Coming home from a third night in a row donut run, I saw a bus for blood donations. I gave blood. This is what I wrote on receipts from my wallet while I was giving blood.

I sit in the back of a van on the side of 9th Street a block away from my favorite subway stop and two blocks away from both my favorite pizza place and my favorite donut place. A cream filled long john sits in my stomach, Paparazzi plays in the van, and the innuendo at the beginning of that sentence makes me giggle. Out of my porthole of the van I see the night traffic of Brooklyn coming in from Manhattan. I was in Manhattan just an hour earlier at an audition for an NYU student film adaptation of an Ethan Coen one act. I rushed all my lines and my voice went higher than I wanted it to, which happens every audition I do. I don’t expect the get the part, which won’t be the end of the world, and hopefully auditioning for the first time in two years will help me lower my nerves before my comedy troupe audition on Thursday. Nobody’s talked to me since I came onto the bus with my form fully filled out. They probably think I’m still filling it out as I sit her fervently scribbling these notes. Someone is coming over.

This nurse is nice. Debbie. She’s pretending to like my name by calling it unique. Complimenting one’s name isn’t really a compliment. At least not to you, it’s more of compliment to your parents. It’s just forcing you to be a messenger of a compliment. It’s like saying: “Hey, I think that your mother makes good soup, but I’m gonna tell you.” Maybe it’s a compliment by heredity, like if you have a nice name, they assume you will name your child well as well. Well Debbie doesn’t know me. I’ve been planning on naming my child Apple since before Gwyneth Paltrow even thought of inflating her stomach with another man’s sperm. I wish I were donating sperm. Then I’d be getting money instead of juice and cookies.

Debbie’s asking me about when I left the country in the last three years. That was the only question I answered yes to besides if I had read the information, if I felt well, and if I weighed over 110 lbs. The 110 lb. question made me sad. It reminded me of a time when I was a junior in high school and all my friends got to skip third period, but I couldn’t because I wasn’t big enough to donate blood. It only made it worse that my jealousy was only tangibly manifested by me getting to complain about not getting to have cookies and juice during fourth period. I still didn’t quite feel like a big boy.

I really only answered that I’d been outside of the US and Canada in the past three years because it would depress me if I hadn’t. I didn’t really remember having left the continent in that long, but I’m sure I had. I’m a first generation immigrant who’s somewhat well off, I should be internationally travelling all the time. Luckily I remembered that I had gone to visit my family in Sweden during January of ‘08. Now at least I didn’t have to admit that I lied on my blood donor form in order to appear more cultured. I almost did the same when they asked if I had had any homosexual contact “even once” because I wanted to show that I was open minded. Then I almost wrote a side note of, but I’ve barely had any heterosexual contact either, but decided that was overkill.

Debbie’s impressed by how quickly my blood clotted after I was pricked. Damn right. I got awesome blood. I wonder how impressed she’ll be when she realizes that I’m O-, the universal donor. Maybe I should slip her my number. I wonder if her husband and kids will mind. I don’t actually remember if I’m O-. That might have just been from when we checked our blood types in sophomore year biology. All the guys kept pricking themselves to prove they could bear the pain, and I had to comply in order to be a man. I don’t think that test was necessarily accurate.

It always annoys me, when people say “rare blood type” like it’s a good thing. The rarest blood types are the ones that can’t donate to anybody. If you have a rare blood type, nobody gives a shit if you donate. It’s the common blood types that are better donaters.

They are bringing me over to the “bed” to lie down on. It’s too small. If only those high-school blood donors could see me now. I was too big to donate blood. I’m not actually that tall. I wonder what happens to people that break the 6 ft. barrier. Do they have to curl in a ball to donate blood. I can’t look while they inject things into me. It’s not the blood, and it’s not the pain, it’s the hole. I don’t like seeing a hole in my body. It makes me feel very mortal. The lady in front of me looks like she just came from jogging. Who jogs and then gives blood? Who needs to do that much good that takes that much out of your body in one day? The immortal, that’s who. I hope she passes out. She’s done filling up her bag. She got water instead of juice and two bags of trail mix. What a healthy bitch. If she got two bags, I’m taking at least three. They’ll probably be cookies and chips instead. Maybe I’ll take trail mix because it probably has the highest calorie content, and I need lots of calories.

