Blind Date

By Brian Joynt

In Brian Joynt's hallucinogenic love letter to the horror genre, it all starts with a blind date for hapless college student Jared Krueger, but quickly spirals into a blood-bath of terror and other-worldly madness extremely beyond his control. Full of sly horror movie references, scalpel-edged dialogue, and crude wit, Blind Date is a novel like no other. Experience the insanity right along with our protagonist, who wanted nothing more than a pretty girl, a cheap dinner, and maybe a little something extra...but got so much more.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brian Joynt
• Release date: Mar 12, 2012

Book preview

BLIND DATE

A NOVEL

WRITTEN BY:

BRIAN JOYNT

SMASHWORDS EDITION, COPYRIGHT 2012

License Notes: This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Whole Lotta Rosie

Breaking the Girl

Is She Weird

Breadcrumb Trail

Riders on the Storm

By Demons Be Driven

Magic Bus

Slow Ride

Sabbra Cadabra

Nocturnal Me

Karma Police

Atrocity Exhibition

A Thousand Kisses Deep

Disgustipated

Sludge Factory

Dried Up, Tied Up, and Dead to the World

Under Pressure

Monster Mash

Shake Hands With Beef

Scentless Apprentice

Until It Sleeps

(I Don’t Want To Go To) Chelsea

Knives Out

Forty Six & 2

In Dreams

Man In The Box

About the Author

Autumn arrives

like a shadow

and memory trails behind

like a parade of ghosts.

Left alone

I painfully reconstruct

the worlds I've left behind.

—DAMIEN ECHOLS

Whole Lotta Rosie

It started with a blind date. I knew the girl’s name was Rosie, but that was all I knew. Rick wouldn’t tell me a thing. At first I thought he might be putting me on, maybe setting me up with some fat, femi-Nazi bitch with a rat-tail and a John Wayne tattoo. After all, Rosie was a fat girl name if I ever heard one. Like that AC/DC song. Ain’t exactly pretty, Bon Scott sang, ain’t exactly small. After a few beers my roommate Rick turned into an amateur comedian, so you can imagine I was a little apprehensive when he first told me about it, after classes one day, back in the dorm.

A blind date? I repeated.

Yeah, Rick said. We were smoking cigarettes, blowing the fumes out the window. It was against the rules to smoke in the dorm. We didn’t care. A lot of the time the smoke set off the fire alarm. We didn’t much care about that, either.

How do you know her?

Who?

Rosie, I said. I didn’t even like saying her name, like we were already pals, and that made me uneasy because we weren’t. We weren’t anything.

She’s in one of my classes, Rick said. And she’s a friend of a friend. She’s looking for a date and I said, hey, I got a friend who’s looking for a date, too.

Thanks for caring, pal. But I don’t need a date.

Yes you do, dude. You’re a recluse. All you do is sit in your rocking chair and watch TV. Recluses become serial killers.

I was going to disagree, but he was right. When I wasn’t doing my work-study in the University Center cafeteria, I was up on the third floor of Jackson Hall, in my room, rocking in my portable rocking chair and watching whatever it was that came on TBS from six until we usually went beddie-bye at eleven or so. From nine to eleven we had an agreed Quiet Time, where we could either read or study, but all I ever did was plug the headphones into the TV and study rerunning sitcoms, liking the comfort of all that fake laughter. The confines of the dorm had become my sanctuary.

Rick said, You haven’t done shit since Linda broke up with you.

That was also true. Linda was my ex-girlfriend. We met through Rick, of course, the amateur comedian as well as amateur matchmaker. The best thing about Linda was that she didn’t hesitate when it came to putting out, and I’d definitely gotten my share of her over the year we were together. But it was three months ago, over summer vacation, when she called me up and gave me the audible version of the Dear John letter.

Why? I’d asked her, holding the phone tightly against my ear.

Just because, she said. It’s just…it’s kind of stale, don’t you think? There’s nothing. You’re pretty nice and all. It’s just…I don’t know, you know?

After another minute of stuttering around, she finally hung up, her last statement being that she thought I was a really nice guy and she’d love for us to still be friends. Friends. Can you believe that shit? I must’ve stood there holding the phone for ten minutes or more, staring into outer space.

