I have a real problem with clothes that are old. In fact, I have a small problem with any clothes that are not brand-new, but I try to overlook it when it concerns a clo that is one or two seasons out of date. Beyond that though…I really don’t feel comfortable at all. Maybe it’s the purple shirt I got at H&M a few years ago and now every time I wear it, all I can focus on is my suspicion that nobody is wearing purple anymore. Same thing with the raggy brown cowboy shirt with the pearl buttons, or these damned gray pants I’m wearing today.

These pants are actually four years old. Good God. I didn’t realize they were this old until just now. I mean, I knew they were old, a few years old even, but four? I think I have to throw up.

Because pants that are four years old can’t possibly reflect current design standards. Even if the current design is one that references four years ago. It doesn’t count.

I always shake my head in sick aesthetic disappointment anytime I hear someone proclaim that their old clothes are “cool again” because fashion has come back around or whatever. Because the trick about fashion coming back around is that it eliminates the uglier characteristics of said period in fashion so that the new clothes look old but better, while the old clothes continue to look old.

I realize that this does not seem to apply for any number of mid-twenties hipster types (in New York they flock to Williamsburg, a recently trendified area of once-bad Brooklyn). See them with their vintage-puff jackets and vests, their nastified hair protruding from mesh caps, tight stinko fake-dirty jeans and red canvas shoes, with their smug little unshaven faces. But even those people, while on the one hand they sort of look cool, they also sort of look like fucking retards who need a shower and a shave. Because, as my friend Brenda says, they’re all beautiful people who are trying to make themselves look ugly. And that’s the problem with being beautiful – it’s hard to make yourself look “ugly” so you have to settle for “like an idiot.”

These pants are particularly frustrating because they are cut almost right. Tight legged, narrow cuff (which, I know, a lot of people have a problem with narrow-cuffed jeans, but all I have to say about that is I’m right and you’re wrong, suffice it to say I don’t wear it stupid like so many men who don’t know how to dress themselves). But the problem with these pants is that the legs are not tight enough. They are just the slightest bit…billowy.

Oh hell. I can’t believe I just described something I’m wearing as “billowy.” What the hell is wrong with me? Why did I wear these pants?!

Now, to the non-obsessively-vain-and-insecure eye, these pants look fine. In fact, I get compliments here and there because I wear jeans so much that anytime I deviate I look like I’m all doodied up in my Sunday Best.

“Nice pants.” My friend Amanda tells me.

“What’s so nice about them?”

“I like them.”

“What about the ass? Are they too billowy?”

“You don’t have an ass, and you have to stop wearing pegged pants.”

“No, you’re wrong about that.”

I can’t stand it when tight pants hang baggy at the ass. What a horrible state of affairs. When you’re thin it is key to have pants that include a shapely ass, otherwise it really seems like you have no ass whatsoever, like your thighs are a couple of matchsticks that got stuck into your torso with no gluteal transition. And I know these pants do that to me because I can feel the air in there. There is simply too much air in my ass and thighs. I can just picture myself from behind, the jeans folding in at the ass pockets, nothing round in here, just some scrawny old assbones.

Note to self: burn the pants.

Well, actually instead of burning the pants I should probably give them to the Salvation-

Burn the pants.

One thing I really hope happens to me is that I find broken glass in my food. It would be a great way to make a fortune.

Now, you might be thinking ‘No way. No one ever gets broken glass in their food.’ Well, I have a newsflash for you: yes they do. It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen, and I for one am keeping my eyes open and my fingers crossed.

Because if you put the glass in your food and then have an accident with it, you will almost definitely get caught. But if it’s just glass that came from the kitchen of the plane or train you happen to be riding – well, that will get traced back to the train, see? I mean, sure, if you somehow got your hands on some glass from deep in the kitchen then you could do it, but I don’t see a practical way that that would happen. So, for my part, I’m not going to consider it. I want this to be an easy breezy miracle, not something I have to finagle. I don’t have the patience for that kind of schemery (I have too many other things going on).

If you were so lucky as to find broken glass in your food, I would say first and foremost you would have to resist the urge to give it back. And maybe that sounds funny, like it would be the last thing you’d actually do (because it would clearly be a foolish thing to do), but I bet it’s the first instinct that kicks in. The urge to call the stewardess or the train conductor over and tell them “there’s glass in my food,” all the while looking at them with sympathy and good nature, in a way that suggests “This is very bizarre, but don’t worry. I’m cool. I won’t get you in trouble.”

That nasty little kindly instinct must be stifled and murdered above all else. You may be cool, and you may want to do a nice thing, but in this case all your idiotic little good intentions will end you up not rich and, consequently, unhappy. And all to spare some broken glass-wielding disgrunt in the airplane kitchen their very warranted comeuppance.

Here is the best way to handle such a situation:

Start by separating the biggest piece, but keep some small ones handy. Then put the big piece in your mouth with some food. Position the piece so that it is poised to cut both your tongue and the roof of your mouth. You don’t want to screw up your teeth after all.

And that’s when you have to just take a deep breath, think of sunny skies and beachfront utopia, and bite, bite with complete abandon, as though you would bite into a mouthful of tender food, do it swift and do it strong, for you want the gash to be deep. As you feel the flow release in your mouth, you should make a snap decision: if there is enough blood, stop now. If you need more, shove some of the small pieces in your mouth and mash them around.

Let it sit for a second as the blood fills your mouth. Here is where you can take an opportunity to publicly realize that something’s up with your food. Frown a little as you glance at the passenger next to you.

When you have accumulated enough blood, let it spill from your mouth and down your chin. Ideally, you want your chin and neck to be completely drenched in blood, and also the neckline of your shirt. So that at first glance it looks more like you are the victim of a gruesome murder rather than someone who bit down into some glass. It is this image that will score you big in the end. Really, the neckline of your shirt should be stained. The astute observer should note the blood in your shirt morphing and growing as more and more gets absorbed.

So. Let it spill and then say:

“Blood.” Realization.

“Blood?!” Mounting horror.

“Blood!” The first bounce on the high dive.

“Blooood!!!” Your most deafening and panicked screech.

And it should be during that screech that you stand and unveil your grisly artistry to all the other passengers, for you are a sight they will not forget, and fifty traumatized witnesses is fifty birds in one very bloody hand.

Sorry for the downtime lately. I have been out of town. Here are some pictures.


It's not that I'm surprised
that a New York ATM is dirty, it's just that it seems to be uniformly covered in filth, as though a grime storm came a-blowin', and no one has gotten around to cleaning it up.



Addendum to Stuck
All my worst fears have come true.



I don't wish terrible things on many people
well that's not true, terrible things probably account for upwards of 95% of all my wishes, but I would really like to find the person who came up with this placemat so I could smash their mouth on a curb.

