Iraqi Graffiti

Have you ever wondered what Graffiti was like in the days before the plague of gang violence and tagging? I hadn’t ever thought of it, but now I believe that I have found the answer in the walls of anything that can be written on, in the various hell holes I call home. Below are some examples which I found great humor in.

Bus stop in Al Asad. (AA is a large base which has an internal bus system to take marines to and from various parts of it, seeing as we do not all have our own vehicles. The bus stop is a plywood and 2X4 shed built by the Seabees. I spent a little time there. Probably because it is nice and safe)

“Ninja fact 26. Ninja’s don’t like waiting for buses”

“Seabee fact 1001.23: Seabees like drinking beer more than they like working”

“Seabee fact 1001.23A: The only thing Seabees like better than drinking beer is sucking dick”

PortaJohn in MP compound in Fallujah

“Demons begone from my ass. This I command thee”

“Due to KBR policy, all turds longer than 6” must be hand lowered” (KBR is a civilian contractor, whose policies and practices make sense to no one)

PortaJohn next to Engineers compound

“BEWARE OF THE JUS!” Immediately below is a crude picture of who I assume to be Hitler. Are all racists illiterate?

PortaJohn in MEF Compound

“Re-enlistment survey, yes no” The no column has it by about 80 or so.

“Nuke Iraq survey, yes no” Here the yes column has it. Apparently MEF is taking the surveys to where the marines will have the time to take them.

“How to win the hearts and minds? Two to the heart, one to the mind” Apparently suggesting that murder is better than friendship with insurgents.

Outhouse in Ramadi (notorious for the mortars raining down several times daily)

“Mortar explosions help the poo come out”

“Here is the home of those who DIDN’T shit their pants today”

And my favorite, in the camp where I usually stay:

“This is your home. Until I stop making money from my defense investments. Deal with it. Signed: GW Bush”

*For those who are a litte slow, this is a message from Sgt. Biff in Iraq. I am not serving in Iraq currently, as my marine Corps contract expired about a year ago. I did not write this, but I thought is was still damn funny.

The Art of Telling Someone to Eat a Dick

If you haven’t noticed, I tend to tell a lot of people to Eat A Dick. This is not so much a disrespectful remark, but more of a way of saying good-bye. It started several years ago, I think from Biff, who often told us to Eat a Dick when we drunk dialed him at 3 AM as he was trying to sleep. Eventually, telling us to Eat a Dick was not enough and Biff just stopped talking to us altogether and the orders of eating dick ceased for the time being. It picked up again when my roommate worked with some valet parking guy who just told everyone to eat a dick all the time. But that alone got old. We started making little variations like “Eat a Cuban Dick “ or “eat an Asian Rice Dick.” And then it evolved even more until one day one of us signed an email with “Enjoy your Arroz Con Dick and See See See Ya Later!” And so a tradition began and now every email exchanged between me and my friends ends with telling them to eat some well known dish, except that dish must include the word “dick.”

Now it is not so easy as one would assume to create interesting meals with Dick. It has to sound funny or else it just comes off as forced and trite. For instance, you would not say “Go have some Spaghetti with Dick Sauce” since it really would encompass a whole genre of food rather than one specific item. Likewise, you cannot say “Eat a Mongolian Beef Dick” since you would still be telling someone to Eat a Dick, and just modifying it with an entrée. (You could say Eat a Mongolian Dick, but that could also imply fallating a guy form Mongolia, which is really not the intent) No, the Dick must be substituted for whatever meat, vegetable or grain is used as the base for the entrée. For instance, I might tell a friend of mine to “enjoy some Dick Au Poivre,” or “Why don’t you much on some crackers and dick pate?” Here are a few commonly used dishes that my friends and I like to tell each other to eat:

Dick Confit

Dick Kiev

Dick Au Jus

Arroz con Dick

Lemon Pepper Crusted Dick

Beer Battered Dick Rings

It also works for desserts:

Dick Suzette

Dick Du chocolate

Dicks Foster

Triple Layer Decadence Dick

Or Beverages:

Dick Con Leche

Dick Collins

Dick on the Rocks

But this expression can be modified to insult someone’s ethnicity as well. Which I find particularly fun. For example:

Asian:

“Hey Seuc, go eat a Moo Goo Gai Dick!”

