Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Thursday, August 07, 2008
The Life and Times of Alex Traynor. Volume One.
My cat got in a fight with one of the neighborhood cats the other day. It was vicious, ruthless, and downright painful to watch. Mostly because they were both on opposite sides of a glass door. You see, sometimes we leave the main door to the house open, yet the screen door (which is glass) closed, so the cat can, you know, look out onto the neighborhood and such. Well, anyway, I’m sitting on the couch, being lazy, when all of a sudden I hear hissing, and then a loud bang, and another bang, and then a “Meow.” I get up to check on the commotion, and there I see it, two idiot cats fiercely scratching and biting opposite ends of a pane of glass. I wondered how this had started, I mean, I was sure it was my cat’s fault, since he’s kind of an asshole, but what could he possibly have done to make another cat want to beat the shit out of him? Maybe he called the other cat a pussy (No, folks, I’m still not above puns.) Maybe he shit and threw up on the other cat’s favorite Lion King Blanky several times? Or maybe, just maybe, the other cat was able to sense evil, and felt it was his moral obligation to destroy my cat once and for all? And it went on for at least ten minutes, they just kept scratching and hissing, gathering intensity, until, finally, my cat lost. Yes, that’s right: my cat, in effect, lost a fight to a glass door. How could that possibly happen, you ask? My cat got tired. In what might be considered either the stupidest, or the most arrogant act ever to occur in a catfight, my cat curled into an adorable little ball and fell asleep in front of the door, while the other cat was still fighting! This may be due to a number of reasons, but the one that strikes me as the most relevant is that, again, my cat is an asshole, and knew this would enrage the other cat to no end. And the fight continued, even though my cat was dead asleep. The neighborhood cat just kept going and going; he wanted to kill my cat. As I kept watching the fight, I felt some kind of connection with the neighborhood cat though I had never met him before. It was as if we shared some bond, as though even though I was a man, and he was a cat, our souls had connected on same plane in a parallel universe. And in an act, that may either be considered the most empathetic, or the meanest thing I’ve ever done: I decided to finish the fight. So, I kicked my cat. Not hard enough to kill it, but hard enough to send it a message: Stop being an asshole! I had been victimized and abused by that damn cat for years, and this was my moment, my opportunity. I couldn’t just let my cat get away with it, yet I couldn’t open the door either, and let the neighborhood cat rip my fucking asshole of a cat to shreds. So, I settled on the only compromise that was just and fair and also let me kick my cat, just once. So, I did it, and even though I am a 6 foot tall man that weighs 160 pounds, and he is a 1 foot tall house cat the weighs less than 15, and such minor victories in the history of man as a species should never be celebrated, I felt spectacular. In my mind, I was a hero. It was like I had saved a family of four from a brushfire, or ended world hunger. I couldn’t possibly have felt better and more magnanimous had I punched the planes down with my bare fists before they had a chance to hit those damned towers on 9/11. And what did I do in the aftermath, did I lay down and cry about the horrible, awful thing I had just done? I blasted “We Are The Champions” from my speaker system and took a victory lap around the living room. Then I went outside and petted the neighborhood cat and gave him treats. We’re actually good friends now (I call him “Rambo.”) So, you might be asking what, exactly, I gained from this experience? It gave me perspective. It showed me that some things just need to be done, they might seem stupid, they might seem cruel, but there are some wrongs in this world that need to be righted. I saw that neighborhood cat, and the look in its eyes, and I knew not only did he need this, and not only did I need this, but in some larger way, the universe needed this. We all have to do things that cannot be explained, not because we enjoy them (though, in this case, I did enjoy it), but because they are demanded of us by a greater power (not God, God doesn’t endorse this kind of shit.) I believe that in some small, atheistic way, we all have a cosmic destiny, and, that day, that moment, my sneaker’s cosmic destiny was right into the side of that cat. And I can tell you now, because I have seen the light, do what needs to be done, because in some small way, the universe depends on it.
It’s sometime around Halloween, and we’re walking around near the campus of BU, surrounded almost entirely by people headed back home from Costume parties. As we walk further down the street, we see a group of around 10 burly looking frat guys. One of them is dressed like a Cop, one’s dressed like an Indian, and another dressed like a construction worker. Before I have time to process this, my friend Jules yells, at the top of his lungs, “Hey, look! It’s The Village People!” Turns out, that was a pretty bad idea on his part. I guess he thought they would just laugh it off and go, “Haha, yeah, I guess our choice of costumes is pretty ironic.” They didn’t take it in such good humor, in fact, they tried to beat the shit out of us. I guess the lesson we all learned from this is that it’s never really a good idea to question the sexuality of drunken fratboys, especially when they happen to, perchance, not be in an all-gay fraternity.
Generally, I’m the kind of person who thinks before he speaks, but sometimes I just get caught off guard by myself and blurt out something mildly retarded. The main example of this happened a couple months ago when I told my friend that she looked “like she just had an abortion.” Now, normally this idea would come through my head and quickly be written off as something stupid to say, but, that day, it just kind of came out. This was bad for, specifically, three reasons:
1: It made an awkward situation even more awkward. Because, even if she just, perchance, happened to have had an abortion, how could she possibly respond? “Thank you, and I feel great!”?
2: You can’t backtrack from it. It’s not like I could’ve just gone, “I was just joking!” because it wasn’t really funny at the time. And it’s not like I could have played it off as a mis-statement “….And by ‘abortion’, I meant ‘good day’! You look fantastic!” It’s just one of those things you’re going to have to live with saying.
3: What the fuck does “You look like you just had an abortion” even mean? Is there even a specific look on the faces of people who just had abortions? And if there is, what would it be? Would they look happy, because they just accomplished something? Or would they look sad, because they just killed a baby? Either way, those emotions don’t specifically denote “I just had an abortion” by themselves, and besides it’s not like she was wearing a Planned Parenthood T-shirt (which, I assume they hand out to everyone who has an abortion.) What I really want to know is, since I blurted it out, without approval of my conscious mind, what the fuck does my subconscious mind think someone who just had an abortion looks like?
A couple months ago I started a group on Facebook. It’s called, “If This Group Reaches One Member, Alex Traynor Will Masturbate.” Funny story: The second I created it, someone instantaneously joined. Isn’t that weird? I think I just needed an excuse.
