Time for some idle gossip from the theatre world. Well, mine, anyway.
This year The Boy's part of the department got three new guys in as students. The one is sort of a crazy Mormon, the other one's sort of like Hammy, from Over the Hedge and the third one is an asshole.
It's Asshole I'm going to talk about. He worked in the summer theatre programme too, but the only time I saw him was about a week in when they had their first party. I went because The Boy wanted me to go. I'm not exactly a party sort of person, and I really don't like hanging around with a lot of people I don't know, so I was sitting by myself and watching everyone else.
I focussed on Asshole because he was the one talking about what a swell guy he was as loudly as he possibly could. After twenty minutes of listening in on the conversation he was having, I determined that he was a borderline alcoholic (because most theatre people are big drinkers, but there's a line, and the fact that he was announcing to the party at large that he lives to get home and drink, but he "doesn't overdo it man" was something of a giveaway). I also knew that he was totally hitting on the girl sitting next to him. I knew that she was interested, but only if one particular part of his anatomy happened to work as often and as well as she hoped. He was hoping to prove this to her as soon as possible. I also knew, however, she knew exactly what she was doing and just needed him for the summer.
He was quick to mention that he would've been getting married that day if his fiancee hadn't dumped him. He hedged around the why, but it clearly wasn't because she found someone else. This means that she got sick of his shit and decided to bail.
In between all of this were references to how well and how much he could drink, everything he knew about horses, all the shows he had ever been in (he wanted to be an actor until he turned TD), the number of belt buckles he had, the number of unregistered fire arms in his possession and his excellent marksmanship with such. Also, the Mustang his parents bought him, who, did I mention he lives with still at 25? And, for good measure, because there were other guys around, heavily embroidered stories of the major accidents his friends had been in, because his stories weren't cool enough.
This guy is a real winner. If you don't want to punch him in the face right now and rip off his balls, you haven't pictured him correctly in your mind. The problem is that many women miss the fact that he's not a winner at all. This is what makes jerks like Asshole incredibly dangerous.
As it was, he was seeing Summer Girl all that summer and chatting up a just-graduated high schooler from the high school show. And that's just the two we know about.
School began. Enter Miss Bobbie. Er, rather, Mrs. Bobbie. She's a very nice girl, and married to a very intelligent, though shy, Iraq war veteran. They've been married almost two years (I think).
Little Jeff, TB and I were berating Asshole one evening at dinner shortly after she'd met him. She couldn't believe we were talking about the same guy. Warning bells went off in my head.
Then, we happened to be at dinner another time with both of them, as well as Little Jeff and Little Jeff's Girlfriend. Asshole was doing his best to flirt with LJ's G, and she was doing the girl thing and being polite. She had to go, and he tried it on me.
Um, excuse me, pal? First off, you do not flirt with married people. You do not do it. Second of all, assholes who think they're smart do not mess with me, because I can make it clear in miliseconds that you want nothing to do with me. I only appear to be a clone of LJ'sG, I'm actually a nasty piece of work. I managed to convey that he was a useless alcoholic without either Little Jeff or TB getting wise (because I asked them later), but since Asshole hasn't bothered me since then, I gather he got the message.
Mrs. Bobbie showed up about then, and he started on her. Like I say, you do not flirt with married women. That's bad, but worse, Mrs. Bobbie was reciprocating. The bells jangled louder, but I thought, no, she's doing the girl thing just like LJ'sG; she's being nice, she doesn't realise she's flirting with him. Besides, she's not stupid.
This situation escalated as time passed. She started doing his homework for him. We heard of arguments between Mr. and Mrs. Bobbie because Mrs. Bobbie's having to do so much theatre stuff. Mr. Bobbie really doesn't understand theatre, which is potentially bad, but he really doesn't understand the time aspect. However, it's suspected now that Mrs. Bobbie was spending an inordinate amount of that time getting drunk with Asshole.
Over Thanksgiving, TB got a call from Mrs. Bobbie asking how much our rent was. He didn't ask questions, but our first thought was that she had been incredibly stupid.
Yep. This past weekend, she moved out of her house into an apartment. Little Jeff and his truck were called upon to help move. She had the nerve to ask Asshole to help too. Little Jeff says that they sat in the backseat of the truck and text messaged each other. Now, were I Little Jeff, that would've been the end, and Asshole would've been on the pavement, but Little Jeff's a nice guy.
The latest report is that the Mustang was sitting in the theatre parking lot from five in the evening to eight o' clock the next morning. Meaning that someone gave him a ride somewhere- gee, I wonder who that someone could be.
I suppose Mrs. Bobbie is not exempt from blame in this, but part of the problem is that since things with Mr. Bobbie haven't been all that smooth recently, Asshole was taking complete advantage of the situation. First: you do not flirt with married people, second: you do not take advantage of a rocky part in a relationship just because you want tail.
On top of all this, remember I mentioned Just-Graduated High School Girl? Yeah, she's an undergrad in the department now, and she's told a couple people she's getting an apartment so that she has a better opportunity to see Asshole. So apparently that's not over/begun/consummated, whatever. It's also against department policies (because grad students are all potentially teaching undergrads). Again, these are just the two we know about.
I have never desired to make anyone a eunuch as much as this Asshole.