Blog Update

Just wanted to let those who care know that I haven't forgotten about the blog.  My wife gave birth to our daughter 5 days ago, and the lead up to the birth, subsequent addition of a child, etc. has eaten most of my time.  We are home now and I expect to get the next chapter up no later than the week of March 7th.  I'm glad people seem to be enjoying what I've shared and hope you will feel that your patience will be rewarded.  Thanks.

Tiger'ish Tales Vol. 7: The Wool Gets Pulled From My Eyes

A while back, I shared the following story in the comments section for a post on Filmdrunk:

One day, a few months into the year, my then girlfriend-now-wife and I made the tactical error of returning to my room when we knew Logan would be there. As was habit for my dorm, whenever entering a dorm room, you make a lot of noise and take longer than you should, to give whomever time to stop doing whatever. We followed protocol and entered to find Logan kneeling before his computer, furiously stroking away. A normal person would stop -he didn’t, of course. My girlfriend just sat on my bed in stunned silence, I carefully said, “Um, dude?” and he replied “HAVE YOU TRIED THIS?” Right then, he finished in an amazing display of rope-tossing that only an 18-year-old who’d never before come could release. And release he did. All over his monitor. Which was off. It was only at this point that I noticed he was jerking off to a turned-off monitor, and probably to his own fish-eyed reflection. He turned to me, dick limply in hand, and said “Can I borrow a shirt?”

I share it again here for two reasons. First, it only makes sense to include it, even if it is a re-run for most readers (or all readers). Second, I’ve spent the better part of three weeks trying to find a better way to start off this post and can’t come up with one. I wish I could subtly or creatively lead-in to a discussion of Logan’s sexuality, but it is like discussing the font used to label a nuclear missle. As soon as people realize to what you are referring, they want you to get to the point. So strap yourself in, fuckers, this shit is about to get crazy.

To be perfectly honest I had assumed Logan had already discovered masturbation prior to that point; after all, how could he not? It was for this very reason that I faithfully shook my keys and stalled at our door. I certainly never thought he’d be having actual sex. Turns out he finally “discovered” himself one day when he went for one of his shit-rituals. (Shituals?) He was one of the first on our floor to find that someone had meticulously plastered each and every toilet stall -wall and interior door- with several pictures of men masturbating. These pictures were then meticulously laminated in packing tape making the task of peeling them up and off more trouble than it would be worth (especially since the custodial staff never did bother to actually remove them). Logan went about his shitual, but couldn’t help noticing the pictures and wonder about what was going on in them. Needless to say, he decided to try it for himself. I know all this because Logan told me. Logan told me because I demanded a reason for his “needing” one of my shirts. He said all this to get to the point that I knew he was trying to make –he wanted a cum-mop. Why stain something of his when I had plenty of stuff available. I –already used to this type of selfishness- couldn’t resist asking him why a shirt? Why not a sock, for example? His answer was simple and direct: He liked to wear my socks, but my shirts were too small for him. I handed him a box of Kleenex and my girlfriend and I left to go throw up.

After that initial voyage of personal discovery, I am happy to say that I never caught him again. I feel pretty safe in saying that he took my Kleenex suggestion to heart, though, as from that day onward he went through boxes pretty quickly. The question, however would persist –how is it that at 18 years of age, Logan hadn’t jerked off? If he had wet dreams, I was never made aware (thank god) and the possibility of his getting laid was exactly 0%. His enthusiasm when I did catch him, not to mention his amount of jizz, certainly suggested that he was coming for the first time, but doubt lingered.

All my questions would be answered when Logan returned from Christmas break. I happened to beat Logan back to campus and was unpacking when I heard a rustle outside our door. Assuming it was Logan –and figuring he had lost his keys again- I went over and opened the door. As I did, a broadsword fell from our doorway and landed at my feet. I looked up to see Logan’s fat ass rounding the corner, back towards the stairs. My roommate had returned. Of all the things to bring to school, let alone bring up and leave outside our door while returning for the rest, Logan chose a fucking broadsword. I picked it up and placed it on Logan’s bed, trying to determine if it was a replica, and if that really made a difference to my safety. Logan came back, his mother in tow, with the rest of his things. Pleasantries were exchanged:

Me: About the sword….

Logan: My daddy made it for me!