I kept expecting to feel hurt, or broken-hearted, or something. But I felt nothing. If anything, I felt a weird relief. Relief that I wouldn’t have to spend the sixty bucks a week taking us out to see a predictable movie and eat a boring, overpriced dinner just to get a little head.

Besides, I told myself, it was no big deal. Someone else would come along. I was a college boy, after all. Most college boys left the university with a major in partying and a minor in pussy. Rick was certainly working toward earning his. I told myself I’d just take a little break, rebuild my ego, and wait out for the next girl with the biggest tits to come bobbing down the pike in my direction.

Yet no one came, big tits or otherwise. I wasn’t fat or ugly or a Star Wars nerd—I was actually pretty good-looking (my mom always said so, at least), and I could play the guitar fairly well, which was always a plus when it came to impressing trim. What I didn’t have, however, was that special gift—the magic spark that immediately showed how interesting you were, how clever, how witty, how exciting. You could tell the ones who had it. You could see it in their eyes like a golden shine, a secret knowing that they held the skeleton key to the master lock of all seduction.

Rick had that key. Rick had so much he had enough for both of us, which was why I’d gotten to ride Linda’s ass in the first place. We usually went out on double dates, me and Linda and Rick and his girlfriend-of-the-day. It had occurred to me that maybe, while Rick and I were separated for the summer, the magic he lent me wore off. Maybe it was the lack of Rick’s presence that broke whatever bond Linda and I shared. Rick was some Dark Lord Sauron-created magic ring, and without him, I was nothing more special than one of those hobbits, just your average, stupid-ass hobbit, smoking pipes and wandering the Shire, or whatever the hell it was those things did all day. And if that was so, I didn’t blame him. It was fun starting off. Dating Linda helped pass the time. And, of course, she was a good lay. Worthy enough for shithouse poetry, in fact. For a good time, call Linda.

I thought I was over Linda when the fall semester started back. She was only a malnourished fantasy in the back of my brain, no more real than Sasha Grey beckoning to me from the set of her porno. I sure as hell didn’t think I’d ever see her again. The campus was huge. And I liked it like that, not even being able to remember what her face looked like half the time.

But the problem was, I did see her, on the second day of full classes.

And when I saw her she was holding hands with a short, elfish kid who had a skateboard under his arm and one of those knit hats on his head that only posers and pussies wore. Even worse, he had a wispy, pubic hair mustache. Me, I could grow a Jesus-beard in a week. This kid looked like he borrowed the mustache from someone else—his older brother or somebody.

I was outside when it happened, and I tried to blend in with the crowd and remain invisible. There was no point risking embarrassing myself, having to listen to her introduce me to her new friend, both of us pretending we weren’t really in this awkward situation while trying to get out of it as quickly but kindly as possible.

Only it didn’t go like that. She saw me. And she actually had the balls to talk to me. After all, we were friends. Friends, she’d said. Friends talked to each other, right?

Panic doused me like a Gatorade bath and I couldn’t breathe. Suddenly I was suffocating.

Oh, hi Jared, she said to me. She looked even better than I’d remembered her, with a red bow pulling back her long hair and her lips red from the Blow Pop she’d been sucking. Her tits looked as if they’d grown a couple of letters further into the alphabet. She wasn’t wearing a bra. She must’ve had that breast augmentation she’d always talked about.

The Skateboard Kid had a smirk on his face I didn’t care for. He must have been a foot shorter than Linda, and two feet shorter than me. What did she see in this dwarf? Did she break up with me for him? Surely not. She couldn’t have…

This is my boyfriend, Aiden, she said, wrapping one luscious, tan arm around the pygmy’s waist. Aiden, this is my old friend Jared Krueger. What idiot named their kid Aiden? Someone who wanted their kid to grow up to be queer, that was who. Aiden had the nerve to stick his hand out for me to shake it. And I did, only on instinct. When someone stuck their hand out to you, you shook it, even before you had time to consider it, usually.

He shook hands like a pussy—just how I imagined someone named Aiden would shake hands, his grip as weak and limp as some old man’s soft, flaccid pecker. I wanted to say, here, let’s do that again, and break his dick-skinner off like the Toxic Avenger or somebody would, just rip the fucking thing off, watch blood spew up out of his arm like drain-water from some busted pipe.