“Break up with me,” she said. And at that very moment, I knew what I should have known all along: she was fucking crazy. What she could have said was, “Our relationship is horrible, we’ve hated each other for weeks now, and you know as well as I do that we should see other people.” Instead, she gave me a choice. Or, at least, it sounded to me like a choice, even though it very obviously wasn’t. I was confused. “What?” I asked. She replied, “Break up with me.” Which didn’t do a hell of a lot to ease my confusion, so I asked a clarifier, “Do I get a choice?” And this is where she makes it complicated, “So, you don’t want to break up with me?” she asks. I sensed, somehow, that she felt offended, as if she was disappointed that she hadn’t been enough of a bitch to make me immediately, involuntarily scream at the top of my lungs, “I hate you, you fucking whore!” And, at that moment, it all became very clear to me: She didn’t have the balls to directly break up with me, but she still wanted it to be over. Infuriated by the fact that I now, suddenly, was the one with the balls in this relationship, decided to piss her off and make things even more complicated. “What if I don’t want to break up with you?” I say. Which throws her for a loop, and makes me giggle in delight every time I try to imagine just exactly what went through that bitch’s mind in those mere moments. “What the hell is he doing?” I imagine her saying to herself, “He can’t do this! Doesn’t he know that by telling him to break up with me, I was in effect breaking up with him? If I don’t ever directly break up with him, will he still act as though we’re dating out of pure spite?” (Yes, yes I would’ve.) Eventually though, after taking around thirty delightful seconds to draft a response, she asks, “What if I told you I wanted to break up with you?” To which I coolly reply, “Too bad, I fucking love you.” Which must have made her mind practically explode into a sea of confusion. Until, finally, after a long silence, she regrows her pair of balls and says, softly, “I think we should see other people.” To which I immediately shout, “I fucked your best friend!” and then hang up the phone.
Sure, I didn’t actually fuck her best friend, but it was cool having her think that for a little while.
So, I was heading out with a friend of mine and I see my friends Frank and Steve signing a bunch of slutty drunk girls into the dorm. The next day, me and Steve have breakfast (at 3pm) and I say to him in jest, “So, how was the orgy last night?” And Steve goes, “Who told you about that?!?!” And I go, “What?!?! You actually had an orgy?” And Steve goes, “It’s a long story.” Turns out it wasn’t a long story, Steve and Frank had an orgy.
It all started at a frat party. I was doing what I normally do at frat parties, lean against the corner of the room and sulk, when I was approached by a group of girls. And this sudden, unlikely, predicament sent me into a shock, mostly because it never happens and I was convinced they were Russian spies or something. Anyway, we get to talking, and I determine that they’re not Russian spies, it just turns out they’re really drunk and men seem more attractive to women when drunk. I tell them my name, two of the girls tell me theirs, and then the third girl tells me her name: Fred. I’m confused by this, and all I can manage to say is, “It’d be really awkward if your last name were Flintstone and I were in a cartoon and my name is Barney” and they think I’m really funny, but, in actuality, I’m just confused. Anyway, my friend Will comes over, and we tag-team hit on the gaggle of moderately attractive drunk girls. Eventually, Will starts to dance with Fred, while I return to my corner and sulk some more, until after an hour of dancing with Fred, Will comes to me and says what he always says, “This party sucks, let’s go back to your room and play Videogame hockey.” As we were walking back to the dorm, I ask him what happened with Fred, and he said she offered, but he wasn’t really interested. I turn to him and say (actually, I was kind of drunk, so I might have yelled it), “BUT SHE HAD GGIIIIANNNT TITS!” And thus begins: The Legend of Fred.
What I forgot to mention (or, for literary purposes, casually decided to exclude) is that Fred had, quite possibly, World’s Biggest Tits. And that fact, coupled with the fact that her name is Fred, would spark the beginning of one of the largest folklores ever created about a girl with big knockers and a funny name.
Now, Will and I remember only passing details of that night, but, here are the events we can both agree on: 1.) We were at a frat party, and the girls approached me. 2.) Fred only told her name to me, and never to Will. 3.) She had abnormally large tits. 4.) She let Will feel them.
Other than that, there’s not much about the story we don’t argue still to this day. We’ve had arguments about the size of the room, about the color of Fred’s shirt, to even about what time we left the party. And usually these arguments last up to three hours, involve a lot of yelling, and sometimes end with someone getting stabbed with something. Though, generally, we end up arguing about the same two contentions most of the time.
The first, and, admittedly, lesser of the contentions is whether or not her name was actually “Fred.” Will contends that she was either lying, or joking, while I, on the other hand, remember it clear as day. He just plain refuses to believe that a girl named Fred could actually exist and that he, of all people, would feel her giant tits. He says, most times, “What if she introduced herself as ‘Ed’ and you just misheard?” I always tell him that I didn’t mishear, and then I ask why a girl with giant tits named “Ed” would sit better in his mind. And he always says, “It’s short for ‘Edith’,” and then I tell him to stop clinging to any kind of false hope he has because even his compromise arguments are retarded. He still doesn’t believe me though, and probably because my credibility is brought into question every time we argue about the second point, which is our main argument, and the one will probably continue to have years from now. It’s over the size of Fred’s tits, which we both can agree have grown larger in our imaginations since the event. Will contends that each of her breasts is “around the size of two, to three basketballs, conservatively.” I contend that they could crush and kill a man. If she were to get titfucked, the man would thrust and then get sucked into the vortex that is Fred’s tits (they’d need a search party to find him.) You could motorboat her with an actual motorboat. Earthquakes aren’t a force of nature, it’s Fred and her giant tits falling over. If she were to jump, just once, we would all die. If you were to cut open her tits, Shaquille O’Neal would walk out, and you’d be like, “What the fuck, Shaq?” Her tits are at least somewhat responsible for the tides. One time, Fred got a wet T-shirt contest cancelled because they ran out of the ocean. If Fred were actually in The Flintstones, her tits would both be bigger than the giant rib that topples over the Flintstones’ car. Before man, there were dinosaurs, and then there were Fred’s tits. Fred’s mother exploded when she reached her second trimester, and Fred’s tits emerged. If you were to stand on top of Fred’s tits, you couldn’t breathe, because there’s no air up there. One day bra sizes will not be in cups, but rather in a new unit of measurement, “Billionths of a Fred.” On the seventh day, God didn’t rest, he created Fred’s tits. Right now, we’re orbiting Fred’s tits.
Will disagrees with me often, and writes off my theories as childish, and lame. But he continues to argue with me for one main reason: he knows I mean them. And, I know they can’t possibly be true, since if any of them were, I would have died at that frat party. But I still mean it. Every time I see a mountain, skyscraper, or Shaquille O’Neal, I think of Fred’s tits, and then I vividly remember, as if it had actually happened, standing in a large room with Will, two other girls, a cup of beer, and a humongous, all-encompassing pair of tits. So, Will argues, and I argue back, and I’ve likened this line of disagreement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Whereas Will, Israel, just wants to be left alone. I, Palestine, just want to believe again. And I mean that in a number of ways, but mainly, both Palestine and I just want to live in a world where we have a place and where we know anything is possible. For Palestine, it’s for Israel to give them their nation back. For me, it’s to hang onto the belief that a pair of tits, each bigger than the sun, could possibly exist in any environment other than my imagination. And, yes, I know there are more than a few problems with this metaphor.
More so than anything, that fateful night taught me a valuable lesson: Everyone’s gotta cling to something. For Will, it’s the small shred of hope that maybe, just maybe, he didn’t almost fuck a girl named “Fred.” For me, it’s the hope that maybe, just maybe, things that you can’t explain, things that seem unlikely, can, and do happen. It’s the constant hope that one day, everything will be as it seems. That one day, there will be no fighting, no doubt, no delusion, no confusion. Everyone will just be happy, and the impossible will no longer remain as such.