“What are you doing?”
“I was going to take that quarter for my laundry.”
“I’d rather you didn’t.”
“Why not?”
“It’s mine.”
“Yeah, but it’s just a quarter.”
“Still, I’d rather you didn’t.”
“I let you take my quarters all the time!”
“I know, but this quarter is special.”
“Special.”
“Yes.”
“A quarter is special to you.”
“This one is.”
“Why?”
“No reason.”
“Tell me.”
“It’s not going to seem important to you.”
“Try me.”
“But it is.”
“I’m sure it is.”
“It is.”
“Tell me the reason.”
“It’s the quarter I use to practice rolling a quarter across my knuckles.”
“Give it to me!”
“No, I washed it, okay? I handle it a lot and I washed it so it would be clean.”
“You can wash another quarter.”
“I washed it really well.”
“Why do you need to wash the stupid quarter anyway?”
“Because I don’t want other people’s germs on my knuckle quarter. I want to know that I could handle that quarter and then touch my eyes if I wanted to.”
“Why would you – ”
“Not that I would. I would just want it to be okay if I did. Like accidentally. I want that peace of mind.”
“Just give me the damned quarter. I’ll replace it tomorrow and I’ll wash it for you.”
“No, I was going to do some knuckle rolls tonight, and besides, you won’t wash it well enough.”
“Yes I will!”
“You clearly won’t since you don’t understand why I washed it in the first place. You’ll wash it half-assed.”
“Look. It’s late. The laundromat is out of change. I need 8 more minutes in the dryer. I need one quarter. Give me your sparkling little knuckle quarter.”
“It’s from Wisconsin, okay?”
“What?”
“It’s a Wisconsin quarter.”
“I don’t…know what that means.”
“Katherine is from Wisconsin.”
“Did she give it to you? I don’t understand.”
“No, it’s just, I look at it, I see that it’s from Wisconsin, and then I start thinking about Katherine and…look. I have a lot of convoluted feelings about her.”
“That’s not your knuckle quarter at all, is it?”
“I have been arguing with it all evening.”
“Wait. Why did you wash that quarter really?”
“I wanted Katherine’s quarter to be clean. I didn’t like thinking about the fingerprints of the world all over her. All over her nickel-plated body.”
“I bet you don't even touch the quarter. Do you?”
“No one touches Katherine’s quarter.”
“Okay, but it's not actually –”
"No one."

I was just making a sandwich and I realized I found the bread open this morning, and that the butt of the bread was flipped up, so that the topmost piece of bread had been exposed all night. At that point I closed the bread and put it away, but a thought remained behind with the bread, a particular unknown.

It occurred to me that it was possible that an errant cockroach might have found the open bread, gotten inside, and walked all over the bread (gone to the bathroom too). The cockroach could also conceivably have walked down the sides of the bread, but that seemed less likely. It seemed entirely reasonable that a cockroach might have walked all over the topmost piece of bread.

But this morning I just put the bread away. I figured if it was something that really seemed like a bad idea later, that I could just throw the bread away the next time I used it.

By this point I had already laid out the two pieces of bread and put a slice of cheese on one piece. The left piece. My instinct told me that the tainted piece was probably not the one with the cheese on it. I seemed to have a physical memory of where I put that first piece. Yeah. I felt pretty confident about it.

It’s okay, just throw it away and start over!

Everything? Then I will have to throw away the piece of cheese.

That wouldn’t be such a tragedy.

What if cheese has feelings?

It doesn’t.

Be a shame to waste it unnecessarily if it did.

Cheese doesn’t have feelings.

All it ever wanted out of life was to be eaten, and you’re just going to throw it away?

Actually, I think the one with the cheese is not the topmost piece.

It does seem like it’s the one on the right.

So I’ll just throw that one away.

What if that screws up the balance of bread in the bag?

It won’t.

Might be an extra piece if you throw one away. They probably make it so there is an even number of bread slices. You just wait – at the end of the bag will be one last solitary piece, it will sit there staring at you, questioning you why – why didn’t you eat it and why won’t you throw it away? But you won’t. You’ll just try to ignore it as it screams at you from inside the bag, every time you happen to pass it by.

I’m not going to indulge that.

And I throw the piece of bread away. I think that was the right one. Probably nothing would happen to me if a cockroach did walk all over it, but then again, something could happen and I would attribute it to something else when, in reality, it is some kind allergic reaction to cockroach waste or one of the many harmful bacteria that are certain to abound now that the cockroach has had his run of the bread.

The bread might still be uneven. Count it.

Now I’m eating the sandwich. It’s pretty good, but my preoccupation with the mystery of the unprovable cockroach has sullied it, not to the point where it threatens to make me nauseous, but enough to make it seem a little stale, a little grimy. It’s pretty good, though. I guess. I am pretty certain I got the right piece.

And even if I didn’t, I don’t think a cockroach got into the bread. It would still have been in the bag this morning.

Probably not.

But I don’t think there are cockroaches here during the night! We don’t have cockroaches anymore! We haven’t seen one in months. And even then it was just a few gigantic ones. And although they may be hideous, the occasional huge one is better than babies in the bathroom.

Make sure you keep a sharp eye next time you go to the bathroom.

Yeah. Probably a good idea.

I have to say, all this baseball hoopla has left me with a real taste in my mouth for steroids. How could it not? They keep telling us it’s bad, but all I see is a bunch of huge rich men who are pretending to be sorry for the fact that they’re so huge and rich and strong!

Look. I’m a thin guy. A small guy. A little, small, thin crappy little wuss, and it might be nice to be a hulking monster, just for a change, you know?

I remember Kingpin in Spiderman comics – how the character was drawn so big that his hand was larger than a normal man’s head. His body was a wall. I always got a kick out of Kingpin because he was drawn in such outlandish proportion – surely no human being could really ever be that big, I thought. And I continued to think that up until I saw that humongous freak Canseco stuffed into a suit, dressed up much like Kingpin and looking every bit as overgrown and hideous. I mean, it would be one thing to see him lumbering about in the Grand Canyon or climbing the Empire State Building – at least then he wouldn’t seem so proportionally fucked, but to put him behind a table, a common little object that regular-sized humans use for everyday purposes – it’s totally incongruous and a nightmare to boot!

And what would it be like to be that huge? I bet it would not be hard to push down a wall or throw a refrigerator, and that really sounds like quite a bit of fun. But I guess I’ll never know. I’ll never know the physical freedom that comes with knowing you can destroy most things with your bare hands. Well, maybe not most things, but most people, at least, and why would a non-athlete such as myself take steroids if not to exact revenge on my enemies?

I wonder if I could jump extra-high. Because if you were a huge monster and you could jump like 10 feet in the air…well, that just opens up a whole new world of possibilities. (Mostly doing evil things and jumping my way to safety.)

And if there were somehow a drug that would turn your skin into a kind of armor, well, let’s just say there is a lot of potential to this idea.

Boy, all this unfounded speculation is making me think I should probably do some steroids.

Because I’m a tense guy. An angry guy. A real hateful and destructive monster trapped in the body of a harmless little twerp. My entire life the only thing I have ever really wanted to do was destroy all the world, but it has always just been a wistful fantasy, an intoxicating what-if where I dream myself stomping on the rubbled remains of all of civilization. Well, this is America, the land of dreams and drugs, and who’s to say I can’t achieve one with a little help from the other?

See, where Canseco went wrong and where I will go right is that I will continue to take more and more steroids, long after the point where I am as big as Canseco. I won’t stop until I can lift a tank (and probably not even then!)

And that’s when the world will see what a vindictive person I truly am. I will dispense an innovative justice that improves where some of our current laws lack, and I will do it with a swift and powerful hand. But first, I will come for my enemies.