I had just eaten a donut from the aforementioned two block away place. I had afforded it for the third day in a row by scrounging through the pockets of my previously worn jackets until I dug up enough change to get myself a Boston Creme. I have an spreadsheet dedicated to a monthly budget. The rows that I add up to find the leftover amount of money I can spend on groceries are: Rent, Transportation, Entertainment (Shows/Movies), donuts, and party. My groceries budget will come out of my party budget before it comes out of my donut budget. I allocate 2/3 the amount of money I allow myself for groceries to donuts. They should serve donuts when you are done with giving blood. I bet they’d get more people.

How come all the doctors are Indian men and all the nurses are black women? Why do they have to be so…? They keep talking about things behind me that I want to look at but every time I turn my head, Kahn tells me to stay still. Fuck Kahn. Why’s he being such a dick? I’m at the end of the bus, the only things that are in front of me is the kenmore cooler where you keep bags of blood. If I were a vampire I wouldn’t kill people or bite people, I would just raid Blood donor banks. It would be pretty easy. There isn’t a lot of security.

Every time I rest my head they all ask me if I’m okay. That’s annoying. I guess I have to keep my head elevated.

I’m finally finished, and once again I have to look away as they expose the whole in my arm. They are telling me to drink lots of fluid, but all I can think about is the exciting juice and cookies that await me. The guy who took my form who waits at the end of the bus asks me if I want a beer. I respond appropriately to his joke and we continue to have a rapport. I like him. He likes me. Maybe I should slip him my number. Then maybe I could fill out that box on the application the way I wanted to and come off as open minded. Instead I grab two bags of trail mix, a bag of cookies, a bag of chips and a juice box and hit the road.

Juice boxes are a funny thing. I was excited to be drinking flavored liquid for the first time in weeks as my finances left me with tap water as my only source of hydration, but drinking through a tiny straw that keeps slipping to far into the tinfoil hole in the top as you walk down a busy street makes you look like an idiot. How did I drink a juicebox every day with lunch during high school. I must have looked like an idiot. Way more than when I didn’t get to give blood.

I had a crush on Tiffany when I was 12. All my friends knew, but half my friends also had a crush on Tiffany. We were supposed to have a crush on Tiffany, and many of us obliged.

We were getting ready to do long jump and me and Tristan were talking. I was good at long jump for my size, but bad at long jump by any other measures. Including the length of the jump. Stretching out included punching each other and letting our feet wander as we still hadn’t grasped the concept of being still. “You like Tiffany?” I was asked with a punch to the shoulder. I watched the runners start the 100 meter race. I wanted to race the 100 meters but only the fastest kids got to do that. I was not the fastest kids. I got relegated to the 800 meter and the long jump. The events no one else wanted to do. When someone wanted to do the 800, I got pushed back to doing the 1600. This was the first meet I was actually going to be competing in the 800, and that was exciting because it meant half as much running so that I could hang out eating vending machine food and talking about girls.

“No. I mean, what do you mean?” I refused to commit to an answer.

“Do you want her body?” My shoulder was getting sore from all these questions.

I was confused. I knew that my subconscious desires to take the female form out for a test drive just to see what it would be like were desires that we didn’t talk about. There was no way that his question was trying to pry deep into my psyche to see if we had similar questionings of our gender. But, what if he was? Or, what if he somehow knew that my gender was under assault by my thoughts, and he was just waiting for me to slip up and he would tell the whole school that I wanted to be a girl. Half of them already thought I was.

When I was 9 I was playing basketball in the YMCA gym. My parents came to pick me up by asking for a staff member to find out where I was. A train of questions led to one member bringing another into the gym where I was sprinting across the court to chase down a loose ball. “That’s the girl. She’s Nisse.” The first member pointed at me with my long bowl cut flowing gently behind me. I got a buzz cut the next year.

