I thought I’d seen it all, I was wrong. I was on the train from Kingston back to Toronto, and the two girls in front of me took the cake. I had my laptop out, and I was watching Lost (it’s a very good show, by the way), trying to enjoy myself and let the trip wrap up as quickly as possible. The problem with watching TV shows with headphones on, is that unlike music, the sound isn’t at a constant volume, you’ve got quieter parts thrown in for dramatic effect, and sometimes long bits of time where not a lot is said, with music, chances are good that it’s all loud all the time, much better for drowning out conversations.

You can see where this is going, I was trying to distract myself, but unable to fully concentrate on the survivors of flight 815 because the two 18ish year old girls in front of me were having a sleepover on the train.

“Oh my god, she thinks she’s so pretty and isn’t, she doesn’t even know how to dress right, she was wearing two solid colours in the same outfit, even after I told her that you can’t do that! She’s so stupid and no one likes her.”

“Like, totally.”

That was the first full sentence I heard, it was amusingly moronic enough for me to mute my show and pay a little more attention to them. I looked through the space between the chairs to get a look at the more talkative of the two. Suffice it to say, she wasn’t good looking enough to talk the way she did.

She was about 30 pounds overweight, she was wearing a ratty denim skirt (and not “stylish ratty”, it was more akin to “welfare ratty”) over top of some black pantyhose with a two layer white shirt. The inner layer of the shirt was some manner of spaghetti string top, the outer was some loose fitting fishnet mesh. Needless to say, she was dressed like shit.

But that’s not all. I mean, it’s pretty dumb of her to be obsessed with fashion yet unable to properly dress herself, but her personal grooming was substandard, as well: It looked like she had personally used a bit too much peroxide on her hair about a month ago, she had split ends everywhere, and her roots looked painfully white trash. If that wasn’t enough, she had some weird skin condition on her back, it was red and flaky (but she was of course still exposing all of this leprosy riddled flesh to the outside world), she was pretty gross.

At any rate, her and her friend continued to spout mindless drivel for about an hour straight – at which point, the unthinkable happened: the train stopped.

The conducter’s voice came over the train PA system: “Attention ladies and gentlemen, we’re stopped for a couple of minutes while the engineer makes a visual inspection of the engine, this is just to ensure that everything is working properly, and we’ll be on our way shortly, thanks for your time” (followed by the same announcement in french).

“Oh my god, it’s a train, what could be going wrong? I mean seriously, you just follow the rails to the station, it’s not like it’s complicated!”

At that point, I had had enough, so I decided to join the conversation:

“Hey there, could you do me a favor and get off the train? I’d like to get home.”

“Excuse me?”

“Well, if it were just your weight, or your ego, the train would be able to pull the weight, but the combination of the two is causing catastrophic mechanical failure.”

“Uh, what did you just say?”

“Well, in truth I just told you you were fat and think too highly of yourself, but let’s be honest here, that’s the least of your problems, I mean, just look at you: You’re a good 30 pounds overweight, and it’s pretty obvious from all the acne around your mouth that it comes from shoveling too much pizza and chips down your gullet.

That’s not your only “appearance issue, either” : you bleached your hair, what, a month ago? Judging by the roots, that is. Why is it that you still smell like peroxide? Have you not washed it since? Oh, and Let’s not forget that your hair has so many split ends it looks like you’re being erased from history like in Back to the Future. Or hey, maybe it was Michael J. Fox who cut your hair, that would explain the style, too.”

“Uh what?!”

“Sorry, I’m not done just yet, I mean don’t get me wrong, it’s pretty funny that you spent 45 minutes “tearing into” some girl from school who you don’t like, especially given how poor a job you did, I guess ripping into other girls isn’t as easy for you as tearing apart a bag of M&Ms. Then again though, I’m sure it feels nice for you to make fun of a girl who doesn’t have to start rumours about herself swallowing just so that boys will notice.