Or maybe, just maybe, I also wanted to fuck Fred.
I fear that I’ll get in a car crash, and the song “Gay Bar” will still be playing when the paramedics get there.
“So you’re telling me you don’t shave your balls?” Steve asks, flabbergasted.
I stare back at him, “No, and that’s not weird”
He retorts, stating an erroneous statistic he made up saying approximately 85% of all men shave their balls.
I question this assertion, while stating that although it’s not incredibly unusual in America to have shaven balls, I doubt, for instance, that many men in China, or Pakistan, or any third world countries regularly tend to hair situation on their ballsacks.
Steve replies, “Have you ever been to China? Have you ever been to Pakistan? How many ballsacks in the third world have you inspected? Because the prevailing evidence in this argument suggests that 85% of men in the world shave their nuts, and unless you’d like present counter evidence stating otherwise, it is scientifically proven that you are weird for not shaving you nuts!”
I’m taken aback by that statement, because it was the most perfect, eloquent thing for Steve to have said. Not only did he effectively ensure the legitimacy of the evidence we both know he made up, but he also changed the element of the argument: I no longer had a chance of winning.
I then, sensing the need for something bold to regain control of the argument, decided that if Steve could falsify evidence, so could I.
“Well, you know what, I have been to China, and I have been to Pakistan and the third world! And I’ve personally inspected over 4,000 pairs of balls, and not one of them lacked a significant amount of hair!”
Steve turns his whole body towards me, looks me in the eye, like this has been the moment he’s been waiting for, and then points towards me and yells at the top of his lungs, “FAG!”
Checkmate.
So, me and my friend Ashley were driving to the largest Indian Casino in New England, Mohegan Sun (which is pretty much Connecticut’s unique way of saying, “Hey, you know, we’re all really sorry, for, you know, the whole genocide thing,”) and on the way there Ashley was, kind of, having a hard time following the directions we printed off of MapQuest. And I, being the good friend that I am, took pride in reminding her of this both constantly, and thoroughly for the duration of our trip. Anyway, we eventually get to the casino, we have a good time, and on the way back, due partly to the fact that she was tired, and partly to the fact that I gave her such a hard time on the way to the casino, she lets me drive the way home. So, confident in my navigational skills, I get on I-95 North, and I think of the things I’m going to say to Ashley when we get back, mostly variations on the line “Na-na-na-na-na-na, I can drive and you can’t! HAH!” So, eventually, after about an hour of driving, when I think things are going to fantastic, I see the only road sign that’s ever scared the shit out of me. It said, in bold, proud letters, “Welcome to Rhode Island!” Now, the thing about this story I probably should have said before is that we live in central Connecticut, the exact opposite direction of Rhode Island. I couldn’t have, in fact, gone in any worse of a direction. And when I see the sign, a flash of panic overcomes me, not because I rarely go to Rhode Island, (and, am, frankly scared of it) but because I could never, ever let Ashley find out about this. There’s no way I could ever live this down. Incessantly making fun of someone for taking a left turn instead of a right, and then proceeding to drive an hour in the opposite direction while still making fun of that person’s lack of direction is the kind of hypocrisy that people get impeached from elected office for. Thankfully for me, she didn’t see the sign, which meant there was still a chance that I could play this out without her noticing a thing. But the tricky part of that idea would have been getting back home without her noticing a.) me making a giant U-Turn on I-95, and b.) the fact that we would be taking three hours to drive home from a place that was only an hour away. I entertain the notion of making a go for it, leaving my dignity intact, before ultimately coming to the crushing realization that there was no possible way I could pull it off without her noticing. So, instead, I set in motion a strategy I like to call: ‘minimization’. “Yes, I’m an idiot, and yes, sometimes I’m also a hypocrite, but we’re not in Rhode Island for any of those reasons, we’re here because you’re such a good friend to me and I sensed, deep down, you’ve always wanted to go to Rhode Island unexpectedly on the middle of a Tuesday night in December. I know you that well, Ash.” Now, that wasn’t what I said, that’s what I should have said. Instead, after I decided I was going to ‘minimize’ the situation, I drew a complete mental blank as I tried, desperately to come up with the right words to say. And as Ashley became more suspicious, and as I searched for the perfect way to explain my massive fuckup, I decided to stall, except, not in the clever way, but in the stupid way. So, I pulled off a random exit and Ashley says something to effect of, “Where the fuck are we?” And I reply, “We’re home! See, I told you I’d get you home without getting lost!” And then she says, “This isn’t our exit. I’ve never been here before!” And, then, I say, “Jeez Ashley, how stupid can you be to not realize that this is our hometown. You’ve been here a million times. Maybe it’s just because it dark. Maybe you’re on your period.” She tells me I’m an asshole, while I continue to drive into the Rhode Island wilderness thinking of the perfect excuse. Eventually it dawns on me that maybe the fact that I’m driving through a spooky forest neither of us have been to before, all the while insisting we were in our hometown, would make Ashley scared for her life. It’s a wonder she didn’t think I was going to bring her to a random shack in the woods and murder her (because that was plan C.) So, I pull over the car and I say, “Hey, let’s get out of the car”, and while I knew that might have sounded like plan C was in motion, there was a practical reason to it. Mainly because if I told her while we were in the car, she might grab a hold of my head and repeatedly bash it into the driver’s side window. Eventually, outside of the car I say it like this, “I know your birthday’s a couple months from now, and I decided to get you a present.”
“What?” she asks.
“Well, remember how you like to travel?”
“No,” she says.
“ Well, I was under the impression that you liked to travel, anyway, it’s the greatest present ever.”
“What?” she says again.
Thinking that it would be charming, I adopted the voice of the announcer of the Price is Right, and said, in a loud, boisterous tone, “An all-expenses paid vacation to… Tropical Rhode Island!”
I’ll never forget the look on her face, because it spoke to me on three different levels. On the first level it said, “You are the biggest fucking idiot I’ve ever met.” On the second level, it said, “I’ll never, ever let you forget this.” And on the third level it said, “First of all, Rhode Island isn’t at all tropical, and second of all, when you said ‘all-expenses paid’, you really meant ‘all-expenses paid, by me’ since we’re using my car, and there’s no fucking way your cheap ass is ever going to chip in for gas money”
But, I guess, her actions spoke louder than the expression on her face ever could.
I’ve never been slapped harder in my life.
“Why aren’t you wearing your seatbelt? Do you want to get killed?” Steve yells at me, while I revel in the irony of the self-proclaimed ‘World’s Best Drunk Driver’ lecturing me on car safety.
As I walk down the street, I fall in love approximately every 30 seconds. “There she is, the girl of my dreams,” I’ll say to myself. And, this random urge to fall in love with complete strangers is so strong that most of the strangers I fall in love with aren’t even particularly attractive. Actually, a lot of them are ugly, or physically deformed, yet still, I fall in love with them, and even lay aside my most masculine sexual urges, in order to rationalize on their behalf. “Maybe she’s a good cook. She could be a good dancer. Who cares if she’s a midget? I bet she knows how to Salsa!”