And that should give everyone who knows me pause, because frankly, with my steroid rage, I can’t be expected to discern my real enemies from friends who sometimes get on my nerves. It’s just the nature of rage and bloodlust, and I think it would be naive to suggest that I would be immune to its influence.

So maybe now would be a good time to return any paperbacks you may have borrowed, rescind any comments you may have made about my prowess in interior design, and if I have a party and you’re invited, you better come, and you better bring a bottle of wine.

And it better not be Yellowtail.

Before starting this out, I feel compelled to explain that, while my cat’s name is Professor, it doesn’t imply an occupation. It’s just a name. We never really planned on it – that’s just how it worked out. And I only mention it because I would be suspicious if someone told me their cat’s name was Professor. My reaction would default to “dorks who really think that naming their cat Professor is just the bees knees of pet name ideas.” And that’s not the situation with me and my roommates. We don’t call him “The Professor” or make in-jokes about his adventures and exploits in academia. If that sounds like a tangent you would be interested to follow, you should probably read William Shakesparkles. So just so you know, his name is only Professor the way my name is Matt, see? Yes, I might be too self-conscious about it, but I feel like there is a high misinterpretation factor intrinsic to having a cat named Professor.

And that’s all I’m saying.

I often catch myself giving my cat an intensely shaming glare of disapproval when he licks his privates or gets dirty with the blanket. It’s probably not the best way to address my uneasiness about his behavior, but for God’s sake, life is full of enough hassles, our every day is absolutely polluted with them, and I’m okay with that, for the most part, but why, for the love of all that is sacred and holy, do I have to be thinking of my cat in terms of sexuality? Cats are supposed to be nice and cute things that you love and only think good thoughts about. Even when they do bad things like knock items off tables or slash guests in the eyes, you’re not thinking bad thoughts, you’re thinking ‘what a cute and bad kitty I have. Bad (cute) kitty.’

But cute thoughts turn a poisonous shade of sour when your cat reveals itself for what it truly is: a horny teen with a raging hardon.

I know that is a gross thing to say! This is exactly what I’m talking about! It’s one hassle too many!

And the blanket thing is highly disturbing. We’ve all seen animals hump things, whether on TV or our legs, but this is nothing like that. No. This has a stillness to it, an intensity through stillness. He hardly moves at all except to shift weight or push a paw into the blanket. It’s the curve of his spine and the forward-leaning angle of his haunches. It’s his eyes. The look in his eyes.

It’s the kind of look that really makes me question the omniscient cosmos as to why I should have to see that look in the eyes of a cat. Because really, I could do without it.

My instinct is to try to stop him while he’s doing the crude and inappropriate thing he does. But then I just keep getting this image of me having sex with someone, and some humongous hand, not lifting me up as the image implies, but pushing me, nudging me to the side, hesitantly trying to get me off of the person I am having sex with, because that is the disgusted and apprehensive manner in which I go about getting him off the blanket, and it really makes me see the whole situation in a very different light. I mean, I would be totally pissed off if someone with authority over me attempted to exert their influence over my sex life. I would consider it wildly inappropriate, even if they happened to be the person who fed me, clothed me, and provided me with shelter. Some things are just private.

That’s when I start to feel like a bad master. Like I’m exceeding my authority and should just leave the situation alone. The cat does not have a bedroom door, after all. His only options are public.

And there isn’t any kind of…discharge of… fluids or anything. God no. We took him to the snip-snip when he was just a little kitty. So the blanket is fine. Forget it if he had been spraying some kind of sinful shit. The first time it happened I would have burned the blanket and murdered the cat in the coldest blood.

But even clean I am not okay with it. So I have resorted to passive aggressive tactics like looking at him with a strong sense of disapproval and saying things like “Professor, stop,” “Seriously, Professor, fucking stop,” and “God is watching you Professor. He sees the terrible thing you do,” but I don’t think I’m getting through. What a dense cat. A dense, dirty, sick, perverted cat.

Sometimes, I don’t know, every few weeks or so, when I get out of the shower, my palms are very itchy for no apparent reason, and I always find it to be strange and moderately alarming. It’s probably just an allergic reaction to the temperature of the water or my olive oil hair treatment or my microfibre-reinforced resin polymer based hair product, but it bears all the swollen insidiousness of a mild yet persistent STD.

Because man, do they ever itch. It’s like fire, its an insatiable urge – to begin to itch it is only to whet its voracious appetite, the stinging intensifies, my itchy palms demand more, more, as they become hotter and hotter, until it feels like I’m going to scratch the skin right off.

The only way to stop it is to not touch anything and try to think about something else, anything else, sunny-skied paradise and the like, but above all to not touch anything, because it only makes it worse. Ice cubes don’t work. Sometimes I think they will but it only makes for itchier and hotter in the end.

I always feel somewhat ashamed when this happens. I think it’s because itches are often grimy little unsanitary conditions, and palms are just shady in general. Hands are fine. Palms are sketchy.

And that’s why it makes me ashamed. I think “itchy palms” and “itchy” sends me off thinking about skin conditions and French whores, while “palms” makes me think of masturbation. Masturbation has never been something I really care to think about. It’s enough that we all do it, we don’t need to call attention to it in conversation or even thought. My personal hell is a social gathering that is full of histrionic, shock-value types that refuse to stop talking about masturbation and poorly considered liberal politics. I don’t know why those two go hand in hand, but they do.

Not to mention that after all that palm-itching my hands turn beet-red. There is nothing more shame-inducing than when body parts turn beet-red. Even the expression: beet-red. Nasty.

So all this gets me thinking that I have some kind of palm-herpes that flares up every few months. Even though I know that's not what it is. It's not like there are any sores or scaly patches or anything. For God's sake, if there were I would not be writing about it, I would be too busy amputating my own hands. Or at least one of them. It would be difficult to amputate the second one because how would I grip the hatchet? And something tells me my friends would be reluctant to assist. Lousy friends. I might be able to rig something up, though. If I planned enough in advance.

Tori Amos...wrote...book.

so...many...jokes...

too much...make fun of...

can't think...reboot.


.

Most people, I don’t want to say just girls, but okay, most girls, it seems, have a special voice that they save only for doggies and babies. It is a voice that flows freely and naturally, untainted by that self-consciousness that colors basically everything all of us do. It’s just bang – they see dogs and begin to jibber and squeal. And really, that is a great thing – people are too wrapped up in inhibitions and peer-based fears. We spend so much of our lives conforming various aspects of our personalities to what we imagine the world expects from us that it is a wonder we are even ourselves by the time we hit adulthood. And who knows – the majority of us may be less individuals and more a pop-culture collage, a complex web of acquiescence and compromise, where the only person you consult before consulting yourself is everyone else in the world. For that reason and that reason alone, I think it is wonderful when people go goo over dogs.

But why do they have to talk to dogs the way they love to talk to dogs? And don’t get me wrong, I think dogs are just great. I weawwy weawwy wuv dem but I maintain a firm grip on my scruples when I’m face to face with one. But then, maybe that’s just a gift I have. Or an alienating curse. (Let’s-call-the-whole-thing-off.)