“No. Gross.” I responded as though the mere suggestion was blasphemy. “I don’t want to be a girl.”

“That’s not what it means, it means do you want, like, her body. You know. Do you want to be able to …” Tristan had found himself at a loss for words in mid-swing. I was simply embarrassed to have misinterpreted a question about my desires to fuck and didn’t realize that Tristan was himself going through a painful self-realization that he didn’t quite know what he wanted. He knew vaguely what he was supposed to want, but to actually put into words what specifically was desired, was proving impossible. My shoulder received another blow and Tristan ran off. “You’re gay.” He screamed back from across the field.

Man, if I had been, things would have made more sense.

I just spent 1/3 of my money on fruit. My monthly paycheck has come in late so I live off of the change I found under my mattress ($1.53). Technically, I can spend $1.34 out of my Chase account without overdrawing and $2.63 out of my First National Bank account, but I’m taking no chances on debit card purchases. I was trying not to spend any money on food, after all I had groceries at home: Corn tortillas, pasta, boca burgers, curry powder, and crushed tomatoes, so I didn’t need to, but I got desperate.

I tutor a man in Long Island who loves to spend our sessions regaling me with stories of his failing marital situation, his sickly eight month old pre-me, and his depressingly fluctuating job status. After another 3 hr session where I explained what a vertical asymptote was and he explained why his wife kicked him out, I was ready to go home. This wasn’t because I didn’t want to hear his personal issues. I’m a guy who put up an ad on craigslist to offer out free therapy, so my emotional voyeurism was keeping me turned on by this man’s confessions. It was because I was ready to eat a large bowl of spaghetti with curry powder on it. I hadn’t eaten since I wrapped a boca burger in a corn tortilla and put it in the microwave 4 hrs earlier, and my stomach was making like a shitter in woods seeing a by product of bee pollination. As I headed back to make my journey back on the LIRR, my client with the over complicated life told me that he was headed into Manhattan anyway, and could therefore drive me back to Brooklyn. This would give my prepaid train card one more use, and I’d be eating my Italian-Indian delights sooner, so I graciously accepted.

He had to “quickly run some chores” so I sat in the car as we made our way to what seemed like every corner of Long Island only to bring back different ethnicities of good smelling food to torture me on our car-ride back. By the time we tried to leave suburbia we were stuck in rush hour traffic, waiting bumper to bumper in a 90 degree car – as the driver was Jamaican and therefore needed to feel like it was summer when he was wearing a coat.

We didn’t sit in silence though. We got to conversing. One sided conversing where Jamaican-me-nuts was now detailing his conspiracy theories about the JFK assassination, 9/11, Obama’s election, Health Care, and the Trix bunny. My headache grew as the blaring horns of citizens in much better positions than me drove past. We ended up in China Town at 7pm – two hours later than I would have been home had I taken the train home. There I demanded an exit and starting sprinting towards the nearest subway. All I found was a chinese street vendor selling fruit. My hands shook as I pulled two quarters out of my wallet to pay for what looked like an orange tomato – a fruit a friend had told me to try when I got the chance – and I devoured the whole thing before the subway arrived for me.

The curry-ghetti was good too.

It was 3:30. Typically after school I walked home with my friends and we played basketball at Jacob’s house or N64 NBA JAM at Tristan’s house . Today it was 3:30 and I was wandering around my school looking for Tristan or Jacob or any of the other people who were my typical walking/bball/fake-bball partners. School had ended at 2:57 and I had gone to the bathroom before grabbing my backpack and searching for my friends, but they were nowhere to be found.