M: Yeah, I don’t know…campus policy…post-Columbine…

Mrs. Logan: I told him it was only for emergencies. I’m glad you’re here, I have  a gift for you, too.

M: Oh. You, uh, didn’t have to do that.

Mrs. Logan: I really did. Hope you like it.

She opens up one of Logan’s bags and pulls out what appears to be a Blockbuster video case. It is my copy of South Park that she “borrowed”.

Mrs. Logan: Logan didn’t get to see it, Canadians.

M: Yeah, it doesn’t really make sense if you haven’t seen the show.

Mrs. Logan: Well, open it up.

I open the case and inside is the plastic VHS housing, but all of the tape had been pulled out. The access door seemed to be cemented shut.

M: Uhh…

Mrs. Logan: I burned the tape in a cleansing fire. It burned green. You think about that the next time. Canadians.

Shortly thereafter, she took him out to dinner at Bob Evans, brought him back and left again.

Of course the big Christmas get for Logan was a brand spanking new flatbed scanner for his computer. I had no doubt that his parents went to their closest electronics retailer and asked what to buy for a guy who uses a computer. Logan knew enough by now to know what it was, but I couldn’t imagine anyone with less use for one. What was he going to scan? The same pictures of horses he already found online? His ass?

Of course his ass. It seemed inevitable. I realized that he always finds the most horrific way to abuse something and that only if I was lucky, would his fat ass break the damn thing and I wouldn’t have to be subjected to a screen-saver slideshow of Logan’s winking anus. It was going to be a long semester.

As it turns out, I was wrong on several counts. Logan got the scanner for Christmas because he asked for one. He asked for one because he very much did have things he needed to digitize, and none of them ended up being his ass. In retrospect, I really wish it had been.

Logan had some trouble getting the scanner up and running but he managed it. As soon as I saw the time had come for his art project to commence, I fled the room. I would have to live with the finished product but I wasn’t going to be a witness to the act, nor would I be willing to pull his bleeding ass out of the scanner if he broke the glass.

When I came back, Logan was very depressed. Despite his best attempts, the scanner wouldn’t work. He mentioned that he brought a photo album from home that he wanted to “computer” but that every time he tried, he just got blank images. Realizing that I had misjudged him, I took pity. I offered to take a look and when I did, the problem was clear. He had laid out several Polaroid photos, all to be scanned at once, and he had laid them all image up. The solution would be obvious. Or it would have been if my brain weren’t exploding at what these pictures were doing to my eyes.

Here it is folks, the point of no return, the “you’ll swear I’m making this up, but I only wish I were” moment.

Each and every picture, and he still had dozens more in the album, were of Logan fucking goats. Logan. Fucking. Goats. On his father’s goat farm. With Goats. Fucking. Logan. Fucking. Goats.

I was in a pretty bad car accident once that totaled two cars (not the one I was in, however) and the memory of the accident is both lightning-quick and endlessly detailed. It was somehow an eternity, and yet I know it was only a few seconds. Seeing these pictures was just like that.

In just a moment’s exposure, the blink of an eye, these pictures were instantly scanned to my brain. Just as instantly, dozens of questions arose: Who’s taking these pictures? Why fuck goats? WHAT THE HELL IS YOUR GRANDPA DOING IN THE BACKGROUND OF THAT ONE? IS HE NAKED? OHHHHH FUCK ME! How does that not hurt the goats? (In each picture, Logan was standing behind the goat, fucking it while holding the goat’s rear legs up and out, forcing the goat to support itself with only the front legs. Think of doing a company picnic wheelbarrow race and you’ll get the idea.) Why? Why? Why?

The realizations came flooding in as well: That’s why he never discovered whacking off –he didn’t need to! That’s why he had so much cum –there are no goats at college!

For the first time in a long time, I felt I couldn’t just tolerate Logan’s actions. This was a black and white situation and I finally had something that would possibly get me out of this living arrangement. The problem, however, was if Logan knew I was trying to use this as an excuse to move, he would go ape-shit on my life in the meantime. I couldn’t hide my disgust and confusion, it was too late for that the moment he opened up his scanner, but I had to play along. I had to let him talk to me about his beastiality.

Me: Dude, that’s totally illegal!

Logan: No it isn’t. We own the goats.

M: Either way, that is just wrong!