Now, I’m not talking about normal everyday gooing and gawwing. I’m talking about all out candy-brained elation, the screeching and cooing of a person who is way too happy to see a dog.

Of course, I’m not going to pretend to be so dense as to not understand the instinct that sends people reeling and squealing over things that are cute. I just think that, as an intelligent species, we can take that instinct and sift it through the prohibitive filter of logic, so that while the instinct may suggest, “Aww – wook atta cootsy wittwe goggy,” the brain restructures it as, “You’re an attractive canine specimen. Perhaps you would like to participate in a game of I-throw, you-retrieve?”

When I bring this up to guys I know who have girlfriends, their reactions are similar and suspect. “That’s busted,” one guy tells me. “This is why you can’t hold down a date,” the other says.

“How exactly does one ‘hold down’ a date?” I inquire, as they shake their heads at me as if to say ‘what the hell is wrong with you?’ for their girlfriends are close at hand and they happen to be looking at pictures of babies and puppies. All this talk is heresy and I’m the only one who is safe from the chopping block. “I wuv goggies,” they recite at me, their zombie eyes beckoning me to join them and their loves in their babygoo petspeak. “Don’t oo wuv goggies too?”

Really, I can handle a little peeping and screeching, but sometimes people get a little too excited about animals – it’s like their whole world got so much better upon seeing that dog that they breathe as if for the first time, and in their eyes you can see a new light and the promise of a New Dog. And that’s when I begin to wonder about how potentially crazy this person may be. Because if seeing a cute animal is that good, then I can’t help but wonder what is that wrong. Because it’s something. You know it’s something.

Funny how bent out of shape people get about dishonesty. Because what am I supposed to do? Grimace at the cute girl I’m with when she goes applesauce over some dog? Of course not, I’ll just smile, say “that’s some dog,” and picture making out with her later. Because I’m not under any delusions about myself. Or at least not many. I fully realize that every one of my unfortunate qualities is basically a million times worse than gogg-voice. And, if nothing else, it would be satisfying in the thick of a row some day to acidly confess that I have always hated the way she talks to stupid animals “and I’m talking from the first date!”

But I’m getting ahead of myself. You can’t have blow-out fights until you have a relationship. So, first things first. Make her think I like dogs, indeed, that every time I see one the sky parts to reveal all the utopian dreamscapes of every paradise ever hallucinated. And if it is that unbearable, if her dogside manner is just too infuriating, I can always just give the dog an “accidental” tail stomp or rib-kick as we walk away.

Yeah. I’ll kikka goggy inna wibbs.

Ess I will.

Yeah, I walk around and listen to Les Miserables on my iPod. So what? I am in love with Eponine. Always have been. In fact, besides Cleo from Heathcliff, you could say Eponine was my first love.

There’s eight year old me, playing with He-Men and thinking about girls, what it might be like to kiss one and why none of them liked me, all the while my mom has Les Miserables on the stereo and I hear Eponine, a cute-sounding sad girl who thinks about boys all the time! We were perfect for each other!

And so, throughout my young life, I maintained a peripheral relationship with Eponine. I knew we couldn’t be together because she was 200 years dead and not real, but some things you just don’t want to let go of completely, and we kept the door open.

One great thing about Eponine is that she is a character in a book and musical, but there is no blockbuster movie associated with her. In a movie, there would be a celebrity face forever ruining her potential, but as it stands she is ambiguous, she is whoever I want her to be, my dream girl or my crush of the week – she is always perfect!

And to picture her out in the night alone in the dark city streets just so she can become lost to a world that would not have her found...well, that is a pathway that leads straight to my heart. What can I say? My heart beats for the lost, and I would expect anyone who has ever known what it is to be lost to feel the same. Because for my part, I am okay when I am alone in the darkness, but to picture one such as Eponine going through it all, all the emptiness and the gigantic hopelessness drumming and echoing throughout the threat of eternity – I can’t bear it. It is too frightfully near to me, and I shudder at the idea that she would feel the same, Eponine, the girl of my dreams (this week).

And that is why I want to give Marius a profound slap across his stupid face – a slap to reverberate throughout the ages, a slap that will knock the sense into all my past loves who would not requite, a slap for all of the blind fools throughout history, every Marius that ever was, only to find it come back and hit me hardest, for I have been irresponsible, continue to be irresponsible, and hearts are always open for misuse.

Why is that the way it always goes? You hurt and hurt for the people who won’t love you back, it’s like emotional electrocution, it bangs through you like a panic of firecracker spiders, everything in you screaming in every direction – forbidding you to sit idly by, insisting that you fight, insisting that you do anything and everything you can to stop them, win them, because why can’t they see? Why can’t they see you? Why isn’t it you? Why don’t they love you? And there is nothing you can do. Because they don’t. Even though you do.

Yet to be on the other side is to feel the burden of love that you cannot reciprocate. And it is a burden, because no one can make themselves love someone who they don’t. And no memory of personal heartbreak will make love magically appear.

And so my heart hurts for Eponine, and I yearn for the opportunity, silly as it may sound, to love her back. To look in her eyes and show her that she is worth loving. That someone thinks she is all the world. Because I have had that before. I have seen that look in another’s eyes, and what a wonder it is to remember that someone once looked at me that way. It has come and it has gone. And I find myself thinking an awful lot about how wonderful it would be to have it back.

What if I did get the opportunity to show Eponine how I truly feel? She would probably be into me at first, the attention would be most welcome, my lovestruck manner would surely win me a second date, but soon enough the specter of Marius would encroach upon our every interaction. I would become the one who loves her dearly, whose attention she cherishes, and who loses out in the end to the one who casts her aside. It’s the way of the world.

On the other hand, she might truly love me, it might all be perfect, it all fits into place, she feels like she is the luckiest person in the world to have met me even in the midst of her torment over Marius. I will get her and it will be good, good for all of 3 days and then it is downhill from there, the mountain is conquered, the race is won, and all of a sudden, I will realize Eponine is not all I thought she was, that she doesn’t get my jokes the way I wish she would, her shortcomings will overshadow everything else about her, and I will want to fly, fly far from Eponine, the girl I thought was right. It’s the way of the world.

I always default to the wistful and then to the negative in matters of love. It is probably because I am a little weary, and I know that I am not alone. I just want someone to look at me, and I want to see that they like me, and I want there to be no hesitation. I want to feel an embrace like an intricately laced amulet. I want to wrap up in another person the way that only two people who wrap right can, because I miss that particular softness and sense of easy perfection. The feeling that comes when you feel her neck against the side of your face and how perfectly you fit behind her ear! It is as though you were made for the very thing.

It is with this image that I take heart, despite my negative and realistic tendencies. Because there is the possibility that it would be right. That Eponine and I would find in each other everything we never found before – or, more accurately, the things we once had that have gone away. Just as there is that possibility in everyone. And that, I guess, is why I do it again and again, why we all do it again and again, despite the fear, despite the familiar hurt, despite the likelihood that I will be On My Own as I have found myself so many times before.

Crap. Oh great. Perfect. I forgot to take my vitamin and flax oil pill. What the hell is wrong with me? How am I ever going to feel better and think sharper if I can’t take my stupid pills with any regularity?