My life was starting to work out. After moving to New York and suffering the deep lonliness that comes with 22 hrs by yourself each day, I had things to do. I was tutoring. I was writing. I was on my way to a comedy show with some friends. I had friends. In my right hand was my newly purchased composition notebook. Already I had started filling it up. On the first couple pages were notes on how to teach intro level calculus. There were equations and formulas and descriptions of derivatives and functions. After that there were fun math games I created for a 6 year old. There was a game with dice and beans, there was a speed addition game, and there were lists of materials needed to make a new game. In the back was a schedule. It listed the times I worked per week along along with the money I would make per week. These added up to 8 hrs and $300 respectively. This was plenty enough money to pay for the apartment/closet I had found earlier that day for $380/month and plenty little hours that I could spend a fair amount of time on hulu and writing. Just before that was the start of a story and a script.

I was 11 when my grandma died. I was in Sweden visiting my mother’s family with the knowledge that there was a 90% chance that the grandmother I left at home would be dead before I got back. I knew this because my parents told me this and also told me that they would call when it happened. When it happened my mother’s mother sat down on my bed with me and let me cry into her arms. It didn’t matter how sure I was that she would pass away, it still was hard to realize that the person I had spent the most time with in adolescence was gone for good.

I knew how to walk to their house from school. I knew the half mile path to find my way at the doorstep where they would be hanging out. I could make it there on my own. I marched out of the school attempting and failing to jump and touch the overhang in the hallway near the library. I was the only male in my grade who couldn’t touch the overhang. Even every boy in the grade below me could touch the overhang. No matter how many times I jumped and how close I seemed to be, I would swing and miss. I wanted to know what it felt like. What that satisfying smack against the wall left on your hand. Was their dust up there? Would I leave a mark? Would people respect me?

My grandma lived a block away from school and my parents worked 60 hrs a week. Every day brought cottage cheese blintzes and saltines as grandma told me the same story she had told me yesterday. It was a routine I enjoyed because her blintzes were fantastic, I liked saltines, and every time I predicted pieces of her story she became more impressed with my psychic knowledge. There were times that were hard when she would forget where she was or write a note on her favorite picture and then get mad at whoever wrote the note, but most of the times were happy. When she died, I didn’t know where I would get my blintzes and saltines from. I didn’t know who would tell me that story.

My new composition notebook symbolized how great my life would be in New York. I would go to cool comedy shows, I would perform cool comedy shows, and to make money I would spent less than double digits of hours working on maintaining my dwindling math skills and creating fun games. Everything in my book was awesome and everything in my life was in that book. Therefore, by the transitive property, everything in my life was awesome. I pressed on down 26th St. toward UCB theater.

A year after her death, my 7th grade class had to do monthly creative writing pieces. It was during this class that I wrote the first thing I was ever proud of. I had hating writing up until then. In 4th grade I used to fake stomach aches every day when writing period came around so that I could go to the nurse and read The Subtle Knife. I never felt a sense of accomplishment when I wrote until 7th grade when I wrote a story about a boy who takes his grandmother to the zoo. She is the true parent figure to this little boy and when he loses her behind the monkey cage, he gets scared and goes on a journey to find her. I spent three months writing the three chapters of the story and I thought it was fantastic. It was a comedy.

Marching down Cottage St. toward the basketball hoop I knew I would find my former friends at, I passed Jeffery. Jeffery was the crybaby. Everybody else picked on him by pulling off his backpack or throwing his books on the ground. I didn’t do this because I thought it was wrong. Did I stop people from doing it? No. Did I laugh along with them uncomfortably? Yes. This was my chance to make up for it. “Hi Jeffery” I started “Go away” was the response. I wasn’t making up for it today.

I entered UCB earlier than my friends and began to wait. I was used to waiting as I was usually the one there earlier, so I opened my book and began to revel in the beauty that was my 8 hr a week work schedule. I got a call. It wasn’t my friends explaining why they were late, instead it was the apartment I had visited earlier telling me that they had filled the room with someone they liked better. Someone who fit their lifestyle better. Someone who was cooler. It wasn’t the end of the world, I would find a better apartment for a little more money and I’d still live, and my friends showed up, so now we could watch the show. The improv show was dull, we had to sit in the aisle, and when I left I forgot my composition notebook.

