Hwoes Before Bros

Precious little time to write tonight. Friends from the least coast are voyaging best as we speak. The hwoe is arriving before the bro - who is actually her cousin, and who gets here sometime tomorrow - so I'll have to gather her and her collection of luggage packed full of cosmetics and feminine hygiene products from the airport this evening. I've rented a U-Haul for the trip. I'm hoping it's large enough.

I expect she'll be hungry and utterly unruly when she lands. Before her departure I received a flurry of texts and photos, one of which included a picture of her clutching a fistful of shrimp wrapped in a greasy bed of lettuce and dripping with cocktail sauce, indicating she was taking them aboard as a snack. She also told me she "felt kind of cool" because, as she arrived to the gate, hauling an armoire on wheels and swinging a school of dead shrimp in her hand, she heard her name being announced over the loudspeaker. Apparently she was the last person to board the plane, and because of this they forced her to check her cavalcade of luggage. Irate at having been singled out and publicly demoralized, she took the opportunity to take advantage of United by demanding free drinks for the duration of her flight under the threat of a social media explosion. The last text I received from her read, "lil bitches rushed me for nothing." I don't know if she was talking about the shrimp or the flight attendants. Either way, she'll be ready to consume the souls of countless men in San Francisco. I've heard they taste as good as airplane food.

The week's weather forecast is full of sunshine and auspicious skies, but I'll need to find a way of faking my death in order to dispense with work for a day or two so I can party with my old friends. It's hard working two jobs; tech-worker by day and tour-guide by...also by day, and hostel operator by night. Always it seems there is never enough time. For anything. How ironic that our most precious resource is squandered, in large part, on the monotonous and mundane, the supremely quotidian drudgery none of us very much enjoys. We live out our lives in this way, at great cost to ourselves, experientially, only ever achieving a fraction of what we'd hoped to see or do. An entire world awaits us while we move over and over again in the same domestic circles, eschewing the new and novel for the safe and familiar. Madness.

I have made little in the way of plans, hoping instead for them to spread their hatchling wings and fly about the city on their own. In fact, my longtime bro, Alfons, the cousin who will be driving up to San Francisco from a bachelor party LA, will be fine left to his own device. In New York, he's what's referred to as a hipster; he knows all the latest fads and trends, and despises them with appropriately wrathful measure; he's privy to all the latest crazes in obscure art, music and food, and likely already knows about places to check out that haven't even opened yet. I have a perfectly chilled pack of Red Stripe, the only lager he'll drink, special imported straight from Jamaica and waiting in the fridge for him when he gets here. And while he might not tell me he's happy for the beer, or show any outward sign of excitement or approval short of a compulsory "rad," I'll know he's grateful in his own way. He's already told me he intends to borrow and ruin my only tent on some kind of gay camping retreat with his buddies in a town called Glansville, or Glansland or some shit like that. Just imagining the amount of scrubbing required to remove the gobs of spilled, caked-on semen which will surely have decorated the inside and outside of the tent to look like a Jackson Pollock painting, makes me shudder with horror. Perhaps I'll ask for a prized possession of his, as collateral. In exchange for the tent I'll take the Nirvana smiley-face pin he keeps casually adhered to the lapel of his denim jacket. That should suffice.

Speaking of Nirvana:

I'm so happy because today
I've found my friends
They're in my head
I'm so ugly, but that's okay, 'cause so are you
We've broken our mirrors
Sunday morning is everyday for all I care
And I'm not scared
Light my candles in a daze
'Cause I've found god
Hey, hey, hey

I'm so lonely but that's okay I shaved my head
And I'm not sad
And just maybe I'm to blame for all I've heard
But I'm not sure
I'm so excited, I can't wait to meet you there
But I don't care
I'm so horny but that's okay
My will is good
Hey, hey, hey

I like it, I'm not gonna crack
I miss you, I'm not gonna crack
I love you, I'm not gonna crack

I killed you, I'm not gonna crack

I like it, I'm not gonna crack
I miss you, I'm not gonna crack
I love you, I'm not gonna crack
I killed you, I'm not gonna crack