I really have a lot of resentment in my heart that is reserved for vitamins. From the rack in the store to the rigid dosing schedule. Now, I don’t mean to seem lame in pointing out that vitamins are difficult to buy. Because they’re not. As long as you’re a woman with womanly needs, a man over 35 or someone looking for CarbSmart vitamins. If, however, you’re just a guy in your twenties who wants some vitamins, you are in for a long and confusing ordeal, and just when you think you have it all figured out, you’ve picked the ones that contain estrogen.

So every few months I will entertain a brief period where I really try to get on a vitamin schedule. But really, life has too many schedules, and what am I doing wasting one on vitamins? It’s not like I can balance infinite schedules.

And that flax oil pill is a little too big for my throat. (I have a really small esophagus – one day I will tell you the tale of how the cheesesteak sent me to the operating room – suffice it to say it did and I have a small throat. Slightly smaller than the width of a flax oil pill.) And so every time I take it I have to force it down with water, which hurts just a little bit. And that’s the thing about something that hurts just a little bit. After just a few instances, all of a sudden it doesn’t hurt just a little bit. It becomes your worst nightmare. (For all of you who were or are poor and lazy college kids who sell their plasma just so they can get a dime bag – I’m thinking specifically of that pinprick they give your finger which soon becomes your worst fear, and pretty soon not even a dime bag is worth that kind of agony.) And that’s just the thing – I start to have a problem when I find myself comparing the act of swallowing a pill to being stabbed with a needle. A pill just shouldn’t be that much trouble.

And through it all, I have two thoughts I can’t shake: first is the thought that all this is a ridiculous farce, that vitamins are just nonsense and I will feel just as lousy all the time whether or not I take them, and the second is the thought that vitamins are magical pills, and they will make me stronger, smarter, and perhaps even give me powers.

I mean, logically, I know that vitamins are not a panacea. Yet when I take them I can’t help but feel their healing light coursing through my veins, strengthening my weary cells and filling my eyes with the light of good health. My ferocious and diseased brain cells drinking deeply of the calming oil of the flax. I guess that’s why I keep coming back. But man, what a hassle. What a shitty hassle.

What can I say? Some things never get not funny.

I swear, the second you start to worry about dating you’re done for. It’s curtains. You’re finished. Ruined forever. Like me.

I remember a time when I was confident. When I had a chance. A time when there was a sparkle in my eye and a swagger to my gait. A time before I got all washed up and miserable. Why, there was a time when I could sidle right up to a stranger after making eyes at her on the subway and walk away with her number. Now I can’t even get girls I don’t really even like to call me back.

It’s the dates, the awful and miserable dates.

Somewhere along the line I screwed myself up on three counts. First of all, I convinced myself that girls in the city are inherently distrustful of men in the city, because why not, they should be, the city is full of sick bastards, and really I just don’t like men in general (they’re all stupid, mean, and they stink - like they smell of hormones, cologne, and old farts trapped in their pants). But then I got confused and started thinking of myself from the perspective of the girl when I would be talking to one, wondering whether or not she thought I was a sick bastard. So of course everything I did and said all of a sudden became twisted in the extreme, and there was no doubt in my (her) mind that I (I) was a real bad guy. (It’s like if you get to suspecting that someone is doing coke, watch them when they go to the bathroom – from children to the elderly, everyone will look like they are!)

I tried not to let that affect me too much, but of course it did, so instead of paying attention to said girl, I would be trying not to act like a psycho. And then, as a result I wouldn’t be able to pay attention to what was going on, which led me to create my second problem: the fear that I have nothing of interest to say and couldn’t possibly connect with another human being in a romantic sense. And yes, I know that that doesn’t need to be true, but as soon as you first think it, it is immediately true! And how do you go back once you have gone over? You don’t, that’s how!

And thirdly, thanks to my first two problems, I have convinced myself that I am crummy dating material, and that any girl who is unlucky enough to be out with me is definitely counting the seconds until the end of the date. Well, if she’s so anxious to get it over with, then she can have her wish! I’ll show her how undatable I am and I’ll never speak to her again!

You want to know what going on a date with me is like? Here you go.

First of all I will be stiff and awkward as I feverishly try to clear my mind and be irreverent and charming. As I’m intensely failing to accomplish this, I will kill any conversations that come up that might have actually gone somewhere, wondering all the while why I can’t just go with the flow. Then, after more than 2 awkward silences I will completely lose confidence and talk, just talk without thinking about what I’m saying and 10 minutes later I will realize with complete shock that I have somehow let it slip that 1) I am a college drop-out, 2) I am very nervous about not making a good impression on this date, and 3) I used to have a drug problem but I totally don’t anymore (as I gaze into myself, checking this fact with my inner truth-technicality sensor, and it checks out okay). And that, for some reason, is when I begin to consume alcohol at twice my previous speed and everything I say from that point on, while not all-out cartoonishly drunk, does qualify as “slurred.”

‘Oh, it’s okay,’ I used to think. ‘She probably just realizes that I’m a little neurotic and dorky and she will find that endearing.’ Oh, the lies we (I) tell ourselves (myself).

And so here I am, alone and ruined. My phone is cold and dark, my email inbox is barren. There is no hope for me anymore. I can’t talk to other people and I am a sick freak. Who knows, there’s probably bodies in my freezer that I don’t even know about. Bodies that I killed and put there but I’m too crazy to know I did it. Maybe I’ve actually killed all these dates and that’s the reason they aren’t calling me back.

Yeah, right. No such luck. Those girls are alive and well, I don’t have any bodies in my freezer and I’m not even psycho. Not psycho at all.

“Are you imagining me with my clothes off?”
“Well…how do you imagine people?”
“I don’t. I just look at them.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Because I find people to be a lot hotter when you picture them naked.”
“Excuse me?”
“No, not like in a jerk way. In a nice way.”
“You think it's hotter to picture me naked - in a nice way.”
“Yeah. Like not in a dirty or sexy way. More in an Olympian way. Like you’re lounging around with leaves and Ionic columns, and you’re just naked.”
“Listen – ”
“Or is it Doric?”
“I find it –“
“Wait, what’s the difference between Ionic and Doric?”
“You’re supposed to be taking my order, not sexually harassing me!”
“Whoa whoa. Let’s just step back for a second. First of all, I’m about to get your order, I was just warming things up with some conversation. Second of all, those words you just put out there are very serious words –“
“I mean them to be! You’re sexually harassing me!”
“No I’m not! I meant it only in a nice way! I didn’t realize that it would make you uncomfortable.”
“You didn’t realize it would make me uncomfortable?
“No.”
“Well it does.”
“You should lighten up.”
“What?!”
“Yeah. It’s nice to be imagined naked. It’s a compliment.”
“It most certainly is not!”
“Yes it is. For instance, the way I’m picturing your body right now –“
“Get your manager!”
“What?”
“Immediately!”
“Okay, now. So let me get this straight.”
“No! Help!”
“Just tell me you’re not imagining me naked too and I will get the manager.”
“I’m not!”
“You’re not?”
“No!”
“Wait. Not what?”
“I’m not imagining you naked!”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m just here to have lunch, not sex!”
“You’re really hung up on the sex thing, you know that? I haven’t said one thing about sex, except to steer the conversation away from it, despite your efforts to the contrary.”
“Get your manager.”
“So what’s wrong with me anyway?”
“Well, I imagine there is a lot wrong with you.”
“No, not in my head. My body. What’s wrong with the way I look that I’m not pictureable as naked?”
“I’m not getting into this with a waiter.”
“Oh. Oh. I see.”
“What do you see?”
“Nothing.”
“No. What do you see?”
“I guess your imagination is black tie only.”
“Oh, don’t you dare.”
“My parents are very rich, you know.”
“I don’t care.”
“I mean my parents are dead.”
“That’s not true!”
“It will be true someday!”
“Get your manager!”
“Look, I need this job, okay? I never meant to offend you, I only meant it in a nice way, please. I’m so sorry. I just don’t have any sense of what is appropriate.”
“I don’t care.”
“But I’m really a nice person, please. I have no money. I will lose my apartment if I lose this job.”
“You should have thought of that before you harassed me.”
“No, please. I just honestly wish people would picture me naked – I think of it as the highest form of flattery.”
“Oh, please.”
“Truly. I only meant it as a compliment, the highest compliment. You just strike me as one of those rare people – you stand out, there is a light in your eyes like diamonds, and I really, honestly am just a little giddy to be in your presence and I said some stupid things. Please don’t make me pay for that. Please.”
“Just take my order.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. Take my order and get away from me.”
“Yes ma’am. What will it be?”
“I’ll have the mozzarella sandwich with the parsnip and ginger puree.”
“Excellent choice.”
“Yes, great.”
“Can I have your phone number in case there is a problem with your meal?”