And as a reflex to this sudden, unexpected burst of romantic attraction, a single thought will race through my mind: BE IMPRESSIVE. I generally set about accomplishing this by repeating the most loud and obnoxious part of the conversation I’m currently in, in some kind of stupid attempt to make them think I’m funny or something. Thing is: most of the time it just makes me seem loud and obnoxious. I mean, what do I expect when I purposely yell the most obnoxious part of the conversation I was just having? I’m not completely sure how I expect them to react either, it’s almost like I assume at the time that they’ll instantly fall in love with me, that they’ll suddenly pull down my pants and blow me in the middle of the street. (I mean, they’d probably drag me into an alley first.)
From these occasions, I’ve learned a little about myself. Mostly, that I subconsciously love all of the qualities that make me such an asshole. Why else would I try to attract a girl by being such a retarded dick? Because, deep down, I love retarded dicks, and I love the fact that I am one. Subconsciously, I assume that being loud and obnoxious will make women want to blow me in the middle of the street, because, deep down, I want to blow me in the middle of the street. I want the world to know that although I’m imperfect, and have flaws like any man, I am someone worthy of love and admiration. And somehow, I will accomplish this by blowing myself in the middle of the street.
It’s almost like I’m in an abusive relationship with myself. Sometimes I gush about how caring and thoughtful a provider I am for myself. And, sometimes I get a little bit too drunk and pee all over my stuff. But, between these conflicting moments of self-love and self-hate, there’s a deep since of admiration, as though, through all of the doubt and delusion, I know, somewhere, that I am my own soul mate. And as I continue to walk this fine line between egotism and self-loathing, it seems almost like I love how much I hate myself. One minute my penis is ten feet long and when I pee, I pee rainbows. The next minute, my dick Is three inches short, and it burns when I pee because I hate myself so much I’ve convinced myself I have Gonorrhea.
The discrepancies in the way I see myself aren’t caused by Bipolar disorder, or Meth addiction, but, rather, they’re caused by my sometimes divergent personality. Which, I’ve come to realize, comprises of two distinct sides. There’s a part of me that really truly is a sweet guy. That wants to help the little old lady across the street, and confess my love to random moderately attractive women because, somehow, I can see their inner beauty. And, then, there’s another side of me. The side that laughs at farts, and old people falling downstairs. The other side of me is a giant, self-centered asshole. And while both sides occur simultaneously, and fight for control over my actions, there’s definition between them. Because I know I hate one side, and I know I love the other. I might be an asshole one second, but, at least the next, I’m able to recognize that and hate myself for it. I’m able to make a dead grandma joke and then go, “Wow, you’re a giant fucking asshole.” Which is something I completely respect, because, in my mind, nothing’s more honorable than an asshole that knows he’s an asshole.
And I ask myself, “How do I stop being an asshole?” The answer to which I’ve determined is, “I can’t.” Being an asshole is ingrained into my personality, it’s not just something I can just stop entirely. That would be like telling Samuel L. Jackson to not be black. I’ve tried to be less of an asshole, but most times when I do that I just end up coming off like even more of an asshole. I’ve decided that the best way to handle this is a radical solution: purposely try to be more of an asshole. Because, you see, when I’m a moderately sweet kind of guy, and a moderate asshole, people just remember the asshole side and forget the moments of moderate sweetness. It’s like when you put a little bit of poo into a batch of Brownies. Even if they don’t actively recognize it, people still get a sour taste in their mouths, despite the fact that the recipe’s 98% delicious brownie, and only 2% poo. What I need to do is: be a loud boisterous asshole, all the time. That way, when my moments of moderate sweetness do shine through, they’ll be all the more poignant and profound. It’ll be like when someone puts a little bit of Brownie into a tub of shit. Sure, it’ll still taste mostly like shit, but people will probably say things like, “While, yes, this tub of shit was disgusting, somehow, it tasted a little better than all of the other tubs of shit I’ve eaten from. Maybe, deep down, this tub isn’t entirely full of shit.” It’s the kind of contrast people would notice, like if Gandhi, all of a sudden ate a giant hamburger in front of a bunch of starving immigrant children, everybody, worldwide would notice. I hope to create that same kind of stark contrast. I want people once and for all to recognize, not only the bad side, but the good side too. I want people to be like, “You know that boisterous jackass that lives down the hall, he told me that he liked my hair today, maybe, deep down, he’s a nice guy” Because, you know what, maybe I am.
I’m one of those Obama-racists. I’m voting Democrat just so I can call other white people the N-Word without feeling guilty.
I think it was sometime last year I was at this party someplace I don’t remember, slightly ill, sitting on a couch across from some random, nerdy, yet otherwise average looking redheaded guy, when a horde of sluts moves in and takes up couch space. After about 5 minutes of talking about whatever drunken sluts talk about, one of them gets the idea in her head that the redheaded guy sitting across from me looks like Jim, from The Office. Around ten minutes later the whole party’s talking about the guy who may or may not play the character of Jim in The Office, despite the fact that the guy looks absolutely nothing like Jim from The Office. A little bit later, somebody yells out, “Where’s Pam?” and an average looking drunk girl enters the room as her friends try to convince her to make out with the guy who, apparently, kind of looks like Jim from the Office. Ten minutes after that, the guy who kind of, not really, resembles Jim from The Office is dry humping the girl who has the same name as Pam from The Office as a crowd cheers them on. Regretting my prior inaction, I decide to put a stop to this nonsense, by stumbling up from my seat, and shouting with a distinctive slur, “He looks nothing like Jim from The Office! He’s a fucking redhead for godsake! And who gives a fuck if her name is Pam?! It’s just a name, people! This is nothing like The Office! These people are not who you think they are!” I fall back down into my seat as the crowd looks toward me, disappointed, like I had just told them that Santa Claus wasn’t real. Then somebody points toward me and yells, “That guy kind of looks like Steve Carell!!” For the record, I look nothing like Steve Carell. Fucking drunks.
I was reading through some old Presidential speeches the other day, and in one, by Lyndon Johnson, he uses the word “awesome” to describe the might of the armed forces. And it really made me think of how younger generations are systematically murdering the English language. I mean, “Awesome” is a word that’s gone from presidential speeches, to “Dude Where’s My Car” in the span of less than half a century. “Awesome” is the go to word I use when I see tits. And, for centuries the English saved the word “awesome” for something, well, truly awesome. See, the Grand Canyon is awesome. Space Exploration is awesome. The way the sun sets on the horizon is awesome. But, tits? Tits are, well, tits. I mean, don’t get me wrong, they’re great and I enjoy them, but tits aren’t awesome. Half the population has tits! I mean, sure, there are some awesome tits (like Fred’s), but tits by themselves, as a concept of sexuality, can’t, by definition be awesome. And, I say this all, mainly, as a guy who uses the word “awesome” almost twice in every sentence. Yet I’m angry, embarrassed even, at the culture that has allowed me the liberty of such misuse of language. I just want words to mean something again, like they used to long ago. I’d like to say “awesome”, and have it be distinguished from every other word. I’d like call a woman a “shrew” and have her slap me. I want to yell “Fire!” into a crowded auditorium, and, actually, you know what, that one still means something. But alas, languages change, and they certainly never change back. Because for now, “awesome” means tits, and “sick” means something to do with skateboarding. And I guess I’m going to have to live with that.
