perfidy

Voting on Round 1 is now closed: Johno wins with his freight-train attack of pathetic dorkery abroad. Round 3 between Johno and Geeklethal is now open. See also Round 2.

One might see my invocation of a Funkadelic album cut in the title to this post as an attempt to hedge my bets and have it both ways: Johno - simultaneously dork/not dork. Unfortunately, I am indisputably a dork. A couple friends of mine in Pittsburgh, Helen and Jill (and you would always call them "HelenandJill," like "Hey, I'm Helen and this is my hetero life partner Silent Jill.") had an extensive alternate vocabulary (as if they were twins with their own language) that they would use in general conversation. For example, their word for the process by which you kill a few hours by maybe getting a cup of coffee then dropping in on the bookstore, then maybe heading down to see if anybody you know is at the Murray Avenue Grill, was "[to] der-de-der." As in, "I didn't do much today, just der-de-dered around before coming over here." Perhaps their best and most useful coinage was "The Dorking."

"The Dorking" is to be understood as a temporary condition something like "The Shining" except when you become afflicted with "The Dorking" you don't see dead sisters and rivers of blood. Instead, an otherwise well adjusted person does something incredibly dorky right on cue for a maximum number of people to be witness, preferably with an outcome of social disaster. Unreconstructed dorks are immune to "The Dorking," as to Be Dorked a person has to have developed a sense of social propriety and its attendant sense of shame. Say for example upon going to someone's house for the first time, you look through their CD collection only to find extensive holdings of Alanis Morrisette, Ace of Base and Shania Twain. A regular person might purse their lips and mentally catalog these people as deficient though well-meaning. That same person afflicted with The Dorking might start bitching audibly to his wife about how the producer-Svengali has completely ruined pop music, and why would anyone buy this crap and keep it in their house when those whores Glen Ballard and Mutt Lange already sleep on big piles of money, and what is with people anyway and the puppets that fart out crap music they seem to like? When will people get some damn taste? And then, of course, you turn around to find your former friend and soon-to-be former host standing there with a frozen smile as he or she tries to gauge just how big a dickhead you actually are. A total dork would not notice the frozen smile or the giant bruise on his arm where his wife pinched him numb, and blithely ask the host for a beer; someone afflicted with The Dorking would however have a moment of clarity in which they would have the urge to flee the room forever.

However, the line between Dork and The Dorking is not always clear. Take, for example someone on the way to a party with tons of hot weeeemin and a 50-gallon drum of highly alcoholic punch with the earnest intention of enjoying some time with one of said weeeemin and a good gallon of said punch. If they instead drink their allotted gallon only to spend the entire night shouting in a close friend's ear about Magic:The Gathering cards within easy earshot of many of the aforementioned hot weeeemin, are they a dork, or just afflicted with The Dorking?

Some cases, however, are beyond the pale. The foregoing incidents, though loosely autobiographical, have been modified for illustrative purposes. The following story, however, is true.

In 1995 I took a semester's trip to Cambridge, Enga-lind with two professors from the college I attended. The intention was to live in and study in Cambridge with other students from my school, and do as many cool things as possible within the larger sphere of Europe. While other students took long weekend trips to London, France, Scotland, Ireland, Italy, Switzerland, Germany and Greece, I spent nearly $500 on Magic:The Gathering cards at a Cambridge game shop and chose to forego all the aforementioned trips (save one to Paris) because it was more important to me to try out my flashy new black-blue-white "Xerox" deck in a succession of Magic:The Gathering tournaments held at a Cambridge pub. Besides two days in Paris, the farthest I made it afield was a jaunt to an apartment on the outskirts of Cambridge to hang out with... you guessed it! A bunch of English Magic:The Gathering players! I missed out on a lot of stuff but, I gotta say. That deck of mine kicked hella ass.

Out-dork THAT, GeekLethal.

[wik]
Johno attacked with a classic 1-2 combo, a twofer that includes both gaming dork AND American dork abroad. This combination is potent, no question, and demonstrates that this opponent is serious and committed to this fight.

