“Not unacquainted with distress,” she said, “I have learned to succor the unfortunate.”
I spent the day turning into toast. So much for my vow of absence, but a day spent lounging by the swimming pool, reading old sci-fi and drinking the gift of juice was not a day wasted.
Last night I went to Dustin’s house. I always thought of him as the rich one in high school, probably because of the long private drive leading to his parents’ enormous, well-appointed home. I told him this, because of that problem I have with saying everything that enters my head, and he smiled nervously and showed me his goats. (Pygmies.) We watched this movie called Novacaine, which you think is going to be Steve Martin reprising his dentist role in Little Shop, but no. Best part of this movie? Watching Helena Bonham Carter have sex in a dentist’s chair. Worst part? Watching Steve Martin do the same thing.
He is an old man, Helena. He is an old, old man, Laura Dern.
Hanging with Dustin was nice but strange, I think due to the surroundings. Two reasonably attractive people, alone in a house, watching a movie in semi-darkness — in most unwritten languages, this is how you spell “date,” or at least “cheap sex.” On the other hand, this is Dustin. I knew him when he had braces and I had Cousin It hair. So we both sat sort of awkwardly through the movie with enough distance between us that it could go either way. Periodically he would lunge off the couch with a Mongolian war cry and smash an innocent moth with his bare hands — I think to break the tension. I hope this won’t make things weird at baseball practice. I hope he hasn’t found this URL, too.