This is part 6 in a series about my time working for the Combined Insurance Company. If you want to catch up, please check out Part 1: PMA Day, Part 2: Johnny B, Part 3: Ross, Part 4: The Preacher, and Part 5: Misfits Guy.

Deep down, I knew I wasn’t cut out for the insurance business, but I still tried very, very hard to do well while training in Raleigh. There was a White Castle in our parking lot, and I never ventured farther than that for dinner, choosing instead to stay sequestered in my hotel room studying the product and rehearsing my speech over and over again.

Every other agent-in-training was staying at the same hotel and they could be seen scurrying about, driving to grab dinner or meet up with local friends. A few of the others who were also taking it seriously met up at each others’ rooms to study. I didn’t feel particularly close with any of them, so I didn’t have much of a desire to meet up with anyone after I lost my roommate (that story is coming later).

One day in class, I approached a fellow student and asked how his studying was going. He looked at me, almost as if to pity me, and responded, “I took… a lot of drugs last night… and passed… out.”

He spoke slowly, as if doing so would help my simple mind understand the life of a cool guy. I kinda hated him for that.

 But I never cared much for the guy anyway, despite him being terribly interesting.

Again, this is a fellow soon-to-be agent whose name I do not remember. He was about my age, was chubby like me and had long, flowing blonde hair that he usually had pulled back into a ponytail. He completed the look with an equally blonde goatee that scruffed ever so chaotically over his top lip and chin.

Since we were all going to the same place every day, we’d often carpool. I rode with my friend with the golden tresses only once. It was during this time that he played for me a variety of Insane Clown Posse songs. He was quite clearly a Juggalo and was incredibly proud of the fact. At the time, I was a closeted ICP fan – still too self-conscious to admit that I knew every word to the songs about severed heads, revenge, murder, and some guy named Dick Anus.

On our ride back to the hotel that afternoon, he confided in me that his girlfriend was really cool and that they’d recently had a threesome. This was likely entry-level braggadocio designed to impress a somewhat meek peer, and I knew that, but I pretended to be impressed.

The next day, I swung by his room to see if he wanted to go over to White Castle with me. I’m unsure if he had taken “a lot of drugs,” again that night, but I noticed he answered the door wearing a t-shirt that depicted three bathroom-sign-style figures, one male and two female. The caption under it read: Me + You + Your Friend?

Dude had apparently been there, done them both, and bought the t-shirt.

Whoop Whoop, I guess.

More tomorrow.

-jtf

This is post 11 of 30 in my most recent attempt at tackling NaBloPoMo. Funsies and such.