But any aggressive course of action assumes a level of risk for the attacker. By attacking along 2 axes, my opponent has effectively doubled the battlespace, and given me double the room to maneuver. Instead of trying to thwart both advances, I can concentrate my forces where I think they can prevail: American dork abroad. Here's a little something I call:

Remembrance of Ass Past

The Munich of 1992 was, so far as I was concerned, famous for 4 things: beer, big tents in which to drink beer, robust fraus to bring beer within the tents, and something about Nazis. Well, Nazis with beer.

Three friends and I had gone down Munich way to see one fella’s girlfriend. I don’t remember her name; I just remember her being astonishingly ugly and the rest of us referring to her as “the troll” behind his back and later, in front of him. Which was pretty far off the mark, to be fair, because she wasn’t at all large or scary or smelly. She was quite petite really, and acquainted with enough hygienic practices to pass as human in broader society. So not a troll for all that. More a sort of semi-goblin.

At any rate, we went down there for Oktoberfest and the troll was going to put us up in her flat in the city. Or so we thought. We made a day of partying at the fest and had a blast. That night, we decided we’d had enough when imitating the huge animatronic lion that had been erected near the entrance and mimicked drinking a mug of beer with a deep, growling “Loooowwwwenbrau” every 2 minutes was no longer as funny as it had been the previous 7,000 times. And we’d pretty much thrown up everywhere we cared to, so it was time to pack it in.

But, ol’ trolly didn’t really want us hanging around her flat after all- she wanted to be alone with Ed. She took us to a nearby hotel, a huge modern tower-type place, and introduced Phil and me to these friends of hers: um, whose names I don’t remember either. Turned out they were a couple of nice Scottish lasses, making a Deutschmark or two as chambermaids. Troll left us with them in the hotel lobby, and took Ed back to her lair. I don’t remember what became of our other friend Jose at that point; I believe he was passed out back at troll’s flat ‘cuz he wasn’t with Phil and me.

These chicks were fairly cute, one more so than the other, and they brought us back to their place, just a few subway stops away. As we walked into their apartment, I allowed myself to believe that maybe, just maybe, I’d get some ass. Play my cards right, put out my vibe, game, whatever-sure, this just might be my lucky night, heh heh heh. Then Phil passed out promptly upon arrival, leaving me with two heath honeys and a snowballing sense of greatness to come from the next few hours.

So we sat down to talk, we three, after a few snorts of whatever filthy rotgut they had close at hand: me on a bed, the two girls on kitchen chairs sort of facing me. Then I said something like, “So…two Scotch girls in Munich…” and didn’t get any more out than that. Now, I don’t even remember what I was going to say next. And it wouldn’t have mattered. Turns out they took umbrage with being referred to as “Scotch”- “SCOTCH YA DRINK!!” it was explained, rather too menacingly for my taste.

After that furor, I figured OK, let’s start again. Don’t blow this, this is a Penthouse letter waiting to happen. I asked something about what they missed about Scotland, and within the minute both of them were telling me what a “bloodthirsty bleeding fucking cunt” Margaret Thatcher was, and this person’s a fucking wanker, this one’s a fucking…I don’t know what, they had a town slang they used a lot which, coupled with their thick accents, allowed pretty much only variations of “fuck” to make it to my brain. This tirade lasted roughly 90 minutes.

By that point, I was past believing a Penthouse letter was in my future. I was thinking more about whether if these chicks killed me, it would be in the line of duty and my mom would get the insurance. I was looking toward the door and wondering whether I could make it out before these hags could catch me. Thing is, Phil was shorter than me but thicker, and it would take time to get him into a fireman’s carry and get him out. No way I’d make it out, and I couldn’t just leave him.

To buy time, I opted for the only topic I could think of that might be of interest to these ladies: weaponry. And boy, was it a hit. They wanted to know all about firing machine guns, and how heavy grenades are, and an M16’s recoil, and a thousand other things concerning the minutiae of deadly tools. It wasn’t Penthouse at all; it was somewhere between Soldier of Fortune and the Michelin Guide to Bavaria. With dawn, they rousted Phil and threw us out to get some sleep.

In short, gentle reader, I had two chicks to myself all night, all of us far from home in a foreign city, energetic, lonely, and young. And instead of being the king pimp rock star of the universe, I talked to them about guns all night.