No, really. I kid you not.
Every story has a beginning and an ending, but I'm going to start somewhere in the middle, because for me the beginning and the ending don't fall in the usual places. It is kind of hard to explain. We'll get there, if you're patient with me, and believe me, you need to have a lot of patience with me.
I don't have any super powers, if that is something you are thinking about. I'm clumsy as hell if that counts. Laugh if you must, but believe me, I've managed to turn clumsy into an art form and it works for me. I never would have even started this traveling in time stuff if I hadn't been so clumsy in the first place, but now I'm getting ahead of myself. That is sort of something from the beginning, and I'm starting in the middle. Don't make me lose my train of thought.
Having had a lot of experience as a waitress I've managed to land on my feet no matter what time or place I end up in. Not too long ago I met this insane poet in a bar in San Francisco in the 1890s. He completely screwed up my head because I started wondering if he was someone else, if I was being followed through time by some kind of stalker, but he turned out to be exactly what he appeared to be, an insane poet. Do you know how hard it is to keep a straight face, smile a little and ask a guy if he wants another drink while he's reciting some really off poem to you? Talk about super powers, maybe I do have them.
Things took a weird turn a while back. I was waiting tables in some grungy tavern. To tell the truth, I wasn't sure what time or place I'd landed in, but everyone smelled funky and there was no indoor plumbing. And it looked like everyone was wearing clothes they'd made for themselves. It seems like whenever you are in a place like that, and everyone smells really ripe, people are bound to get on each other's nerves. One guy looks at another guy the wrong way, or brushes against him walking past, and fists are flying and beer mugs are flying through the air. Talk about being in a tight spot, I was in one. I'd managed to get myself stuck waiting on this guy who ordered by pounding the table with his fist, apparently he'd had his tongue cut out for one reason or another, and this table was in the far corner of the tavern. When the bodies started hitting the floor and blood was falling like rain I couldn't get out of the way.
I've never been that fragile. I grew up in a half-assed orphange surrounded by girls who'd learned to defend themselves to keep from being beaten to death by their fathers. Having survived that, I was not going to end up on the floor in this ridiculous melee. Calling upon all my skills, as best I could remember, I decided to fight my way out of that tavern and find my way back to the time wave that would get me out of this place.
When you're a girl wearing some kind of jacked up Cinderella before the ball get up you aren't exactly decked out for combat. Yeah, I know you're sitting back and imagining some kind of submissive maid role playing crap right about now, but I don't care. I've seen a lot of movies where women have these moves to kick some serious ass. Sometimes they show it in slow motion so you can remember how it is done. In the modern day, where you are, these moves don't work so well because more than likely your opponents have seen the same movies and remember the same moves because they put that shit in slow motion for a reason, so you can learn something. In whatever horrible past time and place I'd landed in that day they didn't even know what a motion picture was so they had no idea what I had up my sleeve. All these jackasses knew how to do was punch each other, and they did so with so much force it always took them just a little bit off balance.
I kicked some serious ass that day, my friends. A little sprig of a girl like me took down over a dozen drunken, foul smelling bad asses. And I was proud of myself. When I was done I walked outside, found the time wave, and stepped out of that time and into another.
Now I find myself in your time. Imagine that.
This is kind of weird, you see. As far as you are concerned, this is the present. If there is one thing I've learned in all my traveling through time, there is no present except for wherever you happen to be at the moment you are trying to determine what exactly the present is. When you are a time traveler you kind of have to have a base time you operate out of. That base time is usually where you started out. I didn't start out in the present the way you see it. I'm from your past. My first jaunt into time and space began in 1999. I was at a party and someone passed me a joint. He was dressed up like a clown, so honesty I probably shouldn't have accepted it. If there is one thing I can teach you, if you are at a party and a guy dressed up like a clown passes you a joint, just pass it on. Don't take a hit off of it. Look, this guy was decked out in total clown gear with the big shoes and the polka dot coveralls and the make-up and red nose and hair and all that shit. This wasn't a Halloween party. This party was in July.
It was some seriously good shit, don't get me wrong. Two hits off that joint and I was out of my mind. Everything was just colors and lights. I think I fell asleep because the next thing I knew I was sitting in the stands in Fenway Park during the 1975 World Series and there was this weird pulsating blue thing in front of me that looked like some kind of wave, or maybe one of those eye of the storm things they show you whenever there is a hurricane coming. No one else seemed to notice it, they were all watching the game. That is the thing I call the time wave. I tripped over something and fell into the time wave, and now whenever I see it, I go through it and end up somewhere else. I guess I don't have to go through it, but if I don't I'm kind of afraid it might not appear again.
Not sure if I should tell you this or not, but the time wave sort of makes love to me every time I go through it. Whatever it is, it fills up all the, um, holes in my body with fluid and pulsates like mad. This happens for a while and keeps happening until I reach this totally mind-blowing orgasm and then I end up in some new time and place. Yeah, I didn't want to tell you about that part, it is kind of private, but now the cat is totally out of the bag.
Here's another little secret. I'm not actually a teenager. I was twenty when this time travel thing started, but when I was in the 1950s talking to this creepy writer guy who wanted to turn my story into a series of pulp novels he added the "teenage" thing because he thought it would sell more copy. So really, it isn't like totally wrong for me to tell you about the orgasm thing. We're all legal here, consenting adults and all.
I don't know if you ever read those novels. I guess those kinds of books didn't have a very long shelf life. A while back, in the 1970s, I tried to find one in a used bookstore but the guy working there had never even heard of the author. The only reason I slept with that creepy writer guy was because I figured he was going to make me famous. I mean, why else would anyone sleep with a creepy writer guy? You have to be realistic here. Not to mention I've never done it with a guy who even comes close to doing to me what the time wave does.
I never know where I'm going next, but I feel the time wave approaching and that means it is almost that time again. I've had a chance to buy some really kick ass black boots while I was here in your time. They are going to go so well with my new outfit, which I spent a lot of time putting together because I want it to look fairly normal in whatever time period I end up in. If I'm going to be getting into situations like the one I got into in that rancid tavern I need to be ready.
Leave the light on for me. You never know when I'll be back.