I made it to the basketball hoop to no success and I began to hate my friends for leaving me to walk home alone. Why did they not care about me enough to wait for me? Was it because I was annoying? Did they not want me around? Was it because I smelled? Was it because I couldn’t touch the overhang near the library? These thoughts raced through my head as I took the final steps towards Tristan’s house. I knocked on the door. Brian opened the door to my face with tears forming rivers on my cheeks. Had he opened the door two seconds earlier I would have had a clean face, spotless from both tears and the possibility of facial hair, but a volcano had erupted from my eyes and salty water was the magma. “Thanks for fucking ditching me!” I screamed and marched off toward my parent’s health food store. “We didn’t know where you were!” Was the call after me, but it was too late and I was off to drown my sorrows in carob covered rice cakes and fruit juice spritzers.

Everything that had seemed in such perfect, working order was now lost. Literally. Comedy shows weren’t funny, I didn’t have a cheap place to live, and all the perfect pieces of my life that I had in that composition notebook were being perused by a confused janitor.

My teacher let me read my story in front of the class (I wasn’t special, she let one kid a month do it) but decided it her job to preface my story. “Now class, I want you to listen to Nisse’s story. There might be funny parts, but this is about a serious issue. This disease: Alzheimer’s, is very difficult for the person suffering and the family members surrounding them. So this is no laughing matter.” She had ruined my story. Of course it was a laughing matter. It was hilarious when Grandma Mae needed the instructions to Sorry explained to her for a 4th time. It was hilarious when Grandma Mae would thank me for letting her stay in my home even though it was her home. It was hilarious when Grandma Mae would refer to my dad as her dog’s name. Her disease and suffering weren’t sad to me, they were means for which I created comedy. What was sad was that she had left me.

So, again I got distracted from attempting to write something creative by the creative news journalism of Glenn Beck. I will now analyze quotes from yesterday’s episode of Glenn Beck’s American Patriot Freedom Show of Liberty and Goodness.

1. “If you are Glenn Beck and you’re in Harlem and someone taps you on the shoulder and someone says; ‘Mr. Beck, excuse me.’ You tend to think; ‘uh oh, I might be in trouble.’”

This is coming from the same guy who asked Keith Ellison to prove to him that he was not working with the enemy because he was Muslim, and the same guy who said he doesn’t have a lot of black friends because he’s scared he might offend them. This is also someone who uses MLK Jr.’s face and quote to start off after every commercial break. I understand that Glenn Beck doesn’t see himself as a racist because he thinks all races should be treated equally, but you must act the way you think Sir Beck. Treating Blacks with fear and disgust isn’t the same as dragging them behind your car and not letting them into your schools, but they come from the same emotion.

My biggest irrational fear is drive by shootings. I don’t get more scared of them when I’m walking alone in Harlem or Brownsville (a place I am literally the only White person on the streets) instead of the Macalester Groveland community or Park Slope. I just have a fear of drive by shootings. The reason is that it seems like the worst way to die. You are walking along thinking about who won’t sleep with you or why you ate that 3rd donut and all of a sudden you flash out of existence without any knowledge of why or by whom’s hand. I like to understand the circumstances surrounding every conclusion and in those final minutes I would no nothing, and I would realize I have no possibility of every finding out. That’s the scariest thing in the world to me. I’m scared of dying without knowing something. Beck on the other hand is scared of dying because of something he “knows.” He is scared of something insane and then uses death to explain why his fear exists, whereas I am scared of death and use something insane to explain why that fear exists.

2. After “uncovering” the hypocrisy of Al Gore’s meat eating ways (because gasses caused by cows a the biggest component causing global warming) and the money he’s made from being the figurehead of the environmental movement. “I am the most enthusiastic capitalist since Adam Smith… If I could advertise on this third chin, I would… But a money making scam cloaked in phony righteousness, lies and, quote-unquote, ’solutions’ that will cost our entire economy, not really cool with that.”