Black:

“Johnson, go home and finish your collared dick and watermelon”

Cuban:

“How about you go down to Versailles and order yourself a nice big plate of Dick Vieja?”

Japanese:

“Listen, Suki, how about you sit on the floor, drink some sake, and eat some dick tempura?”

Jewish:

“Go home and eat some Gefilte Dick?”

Italian:

“Hey Tony, I hear your mom makes some great Dick Pizzaiola”

Mexican:

“Olale, homes, have some rice and refried dick”

Irish:

“You Graig, I bet you could go for a Guinness and Shepard’s Dick right about now, couldn’t you?”

British:

“How ‘bout you eat some Dick and Chips?”

French:

“Tonight you will be eating brie and Foie Dick, Monsieur.”

Greek/Afghan:

“Dick Kebab, anyone?”

Jamaican:

“Eat some oxtail and curry dick”

Indian:

“You want to shoplift in my store? Eat a Tandoori Dick!”

It really can go on and on. So next time one of your friends, or even someone you don't like, pisses you off, or you need a clever way to end an email, tell them to eat some Filet of Dick with a Red Wine Reduction. They may look at you funny, but eventually it will catch on, and you may be noted as the trendsetter that you so strive to be. Just make sure you give credit where credit is due. When I see Brad Pitt saying this in a movie, I will know I have left my legacy.

Don't Be That Guy Volume I - The Sober Sexual Predator

It's 3:00 AM. Or 1:00 AM or 2:00 AM or maybe even Midnight if you live in Arizona. The point is it is an hour until last call and you are blitzed and so are your friends and you are either looking for something to take home or for the nearest garbage can. And maybe you confuse one for the other, I don’t know. You have been steady drinking ever since you took your last bite of dinner and would be lucky to remember your middle name. Maybe you are going to hook up, maybe you aren't, but it doesn't really matter; you’re sloshed like a fat girl on Valentines Day and don't really care. But as you look around the room, you spot him, leering in the corner with what appears to be a gin and tonic: The Sober Sexual Predator.

Now there are some guys out there who go out and don't drink for somewhat excusable reasons, if there is such a thing. Maybe he is the designated driver (although I have been hard pressed to find a group of people who hold fast to this rule) or maybe he is a Mormon or devout Muslim or going through rehab. While I pity these guys and the fun they are missing out on, their reasons for remaining sober are, at least, somewhat upstanding. Unfortunately most boys still at the bar at whoring hour are choosing not to drink for much more sinister reasons. What are they doing? Sitting in the corner, sucking on a soda water with lime disguised as a cocktail, and waiting for the girls to get drunk. And then pouncing.

The Sober Sexual Predator goes out with his "drinking" buddies, but instead of drinking he opts for a non-alholic drink, cleverly disguised as booze, and observes women. Keeping his wits about him, he knows exactly what to do and who to target. Once he finds the girl who has put away enough vodka to kill a baby elephant and appears to have little if any self esteem, he approaches her, buys her one more shot to push her over the edge, isolates her from her friends, and takes her home. Since he is “sober” and can get her home “safe.” What happens after that is usually a sexual encounter that the girls chooses to forget, and the SSP will grossly exaggerate to his friends who were too drunk to remember him leaving. The worst part is that he typically thinks he is a better person than the sot at the end of the bar who has been French kissing a Jack and Coke all night. Sorry, SSP, it is you, you sick fuck, who is the social pariah. Because while a Dean Martin Drink-Alike may go around the bar in a stupor, and may very well make inappropriate advances towards women, he is at worst laughed off as a harmless drunk and all is forgotten. You, on the other hand, are one step away from being put in “special population.”

Have I slept with some girls that were just as likely to vomit on me as sleep with me? Of course. But you know what, sicko? I was just as drunk as they were. If not more so. But you, on the other hand, are staying at a bar for the express purpose of finding a woman too drunk to tell you no. Shame on you. And shame on you again for pulling this "holier-than-thou" bullshit on your drunken friends the next day as you brag about your borderline illegal conquest. You come home and tell us we are wrong for drinking so much and that maybe if we'd drank less we would have gotten some? Fuck. You. Asshole.