Hey, I thought you didn’t care about her? A voice in my head reminded. What are you getting so worked up for? I watched Aiden lean up and kiss her on those glistening red lips. Her tongue was pink; bubblegum sweet. It also glinted with a round metal stud. Everyone said tongue rings were solely for sucking dick—not that I understood that, really. When I got my dick sucked I wanted to feel tongue, not a metal bead. Maybe I’d feel differently if I was part cyborg, or if part of my penis had a robotic attachment. It didn’t, last time I’d checked.

But the voice in my head was right. I didn’t care. He could have pulled out the pencil-eraser he called a cock and started reaming her ass right then and there, and it wouldn’t have made any difference to me. I was a college boy, after all, and they practically majored in pussy, practically got a certificate in it.

I walked off…or started to. Or maybe all I started was thinking about walking off, because the next thing I knew I was seeing the world through a hot red filter of silence, punctuated only by heartbeats. That motherfucker—laying his filthy, limp hands all over my girl, touching her body, touching and caressing what belonged to me. No, I did care. I did care, goddamn it. I’d been kidding myself all along. But not anymore.

I reached out and seized the kid by his collar, jerked him across the sidewalk, and smashed my fist into his elfish face.

There was a sound like a Popsicle-stick splintering. He dropped his skateboard and his knit hat went floating softly to the ground. Ribbons of blood streamed from his nose as he stumbled backwards and tripped to the grass, blood going everywhere. His book bag somehow came open and his papers went streaming off into the wind like little white fairies. It happened in slow motion, too, like it did in the movies. One minute he was smirking in his knit hat, the next he was floating through the air as if on some invisible magic carpet. I was going after him for another taste when a muscular jock came out of nowhere and grabbed me in an inescapable full nelson.

Easy does it, soldier, the jock kept saying over and over again, as if he was the designated referee here to see to it everyone played fair.

And that was the end of my rampage—that one explosive punch. It never went beyond that. After the crowd thinned a little the jock let go of me, and miraculously, I managed to get out of there before campus security came around to poke their noses in it and arrest me. When I left, Linda was kneeling on the ground by Aiden, crying, helping him hold a rag to his nose to sop up the blood flow.

Back at the dorm, I expected the campus police to come knocking. Aiden would be behind them, in the shadows, holding the same bloody rag to his nose, tears drying in his eyes, and when he saw me he’d point and say, That’s him!

Only campus police never came. I guess Aiden realized he had it coming. And I had to give him some credit for that. He took his medicine like a man. Since then, I’d seen neither of them, as if fate brought us together on that big campus for one final showdown, with me getting the last word, and then the three of us were done with each other forever…

Or so I thought then...

But from that point on, my nightly ritual began to take shape. My last class was over at five-thirty, just as the autumn sun was setting, thickening the darkness invoked by the twilight. Rick’s ended at six, but he usually went to the library for a few hours, or to a girl’s dorm to get his pole sucked. That gave me the dorm to myself for a while, and I’d pop a Sasha Grey porno in the DVD player and jerk one out maybe, maybe crack the top on a beer or two, sit back in the rocking chair, and see what the good people at TBS had lined up for me to watch. Maybe Linda’s breakup had changed me after all, deep down, where that kind of shit lingered like Taco Bell food poisoning (the worst kind). But I didn’t like to think about it much. Thinking about it ignited a sullen pain that leached my body into a state of emptiness, I’m ashamed to say. That kind of pain was deep and untreatable. Instead of thinking about it, I liked to think about my beer, and about TBS, and about how good it felt to sit in my rocking chair with my beer and TBS and not think about it.

She’s not a Linda, Rick said, apparently seeing something in my face—the deep, untreatable pain that he had caused to surface.

I don’t know, I said, slurping the foamy cap off a new bottle of beer.

Yes you do. It’s already set up. She’s meeting you in front of the University Center on Friday.

Friday? Suddenly the leg on the rocking chair snapped and I fell to the floor. Beer erupted from the can and spilled down my shirt.

This is an omen! I shouted, getting up. An omen for tragedy! Friday is two days away.

Your fucking chair finally broke, Rick laughed, spilling his own beer. Now you don’t have a choice, do you?

Why in front of the University Center? I asked him. Ironically, that was where my showdown with Linda and Aiden had taken place.

Because that’s where I decided you should meet. She lives in Chelsea Hall, we live in Jackson Hall. The University Center is halfway between both dorms. Where ya’ll go from there is up to you, but I wanted to make it fair starting out.