Is it possible that I might be the first person in the history of the world to make privates out of earbud headphones? I'm inclined to think no, but upon further reflection, I have decided that it is possible.





.

Trash pail? Who the hell says trash pail? No one. That’s who.

I have a particularly strong reaction to words I don’t like. It’s not something I can help, it’s a reflex. I see a word I don’t like and I want to punch its goddamned lights out, and I wonder what kind of person would write a word like that out – how they go to sleep at night knowing they’ve used the word “pail” when they could just have easily said “can.” Did they do it by accident or on purpose? Because if I were going to take subtle revenge on people like me, I would be spreading words like “pail” and phrases like “not so much” everywhere I could.

I feel about words the way the crazy kid in high school feels about all the bullies he means to kill someday. Only, instead of living people, my revenge list includes such offenders as “curl up with a good book,” “bonding” and “funk,” as in “what is that funk in the room?”

“Hand over the chocolate and no one gets hurt!” my friend Jeff likes to say. “You do not want to be around me before I’ve had my morning coffee.”

Tell you what. If you ever want to break me, I mean really make me go nuts, come up to me, use the words “funk” and “feet” in the same sentence, and then tell me how “stressed” you are, how you “just can’t deal” and what you wouldn’t give to be able to “curl up with a good book” especially if that book happens to be written by “Lemony Snicket.”

Now, I have no thoughts on Mr. Snicket’s stories or the movie, as I have neither read nor seen (and yes, I’m suspicious of grown-ups who have), but the sound of the name is nothing less than a grave offense, and it perplexes me to no end that anyone can hear the sound, the awful sound of those two words, Lemony and then Snicket, and see it as anything other than an outrage. And really, I don’t know why I hate the two words as much as I do, suffice it to say, when I hear them, everything in me rises in protest at the blasphemous noise. Like some kind of sour circus candy bar.

Pail. What the hell, anyway? Pails are clunky and stinky old things that belong in the 1930s, not the world of the future. Well, on with the future, I say. Call it a disposal unit and put some lights on it, already. Come to think of it, garbage cans are running seriously behind the times. They don’t even have any LEDs or chips, let alone plasma displays. They’re just crummy plastic. One day when our disposal units catch up to technology we will wonder how we ever kept our garbage organized. No wonder people are still calling them pails. They’re more trash pails than they are disposal units. It’s a sad comment on how far we’ve yet to go as a society if I’m going to be flying on hoverboards and teleporting before I die. I mean, at this rate, I probably won’t even get to leave the planet in my lifetime, and that thought just makes me so stressed I don’t know how I’m even supposed to deal.

I have been going wrong with fashion lately, for the first time in a long time, and I’m not too thrilled about it. I have long considered myself to be pretty trig when it comes to looking good, to the point where I have spent considerable time wondering whether or not vanity was a defining characteristic of mine. Because if you add vanity to anger and self-centeredness, well, I think that’s when its time to answer some hard questions about ones defining characteristics.

Also, girls whom I have dissed or had some other sort of problem with have long accused me of being gay, and for the straight man, that just means you look good, right? All signs pointed to “fashionable.”

I think it all started with the UGZ boots I bought. I was out on a boot-buying excursion and I wasn’t feeling particularly patient (it was some loud and rowdy SoHo shoe store filled with rambunctious city kids who apparently like to hang out in shoe stores much more than I would have figured city kids would) and all they had were black ones. I just figured that UGZ hadn’t really devoted much time to their men’s line of boots and my options were limited anyway, so I just bought the black ones. As far as I was concerned, I didn’t care that they weren’t the cutest boots. Sure, I would have preferred the tan ones that all the girls wear, but well, by virtue of the fact that I wanted girls boots, I decided that some black boots might do me good. Man me up a little. Plus, they feel so damned great. Like I have murdered two of the world’s softest and furriest animals and wrapped them around my feet. (Which I suppose I have since they are made out of sheep, but I like to picture an animal that is smaller and cuter than a sheep, like a sheepling or a sheep nugget – I don’t know why, I prefer things that are small).

One thing that makes UGZ so cute on girls is the fact that they can tuck or cuff their jeans into or above the boot, thereby exposing the whole boot and creating a clean, tight transition from boot to leg. It’s totally cute.

On a girl.

“Well, what’s good for girls is good for me,” I said to myself. “It’s the future now. Men and women are the same.” So I tucked my jeans into my boots and left the house. And my friends, like the vultures they are, sensed it, a stand-out inconsistency in a respectable fashion history. All of a sudden Matt – Matt who will make fun of anyone for any reason but hates it when people give him a taste of his own medicine – was tucking his jeans into his boots.

Amanda pulled that move that people love to pull where you walk into a room with something new about you and their eyes widen, you know they see what’s new about you, and they are trying to filter their bad reaction, meanwhile the look in their too-big eyes cuts through your “I’m doing a new thing” persona, and all of the confidence you thought you had combusts in a cloud of shame and self-loathing. “So…tucking your pants, huh?”

“Yes. If girls can do it I can do it too. We live in the future now.”

“Yeah…I’m not so sure you’re right about that.”

“No, I’m right.”

“Why do you want to look like a girl?”

My friend Culley was less tactful. “You look like a fucking idiot.”

“No! You have to tuck them! They look like balloon feet any other way!”

“A fucking idiot.”

After a few more of my friends offered up comments such as “Man, those are ugly boots,” and “you look like you’re dressed…for a lot of snow,” and “I thought only girls did that,” I decided to merely cuff my jeans instead of outright tuck them, hoping that that would be less out-of-place than the tucking was on me, and still draw attention to the fact that I was, in fact, wearing boots and didn’t just have balloon feet. I swear, when you just let your jeans fall over these boots, you have these huge club feet. I wanted to soften the effect in any way I could.