You’ve said nothing for the past 2 hours, yet you haven’t stopped talking, and close as I can figure, you haven’t uttered a single original idea. Close as I can figure, you’re a vapid, disposable, unwanted shell of a girl, and my god what a huge shell it is.

There’s a bathroom at the back of the train, I suggest you use it to scale back on that mars bar you just ate, it would be a good habit for you to develop. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to go back to watching Lost.”

She just stared at me for about 20 seconds. Then, in under a second flat, she broke down crying. It was terrible. Not that I felt bad, I mean it was aesthetically terrible to watch.

She did run to the bathroom though, so maybe she was taking my advice.

You know how even pretty girls keep an ugly, kind of slow friend around to feel better about themselves? They do it so they look and feel better by comparison. Well, guys do it too; case and point is my friend Matt. We share interests and friends, but he’s basically a crappy knockoff version of me, actually I think that’s giving him too much credit. He’s basically a high functioning nerd, he’s not great looking, he’s not brilliant, and he’s really, really naive. I don’t know why I really maintain a friendship with him, but for whatever reason, I do.

Anyway, Matt has a coke problem. Matt also doesn’t have a very good job. I do. So you can imagine where this is going! Long story short, I lent Matt some drug money. I know, it wasn’t exactly the smartest thing to do, but he was desperate, and he actually put together a fairly solid and comprehensive payment plan, leading me to believe that despite him being a glorified junkie, he might actually make good on it.

Oh yeah, crucial point! For all the crap going on in Matt’s life, there is one positive point, which I never understood. He had this girlfriend, Ianna. Pretty cool girl. Frankly she was too good for him, but that didn’t seem to bother her, it’s probably because she had severe self esteem issues and didn’t realize how bad a deal she was getting.

By now you can probably see where this is going. I lent Matt 150 dollars for coke, and he wasn’t paying it back, so I stole his girlfriend. It wasn’t hard, like I said, her lack of any self-esteem made it easy, I just did all the things Matt didn’t do. I talked to her and paid attention, I noticed when she changed her hair or got new clothes, I made her laugh. None of this is rocket science. It only took 3-4 days of MSN and hanging out with her a bit before we were fooling around, and then another 2-3 days of that before she dumped him for me.

I know that when I end it with her, she’ll go back to him, and he’ll accept her gratefully because that’s what he does.

So yeah, Matt hasn’t said anything to me about taking Ianna away from him because he knows how much money he owes me, and he understands that if he pays me back, I’ll break up with her. I would feel like kind of a prick for essentially holding my friend’s girlfriend an emotional hostage so that he pays me back the drug money he borrowed, but let’s be honest here, he’s not exactly innocent in all of this.

As for Ianna, I have to say, it’s an interesting dynamic we have, she’s so loyal and caring, I said I loved her, but more realistically, I love the way she treats me, it means a lot, her and I have been “dating” a month now, and like I said, last night I told her I had cheated on her, and she didn’t end it. So, I can only imagine what the future has in store! Go go low self confidence!

Now, I’m a certified life guard. I’ve been in similar situations before, and saved lives before, so I figured I’d take a look. And if I could help, it would really improve my mood.

I was just about to offer my help in mouth to mouth, when I saw that the woman had cold sores around her mouth.

Fuck.

All over her mouth.

My hand was half way up in the air when I noticed, I pulled it down right away. I just couldn’t do it. I felt pretty bad, but I can’t allow myself to get that disgusting virus. Especially now.

I needed my mouth to be healthy right now, I had just told my girlfriend that I had been cheating on her, and for whatever reason, she didn’t dump me, so it was pretty clear I’d be doing a lot to make it up to her, including lots of oral. If I thought I was in trouble for cheating on her, giving her herpes would make my life pretty unbearable. I couldn’t do that to someone I love.

Enjoy, and please don’t be afraid to leave comments, I’m new to this and have no idea what I’m doing.