You know you have to stop using sleeping pills when you legitimately have to ask yourself the question: “Hey, did I walk around in my underwear outside last night?”
Sitting here, in my underwear, drinking out of a jug of iced tea, I ask myself the question: “Is there more than this?”I mean, I’ve been alive for 19 years, and this is where I am right now: surrounded by a pile of trash. I ask myself, “What is it that prevents me from being clean. That prevents me from putting things where they’re supposed to go and from throwing things away when they start to smell?” And this reminds me of a time, a couple years back, as I was moving out of my mother’s house, when she said to me, “You’re gonna miss me picking up after you.” And two weeks later, I had an epiphany, while wading through a foot of trash and falling face first into a 2-week old pudding cup: I’m a disgusting, disgusting man. And I realize now that it’s never going to change
Though, generally, this tendency of mine doesn’t really get in the way of my life. Or, at least, it didn’t until Mike became my roommate, and we shared a freshman dorm room that was only slightly bigger than a cubicle. So, a little bit about Mike: he’s got curly hair, he likes soccer, and also, he happens to be a neatfreak. An obsessive compulsive asshole of a neatfreak. The kind of guy that tucks in his bed, washes his clothes, and bathes a ridiculously absurd amount of times (once a day. Jeez, I know.) Anyway, me and Mike got along great until a.) I realized he was a bigger asshole than I am, and b.) the pile of trash on my side of the room started getting so large that it had nowhere else to topple but his side of the room. Now, I tried at first to be a considerate roommate and regularly tend to the pile of trash, but when he decided he could just get away with being a giant douche bag, I decided I knew how to be a bigger douche bag than he could be. So, in an effort to make him angry, I did what I do best, I became disgusting. Now, I’m a normally disgusting man, which I know and have already stated, but you need to be reminded of that when I tell you that how disgusting I became to drive Mike crazy. And to describe just how dirty it got in that room, I need to use hyperbole. Okay, let’s say that I normally am Pig Pen from the Charlie Brown show, and my side of the room is normally New Jersey. Now, imagine if I had an orgy with Carrot Top, Oscar The Grouch, Anna Nicole’s corpse, all the original members of The Jackson 5, and every person who’s ever appeared on The Jerry Springer Show. Now, imagine that if after the orgy we all started shitting, and we continued to shit for, oh, let’s say, a month. Then, when we’re all done shitting, I kill everybody else in the orgy while they jerk me off, and when I finally blow my load (I’m just jerking myself off at this point since they’re all dead,) out of my penis flows 3,000 gallons of a mixture of oil, Fun Dip, the tears of every child who’s ever felt sadness, Polar Bear skin, and a small amount of sperm. Now, imagine that place 3 million years later after all that junk has finished decaying and the bacteria contained within it is starting to evolve into evil, monstrous, creatures that look like a mixture of the zombies in 28 Days later and Kirstie Alley’s vagina.
That’s what my room was like. Actually, let’s be honest, I’m fluffing the details in a shallow attempt to make myself look better. It probably was worse than that.
So, this obviously drove Mike, the neatfreak, out-of-his-mind crazy. It even drove me a little crazy with how filthy it was in there. Anyway, this created a lot of animosity and culminated in a lot of bad things, like a physical fight, that resulted in one of us getting punched in the nuts, and another of us getting the other in a headlock (I won’t tell you who did what, but I will tell you that I aim to kill.) And after a while it kind of hit me: “Why hasn’t Mike requested to move out yet? I mean, this is an awful situation for both of us, but he must know at this point that my spite is legendary and I’d commit Seppuku before moving out. He’s not nearly as spiteful as I am, he should have gotten the hell out of here already!” But he stayed, and he continued to stay until, finally, after 5 long months, something, so trivial, so stupid, finally convinced him to leave.
So, I’m sitting in my room organizing all the porn on my computer, when my friends Pat and Annalise come into the room, and start to tell me about what they did that night until, eventually, Annalise remembers that she has a lot of extra ketchup packets in her purse. She decides that it would be funny to creatively hide them all over Mike’s side of the room (in the back of his dresser drawers, in his pencil holders, above ceiling tiles, etc.) I consider stopping her, but then I remember that I hate Mike.
Around a month later, I’m on the phone with my Grandmother when I hear Mike yell, as loud as he can, “What the fuck?!” I turn towards Mike, in search of some kind of explanation, and he goes, “Why would you do this to me?!” I struggle to think of what it could be, what I did to make his life so, unexpectedly, agonizingly miserable. Not something gradually miserable, that would eat away his soul, like the pile of trash, but something instantly, immediately miserable. And as I tried to think of why he could be so mad, it came back to me, and I say to Mike, in the most patronizing way possible, “I take it you don’t like Ketchup.”
“I fucking hate you!” he replies, which was the third thing he had said to me in over three months.
“Calm down, crazy, this isn’t the kind of thing you put a man into a headlock for,” I say in a calm, cool, collected voice.
“Why would you do this to me? You knew this would piss me off! You don’t just go through my shit and put ketchup there! And you know what, I was already having a bad day!” he screams, at the top of his lungs.
I briefly consider telling him that it wasn’t actually my fault. That Annalise, a friend to both of us did it, and that she obviously didn’t think it would make him shit his pants and go into a murderous rage. But as soon as the thought entered my head, it left, because this moment was far too good to let go. I couldn’t just tell him, and then have him yell at Annalise, because Annalise would probably half-heartedly apologize. In my mind, what Mike needed was to be fucked with.
So, I say, in a faint, quick whisper, with this crazy, manic look on my face, “One of them is open, and I’m not telling which one it is.” And then I bolt out of the room before he has the chance to murder me.
In actuality, none of the ketchup packets were ever opened, and there were probably less than ten in all. But, nonetheless, Mike tore apart his side of the room looking for it, and it drove him even more insane than the persistent nagging of my pile of trash. I never had the heart to tell him I was lying about the open packet, because even after he stopped looking, he still believed me, and deep down, I bet a part of him needed to find that missing packet, to make sure that everything was clean. I probably should have told him, after he had searched literally every square inch of the room, that it didn’t exist, but I guess a part of me empathized with his struggle. I understood his need, in a sense, to know that everything was all right. While he needed to know that everything was clean on his side of the room, I often need to know things like, “Is my fly open?” and “If it is, then is the flap in my boxers open, exposing my penis?”
Actually, you know what? That’s all complete bullshit, I could have told him whenever I wanted, I just really really really wanted him to move out.
