What started off as a small lie, but snowballed into “this is my life now”?
My freshman year of college I was walking around campus when a very friendly looking girl waved at me. I’m awkward, so of course I waved back. The next week, the same thing.
This began the weirdest saga of my life.
For the next two years, we greeted each other as old friends every time we came across the other. She knew my name (somehow?), I never could figure hers out and it was WAY too late to ask. I just pretended I knew who she was and why she knew me.
Finally, I joined the honors program and entered my classes for my thesis. Who should be in this class but mystery girl! I was horrified. I wouldn’t be able to pass it off anymore.
First day of class we are all sitting there chatting and she greets me by name, again. I had finally learned her name from attendance, thank God. Someone asks, finally, “oh, so do you two know each other? Where’d you meet?”
Silence.
I stare at her. She stares at me. Finally she breaks down wailing. “I don’t know! I don’t know, okay, we’ve just been waving at each other for two years and it was too late to ask!”
Shes standing in my wedding next spring as one of my bridesmaids and very best friends.
so at the bar in which I work, there’s an unofficial rule that all of our door staff must have names that start with D or rhyme with ‘doorman’, which has led to me befriending a trio of six foot four men with beards called Doorman Logan, Doorman Drew, and Doorman Dan.
now, let me tell you now that Doorman Dan is the absolute love of my life. I don’t care that he’s a decade older than me and has a fiance. you know when someone is so extraordinary or impossible to define that they’re simply referred to as ‘a character’? that’s Doorman Dan. now, before I get into his personality, let’s describe his appearance. imagine the most stereotypical Scandinavian person ever: tall, white-blond, strong-jawed. now, add a heavy South Walian accent and an orange jumper.
that’s Doorman Dan.
since meeting him last year, I’ve discovered:
he once had a dream that he had a tattoo that said ‘shit happens’ on his left arsecheek, so when he woke up he decided he had to fulfil the prophecy and got it tattooed on his arse by a bloke called Junkie Jeff at 9AM
he forgot to call his girlfriend for three months while he was in the army, and was completely unaware they had broken up until he wished her a happy Christmas and she responded with ‘what the fuck Dan’
accidentally married his army buddy in Vegas for thirty-six hours
he saw someone beating up a guy for being gay, and instead of jumping in and fighting back he decided to get absolutely bollock-naked and stand in front of the homophobe until he got freaked out and ran off
he has a millionare buddy who rings him up once a month for ‘mystery adventures’, one of which has resulted in Doorman Dan no longer being allowed inside any John Lewis shops
he is convinced the love of his life is not his fiancee, but a man named Ned. upon being asked who Ned is, he shrugged and responded with: “I’ll know when I meet him.”
he runs an Instagram account dedicated to his pet rabbits and refuses to let people into the bar unless they follow him
his fiancee booked a wedding venue before he even proposed. “I don’t even know if I’m invited, truth be told.”
when he caught a couple having sex in our loos, he didn’t want to intrude so he just gently knocked on the door and asked if they’d like a snack
he has created his own non-alcoholic cocktail called Doorman’s Sunrise because he feels left out being the only person on the dance floor without a drink when he’s patrolling the bar
I could honestly write a ten-season sitcom about him
I would legit paint it up to have teeth and dangly little legs.
okay but considering that Pokemon Go often shows me suddenly sprinting about 3 blocks away from where I really am and then sprinting back about 9 blocks in the opposite direction and only occasionally getting within 100 feet of where I actually am, I can anticipate one or two problems with this
Same.
Also I get really worried about losing my stuff or being distracted and having it stolen, so while it does look cool as hell I am going to say “no thank you”, personally.
The other day I answered the door to my postman. I was signing for stuff, like you do, when my kid came downstairs with only his underwear and a t-shirt on.
Now, the postman couldn’t see him from the front door, and I scribbled my signature and said, to my son, “You need to put some trousers on.”
My postman, very slowly, looked down at his trouser-clad legs with a mixture of confusion and horror, and then looked back up at me.
When I explained I was talking to my little boy out of his line of sight, he gave a very solemn nod and said: “I thought I’d put trousers on this morning, but suddenly when you said that, I really wasn’t sure.”
Years after this, I still have the same postman. He still always wears trousers, but every time I answer the door, I’m pretty sure we both remember this incident.
Tonight I may have had an encounter with the smoothest human being on earth.
As many of you know I work as an actor in a haunted house. This is a fun job for many reasons, but witnessing people’s reactions to being scared is by far the best. I’m a scare window actor, which means I hide behind a section of the wall that is held up by a latch that I can lift and drop away suddenly, scaring people with both my scream, and the loud sound my window makes upon being dropped. I have a small hole drilled in the wall to look through to see people passing.
The smoothest human being on the planet wore a white hoodie. He came in a group with three other friends. I did not expect to scare him much. After a while you can kind of gauge just by what you can glimpse from your peephole whether someone will be a good scare or not. Men in their 20’s in a mixed group of friends typically do not get scared easily. But this guy was wearing white in my blacklight-equipped hallway, so he had made himself an easy target and I had to take advantage.
I dropped my window precisely when he was in front of it.
He leapt back toward the wall on the other side of my narrow hallway and his drew back his arm like he meant to punch me.
“This is it.” I thought. “I’m finally going to be socked in the face for scaring someone.”
But I was wrong.
His arm kept curling back behind his head. Smoothly, flawlessly, effortlessly he tucked his hand behind his head, leaned back on the wall opposite me, and propped a foot up on the plywood frame of my open window, reclining with ease.
“So, come here often?” He asked.
All of this occurred within the span of a second. Maybe two.
I was shook. I was stunned. I almost broke character.
I shrugged. “Only on the weekends.” I replied with my character voice. His group laughed. He double finger gunned me and walked on.
I will never forget him.
I cannot stress enough how perfect his transition from his fear reaction to his playboy act was. It flowed so naturally.
He is already a legend in my haunt.
Most people have a fight-or-flight instinct. This man has a third option: flirt.
Must have been a bard.
*sees wild animal* daaammn you cute
Someone found Obi-Wan Kenobi in a fuckin’ haunted house.
“the CIA is releasing tens of thousands of files and videos from bin laden’s compound today, except his DVDs of ‘home on the range’ and ‘ice age: dawn of the dinosaurs’ and his copy of final fantasy vii, because those are copyrighted” is not a sentence i ever thought i would type, but 2017 continues to be full of surprises
Steel Phoenix Studios 