L: Why? I like it, they like it.

M: Because of lack of consent. You might as well be fucking a kid.

L: Kids are no fun, they’re too little.

M: What?

(pause)

L: You thought I meant children? No, I meant kid –a baby goat.

M: So what? They can’t enjoy it. Look at it!

L: They do enjoy it, or else they wouldn’t release.

M: Huh?

L: They wouldn’t release their semen if they didn’t like it.

M: You are fucking MALE goats? In the ass? What the fuck?

L: Look, if you try to jibber a doe, the bucks get upset.

M: Why fuck them at all?

L: Because if we don’t get the bucks to release, they will get aggressive and sire with the does off-season. We can’t just rub their wieners because they get scared thinking we are trying to wether them.

M:What?

L:Cut off their oysters. Granddaddy figured out that if you enter them from behind they end up releasing and that keeps them calm. If we are going to do it anyway, there’s no reason we can’t release too. It spills out with the muck, no harm done. 

M: You know what dude, what-the-fuck-ever.

L: You’d like it if you tried it.

M: Why the fuck do you want to scan these?

L: I tried releasing to the other ones, and they just aren’t the same. Mine are better and I think others will agree.

M: What others?

L: On Ultra Donkey.

M: I don’t want to know do I?

L: If I can’t release with the bucks I at least like to look at the pictures while I release in here. I want to share… you know how to get photos on to the internet, right?

M: No I do not. Anyways, why do you need all these pictures? You posed for a full album’s worth just to post them on some porn site?

L: I’ve had the album for years, doesn’t your family keep pictures?

After that, I didn't really think much about the broadsword one way or the other.

Tiger'ish Tales Vol. 6: Fight Club Spoilers Ahead! Or Not.

Probably as a result of being the youngest of seven children, I learned that with Logan you can either learn to tolerate his quirks, enjoy them, or get the fuck out. For the most part I got the fuck out, but I was certainly around enough to pass from abject horror to morbid fascination. I found myself particularly spellbound by his monthly habit of removing some toenails. What first creeped me out eventually grew familiar, and I must admit, fascinating. Once a month or so, Logan would pull out a handful of rubber bands and select a few toes on each foot. He then would wrap and re-wrap rubber bands around the selected piggies, forming tourniquets. He would then put them up and let them turn black as they lost blood. When suitably deadened, he would pull out a tweezers, jam one prong under a toe nail, pinch the nail and then pull it back and eventually off. He would repeat this with each black toe until they were all completely nail-free. He then, and thank god he remembered his order of operations, would put gauze bandages on the toes and finally use a pair of scissors to cut off the rubber bands. Even with these precautions the gauze would quickly darken, which prompted him to put on his “blood stockings” –a thick pair of black tube socks. This ritual ended with him putting the removed nails in his desk drawer. Yup, he kept ‘em.

As I said, I had become fascinated with this ritual and, given his pre-med mentality, kind of gave him the benefit of the doubt that he had a legitimate reason –perhaps he feared they had become in-grown, or otherwise infected. Of course I asked him about this. His response: “Well, it’s a lotta work to get them to my mouth and I don’t want them to go to waste.”

I had my suspicions about what that meant, and they were confirmed the day after I finally asked about this procedure, when I watched Logan pull one out of his drawer and casually pop it into his mouth, like a god-damned sunflower seed.

It was just these types of experiences that I learned to accept. Ultimately, he wasn’t doing anything to me, so rather than fight him, I instead became like Jane Goodall among the chimps. I tried to engage Logan, asking him about his life, his interests, values, etc. I selected pop culture from the civilized world and shared it with him in an attempt to understand him. I never did understand him (how can you when he gets angry that the movie Leprechaun failed to present Leprechauns accurately) but I did learn to live with him.

He never left our room. As an alternative to fucking with my stuff, I began leaving things out for him. I would leave food out –knowing that he would eat it and therefore not rummage through my closet, despite the fact that I never kept food in there anyways. I would leave videos near his tiny little TV/VCR because then he wouldn’t dig through my drawers to watch something while he still listened to his Bicentennial Man DVD on his computer.

