Tessa's Blog - 10/5/2011

For all its predictability, from time to time Chatswin exhibits a real knack for surprise. And it shouldn't. It really, really shouldn't. People move here to get away from surprises – muggings, frotteurism, flashmobs. They take comfort in knowing the streets will be safe, the lawns will be watered and the housewives will be "real," which is why my encounter with Ryan Shay is so disturbing. On so many levels.

On the surface, Ryan seems like any other idiot suburban teenager -- he calls his muscles "the gun show" without irony, thinks the current president is, quote, "that dude" (he means Morgan Freeman) and has twice choked on chicken bones someone else already picked clean. No surprises yet. But somewhere slightly north of his rock hard abs and due south of his Neanderthal brain lie the lips of a spectacularly good kisser. Ugh! It's terrible!

How I came by this information isn't germane to the conversation, but please believe me when I tell you that it is true. Extremely true. Gut-wrenchingly so. Imagine, if you will, Marilyn Monroe having a child with Dizzy Gillespie (we'll call him Diz-Mon because we can) who then kissed the lips of God and studied that scene in "From Here to Eternity" from cradle to grave. Diz-Mon might -- might -- equal Ryan’s make out skills.

I don't want to obsess, but it does feel as though the suburbs should have protected me from, not ambushed me with, these events. Maybe this is Chatwin's latest attempt to try to win me over, but it only makes me more determined than ever to resist this wasteland. I shall overcome, and when I do, I will be a far stronger person. Nigh invincible. A paragon for all holycrapheswashingthecarIgottago!