Listen, slimeball, unlike you I do not go to a bar to find girls to sleep with. If they are there, fine, but my main mission is to get as drunk as humanly possible. And unlike you girls find me attractive without being in a mind-altered state. You, sir, are beyond socially unacceptable for going out to a drinking establishment with the sole objective of taking advantage of an intoxicated female. You're just a fucking joke.

The moral of this story? When you go to a bar, drink. You look much less shady and are probably a more upstanding indiviual. Drinking in a bar is not a bad thing, since that's pretty much what bars were created for. But staying sober in order to score some mentally incapacitated trim? That’s just sick. You, sir, are a borderline sociopath and have no place in my social circle. So go up to the bar, do a few shots of 151, and talk to me when you can't talk clearly. And for the love of God leave the girls alone. If they don't like you sober, they're never going to like you drunk.

USMC Does Not Stand for U Steal My Clothes

Girls, please educate me about something: Why is it that every time you spend the night in a strange, or sometimes not-so-strange guy’s house, apartment, dorm room, or cardboard box you feel it necessary to take with you some article of their clothing? And why, when you decide you need such a souvenir, is it always, without exception, one of my Marine Corps T-shirts?

Now, if you frat boys, or former frat boys, out there think that girls stealing your fraternity letters to proudly display to the girls back on Floor 5 of the freshmen dorm is bad, let me hip you to what I believe to be the Holy Grail of Sex Souvenirs: The USMC T-Shirt. Over my life I have purchased or otherwise “acquired” no less than 13 Marine Corps T-Shirts in one form or another. And do you know how many I have left today? 2. That’s right, 2. And none got lost, none were inadvertently donated by a moronic real estate agent (like all my uniforms) and none mysteriously flew off the bow of a fishing boat. Do you know where they all are? Probably being pulled out of an old clothes box by a current husband or boyfriend who is saying “Where the FUCK did you get this??!!!”

The first time it happened I thought it was sort of cute: The girl wanted to brag to her friends that she had spent the night with a Marine. How sweet. I’m honored. Then it happened again, and then I started to notice that whenever I pointed a girl to my T-Shirt drawer for Walk of Shame attire, they were somehow magnetically drawn to any shirt with the word “Marine” on it. I remember one girl putting on a shirt that said “29 Palms Iron House” and I began to politely suggest she wear another one since “That one may be too big.” “No I like this one,” she told me, and began to gather her things to leave. “You’ve never even fucking been to 29 Palms? Do you know how bad that place sucks? It’s like going outside on the hottest day of the year and blowing a hairdryer in your face And then throwing sand in that hairdryer. You don’t rate wearing that, you don’t even get it!.” Like most people, she just ignored my rant, smiled demurely and asked me for a ride home. What was I going to do, rip it off of her?

One girl I was dating I forbid to wear my grey USMC shirt with the letters in black block across the front. That one was sacred and I could not risk it becoming a fuck trophy. So what did she do? One day while I left for work or class or some shit, she went in my drawer, took it out, put it in her purse and I never saw it again. And she only admitted to me that she took it when I ran into her 5 years later.

Why is this girls? Would it be so hard to take my “Race for The Cure 2001” shirt? Or the one from the 1999 Micron PC Bowl? Or anything that says Von Dutch? I know Marines are known worldwide for our ravenous sexual appetites and larger-than-average apparatus, but is it really necessary to steal our clothes to prove you got your brains fucked out? Can’t you just relay the story of how some Lance Corporal on shore leave gave it to you the best of your life and let it go? Seriously. Do you ever consider that someone may ask you if you served in the Corps? What’s your response going to be then? “No, but I fucked one once and stole his clothes?” Yeah, that makes you look classy. I like those shirts, I wear them with pride. Dare I say they get me laid form time to time. I have about 50 T-Shirts in my dresser, it is not necessary for you to take one of the few, the proud, the Marine T-Shirts. Stop stealing my shit. I went through 3 months of Hell to earn the right to wear that stuff. You only went through about eleven minutes.