And in what I could consider one of the best days of my life, Mike finally moved out, after 5 agonizing months, to a room down the hall. I threw a giant party, I stayed up all night, and my life was great. But something changed the day Mike moved out, because for the rest of the year my room was spotless, odor-free, and completely neat and tidy. And it wasn’t for some bullshit reason, like I had realized the errors in my ways and was a changed man entirely. I did this, for quite possibly the most petty and immature reason possible: I wanted Mike to see. Deep down, I needed that asshole to see the room clean, I wanted him to see what the room could have been like had he not been such a douche bag. I wanted to see the look on his face, and I wanted him to know I hated him too. Because if there’s one element ingrained in my persona stronger than my laziness, it’s my spitefulness. So strong is my ability to hold a grudge, that I’ll completely change almost everything in my daily routine and personal habits to see that look on a person’s face. The look that says, “Oh my god, that person is fucking crazy. Why would he do that?” And to think, I regularly bathed just to make somebody angry. Boy, the lengths I’ll go to piss somebody off. What a crazy kid I am.
Let's say alextraynor.com gets around 20 hits a day, max. And about 15 of those are from me, reveling in my brilliance. Now, let's say I get around 3 legitimate hits a day, since my mom found out how to Google my name and probably visits around twice a day (Mainly, so she can ask me questions like, "Why do you dress like Hitler so often? Do you not like the jews?”) I would say one of the remaining legitimate hits is a carryover from traffic I received for making two cartoons when I was 16. And the other two hits come from people on Google searching for either a variation of "Why don't I have a girlfriend?" or "colonoscopy jokes."
So, I've had this website for going on three years now, and the bulk of my legitimate traffic comes from people disappointed at the lack of relationship advice, and/or colonoscopy jokes. Dear god, that’s pathetic.
Oh my god,” Steve says, “that’s the most attractive homeless girl I’ve ever seen.”
And for Steve, the most shallow and self-involved person I know, to admit that any girl is more than an ugly fatass is nothing short of astounding. Because, despite the fact that this girl was panhandling, and wearing dirty clothes, we were both able to agree that she was one of the most gorgeous people we had ever seen.
“There’s no way she’s actually homeless, she’s far too good looking. She’s just in this for the panhandling money or something” I say to Steve.
“Whatever man, I’m asking her out,” he replies.
“What?!” I ask, in shock.
“Just think about it. I’m good looking. She’s good looking. I have a home. She doesn’t. This all makes perfect sense!”
I decide not to argue with Steve this time, for fear that I might actually win and he wouldn’t ask out the hobo. As I stand at a distance, Steve approaches the girl and most likely launches into Smalltalk and reassurances of how even though he could rape and murder her without anyone noticing, that he wouldn’t, because he’s a nice guy. Eventually, the conversation seems to wind down, and Steve walks back towards me.
“When’s your hot date, buddy? 3:34am next to the dumpster behind Pizzeria Uno?”
“She turned me down.”
“Why?” I ask.
“She said she thought it was weird that I was asking out a homeless girl.”
“Oh Steve. She wasn’t right for you anyway, she doesn’t know what she’s missing out on. One day you’ll find the right homeless girl. The homeless girl of your dreams. The one that’ll love you for you, and not just because you have a home. But until then, you’ll always have me.”
“I don’t want you. I hate you.”
“I love you too, Shnookums”
“You have to.”
“I’m not gonna.”
“Just one puff.”
“No!”
“Please?”
“For the last fucking time, Frank, I’m not gonna smoke catnip with you!”
Eventually, like fifteen minutes later, I did smoke Catnip with Frank. Not because I particularly wanted to, but more because I wear down easily. Frank argued so persistently, and with such conviction, that at times, he made it seem like the concept of smoking Catnip wasn’t retarded. As he insisted, Catnip was cheap, legal Weed, except better, in a million different ways. “If it’s so much better, why do people still smoke weed?” I would ask, and he would make up some kind of government conspiracy that made no sense. And even though there were flaws in his arguments, somehow, he was able to convince me that I needed to smoke Catnip with him. Mainly, because it was probably the only way to get him to shut up.
So, what you all want to know is: Does it work? Does Catnip get you high? And the overwhelming answer is: No. It doesn’t get you high, it doesn’t make you feel good, hell, it didn’t even make me feel like a cat. Frank’s main contention was that it made you drowsy, and, yes, it will make you drowsy, because if you smoke something for long enough, eventually you’re gonna get tired. Though not exactly as a result of what you’re smoking, but rather because time has passed. So, as a word of advice, if somebody asks you to smoke Catnip with them, just say no. Because if there’s anything worse for our society than Drugs, it’s Cat-Drugs.
It was a Thursday night, and me and my friend Ashley went to Hooters, and we did what everyone does when it’s ‘all-you-you-can-eat wing night’ at Hooters, we brought large plastic bags in an attempt to steal as many wings as we possibly could. Because, frankly, I love chicken wings (Also, I love tits.) Behind Pizza and Fun Dip, they’re my third favorite type of food (And behind vaginas, and taints, tits are my third favorite kind of body part.) And by the end of the night, we had managed to fill our plastic bags almost entirely full of wings, a fact that we were extraordinarily proud of (so proud, that we actually took pictures.) On the ride home, as me and Ashley were lip-syncing to ‘Gay Bar’, I get a call from my girlfriend at the time, and we have a long boring conversation that, frankly, I don’t remember most of. Eventually, I tell her about the wings, and merely as a common courtesy, I offer her some, suspecting that she’d politely decline the offer. And then, she said the words that still haunt me to this day, “Sure, bring them over.”
Which threw me for a complete loop, since I had never considered the prospect of having to give any of my wings away. Though I had only possessed the giant bag of wings for mere moments, I had become quite attached to it. I had fallen in love with it, it was like my baby. And for me to give it away, minutes after it was conceived, would be like the Pope making his girlfriend get an abortion on Easter Sunday. I had to ask myself the question, “Am I willing to part with these wings?” I mean, I love Chicken Wings. Her, on the other hand, not so much. We were dating, sure, but I also kind of hated her guts. And we were probably going to break up within a week anyway; I mean, if I properly rationed the chicken wings, they could last me as long as two weeks. The chicken wings would bring me immeasurable amounts of joy and happiness, while she would, at best, give me a handjob (And let’s face it, you can buy those in Chinatown for less than I spent on the wings.)
I had made a decision in my mind: I valued chicken wings more than my relationship. But I couldn’t just break my obligation, I had made a promise and I intended to keep it. I would go to her house with the giant bag of wings, and she would take four or five, necessary punishment for stupidly having had volunteered them in the first place. But what if she took more, what if she wanted more? Could I deal with that? Was I emotionally ready for that kind of heartbreak? Would I dump her, right on the spot? More importantly, was I willing to break up with a girl over chicken wings? Sure the breakup would have a list of other motivations, but did I want the straw that broke the camel’s back to be a bag of chicken wings? I flirted with the idea of removing the majority of chicken wings from the bag before presenting it to her, ensuring she could take no more than a couple. But, eventually, I decided against this idea. As I told my friend Ashley, “If that bitch thinks she can take the entire bag, this is about a whole lot more than chicken wings”
I get to her place and walk up to her door as she greets me. She sees the bag, and then, immediately, reaches for it. This is when it dawned on me: our relationship is over. This wasn’t about the chicken wings, this was about her biting off more than she could chew. And as she grabbed the bag, and as I reflexively pulled back on it, unwilling, unable to let go of my child, I knew that we were at different places in our lives. She was able to sit back, and let others provide for her, care for her. While I was in a different mindset entirely, I was ready to move on, to create adventures, and make memories. To forge my own path, and to eat all the chicken wings that I deemed delicious. She was ready to take the whole bag, ready to let others suffer for her enjoyment. While I just wanted to hold onto what I believed in. And I sure as hell believed in those Chicken Wings. My conscious mind prevented me from screaming the words that echoed so clearly in my brain: “Bitch! I want my wings back!”
