Charlie is useless Boogaloo Couch Slug. He howls like a wounded toddler at the suggestion that the empty bag of Cheetos belongs in the trash. Then he’ll petulantly ask you to do that for him. The empty Chinese Takeout containers? Ain’t there people for that?
Charlie the Boogaloo Couch Slug occupies space in this blog because he befriended Inger’s parents. The boy inveigled his way into house sitting and being a roommate to Inger. Mom thought he was a perfect ten. This meant that for Inger, Charlie was a perfect zero. I get it that Inger would rather have this couch slug disappear into some forgotten depth of my imagination.
The World Ended, Not
Charlie is forgettable. He’s one of many business school graduates who completed the punch list of items one does as a desirable future husband and career functionary in some cubicle at KPMG. Charlie comes to this blog as a couch slug who slimed Inger’s basement. He was invited in by Inger’s parents because they thought she’d like him, maybe marry him and settle into hausfrau bliss. They thought wrong.
In front of Mom and Dad he’s the perfect boy. Pleated khakis, Florsheim Oxfords, Phi Beta socks, Land’s End Oxford shirt, boxers, not briefs, and wife beaters. Axe body spray because his Mom likes it. Natural orange hair, blue eyes, freckles, chubby, and wreaking of Old Virginia money. It’s a beard he wears to keep Mom & Dad at bay.
The rest of the time he’s in an electric boogaloo t-shirt, pajama pants, and dear foam slippers. His living space is a shrine to empty Chinese takeout containers. Front and center is a wet dream gaming setup consisting of 9 32″ monitors hung from an Ergotron stand, an Alienware Aurora PC worth three months pay for me, Razor keyboard and mouse and Logitech G560 speakers. It’s good to be rich.
Chicken Fried Steak
Here is my beef with Charlie. He has no opinion. Actually, he has your opinion until your opinion is something he disagrees with. Then he gets this face like he’s shit his pants. And his normal baritone shifts up to right where the vocal break is. So he sounds like a prepubescent tweenie struggling to sound grown. Suddenly he is full of opinions on what you need to do so that he can be happy.
Also, Charlie snores–Boogaloo Couch Slug snores. I made the mistake of letting him crash on my couch this summer. Great bellowing, sleep apnea snores filled my night. I spent too many homeless nights sharing a church social hall with 39 other guys in an unconscious chorus of elephant seal snores to be OK with this.
Stop Smiling
Next, Charlie is melancholy. He’s an Eeyore. Everything is OK until it isn’t. And it mostly isn’t OK. The sun is out and it’s too hot. It’s cloudy and he’s worried about the rain. It’s raining and I have to listen to him talk about a tropical storm somewhere in the Atlantic that is going to wipe out D.C. and cause Mama Pelosi to be queen—the worst dystopian nightmare ever.
I can’t do Charlie. Charlie the Boogaloo Couch Slug is like having whiskey in the house for a recovering drunk. His social chameleon thing scratches an itch to be contrary just to get a rise out of him. I have to fight urges to slap him silly so he’ll have an opinion of his own.
You can disagree with me. I like it when someone believes in their opinion enough to argue with me. Charlie weasels about until he figures out if you are red or blue and then changes his skin to match. He does this with stupid stuff like picking from a bbq menu. On politics, he has the opinion of whatever headline is on breitbart.com. Or whatever he thinks will ingratiate himself to you. Religion? He was raised Synanon, so there is that.
Free Will is Scary
IMHO, Charlie has a few major malfunctions. The first is his presumption that he does not have free will. He has no agency, no ability to act in his own self-interest. So he molders on a couch of his choosing and binge-watches YouTube videos of other guys winning at some random VRPG/D&D thing. Next, he is a victim of the evil Maoists who won’t let him shine. Yeah, let that rattle around your stomach for a bit. Last is his morose character. One more, he’s more choleric than melancholy. Oh, and the Walking Dead was a documentary, facts.
I’ve started to describe Charlie’s safe space. He built the first one in the basement of Inger’s Stuart Street house. If you are a gamer you would kill to own his setup. The equipment was kept pristine. The rest of the living space was a shit-hole.