Hot Judge, Cell Phone Etiquette, and Kickball on The Front Page

My deepest sarcastic apologies to anyone out there who has missed my ranting and raving over the weekend. Really I am sorry. The goddamn sun finally came out and I decided my tan was more important than my blog this weekend. So all of you jackasses who call me a bog addict, remember that tanorexia was my first disorder, and therefore will always supersede any later ones. I have some good shit lined up for this week, but I had a lot of shit I wanted to get off my chest before I continue. If you don’t like it, I guess that’s one more day you are going to have to go without my priceless insight.

1.) There is this judge who lives across the street from a couple of my friends. She has like nine of her signs out front for her re-election and I swear, judging by the signs, she is the HOTTEST FREAKING JUDGE EVER. Bronwyn Catherine Miller may soon replace Judge Jules and Judge Julie of Playboy’s “Sex Court” fame as my favorite judge alive. Apparently she presides at the South Dade Justice Center, which is where any litigation brought on by myself would take place, so this really works out perfectly. Awesome. My next step is to mull over the various people I could conceivably sue just to get some face time. Perhaps those guys I got in the bar fight with last month. I think I have some permanent vision loss. Now, would Judge Miller be turning any heads at Prive on a Friday night? No. But I would wager she is the best looking non-defendant at the SDJC on any given day. Although those traffic court prosecutors are not bad either….

2.) Do not ever talk on your cell phone around me, ever. Unless it is a critical matter or something pertaining to whatever activity you or I are participating in, any other calls can wait. I don’t do it to you, don’t fucking do it to me. You want to catch up with your second cousin in Boise? That’s what your bedroom is for. Checking in with your girlfriend/boyfriend? It can wait for a car-ride. Work-related call? If it’s not during business hours and you are not a drug-dealer, pimp, or on-call neurosurgeon, it can wait. Trust me, it can. It is just plain rude and I am not the only person who doesn’t like listening to other people’s cell phone conversations. Especially when you are sitting right next to them and have nothing else to do. Unless the person on the other end of the line is dying, they’ll be there when you get home. So show some goddmaned courtesy and wait until you are alone to call them back. Ever notice how my phone often rings when we hang out but I rarely if ever pick it up? Exactly. Take the goddamned hint.

3.) On a similar note, to the nine or ten of you who called me this weekend and I did not return your calls: Do not take it personally. Sometimes I really don’t feel like “catching up” with anyone, nor do I want to listen to you drunk at a Pearl Jam concert. I am not being a dick, you are still my friends. But sometimes people, and especially guys and especially me, don’t particularly feel like having conversations with anyone that are not immediately relevant. I am doing fine. I hope you are well. Eat a Honey Glazed Maple Barbecue Dick.

4.) Strippers should no longer be allowed to wear glitter. Ever.

5.) If you thought this Kickball thing I’m doing was unusual, think again. Those of you who bothered to look at the front page of the Miami Herald may have noticed a little article on the bottom of Page One about our Kickball league. The picture was taken about five feet from where I was standing, our team even gets a small mention, and they give a nice explanation of how “Flip Cup” is played. If mine was not clear enough. Though you will undoubtedly be smarter for not having read that particular section.

There. All done. The proverbial blog-shit has been taken and now we can continue. Tomorrow.

As if I Needed Another Reason to Despise Florida State

We take our beer pong pretty goddamned seriously. Which is why I did not especially appreciate a group of Trailerhassee Trash attempting to take over my Green-and-Orange “U” emblazoned Beer Pong table with their little drinking game called “I’m a Raging Flaming Queen.” Some of you may know it as Flip Cup.

Flip cup, for those who didn’t go to college, is a sort of relay-race drinking game where teams line up on opposite sides of a table. One person on each team chugs a beer then attempts to flip their now-drained cup over once they are finished. Once they have completed this task, the chugging-and-flipping responsibilities are passed to the next person on the team until the entire team is done. It really requires no discernable skill other than having a wrist limp enough to flip a plastic cup upside-down, and has absolutely no place in a fine drinking establishment like Tavern in The Grove. A frat party, maybe. A football tailgate, okay. But definitely not in a bar. Though I suppose Florida State has always lagged far behind Miami in both athletics and academics, so it would reason that they would shun the coordination, strategy, stamina and mental toughness required for Beer Pong in favor of this relay race for spaz’s and retards.