Like all the lesser apes, just when you think you’ve got them figured out, they remind you that they are wild animals and can’t be tamed. For me that lesson occurred with Thanksgiving break. Simply put, Logan would be going back to the goat farm –his first time back after what was undoubtedly his first time away-and I had neglected to leave him things to discover. I had classes a full day after Logan was scheduled to be gone and as I left for the first of them I wished him a Happy Thanksgiving, as I didn’t expect to see him again before he left. He was busy trying to decide which of his “friendlies” –his horse pictures, to bring with him to the farm.

My classes ended, and I returned to the room anticipating what would be my first significant time in my dorm without Logan. My first clue that there would be trouble was that Logan had written on our message board:

I LOST MY KEYS. DON’T LOCK THE DOOR.

I quickly did the math and estimated that his message served as an invitation to anyone with basic literacy skills (approximately 43% of my wing-mates) to enter our room and do as they wished. So it was with inevitable resignation that I opened the door to see the room was trashed. For a solid minute I just stood there and surveyed the damage: my bed upturned my closet ran-sacked, my drawers overturned, etc. Then I realized it was only my stuff. No one would come in and target me without also attacking him. Maybe they’d attack him and spare me, but not the other way around. I glanced back out into the hall and noticed that almost every door had the tell-tale checkout form attached to it. This was done by the last person leaving each room to let the resident assistant know that he was free to leave as well. I re-surveyed the damage and concluded that Logan did it. At first I didn’t know why he did it, but as I put things back to normal I began to notice some things were missing. My M&M’s were gone, the fridge was left open, and a couple of my VHS tapes were also gone. Because I had always left things out for him, he learned to need them. Because I had never shown him where they were kept, he had to search for them. I found myself fascinated by the fact that I understood it and didn’t blame him. He was actually converting me to his flock –at least at this relatively early point in our time together.

Given the Logan-logic of what he did, I paid attention to the movies he took. Both had been titles I had never shown him, and I believe he had never seen. Both were very popular among the rest of the men on our floor, but again, Logan never left our room to socialize so I don’t think he even knew that. Most interestingly, both were stolen from the local Blockbuster.

I haven’t been inside a Blockbuster since 2003, so I don’t know if this is still the case, but back in the day Blockbuster had insane rental policies where new releases –which could be defined by any movie released in the last 5 years- were more expensive, could only be kept for a day, and were guaranteed in stock. What that meant for my friend who worked at Blockbuster was that the in-and-out goings of these titles were hard to really keep track of and he would, by the backpack full, cherry pick tapes out of the return bin before they could be scanned as back in stock. Ever get billed for a tape you swore you returned to Blockbuster? Yeah, you did return it, but you did it on my friend’s shift. Blockbuster hassles you, ultimately the stock is so great that it doesn’t really matter and my friend goes down the dorm halls like the morning milkman dropping off the day’s selections, sharing the spoils.

The films in question: The South Park movie and the ever popular Fight Club.

I guessed that maybe Logan was drawn to them because of their Blockbuster hard-cases, or that they were simply the first he found. I never got him to explain, either. Some mysteries just stay mysteries.

Eventually I too left for home and thought that my time dealing with Logan was finished, if only for a short while, but it was not to be. On the Friday after Thanksgiving, my mother got a phone call. It was Logan’s mom, who was upset that I was exposing her son to filthy movies. My mother quickly handed me the phone to fight my own battles and I tackled them head on. Mrs. Logan’s first grievance was that these movies were both R-rated. I retorted that so was one of Logan’s favorites, Chill Factor (which, by the way is the sole directorial effort from a guy who’s actually named Hugh Johnson). She ignored that observation and barreled through to say that Logan wasn’t 21 yet and therefore shouldn’t be seeing “adult” movies. I asked her if he had actually watched them yet and she told me that they had watched Fight Club. With his grandparents. On Thanksgiving. At this point she was almost to tears so I informed her that 17-year-olds get in legally to R-rated movies, that Logan had been exposed to far worse in college already and that in the future they should read the back of the fucking box before they put the movie in, and, finally, that he stole the god damn tapes from me anyhow. She then threatened to report me to the Dean of Housing which I begged her to do. I had given up trying to switch rooms and frankly, there had already been so many false complaints against Logan that the Housing office was ignoring anything pertaining to him as a prank. I hoped that if she did complain –which she didn’t- that the Housing office would get a glimpse of what I was dealing with and help me out.