I could have asked for my wings back before she shut the door on the night, our relationship, but I just couldn’t bring myself to it. Partially because I was in shock, I was too depressed to say anything. Partially because I still cared what she thought of me, and didn’t want her to think I was petty, since she obviously could never understand just how much those wings meant to me. We broke up a week later. Partly, because she was a bitch, and, partly, because she told me to break up with her. And, later I would find out that she’s actually a vegetarian, and she just put them in her Fridge for her Stepdad to eat. But that wouldn’t matter to me, because this wasn’t about the chicken wings any more.
This story, mainly serves as a parallel to almost every romantic situation I’ve ever been in. Now, go back and re-read the story, except replace the words ‘chicken wings’ with the words ‘self confidence’. It goes the same way every time. I gather self confidence, they take that self-confidence and destroy it, until, ultimately, I’m left speechless thinking, “Bitch! I want my self-confidence back!” unable to vocalize it, because they took my self-confidence.
Actually, let’s be honest, there’s no actual purpose to this story. I just want my chicken wings back.
“It’s not working!” he shouted, “It won’t let me get into my room!”
And all I did was stand there, in awe. Mostly, because Dan was drunk, and also because he was in his underwear. “Where did he come from?” I asked myself. I mean, where exactly does one go to get drunk and naked without being sent to jail? He probably had to have come from another room in the building since if he were outside naked, I’m sure it would have made the news.
Eventually, Dan notices me standing there, and asks for assistance in his current predicament. I knew that I would have to eventually show him how to get into his room, but first I needed to ask a question: “Where are your clothes?”
“I don’t know, maybe somebody stole them?” he replies and I try to make of what to think of this. Is he joking? Or is there a pants-thief on the loose? I consider asking a follow-up question like, “How could you not remember?” or “Has this happened more than once?” but instead, I realize the futility in asking questions to anyone that drunk and naked.
He hands me the card, and it’s not his Student ID, which is what you would use to swipe into your room, but instead, a gift certificate to Wendy’s. This raises more questions, like “Why the hell does Dan have a gift certificate to Wendy’s?” and “Why wouldn’t the pants-thief take the Wendy’s gift certificate too? I mean, I know he’s a pant’s thief and all, but the gift certificate was probably already in the pocket. Does pants-thief not like Wendy’s?” But, instead of asking these questions, like I had already decided not to, I asked him to give me his Student ID, and not, you know, a giftcard to a fast food place. He gave it to me, and I swiped him into his room.
The next morning, he remembered none of this. And I still do not know the true identity of the pants-thief. But, either way, I know what I’m doing now: When I get drunk, I’m making the hell sure nobody steals my pants.
I’m not sure what it was exactly that made me re-evaluate my life, but I think it was when the third Brazilian chick shit all over the second Brazilian chick. That was when it hit me: “This is stupid. Both, you, and your friends are fucking stupid!” And I don’t know how it started. I really don’t. But, I figure it began with a number of escalating dares, and, then, somehow, unexpectedly, the whole group ended up watching shit porn. And not, 2girls1cup kind of shit-porn, either. Something much much worse. So much worse, that it’s only referred to by its filename: Swap.avi. The video is best described by Somethingawful.com, which writes: “Imagine if the Holocaust was a 63 minute long video about pooping. Now imagine your mother drowning in a bathtub full of diarrhea.”
It was a contest, in effect, to determine who was the manliest among us. We set out to see who could watch the video for the longest without throwing up. And, in retrospect, I guess the fact that we were all willing to have the contest was pretty much foreshadowing that no-one would quit. It was like a game of Chicken, except nobody chickened out, and we all just felt dirty at the end. And 63 minutes, full of pooping and vomiting, after the video had started, I looked to Steve, and I looked to Frank, and I said with genuine concern, “What did we win? What was the point of that? I need to take a shower.”
And as I showered for a good three and a half hours, I realized that Steve, Frank, and I, along with millions of other Americans lack something necessary, crucial to wellbeing: A moral compass. We’re willing to joke about 9/11, cancer, Aids, the Holocaust, diarrhea, and a myriad of other topics because, as a generation, we feel detached. We don’t directly hold ourselves accountable for anything. We can watch Brazilian girls vomit shit into other Brazilian girl’s shitty mouths because we pretend that it’s just chocolate ice cream. And we can pretend all we want, to not have done or said the things we have said and done, but ultimately, we will be held responsible. And to make sure of this, I write the following: If anyone is reading this close to or around the year 2025, well after Steve, Frank, and I have become mature, responsible adults, you are obligated, by the powers that be, to find and track me down, and then slap me, really hard, in the face. I will, in turn, find and track down Steve and Frank, and then slap them really hard, all the while yelling, “Why did we make ourselves watch that godforsaken video?! We need to be punished!” And then, all will be right in the world.
“It’s really cold out,” she said to me. And what I wanted to say back was, “I LOVE YOU!” but I ended up saying something along the lines of, “Yeah, I’m freezing my nuts off.” In retrospect, I probably should have made a more compelling argument as to why she should continue the conversation with me. Because, as a general rule, the fifth word you ever speak to the girl of your dreams should probably be something other than “nuts.”
People call me “Harry Potter” a lot. Though, generally, it’s mostly black, inner city children, who shout it at me as I drive though Hartford. And I’m starting to think that although there are some similarities, the main reason I get called “Harry Potter” is abject racism. In the minds of inner city black children: White guy + Glasses = Harry Potter. Despite the facts that: A.) I’m not British, B.) I don’t have a scar on my forehead, and C.) I don’t do magic. I mean, I don’t drive though Hartford and yell “DENZEL WASHINGTON!” at everyone I see, just because they’re black, and don’t wear glasses. And I think the double standard is disgusting, because I can’t publicly point out the similarity between black people who don’t wear glasses and an Academy Award winning actor without getting beaten up. While it’s completely socially acceptable for black people to point and laugh at a guy who only vaguely resembles a fictional wizard. Who gives a fuck if I wear a cape everywhere I go?
The first things I noticed on her profile were a video and a photo album chronicling the cross-country roadtrip she and a friend took, and I decide immediately that I am in love with her. “She is exactly what I’ve been looking for in a woman,” I say to myself, “She’s somebody who can just pack up and go, ditch all sense of personality responsibility in search of adventure and the open road. She’s perfect.” I decided that I would marry her someday.
