The birthday weekend peeked for Kevin with a serendipitous cherry on the top of the Sunday…. well – more like toward the end of Sunday… piss.. lost the pun.

/distraction

I’ve mentioned this before… Kevin is a goth girl trapped in (now officially a middle-aged) gay man’s body.

I think I’ve also mentioned before about the odd game Chad and he plays whenever we’re out driving around. They’ll evaluate buildings, houses and neighborhoods for their susceptibility of zombie attacks.

I always thought this was just a very specialized eccentricity and wrote it off to charm.

… until….

Kevin brought a flyer out of the back room and announced finally what he wanted to do for his birthday: A food drive zombie film festival put on by a local group that call themselves “The Zombie Squad”.

“You mean there’s more people like you?” was my way of saying “Yes – we’ll go.”

We’d not been to the Royal before and I wasn’t sure where it was… It wasn’t hard to find though since the Zombie Squad “fleet?” was parked in front of the bar: An armored, olive-drab truck and old dirt bike done up like something out of one of the old Road Warrior movies.

The ZS folks had reserved the entire back patio and were projecting the zombie flicks onto a sheet taped to the brick wall. Admission was 5 cans of food. (Apparently the group actually has a humanitarian point… I haven’t gotten my head around it completely yet – you can read more about them on their site.)

You could tell the members from the guests… They were running around in camos, black shirts and tattoos.

It all felt delightfully bohemian and counter-culture…. I hadn’t felt that “comfortably” out of place since the late 80’s when I’d go with friends and hang out in decapitated punker flop-flats in the Central West End. (*yes – at one time – the apartments in the CWE were rat-infested, cheap and a magnet for young bohemians).

Kevin’s excitement was far less nostalgic and anthropological.

He was GIDDY… and school-girl nervous. We tried to get him to go up and introduce himself to some of the members but he wouldn’t.

We slipped out early and went to the tea-dance at JJ’s – but Kev said he’d be getting in touch with ZS and getting involved.

Will this be the thing to plug up the hole left by our stepping back from the bear club?

We’ll see. I’m just along for the ride…. It’s not like I’m a zombie genre freak.

but I *do* love strange…

I also love chicken.