I looked forward, as much as I could, to my reunion with Logan because now I would pick his brain about Fight Club. I would see how he reacted to the most popular film among his peers, see if he noticed the references to the film they had been making (LOGAN HAS BITCH TITS), etc. He didn’t really make any of the connections I had hoped. He came back to our room late on that Sunday and handed me back the Fight Club tape. We talked for a bit but he seemed to have not gotten that he was Starbucks and they were Project Mayhem. I switched gears, and asked what everyone gets asked after the first time they see Fight Club: Did he see the twist coming?

“What twist?” He wanted to know.

“About Tyler Durden. That He and Jack, or whatever, Ed Norton’s character, that they’re the same person.”

“Who else would they be?” He plainly asked.

“The whole movie you think they are two different people and then you find out that Tyler Durden is him! That’s why he couldn’t sleep, why he felt left out of Project Mayhem, the whole thing. Why do you think Brad Pitt fucking disappeared when Jack shot himself in the head?” I was getting worked up about this.

“It was pretty clear from the beginning that they were familiars. Everybody has others that take over from time to time. I found the whole thing pretty boring.”

He always found a way to leave me speechless.

I asked him if he had brought back South Park. He told me that he had left it behind because his mother wanted to watch it. BECAUSE SHE HAD NEVER SEEN A CARTOON BEFORE. Again, speechless.

Switching gears, I asked if he managed to track down his keys. He told me that, yeah, he did. They were in his pocket the whole time. I asked why didn’t he check there in the first place, that he was begging for trouble by leaving the note on our door. He said he wouldn’t have left the note, but he knew he wasn’t able to lock the door without his keys and didn’t want me to get confused by his leaving a note inside the room I wouldn’t be able to get into because he hadn’t locked the door and when I came to unlock the door I would actually be locking myself out.

Whatever.

“So, when did you find them in your pocket?”

“Well, I dropped the door pen after I wrote the note and felt them when I bent over to pick it up.”

Of course he did.

Tiger'ish Tales Vol 5: To Sleep The Sleep Of The Dammed

As much as Logan would’ve liked it to be true, we simply didn’t live in a bubble. A world existed beyond our room, and Logan would have to venture out into it. I feel sorry for those with whom he had classes. It was a fairly typical experience to come back to our room, check our voice mail and hear, “Hey, uh, Logan…This is Mike from Intro to Anatomy…uhm….you, uh, ….missed our lab appointment today, so, uh, …yeah. Also, uhm,…so, where’s our fetal pig?”

Simply put, Logan was lucky to have me as his roommate. I can honestly say that no one on campus and certainly not in our dorm wing would have tolerated him as well as I did. Our school policy on roommate switches was that I –the grieved- was responsible for finding someone who was willing to move in with Logan. Additionally, I had to have a written agreement from my new roommate accepting me into their room and a document signed by Logan’s would-be roomie spelling out why I could no longer live with him and felt moving was the only option. Logan stymied any chance I had of taking that route within hours of being at school. First of all, he stuck out like a guy who always wore a unicorn necklace that hung down to his waist, because HE ALWAYS WORE A UNICORN NECKLACE THAT HUNG DOWN TO HIS WAIST! Secondly, our wing-mates (wing-men?) were almost uniformly the dumb jock/ frat boy stereotype.

A few words on with whom we co-existed: If I were to pick an anthem for our wing, it would be the Limp Bizkit cover of the Mission: Impossible theme. That was always blasting, and far too many of these fine young men thought it was the height of musical achievement. Also, these guys had discovered the cult-hit that had flopped at the box-office not quite one year prior, FIGHT CLUB. Completely missing the point of the movie, these generally privileged upper-middle class Midwestern white boys identified very heavily with Tyler Durden and his message. The inevitable fight clubs began, only to be shut down by the administration, citing it as a violation of the school policy prohibiting “General Tomfoolery.” Well, what choice is left for these disenfranchised youths but to proceed to their own version of Project Mayhem? And, in fairness, to them, who more embodies the belief that he is, in fact “special,” that he is, in fact, a “beautiful and unique snowflake” and not “the same decaying organic matter as everything else” than Logan? Project Mayhem had its target, and I would be collateral damage.