I nagged him all night to tell me something about her. He didn’t. And it was a long night. I lay in my bed, restless, listening to the black guys playing basketball out in the hall. They never seemed to sleep. They bounced that ball all night.

Finally, about midnight, long after I thought Rick to be asleep, he said,

All right, seriously…she’s not the Stay-Puft marshmallow man. You don’t need to worry.

I surprised myself by sighing a great, pressure-draining sigh of relief, after which I felt like I’d lost 30 pounds. You could trust whatever Rick was saying when he started it off with All right, seriously…—that meant he was through fucking around with you for a while, was sorry, and wanted to put you at ease. And it must’ve worked. Because that was the deciding factor. The next day I told him all right, seriously, I’d go…but only to get him off my case. My nightly routine was satisfying. It worked well as a topical painkiller. I enjoyed it. And I couldn’t find myself too worked up to miss TBS and beer for something that would probably be a disaster.

Don’t worry, Rick said, reading my mind. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll buy you a new rocking chair.

So it was on. Friday night. I had a date.

* * *

Breaking the Girl

The next few days I didn’t sleep so well. I was awake long after Quiet Time and TBS were over, awake in the darkness, listening to the black guys bouncing the basketball out in the hall. I didn’t eat much, either. There was an on-campus Taco Bell where Rick and I sometimes went. Those next few days he went alone. I had that pit-feeling in my stomach, the one you got from nervousness and excitement and anxiety, anxiety of knowing you’d probably fuck up a good thing, because with women I was King Midas in Reverse, whatever I touched turned to shit. What I did do those next few days was watch a lot of TBS (one night there was a Steven Seagal double feature), drink a lot of beer, and fail an important biology test. I just couldn’t think straight. Rosie was all I could think about. What if I already knew her? Not her name, but her face. Maybe I passed her in the hall every day. Maybe she passed me. Maybe she already didn’t like me. Maybe I already didn’t like her. Maybe I should just tell Rick thanks but no thanks, I’ve had some time to think it over but go fuck yourself, thanks for caring, mind your own goddamn business and leave me alone, please.

But then Friday was here, the Big Night. And my chair was broken, not leaving me with many other options. On top of that, TBS was showing a chick-flick. I was a man without a crutch to lean on.

It was four o’clock, and Rick and I had bailed out of our last classes. We were smoking cigarettes out the window of the dorm when he said,

All right. I’ll tell you something about her.

What? I replied, too quickly. I didn’t want to sound too excited. I wanted to come across like the date was just some average daily excuse, like getting up and taking a shit, something you just did, didn’t even think about.

Rick said, She’s cool, but she’s got one problem.

I waited, feeling the anger at his practical joke start to surge up through me like overheating oil in some junked car. She’s kind of a nerd, he said.

A nerd?

Yeah, dude. Well, not really a nerd, just kind of nerdy, I guess. Does that piss you off?

I thought about it. Linda hadn’t been a nerd, just a flake. Maybe a nerd was a good thing.

"As long as she isn’t wearing a Star Wars t-shirt," I said.

"Not a Star Wars nerd. A book nerd. She’s always reading some book, and she makes good grades—that kinda shit."

What’s wrong with that? I read books every day. I’m not a nerd.

Nothing’s wrong with it. But you read fiction, she reads serious stuff.

So? A book’s a book.

I know. I was just telling you to let you know you guys would have something to talk about.

"What, books? Why is she a nerd? Does she play Magic: The Gathering?"

I just told you. She’s on the dean’s list. You know the kind of person I’m talking about. She was probably in the smart-kid class in high school.

I wasn’t.

You could’ve been. You just never tried. You’re too lazy.

So I’m a nerd, too?

No, he said thoughtfully. Nerds, they’re different. They don’t have the decision to make like guys like us do.

What decision?

To either do well or be a fuck-off. Nerds just instantly do well. They don’t see it any other way.

So, what you’re saying is Rosie’s one of those guys we never liked in high school?

For your sake, I hope she’s not a guy.

I thought you knew her? I said, wanting to punch him in the trachea.

I do, he said. But I don’t know.

Well, is she stuck-up or something? Tell me she’s not some stuck-up bitch.

He considered it. No, she’s not stuck up.

Then why the fuck are you telling me this, Rick? Are you trying to get me in a bad mood? This is your stupid idea.

