I was wonder bread

97.9, 103.5, 95.3, 96.1 Do you know what these numbers mean. They are not equations from my stats homework; they are not measurements of appendages in millimeters and they aren’t numbers representing my weight though some people would assume so. These numbers represent some semi-saviors of mine. Back nearly a decade ago there was an extremely fresh faced Mitch who just started working his first legit summer job, 8-5 Monday through Friday. I was on an interior-painting crew that cleaned up section-8 $h*t holes and repainted them just to be trashed again by the new drug dealing-prostituting-meth using-porn addicted tenants.
The guys I worked with ranged from a summer working college student, recently paroled felons, high school dropouts, and illegal immigrants. I was the only high school student on the crews and one of two Mormons. Compared to guys who spent the night before work telling girls they were having a relationship with at that moment that they had AIDs just for the reaction, it didn’t matter how much of a punker I thought I was. I was a loaf of wonder bread to them. The first place I helped clean out and paint was a deserted brothel, I was put on sex toy watch. I was to locate any sex toy and store it in a separate bag for later unplanned pranks on the other paint crews. My innocence stood less of a chance than a remnant piece of cocaine on Hunter S. Thompson’s kitchen table. But what did the numbers mean!?!
These numbers are call signs, radio frequencies for all the rock stations in the Willamette Valley. We drove all over that valley for three months in crappy non-AC’d trucks filled with off white paint and old mattresses that some diabetic died a lonely death on two weeks before we cleaned it out of the apartment. But if there was one belief we had in common was that Journey was God. Rage against the Machine made you win any red light stare down no prob. You had insane echoes in an empty apartment with for guys singing more than a feeling. Metallica was a great morning wake-up call and the college radio gave all the Gin n’Juice we would ever need. These were fantastic eye-opening times, because every hourly wage worker in each city would be bumping the same jams. Walk into this paint shop you could finish your new wave anthem “Just what I needed”. The landscaping guys are busting some crazy latina-polka we just heard in the Taco Bell or Gn’R. The talk for all of august was how the college radio was doing every 15minutes up-dates on the top-less car wash going on in front of the West 11th 7/11. It really brought everyone together just like Duck football games did during the fall.
I was stripped of a lot of my innocence that summer, but I gained a chunk of confidence because I didn’t drown in (for the lack for a better word) the shiz of my co-workers but I learnt how to even do a very cocky, jack-assed butterfly stroke.

-Y girl

(older deal that i wrote a while back but never posted)

There are a few questions about my likes, dislikes and tastes that I cannot answer. I have learnt to dodge answers that get me out of answering them without explaining why I do not like to answer these questions. i.e. what kind of music do you listen too? If I tried to answer that I would end up saying “rock” at some point and feel like should A) try to assemble a 1,000 piece puzzle in the middle of a four lane highway. B) Spend the night with any girl that gets excited when either of the “you’re a jerk” or “soulja boy” songs come on at a house party. Both are hazardous to my health and self-respect. But both are more comfy than trying to answer that question. One of the worst question I can think of at the moment is, “what is your type?”

This type means what is the type of woman that I will be attracted too. I could and you too, could spend hours naming off adjectives. None start with –A- (attractive but that can't end in a -y unless its an adverb) so , bumpy, cozy, dressy, EE-y, freaky, geeky, hotty, irresistibly, jazzy, kinky, lovely, mega-sassy, nippy, obedient, pretty, Quirky, riskay, slutty, touchy-feely, not ugly, very __, wispy, x-rotic, yappy and zesty.

Adjectives can’t explain what anyone can feel when a connection is made. Adjectives rarely can describe what a person is when this person makes you want to stalk them on facebook multiple times before you see them again. Adjectives don’t knock your socks off, they can’t keep you up at nights (even when you didn’t take a nap).

–Y doesn’t. He/She does.

THE PILE

There this pile right in the middle of my room. In side this pile are all me clean clothes all my dirty socks, all my opened school text books, my tax information, my deodorant, my cell phone charger, my laptop power cord, my journal, my other journal (intimidated that i have two?), my wallet and keys are somewhere in there in some pair of jeans, i own two belts and they too are buried in this pile that in more or less everything that i use on a weekly basis. When i get out of my towel that by divine providence of heaven does not get thrown into the pile, i start pulling my outfit out of the the pile. All my clean clothes are in the pile because i washed them earlier that day or when ever and then instead of folding them and putting them into the entirely too small drawer, i just leave them on my bed. So when i am ready to hit the hay i look at my bed and see it is going to be tough to dream on top of all my jeans. So i just move the new clothes to the bench press next to my bed. They will fall off as i try to fine a shirt that actually go with my shoes (its so tough ladies) and start to make the pile. My homework and books will get thrown in there because i am so sick and tired of them when i am finished that i set them on top of the pile and walk out. When i get undressed to climb under my electric blanket at nights i just toss everything on the pile. It takes less effort than you'd think for me to remember which shirts i have worn earlier in the week so i don't pull those out of the pile the next morning. At the end of the week i say i need to clean my room but really it only means to stick the whole pile except my books and tax stuff on most occasions into the dirty clothes sack. Take the sack containing the pile and washing everything in two loads. I will undoubtedly put all those clean clothes on my by there-in-by repeating the entire process again the next week.

I hope by making this known i will stop this ridiculous man-boy tradition.