My roommate and I took over the Beer Pong table from some idiots playing 10 Cup Pong in a crowded bar (VERY inconsiderate) and won another three games in a row. As we basked in the glory of yet another Pong conquest, we were approached by a trio of blondes that more or less made the Cowgirls look like the three little pigs. I will give one thing to Florida State; they do have some unbelievable women. Unbelievable looking, and unbelievably stupid. One of these blow-up-dolls with a pulse was so naive as to inform me that it was now time to play Flip Cup, which I found rather odd since we had just run the table and, by any bar rules, had the right to determine what would be played. I guess Miss Trailer Park 2006 failed to realize that a 26-year-old local is a little bit different that a 20-year-old frat boy playing pong at the TKE house in Tally. But she quickly learned.

One thing I love about myself is that I have the innate ability to tell a drop-dead gorgeous woman to fuck off and shut her cock-holster when I think she is out of line. Actually, I rather enjoy it. There is really no better feeling than saying "no" to someone who always hears "yes." So this solid 9 and a half and her equally as nubile friends are trying to move in on my pong table after I just won 3 games in a row? Not in my Tavern, bitch.

"If you wanna play us a Beer Pong, go to the bar, buy yourself a pitcher, and we can play. Otherwise get off the table and give someone else a chance.” Stunned that her appearance did not immediately force me to give in, she tried another tactic. "No, here's how it's gonna go," she told me, now flanked by a couple more knockout friends and a few dudes who were obviously trying to use flip-cup as a prelude to flip-skirt. "We're gonna come on the table and play flip cup, and you're gonna leave." I looked her dead in her baby-blue eyes and said "No, sweetie. I'm sure you think you're cute and that we're just gonna up and leave because you want us to. But it doesn’t work like that in this bar. We play pong on this table, not faggy-cup or whatever it is you play in Tally. So you can go stand over there and wait your turn and hope we lose, or you can shut the fuck up and go home."

So she had her dudes play us for rights to the table, since they apparently had not developed the ability to tell a hot girl “No.” And we dispatched them quickly as well. Just to drive home our point, we played a couple from FSU and beat them in four turns. Which made the bleached-blonde from Sarasota who kept showing us her ass-crack as she tried to distract us from making the One Cup ask us "Wow, you guys looked like you would suck. You're pretty damn good. Where do you go to school?" I smiled. I still look young enough to be in college. Or at least I do after a night of beer-pong in a dark bar. "Thanks," I told her, "We don't go to school. We go here. Beer Pong is all we've got." Fuck you, Florida State. Go home, play your Flippy Cup, and I’ll see your sorry asses on Labor Day.

Fidelis Must Be Latin for "Bragging About Sex"

Jarhead is one of the few movies I have enjoyed vastly more than the book. And no, I am not some Jake Gyllenhaal-loving homo, nor do I hate on Tony Swofford for being a Marine who can write who actually did something with his talent. No, the reason I like the movie so much better than the book is that it left out all the useless shit Swofford threw in that was completely irrelevant to the Gulf War story. And by irrelevant shit, I mean irrelevant Sex Stories.

Swofford, like so many US Marines, finds it necessary to work a sexual anecdote into every otherwise asexual story. Sadly, he is far from the exception. During my time in the Corps, I noticed that most Marines were wholly incapable of carrying on a conversation without including some form of sexual braggartry. And with these anecdotes inevitably came a lengthy physical description of how drop-dead hot the girl was, since we all know Marines have such high, high standards. For some reason Marines can't jut say "I was dating this girl," or "I slept with this chick." They will instead will phrase it more like "I was dating the smoldering Brazilian model" or "I was fucking this girl for like nine hours and she asked for it in the ass." Tasteless, truly tasteless.

After a few years of swapping Fuck Tales, I began to realize that 90% of them were grossly exaggerated or bullshit. And that anybody getting that much ass was not fucking 9's and 10's. It began to get extremely irritating. It is one thing to relay a tale of a sexual encounter, I guess among guys those sorts of thing come up. It is quite another for me to say, "Hey, Suarez, can you hand me that 3/8 socket wrench" and have Suarez go, "Yeah. Man, this thing is about the same size as the vibrator I was using on this girl last week. Man, she was sooo smoking hot." And that is pretty close to a real conversation I once had while replacing a radiator.