Dude, don’t get so bent out of shape. I was only trying to make a little conversation. Jesus. You’re acting like a little bitchboy, you know that?

I tossed my cigarette out the window. It barely missed hitting some black kid on the head. I shut the window, shutting the chilly October wind out of the room, and turned on the TV.

Shit, I said, watching the preview on TBS. I can’t go tonight. There’s a Chuck Norris movie on later.

You’re going, Rick said, and grabbed the remote.

Defeated, I went to get ready.

In Jackson Hall, we had to shower in a community bathroom. It always stunk like shit and puke, and today was no exception, probably because there was a huge puddle of barf right at the front of the door.

It looked and smelled like pizza-barf, and seeing and smelling it, I almost barfed too, which would have been Taco Bell barf. To make things worse, I almost stepped in it. Fortunately, I saw it in time to jump over it. Sometimes you really hated this place. It was a human zoo most of the time. Only here, there was no one to come around and clean the shit out of the cages. The janitor was a long-haired, semi-retarded burn-out who seemed to work his own hours, running a filthy mop up and down the floor on his good days, a look of complete vacancy ringing from his empty head like a chime from another dimension. Most of the time it was bad, but it was funny too, because it was fun to bitch about, and a funny detail to remember later on, when you got back together with your chums and wanted to bring up some gross story that would make everyone laugh and cut up.

Only today, I wasn’t laughing, because I had to smell it and the odor was so strong I thought it would probably cling to me like the cloud of filth around Pigpen in the Peanuts cartoon, staining me like an anti-perfume.

I shaved in a sink molded with dried droplets of blood from somebody’s bloody nose, then got in the shower, naked except for a pair of rubber flip-flops. One thing you didn’t do was shower in your bare feet. That was like a rule around here, at least to Rick and me. Showering in your bare feet was the same as fucking a pimpled-pussy hooker with your bare dick—just a common sense issue.

The drain was clogged with corn and someone’s lost bar of soap and a black nest of shaved pubic hair, so I made it a quick shower. The water came out in a slow drizzle that felt not unlike someone taking a piss on my head; but it was hot, and therefore, it did the job.

Back in the room, I used extra deodorant to keep myself from sweating everywhere (even though it wouldn’t work) and splashed enough cologne on to thwart out any bathroom smells that wanted to hang on like sinners hanging on to the side of Noah’s Ark.

What’re you gonna wear? Rick asked me.

I didn’t know. Hadn’t even thought about it.

Shit, I said. He put down his magazine, something about Lowrider cars, and said,

Don’t worry, I got you covered.

I borrowed a pair of his khakis and put on a black turtleneck. But the turtleneck looked gay. I didn’t want to look like a queer on my first date, even if it was a fluke, so I took it off and found a black Polo shirt straight out of GQ. That was much better. I gelled my hair, polished my glasses, and when I was done primping, stood in front of the mirror, feeling a little stupid and queer for having spent so much time getting ready, like I was Ryan Seacrest or some other androgynous TV homo.

How do I look? I asked him.

He paused. Well, are you meeting a woman or a man?

Fuck you, bitch. Give me some confidence here.

All right, seriously…you look great, dude. She’ll cream her panties as soon as she sees you coming down the sidewalk.

You think?

He nodded yes. I had a dream about this last night, about the date. You had a blast. You came back here a changed man. You didn’t mention TBS once.

I put on my leather jacket and went back to the mirror. Shit, I did look good. What do you know? I surprised myself. I could still get dressed up. Two solid months of TBS and beer had yet to corrupt me, even though I was wearing Rick’s pants. Maybe they would serve as a representation of his One Ring power and help me seal the deal.

Where are you taking her? Rick asked.

That was one of the things I’d been thinking about non-stop for the past few days. It was always on my mind, like a tiny, nagging wife trapped in my brain casing.

Well, since she’s a nerd, I guess we’ll go to the on-campus movie theatre. No point in leaving campus, wasting gas money, food money, and activity money for a nerd.

Jared, Rick said. "Get over that, dude. Take her out. She’s a nice girl. You’ll have a good time. Tonight you’ll be thanking me. If you even come home tonight. You two might decide to get a hotel room."

Yeah right, I said angrily. I’ll be back tonight. You can bet on it. Nerds don’t like to stay out late.