Aside to the aside: The town in which our University exists had one tattoo parlor, Porch Front Tattoos. Anyone who went there –on my floor it was usually to get the barbed-wire bicep- of course became known as “Porch Monkeys.” Of course, Porch Monkeys took the name with pride, never realizing its etymology. One Monkey took Project Mayhem really to heart and, in thinking of the wonderful synergy between Porch Monkey and Fight Club had “Space Monkey” tattooed on his neck. For the rest of his college days, he was to be known as “Sponkey.”

Anyhow, the Space Monkeys mission to upset Logan-as-representative-of-the-establishment (and really, Logan couldn’t be less representative…they were the ones downing White Castle Crave Cases nightly) began gently enough. Our dry-erase board regularly was tagged with “Logan has bitch tits!” When Logan started putting up equestrian art on the outside of our door, the horses always ended up with giant cocks drawn somewhere on their bodies. Which, for reasons that would become all too clear, didn’t bother Logan at all. Having the only room that was opposite a bare wall and not another dorm room, our door was blocked with all of the lounge furniture. A few times a gallon-sized zip-lock baggie was filled with shaving cream, slid partially under our door and then stomped upon. They gave that up when they realized that it was only hitting the bare floor and my bed, so Logan wasn’t affected.

The one thing they did that was truly clever, that still boggles my mind and makes me shudder to think of how potentially dangerous it was, was inspired by Logan’s own insufferable bathroom habits. Each room had a small sink and mirror, but that meant everyone had to use the communal showers, toilets, and urinals. Logan being Logan, had his own way of doing things. The shower set-up was a bank of five shower heads along a wall, with dividers in between, but with one drain in the middle stall that all the water ran into. In other words, each day a choice had to be made: do you take the end showers, which had only cold water, but relatively clean conditions, or do you go in towards the center, where the water was hot, but you were guaranteed to deal with the shower water of the other men? This water was always dirty, usually pissy, oftentimes mixed with cum, and if someone was drunk, shit and/or vomit. I was a cold-shower man. Logan, was a bath man. Which is to say, he would take the next available stall, and sit/lay bare-assed on the ground and bathe. Why? Because he preferred baths, plain and simple. But, as the stall dividers and curtains went from about six feet off the ground to maybe two feet off the ground, and because Logan wasn’t one to close the curtain anyhow, everyone got the show.

Similarly, Logan would leave the stall door open on the toilet, and one could tell what his purpose was by how he was sitting. If he was facing forward, looking out towards the sinks and mirrors, he was taking a piss. If he was sitting backwards, pants off, straddling the bowl and holding onto the pipes, dude was taking a dump. Even if shitting, however, he was turned to watch himself in the mirror. I asked him once why he didn’t stand at the urinal to take a leak and he told me, “Why do something standing when it can be done sitting down?” He’s got a point there. I do think a bigger factor really was that there were no mirrors by the urinals. Dude liked to watch himself on the toilet. But again, this meant everyone else had to watch him, too.

So, onto the one prank that made sense to me. It was a Sunday morning, and the combination of Logan’s general early-bird noises, as well as the constant Bizkit through the walls, had developed in me a high capacity to sleep through noise. Even if a noise was loud enough to kind of wake me, I would ignore it for as long as possible, usually get used to it, and fall back asleep. I was also pretty hung-over, so it didn’t occur to me the gravity of the situation when I finally did open my eyes. As usual, Logan had been up for a while and I had decided the need to pee was greater than the need to sleep and woke up to see my shower sandal float gently past my bed on a pool of water that was easily two inches deep. I just kind of stared for a moment, slowly realizing that something was very wrong and that I probably had to deal with it.

It would turn out that the Monkeys had purchased some garden hoses and duct tape. They taped the hoses to the faucets in the bathroom, then taped the other ends to the bottom of our door. They then taped the bottom of our door to the floor to create a surprisingly effective seal. They jammed pennies between our door and doorframe, locking us in for good measure, then started up the water and waited.

I would end up calling the physical plant services for help, only to be told that they were busy dealing with a mysterious ceiling leak in the room below ours. Evidently, it never occurred to them to check on what might be happening on the floor above. Anyhow, I called our Resident Assistant, he stopped the water, un-jammed our door and things slowly drained out onto the women living below. All four of us with water damage got some cash from our room-cost reimbursed, and we were all relieved that nothing really came of it. No electrocution, no drowning, just some wet stuff and a small cash payout.