He dug his current safe space into the yard of his farm in Goochland. The bunker is 1600 sq ft. The house has gone to seed. The only evidence of the bunker is a sunken storm door near the house. OTA TV, shortwave radio, satellite Internet, and so on are on antennas on the roof of the barn and cabled to the bunker by underground lines. Electricity is solar backed by a Tesla PowerWall and underground lines to Dominion Power. There is a well and a creek on the property. Sewer is done with a septic system.
He bought the property with the contents, including a tractor and equipment for growing and harvesting hay. Locals have tried to contact him about selling the tractor and equipment. Or farming with it. Charlie is nonplussed. He’s too busy with Rift.
Understand that Boogaloo Couch Slug Charlie is Right
One more thing about Charlie the Boogaloo Couch Slug. Actually, it’s the same thing mentioned above. Charlie has your opinion until you stumble across something he disagrees with. Then, it’s not that you are entitled to his opinion. I have a lot of family members who believe they are correct and you need to get used to that. Charlie goes further. Now the fangs come out and you discover that not only is he correct but his approval depends on your compliance with his advice. You have to do as he says or there will be trouble. There is trouble. I don’t take kindly to being ordered around and Inger doesn’t either.
Charlie failed a shit test when BLM was in Richmond this summer. He was at the Lee Monument standing at the fringe of the crowd. A girl dressed in some sort of goth/black block/club hot outfit walked up to him holding a rattle can of fluorescent pink paint, “Hey! Want to do something real? Go up there and spray ‘F12’ on the Lee Monument.”
Charlie got a look on his face as if someone had just shoved a chickenshit covered glass dildo up his ass, “Uhm, yeah, so . . . I dunno . . .”
Wrong answer, “are you for real or not?” He is not, “Hey, so, uhm, sorry but I have this thing I have to go to,” and he headed east on North Lombardy.
A Black Man’s M3 Wish Matters
“You SUCK! BLACK LIVES MATTER!” shouted the fashy goth girl as she melded into a gaggle of black block protesters. Charlie’s thing was his M3 parked in the Kroger parking lot. Shit test fail.
Inger, for her part, has been at her home (sort of) on East 16th Street from her bar-tending job. There is a door to Paradise in her 16th Street house. So, yeah, she’s home but not really. She watched the riots through local TV news. Black Lives to Matter to her but not at the cost of her city on fire.
When it comes to social justice or the fight against Communism Charlie ain’t shit. Fashy girl discovered he’s a titan on reddit and a total loser IRL. He’s good as long as he looks awesome in his selfies while he cheers on the Boogaloos.
Zero Sum
I’m not done ranting about Charlie. He’s transactional. You’ll have to forgive a bit of mansplaining. If you know, you know. If you don’t, well . . . nothing is free with these people. Nothing is free with Charlie. He has a memorized ledger for everyone he believes owes him or worse, he owes. It’s a loss of face for him if he owes someone.
So I can’t do any favors for Charlie because kindness creates a debt. The stint on my couch meant that I started getting hentai manga. Hot? No. I like my women warm-blooded.
He found some beef jerky coated in dried red pepper branded Ming-Ha. My ex, the Empress, has a similar first name. Big yucks for Charlie, big zero for me.
No Hope of Return
Why do I care about transactional people? First, the Empress is a brilliant and talented trader. She tends to win against white monkeys like Charlie. I could never win with her because I grew up with pink panty parents who felt entitled to their upper-middle-class lifestyle. They were not transactional so I never learned how to fight like that.
Second, the way I practice my faith is self-sacrificing. I do stuff for people with no hope of return. This is offensive to the Empress and to Charlie. Good. Moving on.
Last, this post is one of 16 that lay out the story I’m building related to Inger’s finger. In previous posts, I wrote about Paradise and the doors you use to get there. Charlie owes Saito-san some huge gambling debts. So his key is shut off. Which would deter most reasonable folk. Charlie isn’t reasonable. What he’s been doing is sweet-talking other key holders into letting him use their key. Trouble? Do you think?