Challenge 2: Eric Filipkowski's hometown by Eric

March 4, 2006 9:13 PM Permalink

Though I currently live in Hollywood, the entertainment capital of the world, my rise to fame begins in a much more humble setting: Glastonbury, CT.

Glastonbury is a picturesque burg, located along the banks of the mighty Connecticut River. It began life as a farming town with ample fields of corn, apples and tobacco. Due to a freak set of meteorological circumstances, it is also the only place in the Western Hemisphere capable of growing bananas in a non-tropical environment.

My early years in Glastonbury were idyllic ones; a childhood not unlike the one experienced by Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. In fact, Mark Twain, a resident of Connecticut’s capital city, Hartford, a mere stone’s throw over the river, based all three of those books on his own life, growing up in Glastonbury. I too would swim in the creek (or “crick”, as we called it), trick other boys into whitewashing fences for me and even befriend Negroes.

Not all was peaceful and racially harmonious, though. I once witnessed a Native American man murder another over—

You know what, fuck it. I was supposed to write about my hometown, but the fact is, sometimes life gets in the way. Sometimes love gets in the way.

It is true, I am in love. Not only am I not incapable of it, I am actually in its midst. It has its slimy paws wrapped around my neck and it is choking me to the point of lost consciousness as I masturbate in a Sydney hotel bathroom.

I was in my favorite LA-area hotspot, Planet Hollywood, when I saw her. Normally, I meet most of my women at Gulf War Widow Support Groups or I’ll hire a midget to play my kid and cruise for broads at a Parents Without Partners meeting, but when fate punches you in the nuts, only cowards bend over and take it. So it wasn’t normal. It wasn’t my routine. I live life on the edge and I was ready to take a chance.

She was over by the t-shirt counter, arguing with the clerk because their women’s sizes only went up to 5X. He tried to tell her that she could order the shirt in her size on the website but she wasn’t having any of it. I like a woman who knows what she wants and doesn’t take shit from anyone.

I introduced myself to her and told her she could access the page with my Blackberry and order it right now, if she liked. She released her grip on the clerk’s now-lifeless body and gave me a shy smile.

“That would be delightful,” she said in a husky, yet demure voice, as she looked down at my comparatively puny 6’5” frame. She picked me up like I was a baby and kissed me. “I’m Cheryl, it rhymes with ‘gorilla.’ That’s a joke. Laugh.”

“Yes, ma’am!” I chuckled, though I (rightfully so) feared for my life.

That was 3 days ago and my life has been a blur, ever since. Our first date at the Chili’s in Thousand Oaks (or as I call it, “Spago North”) might have seemed like a disaster to anyone who witnessed it, but to me it was pure bliss.

Of course, the booth wasn’t big enough to accommodate Cheryl’s frame and when she flew into a rage and begin destroying everything in sight, what everyone else might have viewed as “scary” and “violent”, I saw only as child-like innocence run amok.

Cheryl wanted love. And from the moment I saw her, I knew I was going to be the one to give it to her. When she ate those candles in the Burbank Media Center Target, I yearned to put her soul at ease. When I took her to this little-known, local record store I heard of called Tower Records, I cried inside because the loud noises frightened her and made her bellow in that ultra-low frequency that caused those babies’ ears to bleed. When we went for an authentic Chinese dinner at the Panda Express near Universal Studios, I couldn’t blame her for smashing the glass.

If you’re a Chinese restaurant and you don’t want women with Monstrism to get hysterical and break stuff, make sure you’ve got plenty of fucking kung pao chicken on hand to appease their insatiable appetites. Seems obvious to me.

We had planned a fun day at Magic Mountain, re-enacting scenes from our seventh-favorite Chevy Chase movie, “National Lampoon’s Vacation”, but apparently, the security guards had other things in mind: like pepper spray.

A quick note to any other security personnel out there who are thinking of raining on Cheryl’s parade: pepper spray doesn’t work. It only makes her madder. If you like having your neck broken, feel free to spray away, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.

It seems there was just no place Cheryl and I could go where we could be ourselves in peace. Except the bedroom. And that was an extremely painful experience for me. I’m not really sure what’s going on with Cheryl’s genitals, as she always insisted on nearly suffocating me with her homemade Darth Vader helmet while we made love (Hey Cheryl, how about some eye or nose holes! LOL! Just kidding, baby. Love you!), but let me just say this: there are two of them down there. I’m not saying she has a penis, but there’s something keeping her vagina company. And it hurts. A lot. It’s barbed. OK, I’ve said too much.

Anyway, I know my friends out there are going to tell me to be careful. They’re gonna say I’m only going to get hurt. Well, maybe that’s true. My future with Cheryl is uncertain, at best. You’re probably not surprised to find out she has numerous lawsuits pending, warrants outstanding and I genuinely fear for my life on a minute-by-minute basis. But so what? Since when has love been easy?

And I do love Cheryl. That much I know. I love her for who she is, who she could one day be if she sorts out her violence issues and I love her for her soul, which I think she has. I don’t know, I’m pretty sure those are limited to humans only and I’m not really sure what the hell she is.

The point is, love is blind. You can’t tell your heart to stop feeling something so real and so pure and so based on fear. One day, barring my sudden and “accidental” murder at the hands of my beloved, I’m going to marry this girl under the Hollywood Sign. And Ryan Seacrest is going to do the honors, because Cheryl loves him so much. She calls him “Ranin Sekrets” and claps and jumps up and down whenever he’s on TV or the radio.

It’s like I told her, “whatever makes you happy, baby!”

To which she replied, “arrrgh blarghhhhh gaaaaarrrrrrrrrr ME HUNGRY!”

By: Eric | Challenge 02 | March 4, 2006

Comments: