relay for life
it's no secret that four years ago my mom died of breast cancer, so i thought that in this, my last year at nyu, i would finally get off my ass and do my part to raise money for cancer research.
and that's how i got into relay for life.
but before i get to all that...i had some unexpected visitors.
i woke up around 1 in the afternoon as usual since my ass can't seem to get to bed before 5 am or so. my ophone started vibrating like whoa, displaying some random ass dc number i had never seen before. random ass dc numbers intrigue me. so i answered and it turned out to be dan driscoll, oen of the few friends of mine i had in high school. we were on the soccer team together freshman year and had classes together throughout high school. we even carpooled together senior year since he lived so close (about five minutes up the street in rock creek park). it's interesting that he would show up today, because he is somewhat linked to me and my mother's cancer story. he was one of the first people that i told, and when she eventually died he was awesome get a rather large group of gonzaga kids to come to her funeral. so for that, dan will have a special place near and dear to my heart for showing me such compassion back in my days of extreme depression and suicidal thoughts (my mothers death probably being the height of that period).
anywho, he called up and said he was in the city and wanted to chill while he was here. i was down since i hadn't seen him in about three years, when we went to go see gangs of new york back in dc over christmas break. he was somewhere uptown so i got showered and dressed and met him downstairs in the lobby about an hour after he intially called. he looked pretty much the same as the last time i saw him, only a little bit taller and his ears were pierced with earrings that looked like they were 8 or 10 guage. well, he has been out in california for a while. he was hungry as crap so we decided on getting some pizza. i think extreme hunger and vegetarianism (didn't even know his ass switched from killing cows to killing vegetables) go together since all the vegetarians i know have these voracious appetites. we got a full pie (half pepperoni for me, half spinach(!) for him) at ray's pizza on st. marks and third avenue and sat in the sunlight reminiscing about the gonzaga days, catching up on what happened to gonzaga people we used to/still hang out with, and catching up on each others lives. apparently he went and triple majored (!!!!1111!!111111!1!111!) in english, enviromental science (wtf) and politics (who doesn't major in that, besides me?), got a girlfriend, and was here in new york for a job interview in harlem to be a english teacher in a public school up there. well, that's not where i imagined dan winding up after we graduated from gonzaga. he sounded pretty confident about how the interview went, so we might just wind up being neighbors when the summer rolls around.
eventually we were joined by yet another former gonzaga kid, steve eble. i hadn't seen him in a while either, but he goes to fordham so i've definitely seen him a lot more than i've seen dan. he too looks the same as i remember him, but apparently switched from whatever his intended major was last time i saw him (spanish and something else, i think) and has decided that the priesthood might be right for him. wtf i say again. dan busted out every last joke he could think of involving priests and little boys, and even threw in some comments on the pope for good measure. oh that crazy jew. steve related to us news of all the ex gonzaga kids that go to fordham (of which there are many), what steve's plans were after graduation (north carolina, to eventually go to graduate school at duke with his brother), and what his ideal wife would be like.
dan:would she respond to "hey, wanna bang?"
eble:no, i don't think i want a woman like that
dan: my girlfriend does! it's kind of nice.
me: i could definitely direct you to girls who respond to that
dan: now that there is a fine woman
we didn't stick around the popsicle stand long after eble came because dan needed access to a computer and my joint was the place.
dan: i really need to get home. i have a lot of homework and i'm really sick.
eble: oh. is your herpes flaring up again?
dan: yeah you know how it gets.
eble: really?
dan: no.
me: laughs hysterically because i laugh at everything
dan: the doctors thought my apendix ruptured, but then they figured out that wasn't it and thought sometime thing ruptured.
eble: so it was the herpes.
dan checked his email and eble told me how he came to find god. he was telling me about his childhood and his gonzaga experience, stuff that i never knew about. he said his dad was abusive and was the reason why eble was always high strung and forcing himself to do well in school and know everything. he said he didn't really care about the shit he was learning about and the only source of self esteem he got was being good in school. and he got to college and thought he'd do the same thing, but then finally got to realizing that he wanted to study things that he actually cared about. he sounded like he was dead inside for a long long time and was just doing things to please his father or whatever. well, i figured there had to be a reason for eble's madness, but i didn't think it was quite that intense. anywho, he eventually came to want to study theology basically because he wanted to figure out the meaning behind his existence and what the hell he was supposed to do in life. it's interesting, because it seems like for a lot of his life he hasn't really been living it for himself but for other people. hmmmmmm...
i mentioned to both of them that i was going to do relay for life at 6 and they both said they wanted to go. well, ain't that nice of them. dan even offered to donate money! rock on. that dan is a stand up guy, that's for sure. we made the trip over to coles (with the both of them complaining about walking a ton along the way) and gazed upon the sea of people involved with the relay. i was like gooooooooooooooooooooooddamn that's a lot of motherfuckers. i couldn't even spot my team at first, until i noticed corey (chug president corey) running around like a chicken with her head cut off in her turquoise shirt (which definitely stood out among the sea of white shirts). the event was being held in the bottom of coles where the basketball courts are. besides having a shit load of tables set up for teams (where people were selling various things, from food, to water bottles, to fans, to raffle tickets for psps and ipod minis), they also had arcade games, an xbox with a wacky ass emulator, a moon bounce, and bouncy boxing to keep people entertained, among other things. i boxed dan in the bouncy boxing and that shit was quite a fun workout. opening ceremonies started soon after that, and the two of them bolted. i don't blame them. the good times weren't going to be happening for a while, and i could think of a lot of other things a person could be doing instead of walking around a track for 17 hours on end...but at least they donated money to a worthy cause so that was cool beans.
at least i had planned on staying the whole 17 hours, but then i realized that 17 hours is a long time and instead decided to leave a bit earlier than that. in the meantime i walked around the track, played arcade games, helped our team sell shit, and chatted it up with a few people that i knew at the thing. corey busted out her g-string for the event, and i was like why the fuck to people with no asses where g-strings? and then i saw another offender elsewhere. whhhhhhhhy? which reminds me...dan was all checking out people while we were at the pizza joint and commenting on how hot they were and how nice their asses were. now i admit some of the girls that passed by were pretty cute, but i don't know about nice asses. just goes to show you the gigantic divide there is between what a nice ass is to a white person and what a nice ass is to a black person. small and tight seems to be the order of the day for him, while thick and juicy is what i'm down with. baby got back is my theme song.
i didn't last the whole 17 hours but i did about eight hours of good service, lasting until 2 am. i just hope that if there is some kind of afterlife my mama is around smiling at me and proud of the little thing that i did in her honor.