Part of the reason I started tucking was because I actually liked the whole look. Sure, they offered up the same leg-line that is traditionally female, but I thought it looked really good, even on a male like me – it was clean and gave me a real thin line. I like to look thin, sue me.

The cuff, on the other hand, was an all-out dipshit thing to do, but it got me harassed less than the tuck so I wore it like that for a few weeks regularly. I really felt like an idiot. Every time I would catch my full-body reflection I would kind of squint my eyes (I don’t know why that is always the way to make yourself look better to yourself) and try to justify it, but I always knew that I looked like a cross between a girl and Huck Finn, and that made me a Level 2 Tool. But why weren’t my friends making fun of me?

Eventually I tired of all the maintenance cuffing requires and decided to settle for balloon feet, and it was only then that my friends started saying things like “remember when you cuffed your jeans? I’m glad you are not doing that anymore,” and “remember when you cuffed your jeans and you looked like a fucking idiot? You really looked like a fucking idiot.”

Well, the boot fiasco is behind me, but I don’t know what to trust about looking good anymore. Just the other week I bought an iPod Shuffle and wore it around my neck because it seemed like a cool thing to do, but no, this did not meet the approval of the world either. “Tell me you’re not going out with that thing around your neck.”

“Yes! Come on! If you weren’t supposed to wear it around your neck, they wouldn’t have included the lanyard!”

Or maybe I’ve lost sight of some basics, such as stick to your gender, and, if the idea is to be cool, the word “lanyard” should be nowhere in sight.

Why on earth does the scoutmaster stereotype correspond to that of the leery-eyed pervert? I think this is cause for some degree of alarm, because I can picture a perverted scoutmaster crystal clear, but I have a very hard time imagining any other type of scoutmaster. Or is it priest I'm thinking of? No, I think it's both. And the thing about stereotypes is that they’re all secretly true.

Look at him with his warm gaze and milky touch. You know what I mean. Feel him place his hand on your shoulder – his is a clammy, limp hand that comes down light then sinks into your skin, getting heavier and heavier as the look in his eyes gets more and more distant, focused on a desire that would remain hidden but gushes, overflowing from him as you get the sudden notion that something is stirring below.

And no, I was not in the boy scouts. I quit when I was a Weblo. That's right. We-blo. We Blow. Us, the little boys. I'm telling you, it's sick. But that's not why I quit. I quit because they wanted me to do things like learn how to tie knots by reading books about tying knots, take train trips to historic Pennsylvania, and make racecars out of blocks of wood by nailing wheels into the blocks and then painting the block and then racing your nail-wheeled block against the others. Mine didn't make it down the ramp. Yes, my dad helped me. We're not engineers, okay? In any case, I may have been young, but even then I had a pretty acute sense of how I did not want to spend my time. Maybe if they had girls it would have been different, but we all know the scoutmasters would have something to say about that.

There is a mug in my room that is full of pennies. It is always full almost to the top, but it never spills over. I primarily use this mug as a place to keep my laundry quarters. Every time I have change in my pocket, I try to throw it in the mug, because it’s such a dent in my wallet to change my dollars into laundry money. I always way underestimate it. I think it’s going to be somewhere in the vicinity of four dollars and fifty cents—I do the math in my head and the numbers add up. By the end, however, I’ve used about three more washers than I had anticipated and the dryers aren’t as good as I remembered them being and my wallet is twelve dollars lighter than it was before I did that terrible laundry.

My friends say, “Why don’t you just drop it off and have them do it for you?”
I react like they’re crazy. “Are you crazy?” I ask. “That costs a fortune. When I do laundry, it only costs me four-fifty.”

Sometimes, I can make the whole laundry go on just the quarters I have in the mug. I love it when that happens. And it's not because I’m broke or anything. I mean, yeah, I don’t have a lot of money, but I just really resent the action of taking my dollar bills and turning them into change for the purpose of washing my clothes. It’s insulting.

Laundry woes notwithstanding, there’s something about that mug that doesn’t feel right. It has to overflow one day, but it never does. I mean, I throw all kinds of change into it, but I only remove the silver. The pennies have got to be adding up. Indeed, the majority of the mug is pennies except for the top layer. So why hasn’t it overflowed yet? And what happens when it does? Where will I put my change then? It just sits there, threatening me, brimming with change I don’t want. I should just dump the pennies out the window and have that mug be empty—then I’d make a new rule: no pennies in the mug. I could make two mugs: one for pennies and the other for silver. But I don’t foresee myself doing that. It’s not like I have mugs to spare.

It would be a different story if I could put the pennies to good use—like laundry—but I can’t do that either. The laundry lady won’t take pennies; nobody takes pennies. So then am I supposed to wrap the pennies up and take them to the bank? All for a buck fifty, if I’m lucky? Yeah right. While I’m at it, I’ll be sure to call up my dad and ask him where he gets his penny sleeves.
I don’t get those money sleeves. It’s based on the honor system. Who’s to say I didn’t skimp on a few pennies? Nobody would know, right? You just give the sleeves to the people at the bank and they give you money. Maybe the fifty cents they just gave me just cost me forty-nine or even forty-eight. And the severity of the fraud increases as you go: nickels, dimes, then, giver of greatest bounty, quarters. Seriously. Think about it.

Suppose I took a roll of quarters worth ten dollars, but I only put nine fifty in it. Then I take that ten and turn it into change and then I turn around and put that change back in a quarter sleeve, but I pocket fifty. I just made a buck and it’s been like just a few minutes. Suppose furthermore I have six rolls of quarters. Every bank I go to I make three bucks. In a city like this, I could just do that all day every day, bank after bank, and by the time I exhausted every one of them, I could start repeating them, nobody is going to remember me anyway. There’s some serious money to be made here. I could probably make like two hundred dollars a day. Holy God. I don’t know why I didn’t think about this sooner.

No, that would never work. It’s stupid. Would it? No. Probably not.

Today it’s the worst, too, because I’m fishing through the mug, not because I need laundry money, but because I need subway fare. It’s not like I don’t have a dollar fifty in my bank account for the ride. I’m just not so sure I should be taking out twenty is all. At least until some checks clear and even then I still have that—well nevermind. That’s not important. Damn, and then there’s that check—no, withdrawing that twenty is out of the question.

Buying things with change is always so humiliating, especially when you’re obviously buying staples. One doesn’t buy bread, eggs, and milk, pay for them with nickels and dimes, and then pretend he is anything other than washed up. I have done this on numerous occasions. I get uncomfortable, I blush, laugh awkwardly, and say something to the effect of “I found all this change and here’s…I’m paying with…you know how it is…I’m really sorry.”

“You gave me four twenty-five. It costs four twenty-nine.”

“Please…please.”

Maybe I’ll try that fraud thing. It’s a long shot, but it could work. One potential problem is they might say I need to have an account there in order to exchange money, but I think I could convince them. “Can’t you please just do this? I mean, it’s not a check, it’s money.”