My mom once said that all men are like this. But having spent considerable time around Marines and civilians, I can safely say Marines are 100 times worse. Here is my theory as to why this is: Marines have a LOT of time on their hands, both in peacetime and in war, so the common subject of sex often comes up. Marines are intuitively alpha-males and are constantly trying to one-up each other due to the macho image of the Corps. So the natural progression of "Who fucked a hotter chick" or "Who partook in the more depraved sex act" is to be expected. The stories are almost always either made-up or exaggerated, so Devil Dogs have to start inventing shit to look like the bigger stud in front of other Marines. Also, Marines are, for the most part pretty fucking stupid, and the notion of tact and etiquette when discussing sex is often lost on guys with an IQ of 38. Lastly, Marines do not adapt well to the civilian world. So when put back out into society, they may well find stories of banging a silicone-enhanced stripper to be normal bar chat with a group of fellow mortgage brokers at Happy Hour, when in fact their cohorts are usually thinking "What a braggart asshole."

I make a concerted effort to not brag about sexual conquests too much. An occasional story is okay, but you will never hear me talking about how smoking hot some girl I slept with was, or get into too much detail about what we did. I find it truly tasteless and irrelevant and, to me at least, bragging makes me lose respect for you rather than gain it. Like JoPa once said "Act like you've been there before." So while there are many positive traits I have retained from my time in the Marines, excessive bragging about sexual conquest is certainly not one of them. That is, of course, unless you ask.

West of I-95

In my first-ever post, which I think about nine of you have read, I talked a little about what life is like in Dade County. Not “Miami,” mind you, but Dade County. I am not going to get redundant here as I made this point very clear in my opening post, but the idea all of you non-Miamians have about “Miami” in your head, and what is, in real life, Dade County, are totally different. Well at least they are if you venture west of I-95.

East of the Interstate is South Beach. Also contained there are Bal Harbour, Brickell, Downtown and just about every other part of the city the Dade County Board of Tourism and CSI want you to see. But none of that is really Miami. Sure, it may be the city you see on TV or in rap videos, but it is about as much Miami as The Strip is Las Vegas. I had a conversation with a girl who had moved to Dade from some shithole in the Midwest or Rocky Mountains or something, and she said she absolutely loved it here. Shocked that a year-relocated white person would still be touting the virtues of our fair city, I asked where she lived, and she told me somewhere in the Beach. Apparently she rarely if ever ventured West of I-95. Well, OF COURSE you love Miami, sweetheart, you don’t fucking live there. You live on the Travel Channel.

Are there life-long residents who live out there? Sure. Are there people from West of 95 who prefer to live east because it’s nicer? Of course. But I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about the transplants who claim to have moved to Miami but are really living in our version of Disneyland. They think Miami is full of beautiful models and sandy beaches and charming art-deco apartment buildings when, in fact, it is really more full of slightly-overweight Hispanic girls with back tattoos, man-made lakes and track homes. But they wouldn’t know that if they’ve never driven on the Turnpike.

West of I-95 is Dade County’s version of Flyover country. Aptly named, since most people who come here fly over it on approach but never set foot there except for their trip to the Rental Car counter. It is flat and ugly and where the bulk of our population lives. While it gets no real media attention, it is the home of large, influential numbers of people that are largely ignored when Hollywood comes to town. It is the blue-collar Cubans, the blacks, middle-class Hispanic families and what’s left of White Dade. It is the people that make this city what it is, both good and bad. It is Miami’s heartland and it’s the Miami nobody ever sees. If the words “Palmetto Expressway” don’t immediately send you into a fit of crying rage, you don’t really live here. If you can go a whole day without being forced to speak Spanish, you don’t really live here. If you’ve never sat on US-1 and thought “Would it have been so fucking hard to extend 95 to Homestead?” you haven’t really lived here.