Never before have I laughed out loud with the wide-eyed astonishment at a more obviously hypocritical statement then when Glenn Beck attempted to condemn someone else for profit seeking, fake indignance. Instead of explaining why this is so hypocritical or give evidence to back up this claim because it is too easy, I will tell a story.

On our way to McDonalds at 1am, I sat in the back of the van waiting for my chance to order a McChicken and whatever Mickey’s new attempt at a health-option was. My two friends in the middle seat were discussing the possibility of creating a weekly workout routine. They turned to the back and asked if I wanted to join. “No, I don’t want to get ripped, that would ruin my image.” was my immediate reply. I have a strong self-awareness of the person I seem to be to others and parts of that I love and parts of it I hate. Mostly the parts I love are the parts that allow me to be a victim. Glenn Beck is the only person I’ve ever seen able to be both self-deprecating and have a complete lack of self-awareness. Typically when one analyzes the shit out of oneself, one focuses on the flaws. Glenn Beck goes the opposite way and makes up flaws and then through that he assumes that he has self analyzed.

My conclusion is that Glenn Beck starts at conclusions and then finds evidence to back up those solutions, whereas I am the bringer of logic and goodness and start with evidence in order to lead to a solution.

Did you really think that this wasn’t gonna turn into a diatribe about myself?

In Woody Allen’s opening monologue of Annie Hall he frantically “doesn’t” worry about his age. “I think I’m gonna get better as I get older, you know? I think I’m gonna be the-the balding virile type, you know, as opposed to the distinguished gray, for instance, you know? ‘Less I’m neither o’ those two. Unless I’m one o’ those guys with saliva dribbling out of his mouth who wanders into a cafeteria with a shopping bag screaming about socialism.”

I have always related to this line because I too think I will get better with age – maybe finally grow into the uncomfortably hairy body that was bestowed upon me. And though I don’t think that I will bald, I do assume the only thing stopping me from becoming the comfortably cynical wrinkle-bag is the possibility that I become the shopping bag holding crazy ranting about socialism. Halloween night had me dressed as Trotsky with my friends as Marx, Lenin, and Stalin and we were showing off our newly purchased facial hair at a lower Manhattan bar. I’ve found a new appreciation for Halloween after celebrating it in New York because with more people comes more costumes comes more silly things to witness. Whether it be Spiderman and a zombie arguing about whose turn it was to go down the vert ramp, or a woman with a knife through her head yelling at her kids in the back of her minivan to quiet down because she had a splitting headache, Halloween is a veritable grab bag of eavesdropping voyeurism.

Another strange event occurred in the form of two eighties aerobic instructors approaching a group of Marxists with the desire to dance. My true bewilderment coming from the fact that women were talking to me. After a quick explanation of our costumes, explaining that I was not Groucho Marx with a pickaxe in his head, I cracked a joke referencing my man under the mask beliefs in the tenants of socialism. The sideways ponytail and leg warmers responded with a scoff and a question of: “you’re not serious, are you?” I began attempting to regale her with my impressive, if limited, canon of speaking points that I had practiced in a mirror serving as Glenn Beck, yet I stopped myself. This was not the place, nor the time to force upon this nubile practicer of Halloween tradition my over spoken views of equality over freedom. So I feigned sleepiness and left to search for an F train.

The next day I was riding the C train over to the poorest part of Brooklyn to tutor a 5 year old how to draw letters and numbers and sit in her chair. Enter man with long beard and even longer windedness. He begins his tried and true speech about how the bible is true and the bible is socialist. He handed out pamphlets  explaining that “To the rich God says, ‘Go and sell whatever you have and give it away to the poor people, and you will have treasure in Heaven, and come, follow me’ (Luke 18:22). But the rich, being atheists and blasphemers against the good Name of God that is called on the poor people, hearing about ‘treasure in Heaven’ only laugh in their hearts and reject the path of salvation that God has ordained for them.” And quoting “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God!” (Luke 18:24-25) I’m not sure who transcribed an exclamation point when translating the bible, but kudos to them. After a scuffle-stumble up and down the train car, the old man found his way out onto the subway platform and onto another train for yet another recitation of his monologue.