Now, I know what you, the reader, really want to know. What was Logan’s reaction to all this? Again, I remind you that he always woke up before me. After I woke up and saw my sandal float by, I turned my head toward where I knew Logan would be, his computer. Right as I did I saw his already all-too-familiar bare ass winking at me through the slats in his chair, and then I saw his hand, calm as can be, reach down holding one of those cheap cups colleges like to give out with the event-du-jour printed on it (Ok-SOBER-fest 2000 in this case), his hand dip the cup into our flood waters, fill it a bit, and bring it up to his lips for a nice, refreshing drink.

Tiger'ish Tales Vol 4: All The Pretty Horses

It didn't take long to begin noticing that Logan's biggest problem wasn't an embarrassing family. First of all, he had all the cliche bad roommate traits. He'd wake-up hours before me, make lots of noise -country music at 6 in the morning. Spill sink water onto me while I slept and he popped zits -wiping them on the mirror- eat my food, leave his wet laundry on my bed, etc. Horrible shit, but not unheard of.

I should have known from the moment he went from not speaking around family to being perfectly chatty when they left that he was crazy. I would eventually find out that he was truly the little prince of his clan. He had an older brother who had died and Logan was the replacement child. He was sheltered and spoiled because his brother died by accident. I never learned what exactly happened. I did learn that they even named him after his brother. His brother was also named Logan. FUCK ME. Mostly isolated from the larger world, Logan lived on the goat farm as a precious jewel that was to be protected both physically and mentally. He wasn't kept from the greater world, but everything was filtered through his parents editing.

Now, before you feel sorry for the fucker -remember that he wasn't being abused he was being treated like a god. The problem came when they -actually rather surprisingly- left him to his own devices as a college boy. I liken it to the Amish sending their young men out to be tested. Problem is, he in no way was ready for socializing with the real world.

When they bought his computer, it came with a DVD player, which was very rare at the time. So he picked out two movies that he played CONSTANTLY -even if it was only the sound in the background. What two flicks would an average 18 year old in 2000 pick? Not these:


It would be bad enough if the movies weren't awful, but god damn it, Robin Williams as a robot and fucking Cuba Gooding Jr. buddying up with Skeet Ulrich? Eventually he would get X-MEN and run that into the ground, taking notes on his future.

Worse though, then the movies, was that the PC offered him his first foray into the internet, where nothing is off limits, everything is the best ever and he could get validation for his every strange belief. His MP3 of choice? The Hamster Dance. Over and over. His initial obsession? Horses. He would print out hundreds of horse pictures and hang them up all over our room. In asking about this, I got the first visit from Tiger'ish:

ME: So what's with the horses?
L:They are my friends.
M: I just saw you get that off the internet. It's fucking Mr. Ed.
L: We like each other.
M: (already somewhat used to creepy statements like that) So are horses your favorite animals?
L: No. They are just friendlies. My favorite are unicorns.
M: You know they're not real, right?
L: Just because you haven't seen one doesn't mean they are not real. You've never seen a dragon, but you believe in them.
M: Fuckin' A. dude.

He went on to show me the pictures and tell me about the horses personalities, names, etc. Even when it was Mr. Ed or a Budweiser ad, they were friendlies with names, etc.

Years later I saw GRIZZLY MAN and a chill went down my spine. This Timothy Treadwell fucker reminded me so much of Logan. They both can be in society, but have constructed such an elaborate fantasy world that you just know someone's getting hurt. It is in seeing this movie that people can get the clearest idea of who Logan thought he was in relation to animals. The only real difference is that Treadwell was benevolent, trying to protect (he felt) the animals, whereas Logan never lost sight that they too, were here for his pleasure and his pleasure alone. Here's the trailer:

Tiger'ish Tales Vol 3: Mano-a-Gato

I'll be honest: I come from a fucked up family. Maybe as fucked up as Logan's. The difference being that in my family the cardinal rule is to keep the skeletons in the closet. Logan's family keeps the skeletons nailed to the front porch, with dildos rammed through the eye sockets and a big sign that says "FREE CANDY" next to a bowl full of cum-glazed-shit. My family is ashamed of itself, and rightly so. Logan's family celebrates their depravity like the family in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

All of which is to say that I, at this point, was still reserving judgment of Logan. I've fought against being defined by the actions of my family -both evil and innocent- my entire life. Just because his parents couldn't understand the concept of sharing a room or his grandparents couldn't respect the sanctity of a stranger's bed didnt' mean he was the same.

