During the holidays I attended a party at Chicago recluse author Clive Javanski’s place. There was a guy there wearing Jesus pants and playing acoustic guitar, but I’m not going to talk about that.
I’m going to talk about the Weird Girl.
I never have expectations when it comes to ladies when Clive hosts a social gathering, which is rare (the last time it happened, he was gone for three hours – turns out he was at Quenchers Saloon). I’ve seen models there, bookish-types, some that look homeless and one that had a penis.
So I’m drinking a Polish Weiss in the kitchen and in walks three girls. One of them was the Weird Girl. She walked up to me and while I was talking to Cookie Roy and introduced herself. I didn’t really understand her name. I asked her to repeat it. It had all sorts of vowels and consonants and all I know is it rhymed with Quasimodo. She said this name was given to her by “a lady who rose from the water.”
I decided to call her “Q” and asked, politely, what her deal was.
Q is from Minnesota and she’s on a journey to wherever “the energy” takes her. She doesn’t know the two girls she walked in with that well, but she’s staying with them over the holidays. Then she’s off to Atlanta, where she knows nobody but was told in a vision to go there. She babbled on about her “mission” and I started to think she was part of a cult but I stopped asking questions because the party was too loud. I started looking her up and down, wondering if her oddness could work to my advantage, as I was in the mood to just make out with someone. She wore a friendly red sweater and a flowing hippie dress. She wasn’t beautiful, but attractive in a culty way. She looked like the girl next door to the girl next door. As I was half-listening she said something about “eight men” but I didn’t know if it was a sexual goal or if she was talking about the baseball film “Eight Men Out.”
I thought maybe she was a Second City actress fucking with me. Just as I was eyeballing over her shoulder, checking out her temporary roommate, a French/Mexican beauty, she said she had to find different energy at the party and shook my hand. While doing so she creepily rubbed my palm with her index finger.
I don’t know why she ignored Roy, who remained standing next to me the entire time. I think she was put off by his Farm & Fleet shirt.
About two hours later Weird Girl did a weird thing. A bunch of people brought food to the party, including someone who supplied a platter of cookies. When Weird Girl was leaving was leaving with her two friends she said she was heading to another holiday party. She asked if she could package up some of those cookies to take to the next party. Clive sorta shrugged and put some in a small container.
“She could’ve asked to take beer, and that actually would have seemed more normal to me,” Clive said. “But fuck it.”
I left shortly after and as I was walking by a nearby bar I thought I recognized a blonde girl having a smoke outside. Sure enough it was Kirsten, a girl I volunteered with in college and briefly dated. She was an evil drunk and it was this same time of year we went out, got in a fight, and broke up. She brought with her that night a gift that was beautifully wrapped in Christmas paper. But we broke up before I could receive the present and never knew what it was.
She saw me pause on the sidewalk and look at her. She put out her cigarette and as she walked back in the bar said, “You’ll never know what that present was and you’re still an asshole.”
Filed under: Essays/Writing, Recluse Author Clive Javanski
