towel = big hurt.

Soon a showdown of terry cloth emerged in the living room. Signore had frightened everyone with his ninja skills, and we all kept an eye on him and on each other. Metro and Youngun started to team up on him, but Metro betrayed Youngun. And that's when the terry cloth started flying. The funny thing to me, by the way, is that there were spectators, huddled in one corner, yelling, laughing and applauding. In retrospect, had it not been for the spectators, I might have walked away after awhile. But being the gloryfiend I am, I went full in.

So I wind up my towel, and I unleash. First hit goes completely limp. There's not enough water on my towel. I pay for it with my stomach and chest. I run back into the kitchen and wet the towel down for all I'm worth. And I come back out and I unleash on the closest person to Signore.

The snap from this towel was deafening. It literally sounded like a gunshot. I saw my victim crumple in pain. I remember thinking, "holy crap, that was a good one." I'd still not realized what I held in my hands. Didn't have time to think about it. Biggun snuck up behind me and snapped me in my back. Without really thinking, I unleashed my monstrosity of a towel again. And again, I heard a gunshot. Biggun tried to clear the towel, but he couldn't escape its grasps. I hear him gasp as it hit him. I then see Biggun turn around and come after me. I step back trying to wind the Fenway Park (the Green Monster. . .get it?)towel as quickly as I can when suddenly, Signore jumps in front of me and begins ninja toweling Biggun. Its amazing to see. His two toweled fighting technique is ferociously effective and Biggun is forced to retreat under the onslaught. I stumbled away in awe, and maybe a bit of pain from Biggun's hit when I see Jughead attempting to catch Signore unawares. Of course, I can't let that happen, Signore had just jumped in for me, and was still meteing out punishment upon Biggun, so I stepped up and out came the towel. It hit and a mist arose from the impact point.

The water on the towel rose and I saw Jughead fall. At about that point, there was a standstill and the spectators were chanting my name. Ah yes, thank you largest of towels. Then someone came up with the idea of a tournament of terry cloth, a championship of chamois, if you will. And that's when things got bad, for me at least. First round for me? Signore.

The rules were five hits a piece. If your opponent quit, you won. If both were left standing the crowd judged. First round, me versus Signore. I went first. Only about three of my hits really connected, but when they connected, I might as well have shot off a gun. I'm sure none of them really connected (because at other times I've drawn blood on the good connections) but the spectators were loving it. Signore managed to actually make contact with me, but it wasn't as impressive so he lost by way of judgement. If you'd felt my side, then you'd know that he was the true winner. But I was the champion. Second round, Metro.

You have to understand. Metro is a cool guy, and I consider him my friend. The one thing we truly have in common is we are competitive. Very competitive. Whenever we meet each other and we are at odds, I sincerely can say I hate him. I think it wouldn't be much of a stretch to say that he feels the same way. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to kill him, hurt him, or maim him, but I do want to beat him. In the worse way. So imagine my fierceness on realizing he was the next to feel the wrath of my towel. Honestly, I think it was that fierceness which led to my poor towelling. And yet that same fierceness is what let me take the hits from him. Because let me tell you, he drew blood that night. I still have a scar on my back from that. And that was using a dish towel. On the same spot. Three times. As you can tell from this story, Metro won.

Then there was another challenge. LadiesMan challenged Signore to a showdown. This, of course, was much later. I won't go into details, but I'll quote LadiesMan. "Thanks, Signore, now, because of you, I'll be crapping blood for a week." Excellent stuff.

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