I really don’t think I’ll get caught and even if I do, I have a good excuse. “No,” I’ll say. “That’s ten. It’s all there. I counted it.” And then when we re-count it I’ll go, “Damn, I must have counted wrong. You know how it is. So many quarters can get confusing. Oh hey, look. I have fifty cents in my pocket…”

Easy as pie.

Note to world:

If you wear a hat that says New York Princess and you see me holding my phone as though I'm engrossed in a phone game, you should probably beat me up.

“Um…can we turn the lights out?”
“What?”
“I think I would just…you know, feel better if we turned the lights out.”
“But you said before that was indicative of low self-esteem.”
“I said that?”
“Yes.”
“Why would I say that?”
“I don’t know. I was confused at the time.”
“Because you could have been someone who prefers to keep the lights off.”
“Oh, I am.”
“Great then! Lights out.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Not after you said that. We’re keeping the lights on.”
“Come on. I already apologized for that.”
“No you didn’t.”
“Well, I acknowledged it.”
“That’s not the same.”
“Well, I’m not actually sorry, so I figured the acknowledgement could suffice.”
“You figured wrong.”
“Come on. Just let’s turn them off.”
“Why are you so fixated on the lights?”
“I don’t know. Just want them off.”
“No, there’s a reason.”
“There’s no reason.”
“Tell me.”
“No.”
“Tell me or I’m going home.”
“No, don’t!”
“Then tell me!”
“It’s my underwear, okay?”
“Your underwear?”
“Yes.”
“What about it?”
“Come on.”
“I want to know what the problem with your underwear is. I don’t think that is unreasonable for me to ask.”
“It’s not…it’s not cool underwear, okay?”
“What’s not cool about it?”
“It’s bad underwear.”
“What, are there like holes in it?”
“No.”
“Then what?!”
“It’s last-resort underwear that dates back to Freshman year of college.”
“That’s a long time.”
“I know. And the elastic doesn’t really work so they kind of balloon up around my bottom ribs.”
“Great.”
“So…lights out.”
“What do they look like?
“No.”
“Just tell me.”
“They’re…yellow and they have monkeys playing the bongos all over them.”
“I have to see them!”
“No!”
“Really, all jokes aside, I don’t care that you have bad underwear. I do too.”
“You do?”
“Yes.”
“But you’re not wearing them?”
“No. Why?”
“No reason.”
“So let me see them.”
“Promise you won’t laugh?”
“No, I think I’m going to laugh.”
“In a nice way or a mean way?”
“Just show me the stupid underwear!”
“Fine. There.”
“Ew. Those are some ratty underwear you have there.”
“That’s why I wanted to turn the light off!”
“I don’t know if I can have sex with you now.”
“What?! Come on!”
“Why would you wear those?”
“I had no other underwear!”
“You could have just not worn any.”
“Yeah…no. Wait, did you just take a picture with your phone?”
“No, someone texted me.”
“They did not.”
“Yes they did. See?”
“Well, I can’t really make that out, but okay. Really?”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t take a picture?”
“No.”
“Because your fingers are separated right over the lens.”
“Trust me.”
“Okay…you…are you taking more pictures?”
“It came out blurry and I want to send it to my friend.”
“What?”
“Just because this was something we were talking about the other day.”
“Underwear with monkeys playing the bongos.”
“Yes.”
“You were talking about that.”
“Yes.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“Are you calling me a liar?”
“Well-”
“Because I hope you’re not.”
“It’s just that-”
“I really hope you’re not.”
“…no.”
“Good. Can you just stand more in the light and…do something funny?”

Oh, shit. Did I just hear….wait, is the water getting…OW! FUCK! It is so hot! I can’t get past it, I can’t touch it, it hurts, how am I going to get to the faucet? It’s scalding! How can water get this hot? I’ll just have to stand back here and wait it out. Oh no. The steam. Wow, that steam got very thick very quickly. It’s really thick …it’s actually kind of hard to breathe, all this steam. It’s making me a little woozy. It’s hot. It’s starting to feel like I can’t get any oxygen in here. Wow. Can’t even see the faucet anymore! Wait, is it…yeah, back to normal. Holy hell. I hate those bastards downstairs. They’re doing this just to fuck with me. They know when I shower in the morning. I can just see them joyriding on the hot and cold, glancing up at the ceiling with malicious glee, hoping to hear me yelp, and I never disappoint them, do I? They’re probably laughing. Who knows, all this probably turns them on, the perverts. This is New York after all. I find it entirely believable that some sweaty freak could be pitching a tent to the thought of scalding my naked body. And what kind of way is this to start every morning? I’m so angry I can feel my heart thumping…I’m definitely going to die of a heart attack someday and it’ll probably be in a scalding shower. Shit, hot again…HOT!

Why is it that the people downstairs always seem to get preferential treatment when it comes to the hot water hierarchy? I mean, sure, I’m inclined to think that that is one of those things that everyone experiences and so that might lead one to conclude that no one is special and everyone gets screwed, but then I ask who it is who is always scalding me to death and why aren’t they getting scalded by me? Sure, maybe they are getting scalded by someone else, but it stands to reason that someone down the line is not getting scalded. Someone is the person who has their leisurely pick of the hot water in the building, they probably don’t even know what it’s like to have their comfort yanked out from underneath them and replaced with searing hot pain, and I bet they just can’t get enough of their sweet luxurious lives. Maybe it’s that the people on the first floor are closer to the boiler so they are able to siphon more of their share of the hot water as it makes its way upward through the pipes. I bet it’s those bastards on the first floor.

There’s me at the Hot Water Club, pleading with the bouncers about my black tennis shoes versus their dress code, while my downstairs neighbors, all my downstairs neighbors from all the years, are basking in the VIP lounge in the steaming hot comfort afforded them by wretched and obnoxious circumstance.

Sometimes (usually in the thick of an incident, meaning every day) I imagine what it is like to live in the Magical Apartment of Temperature Control. Sure, the apartment downstairs is basically the same as mine, but in my mind’s suspicious and hateful eye, I see the bathtub is made of solid gold, and where my bathtub has only a faucet, hot and cold knobs and a shower knob, theirs has a Willy Wonka rig-up of valves and levers and meters connected by spirally wires. Here is a light which emits a faint buzz, signifying the upstairs shower is in use, there, a dial measuring temperature, and next to it is the lever, the accursed lever that they casually and callously flip to the top, and oh, how they chuckle as the needle jumps to the red and steam begins to seep through the cracks in the ceiling, accompanied by my shrieking and cursing. Listen to them cackle, choking on their own joy, the mad gluttons who can’t stop gorging themselves on helping after helping of hearty and delicious cruelty.

I wonder what they would do if I stomped right down there, soaking wet in my bath towel, demanding an explanation for their extreme and sociopathic behavior. Whoever answered the door would probably feign ignorance, demonstrating complete bewilderment in the face of my raging accusations, all the while one of their hideous oompa loompas is quietly and discreetly drawing the shower curtain to divert attention from the contraption within. But I won’t be sent away so easily, and I insist they let me look around their apartment if they truly have nothing to hide. That is when the guy who opened the door offers me a piece of candy I somehow can’t refuse, and no sooner does he tip his velvet top hat than I am back in my apartment and it’s morning, and what do you know, it’s time for a shower.