OXFORD, Ohio (ZP) — There’s things about me, I tell her, she’s not going to want to hear about.In fact, there are things about me and where I’ve been, things I’ve done, that I don’t want to hear about.She’s not happy with my answer but, well, she accepts it. Me being the Man of Fucking Mystery, and all that.She’s standing in my living room, staring at my very lovely, very intentionally crooked abstract expressionist piece.I painted it years ago, after I’d gone clean, one particularly bad night on the beaches of California’s Central Coast, overlooking the village of Cayucos.”It’s about nothing. Sorta about Jackson Pollock. But a lot about Lee Krasner and my perceptions of their marriage…”I can tell she knows nothing about either artist, about California beyond Disneyland and television, doesn’t get my whole Well, see, I don’t smoke weed because, like, I’ll have to check myself into rehab bit, either.Apparently, if you add in some White Russians and a joint, I’d make a perfect Ohio version of The Dude, given my lifestyle and the way my brain works. Sadly, I really don’t see any similarities…But she says she gets the nothing part. About the painting. My crooked, three-foot-long, acrylic-covered canvas is purple and squiggly and pretty, she says. I leave it at that.She totally ignored the abstract form on the same wall, the one I’d, well, sorta painted using a woman’s breasts. No sense in bringing that up.”You know, you’re the most interesting guy I’ve met in college,” she says. “EVER. I can see why girls think you’re a mystery.”She turns as I hand her a cup of tea. She was hoping for something harder, but, well, after last call on a Saturday night my apartment goes drier than an AA meeting in Utah.The Dude may abide, but I hate hangovers just as much as he hates the fucking Eagles, man.* * * *She’d been drinking Crown Royal and Cokes at one of Oxford’s lesser watering holes, a veritable swap meet of flesh. …

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