I look at more of her profile, and in her photos, it’s hard to tell exactly how attractive she is, since in almost half of the photos she looks stunningly gorgeous, and in the other half she looks like she got beat in the face with a shovel. I chalk this anomaly up to her being un-photogenic and figure that she probably averages out in the middle in real life (and isn’t, you know, an attractive woman who just recently got beat in the face with a shovel.) I then browse through her interests, which don’t exactly match up with my own, but aren’t anything I can’t just pretend to like (“Oh, you’re a huge Beastie Boys fan, me too! We can listen to them on our roadtrip!”) I look at her comment area and see that no-one’s posted anything in over a month and think, “Hey, she doesn’t have a lot of friends either, that means she won’t have to waste time, and inform a lot of people when we leave to go on our roadtrip!” Finally, I reach the link to her blog and I’m amazed to find out that she’s crazy. And not in a fun way, like in a psychopathic kind of way. And I think to myself, “Oh boy will this create for a lot of crazy stories to tell our kids about our first roadtrip!”
And then it dawns on me. “Wait a minute, you don’t want to date this girl, you just want to go on a roadtrip! You’re not in love with her; you’re in love with roadtrips!” I was able to overlook the fact that I’m not at all attracted to her, mainly, so she would drive me across the country. I didn’t want her to be my lover; I wanted her to be my road-trip guru. I wanted her to teach me the ways of the open road, and who better than her, she has experience, she knows where to go, hell, she might even pay for gas. But, I realize now, that the way I was looking at it was stupid. I was able to convince myself that I was in love with a girl, when, in fact, all I loved was road-trips. And what this makes me realize is that I shouldn’t settle. I shouldn’t commit myself to someone who’s just good at road-tripping. And I shouldn’t settle for someone who I love unconditionally either. I need to find someone who I love AND who knows how to go on a road trip. Aw shit. I think I just realized this means I’m gonna marry Oprah. Well, she is rich.
I have two pieces of advice concerning alcohol. 1.) Never go to a Barack Obama rally hung-over (his message of change isn’t nearly as resonant when you’re trying to not throw up on yourself) and 2.) Never get drunk during a thunderstorm. And if you absolutely must get drunk during a Thunderstorm, make damn sure it isn’t your first time getting drunk, period.
So, it was a Wednesday afternoon, and there was a large box of malt liquor in my closest, and I thought to myself, “Why not?” Sure, I had never tried alcohol before, but if ever there was a time, now would be it, right? Wrong. Because what I didn’t know was that the second I would finish chugging the 40, one of the worst thunderstorms on record would hit central Connecticut. And when you’re drunk, alone, and the power’s out, you tend to do crazy things.
Now there are three things you’ve got to keep in mind when I tell you the following story. Firstly, my backyard consists of a large, rotting wooden deck, and then, directly behind that, a large, steep, scary hill. Secondly, I get bored very very easily. The chief example of this is when in 8th grade, out of extreme boredom/ curiosity, I put my backpack in the microwave, and almost burned all of my stuff. Alcohol only amplifies this. And thirdly, it’s almost a near universal certainty, much as how the sun will always rise, that after I drink malt liquor I will be at least significantly more naked than when I started. Also, I was in my underwear when I started drinking.
So, for some reason, maybe boredom, maybe sheer fate, I decided that I needed to go to the top of the steep, scary hill in my backyard. People under the influence of alcohol are often driven not by logic, but by impulses, and accordingly, I ran out the door in my underwear, into the heart of the rainstorm, never questioning the intelligence of that line of action. I had considered putting on pants first, but ultimately decided against it, partly because I deemed it too time consuming, partly because I no longer knew how to put on pants. And at the top of the hill, I looked down at my house, and then, above, to the heavens. And as the rain fell, and the sound of thunder rang through my ears, I felt triumphant. I didn’t remember why I was there, and it was possible that I never knew, but I felt, somehow, that I was standing in my underwear at the top of this hill for a substantive reason. As though the forces of nature had led me here, purposely, in order to reveal to me my true destiny.
And then, a thought popped into my brain. Like a flash of lightning, it was there and then it was gone. It was the kind of thought that could serve as proof that God exists, and that he hates me. “The fastest way down that hill, is to run as fast as I can!” I thought. And then, sensing that this was my destiny, that the forces of nature demanded it, I took off, as fast as I could down the hill. It was as though my feet started to move without the express written consent of my conscious mind, and before I knew it, I was in a dead sprint. I was traveling faster than I had ever travelled before, the wind rushing through my rain-soaked hair. And, for a moment, I felt serene. As though this majestic act of destiny was not only an instant in time, but a path to true enlightenment. I had never felt greater in my life.
And then, two things happened at once: 1.) I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to stop in time enough to avoid crashing painfully into the deck behind my house, and 2.) My underwear fell off.
This was when I knew that the world was against me. The heavens had spoken, and they had told me my destiny. And not only would that destiny be painful, but I would also somehow be naked when I met it. It was as if nature had decided not only to slap me in the face, but to shove a cinder block up my ass while it was at it. And as my boxers slid down past my knees, I tried desperately to plant my feet on the ground and stop the whirlwind of momentum I had created. I tried to defy the forces of nature. But, it was no use, since the rain made any kind of traction impossible. And before I could prepare myself, BAM! My shin crashed into the base of the deck, which caused me to topple over and collide with a large wooden wall. My head and shoulders proceeded to crash into some kind of railing, and then, I lost consciousness. But not before thinking to myself, “Hey, maybe I shouldn’t run down that hill,” around five seconds too late.
I’m not sure how much time elapsed before I regained consciousness, but it was enough time for it to be dark outside, and for me to be moderately sober. And as my eyes opened, and I came to the realization that yes, I was in fact a.)Naked b.)Outside c.)Covered in splinters d.)Drenched and e.)Bloody, I struggled to think of how this could possibly have happened. And as my mind tried desperately to somehow connect this to the Russians, it came back to me. Like a bad dream, only I knew it was real. And it became very clear to me that this wasn’t a series of coincidences. This was the universe sending me a message, a message that, one day, I would need to pass on: Stop being an asshole! And as I laid face down on the wooden deck, naked, being rained upon by the heavens above, I committed the ultimate act of cosmic rebellion: I refused the message. I came to the realization that maybe, just maybe, the universe doesn’t control my actions. Maybe I won’t be better off if I learn from my mistakes. I recognized, for the first time, that I’m the only one responsible for my actions, and that one day, I’ll be held accountable for them. But just because, occasionally, I’ll get drunk and run into a deck, it doesn’t mean I should stop doing what I do and being who I am. Because, true beauty can be found within all actions. And someday, yes, I’ll realize that all this was stupid, but I’ll never agree that it wasn’t worth doing. And then I said out loud the words that would set me free, “Fuck you, universe! I’ll be an asshole if I damn want to, because it’s who I am, and who I love to be. And, universe, you can’t just tell me to stop. That’s like telling Samuel L. Jackson not to be black! So, fuck you, you fucking asshole of a constant force of nature or whatever you are!”
And as I picked myself up, and limped into the house to put on band-aids, and to tweeze splinters out of my butt, I swore to myself that I would never, ever drink alcohol again.
I really should have listened to myself.