He Didn't Even Make It Through A Full Gallon of Milk

This title was the line from an old friend. I watched her as we grew up in our crazy town. As i went down the proverbial hill i watched her slide down the same slippery slopes. I never had much of a attraction to her which always baffled me because she is a pretty gal but more so just a observational interest akin to a JD (from scrubs) closing monologue.

But where were we? Oh yes i watched her as we both did our straying. Once i got my act together and pulled myself out of the pits i was falling into i saw she was super far away in some pits i managed not to find myself in the bottom of; lucky me right? I left and when i got back this girl had married a real idiot, someone we both knew that saw these same pits that we were dealing with as little muddy puddles that one jumps in and gets everyone around all wet and gross. Gets all your friends and family all dirty too.

This kid got sent to jail, which left my friend with a ring on her finger and an empty space in her bed. Two more years with good behavior she told me at a Christmas party as we ate from the brownie tray. In the time he was busy getting prison tat's, my friend got herself a diploma and a job doing what i knew she probably always wanted to do. It just fit her so well. I watched as she pulled herself out of those pits, it was great to see out of all of us that strayed someone else besides me come back. It made church back home during winter break a lot more interesting. Who was there because they wanted to be and who was there because they had a huge fight with their parents the night before and were sitting in those ol'benches but were more uncomfortable because of the awkward family tension.

Anyways where was i? Oh yeah, this idiot got out of jail last week. She had a pizza party for him and even my parents were there to wish them luck. She arranged for him to have a parole officer in the state where she was living. They arrived home and spent the next day getting him some new clothes and by the next morning he was gone. Took the car and left it somewhere in a nearby city and is on the run. Her line, "he didn't even make it through a full gallon of milk", means so much. I love it.

I've watched this girl for most of our lives, and i know that others would consider those three years she waited for her husband a total waste but i know she will see it maybe not right away but she will see it as such a great blessing to have that time to come back to love. Real love. Like love of her family her real friends and her real heavenly father. Divorce is a ugly, terrible word. But every now and again, it brings a big smile to my face for an old friend.

I could have lied

It’s a valley

Keeping in cows, clouds and cause

Not my plan, plans or plans

What I learnt I sought

What hurt I fought

What I stole was caught

My head and heart

Open empty were ready to start

I d hate to see

The real tuition I had to pay

For this education during my stay

My eyes go one thousand yards

Burning in this 60watt life

I feel this way

So many hours left to learn

I am not sad babe

I just yearn

Pop a cap in sancho...

I have written but never posted many a blog that have to do with others. I look at my posts and they are either like a microscope put on 100x to some part of Mitch, or they are about completely random people or groups that couldn't be connected to me by less than six degrees. To me at least there is this huge black hole in secondary representation in my prose. Respect for the eternal documentation power a blog has on anyones actions and how public it can be is the main reason why this glaring hole exists. But wow do i want to write and post things about you all. Honestly because you have such a huge effect on where my brain waves go.

Example (oddly not a far out one either): I was recently made a SANCHO over a 2 weeks period. A sancho is the man that a wife cheats on her husband with, get it? I unknowingly presented myself to this girl during a rough patch in their relationship. I resisted as best i could and i succeeded no doubt about it. But it was a enlightening moment when i found out the existence of the boyfriend. This girl rightly perceived me as one that is "rough around the edges" and wrongly assumed that i was up for quick action and defined myself by man-whore choices. Leaving me thinking that she couldn't be the only one to think that i was the male equivalent of the girl with the tramp stamp on the small of her back.

Normally i would just skip that whole debacle to tell you that i am making plans to not be seen as a slut. I would skip the whole sancho era and just explain why i would be thinking twice before dating a born and raised Utah chica because they (very generally speaking) think that since i wasn't like their prom date mommy and daddy can't know about me.

But i was reading from one of my favorite books and noticed in all of his short stories he didn't hesitate to explain his affect on others their affects on him. I enjoyed that and at the risk of sounding like Kelly Clarkson or Taylor Swift i will start easing you all into my stories. It will be good practice and look at the title of this blog and you'll see why thats a good thing.

SIMPLE BOY

She is a girl and i am a boy. She is five foot something and everything from that inch mark to the floor is making my heart, the most central organ in my body in charge of regulating every output in my body, punch instead of beat.

I met her and my mind, heart, soul, chemical signals or whatever told me to chase this girl. She is a girl and i am a boy so she says yes when i ask her out. I hold about 40-60% of myself back and I get a second date. Because she is a girl and i am a boy, i make supposedly random physical contact with her. Sometimes i look her in the eye when i do, sometimes i do not. It is all for the same effect, preparation.

She is a girl and i am a boy. When she talks i listen, i question and listen again. I subtly keep me to a minimum. I am a boy, she will get what i give of me. But i get what i work for in our conversation, such is the double edge of chivalry. What else would she want from me? I am a boy genuinely interested in a girl, therefore i am a simple boy. She is a girl, this is why she enjoys all the attention she is receiving and why there is a third or fourth date.

She is a girl and i am a boy. Everything about her mattered to me until this exact moment. Now it is, "will she let me kiss her?" Everything about me mattered to her until this exact moment. Now all it is, "is he going to kiss me right now?"

I do not have her in an embrace that we have held for hours even minutes before. It may or may not be in a semi-public area with the possibility of a 3rd party encounter at any moment. We are not on any piece of furniture or in my car.

Everything but this potential kiss will stop mattering when i take that last step to her, place one hand on the small of her back and the fingers of the other weaving through her hair. I will be the last to close my eyes.

She is a girl and i am a boy.