Eventually they had to leave, and I would learn the truth. It would be just him and me and the truth would come out. That truth, is that Logan was their Leatherface. He didn't have a blood-lust and cannibalistic tendencies, that I knew of, at least. He did, however, lack any social awareness and coupled that lack with a complete disregard for others. And yet, somehow, it wasn't selfishness. It was how he was raised; he genuinely thought he was the center of the universe. His family thought so too, and he'd never known anyone or anything else. When eventually challenged by the larger world that is college, he didn't get angry. Instead, he treated his detractors, myself included, as if we were the foolish toddlers still learning about the world. He was patient with us, with our yelling at him, because he knew that he was god, and no one -at least for the year I knew him- could challenge that.

Of course, this created a dangerous mixture: He was the little prince straight from David Lynch's version of Wonderland whose parents bizarrely secure financial liquidity left him with almost no door unopened. I was the youngest of seven children in a Todd Solodnz movie and was the one who was allowed nothing in life on the basis of simply being youngest. Imagine my rage when this freak gets everything and can't even figure out that you don't have to turn the ringer off whenever you answer the phone, and not only do I have nothing I didn't work for myself, I have to live with him.

Now, patient reader, I admit that so far this blog has been a giant cock-tease. You are here for stories of animal-love, of fantastical creatures, and even a little bit of laughs. Well, the ground-work has been laid and from here on out you have the context to fully know the man who was Logan and would become Tiger'ish.

I'll end this post with a taste of life with Logan. Given his bizarre narcissism, Logan surmised that Wolverine of the X-men was named for him. Ergo, this Logan, my roommate, is the Logan of lore. He is Wolverine. When I challenged this, he merely reasoned that as Wolverine was older than now-Logan, it was something of a prophecy. THE FUCKER COULDN'T TELL FACT FROM FICTION! EVEN WITH A MOVIE THAT FEATURES SUPER-FUCKING-HEROES. AND AN ACTOR THAT WOULD APPEAR IN ANOTHER FAVORITE FILM OF HIS, STAR TREK INSURRECTION! He simply saw it as his destiny, as shown to him by the good people at 20th Century Fox to become Wolverine.

To that end, he attempted to groom himself in appropriate fashion. This task lasted as long as I would know him, and probably beyond. I spent my last moment with Logan taking his picture, knowing that this past year would be one for the record books. Here's how far he got in his quest to become Wolverine:

Tiger'ish Tales Vol 2: It's Genetic

I'm the youngest of seven kids. In other words, my mom don't give a damn. Whereas Logan's entire clan left the middle ages that is a Tennessee goat farm to see him off (yes, of course, he was the first to go to college), my mother lasted long enough to leave my shit at the curb. Once Logan's family accepted my existence, they got pretty dependent on me for "big city" advice. Imagine the rednecks from The Simpsons, and you've got a pretty decent idea. They stuck around for several days of freshman orientation and throughout Logan never said a word. They went to the bookstore and got the requirement info for computer purchases and promptly went to Walmart and bought one. I tried to do my own thing but they wouldn't leave me alone. Being a theatre major, I had auditions and they showed up with me. I went to dinner, they went to dinner. Through it all Logan never spoke. I finally found a way to lose them by suggesting they attend some of Logan's orientation activities, like the pre-med mixer. He was going to be a doctor. They listened, I did my own thing for once and hoped that would be the end. That evening, I returned to our room to find Logan's grandparents spooning in my bed -clothed, at least, his great grandparents and his father in his bed asleep. Logan was exploring his new computer and his mother was sitting at mine. She angrily began chastising me, "What kind of person has a 'password' on their computer? I've been trying to use your computer for some time now, and I can't get in!"

I was Logan's roommate for a week before I heard him utter a syllable.

I would quickly learn that much of Logan's issues were not his doing, but the result of his bizarre redneck life. None of that excuses it, however. It serves merely as a warning to you, the reader, that everything Logan would do, say and be over the next year was encouraged and validated by his family.