Rick said, Good luck.

I said, Thanks.

* * *

Is She Weird

It was mid October and cool, the wind full of that foreboding chill, but not yet cold enough to warrant any serious discomfort. The campus was lustrous, a sea of fragile, fiery leaves so deep in some parts you could actually wade into them. The old brick buildings were burnished orange by the falling sun, setting off a menagerie of long, pointed shadows. Thirteen days until Halloween and I was already thinking about what good scary movies TBS might show in their Halloween marathon. You’re pretty pathetic, part of me cried, a big, pathetic loser, sitting in your rocking chair with a beer in a coolee cup, watching TV like a senior citizen, like an old man with Alzheimer’s and a pecker that’s only good for pissing out of.

Fuck you, I said aloud, and actually felt better.

On the walk to the University Center, I somehow started to think about those blind date/matchmaker shows that came on late at night—the ones I sometimes watched when TBS went to infomercials and I was awake and there was nothing else on. They put them on that late for a reason, knowing only the desperate people would be watching them, while the rest of us were out doing the real thing, dating, having fun, getting laid. It was almost like they were mocking you—but the contestants (?) were always made out to look like idiots, so you could think, I’m not that stupid, why can’t I be on this show? And you kept watching, fascinated, engrossed, addicted, wanting to see what silly adventure they got into next. They were all idiots, though, when it came down to it. They weren’t acting. Maybe I was an idiot, too.

I checked my watch—a nice, silver Seiko. Rick had an annual summer job at a jewelry store he worked over the summers, and he got me the watch at his cost. Rick, again lending me his bling.

The low, agonal sun glinted off the quartz face of the watch, its molten fire spilling off pink clouds in the west. It was almost five. I was going to be early.

I considered hopping in my Mustang and flying up to the store for a couple of quick beers. There was a corner store up the street Rick and I would sometimes walk to that had a wide assortment of imported brews.

That’s a great idea, I told myself. A few Icehouse tallboys would sand down my nervous edge. One to take the edge off, and one to reward myself for thinking up such a great idea. So I’d be fashionably late? Big deal. Let her wait. Maybe she’d think I stood her up and go back to her dorm. I needed a drink. Chuck Norris and TBS might pull through after all.

But as soon as I turned in the opposite direction, someone called my name. It was a new voice, one that didn’t call my name often.

Jared Krueger?

I turned back around. For a second, I actually saw the Star Wars t-shirt. It was tie-dyed, with Jar-Jar Binks’s stupid goofy face staring out at me like he and the shirt’s owner shared some hilarious inside joke.

But that was only my imagination. She wasn’t wearing a Star Wars shirt. She wore a conservative gray blouse and jeans. Already, we clashed. She was casual, I was dressed up, or as dressed up as a guy like me was apt to get.

You’re Jared, right? She wasn’t smiling. She said it the same way you’d verify something with the cafeteria lunch lady: That’s macaroni, right? It was said with a total and utter lack of enthusiasm.

Yeah, I said. And you’re Rosie? Already, I sounded stupid. Me Tarzan, you Jane.

"Rose," she corrected.

Sorry, Rick told me Rosie.

She smiled when she heard Rick’s name. Well Rick’s a big kidder. He’s so silly.

He sure is, I said.

You’re nothing like he described, though. She frowned.

How’d he describe me? I still stood there, but I could feel myself sinking slowly. It was as if I was fading away, just disappearing slowly like a ghost in open sunlight. It wasn’t a good feeling. Actually, it was one of the worst you could have.

It’s not important, she said. Forget it. So where did you want to go?

You’re killing me with enthusiasm, you bitch, I wanted to say. Why don’t we just go see the movie? Nothing wrong with the on-campus movie. You could walk there, get in for two bucks a person, and sneak beers in, if you were careful.

The on-campus movie? she asked with an upward turn of her nose. In that instant she looked like a pig. A walking, cartoon pig in a gray sweater, snout turned up to the gilded sky.

Yeah, I replied. Something wrong with that?

Is it still that one with Will Ferrell?

I nodded. It was.

I’ve already seen that. Twice. I thought Rick said you were taking me out?

I sighed. Where did you want to go then?

"You’re the one taking me out. Didn’t you have anything planned?"

Yeah, the campus movie, I said. "But since you’ve already seen it, twice, I guess we can go get something to eat. Unless