I do not claim to be some hardened local, becasue like many who live here I too am a transplant. But what I am not is a permanent tourist. What I am not is someone who came down here for the weather and the beaches and refuses to leave my little tropical paradise bubble. If you have never lived in a place that did not end in Beach, or Coral Gables, you get no Dade cred. You’re just a step above a snowbird and 2 steps above a tourist. Before you go off touting the greatness of Greater Miami and The Beaches, think about where you live and what you do. If you don’t go west of I-95, you don’t really live in Miami, you live in a fantasy world.

I am a Baby Blue Saturn

Just south of Gainesville, an historic moment in my life was reached on Monday afternoon. With Cliff behind the wheel, my trusty Baby Blue 2002 Saturn turned 100,000 miles old, and kept on purring all the way to Miami. Some may say “Christ, 100,000 in four years! You’re running cocaine to Seattle, aren’t you?” but, sadly, it is hardly that interesting. Moving to California and back was part of it, living 58 miles away form a girlfriend for a year was another. The point is my car has seen a lot of places and stood up extremely well despite my constant abuse.

I do not slow down for speed bumps. Ever. My idea of maintenance is an oil change every 3000 miles and fixing whatever breaks. Radiator flush? Injector cleaning? What the fuck is that? And I wonder why my car has all the pickup of a golf cart. The brakes are still courtesy of that illegal immigrant who kept my ex-girlfriend in the champagne room for two hours at the Crazy Horse. Seeing as how we broke up in 2004, this makes for some interesting noises. The right rear window is pulled out from the frame, since some crackhead in the Grove decided he wanted my new Razr phone a year ago and considerately managed to acquire it without breaking any glass. One year and couple hundred rainy days later, it is still pulled out from the frame and I think the molds are starting to form their own government. Thank god for Fabreeze and scented oils. Suffice to say, my car has treated me very well, despite my wholehearted neglect.

I love the fact that I drive a Saturn. It makes a statement without making a statement. Some of you may say “Yeah. It states that I am a broke ass who can’t afford anything better than a four-year-old economy car,” but I think it goes deeper than that. It says, “I really don’t feel like I need to impress you with anything other than myself.” It speaks of confidence, and not feeling a need to overcompensate for other shortcomings. It says I am proud of who I am and where I am in life, and if you don’t like it you are not my kind of person. It says that I see a car as a way to get form one place to another and not as a reflection on me as a person.

I often slam my Saturn keys down on a bar to drive this point home. This is part satire on jackasses who do it with Porsche keys, and part my way of letting a girl know that I am not going to try and pretend to be something I’m not in order to make her like me. Because you can’t lease looks, personality, or a sense of humor. My last girlfriend, a bartender, said that when I did that it was the moment she knew she liked me. She also drove a Saturn and was of much the same mindset. Again, I think by letting a girl know straight off that I am not going to try and impress her with material things it sends the right message. And you say I’m going about it all wrong.

My Saturn, when it is clean, is Baby Blue. I selected this color because I thought it matched my eyes. My sister found this endlessly entertaining for some reason, which I never understood until one of her friends from Costa Mesa (and leave it to an Orange County girl to point this out) explained that complimentary eye color does not make you look hot in a $14,000 car. “You know why it’s funny?” she told me, “Because if you are talking to a girl out of the window of an ’02 Saturn, you’ve already lost. No girl is gonna say ‘So what if he drives a lame car. Did you see those penetrating blue eyes?’” Point taken, but it still doesn’t show dirt and is my favorite shade of blue.

While I keep my apartment and myself immaculately clean, my car is the great exception. I figure since I am often the only one there, who cares? The Saturn in registered in Washington State, although it has spent a total of about 36 hours in said location. This has more to do with outstanding tickets and a dislike of Dade County DMV’s than it does with any attachment to the Evergreen State. Although the powder blue Mount Rainier plate does match the car very nicely. There is a faded "Semper Fi" sticker on the window, which shows how long it's been since I was actually in the Corps, along with parking decals from two different condo complexes. All of these things are what make my car my car. It may not be glamorous, it may not be sexy, hell, it may not even be able to go much over 60 miles an hour without violently shaking. But it’s mine and I love it. And if you can’t love it back, then you’re not the kind of person I’d want to be around anyway.