Woody Allen’s line about fears of become a raving lunatic is the last line he says before he introduces his female counterpart and title character, and thus the movie begins. I think that’s significant. Before he begins to tell this story he must first describe who he is in order to present context for which the audience can watch. This description of himself comes to a solid conclusion when he finally comes to his worries of ranting in public places because he realizes that once he’s fully rejected society’s attempts to include him as a part of it, he will no longer truly exist. “Tact” is a word I have described often as the “bane of my existence,” and yet I recognize that without the little semblance of tact I still have I would lose my ability to function in this society – and though I hate without reservation most of my surroundings, I want to have surroundings. Without others to bitch about, I will finally corrode into spewing the same monologue over and over to annoyed people attempting to hide their faces in books they don’t want to read. And I hate saying the same thing over and over again.

I sit here eating stale popcorn because it is what is in front of me. In an hour I will have to leave to watch a five year old attempt to draw the alphabet, and I ate my last piece of bread yesterday. This means that, though my fridge is full of condiments and cheeses and other such ingredients that you might use to make a sandwich, a sandwich is not available to me. Instead I eat stale popcorn because that is what’s in front of me.

Considering that my time frame leaves me with only an hour to accomplish a meal, finding a restaurant or a grocery store is out of the question. I can tell by your annoyed smirk and furrowed brow that you are confused by this statement. You believe that an hour is plenty of time to walk outside, grab a sandwich or a slice of pizza and then continue on my way toward the appropriate subway stop. Well, you are wrong. I’m sure that it is physically possible to eat a meal and walk three blocks in an hour, but I refuse to believe that that type of energy expenditure is sustainable.

Leaving my apartment requires me to mentally prepare for the outside world. Interacting with a sandwich shop attendant requires me to mentally prepare for other people. Looking for a new restaurant to eat at requires me to mentally prepare for a thought process. Instead I’ll content myself with stale popcorn out of a bag I bought two days ago and left open behind my overheating laptop. Does it taste good? no. Does it satisfy my cravings for food? no. Am I happy? no. But, do I have to leave the comfort that is forced loneliness? no.

 

Yesterday I almost shit myself.

After forgoing the option to take the subway home in favor of a 2 mile walk back home, I found myself running the last six blocks like a penguin on meth as I forced my sphincter closed. Having only eaten ramen and cereal all day, I knew my toilet expedition would be sloppy, and I wasn’t excited about the possibility of that sloppiness happening in my pants.

Using one hand to manipulate the keys needed to open my apartment door and the other to hold my buttcheeks shut, I frantically danced the dance of distraction to try to trick my mind into forgetting that I had liquid poo attempting to fall out of my ass. I swung open the four doors needed to get to the bathroom leaving keys and clothes on the floor in my wake and found shit falling out as I began my descent to the toilet. I had made it!

As I sat, letting waste drain out of my body, hoping that no intruders would take this opportunity to walk into my apartment as all the doors were still wide open, I thought what would have happened if one of my roommates had been taking a shower or had their own waste removal process happening at that time.

This blog entry would be a lot more interesting, that’s for sure.

I have an enormous pimple on my neck that looks like a red button that when undone opens a secret passage to my windpipe. I also went to get a haircut today. I replied to a free haircut ad in craigslist so that I didn’t have to spend the money I didn’t have.

Out of the subway, I found myself forced to walk through a sudden and long-lasting downpour. My eyebrows pursed to keep out the rain, and suddenly I looked like the saddest person in New York City. As the only one on the street without a hat or umbrella, I had long rivers of water running down my face where my hair that was too long connected with my face. This just happened to be exactly where tears would also run if I were to be crying my way through the streets of Manhattan. The crunched face and confused look of being lost, only served to make me look more depressed.

I finally found the hairdresser with my hair looking like a drowned spider sitting atop my head. The house music, stylish hairstyles and lime green tables told me I was in the wrong place, but the address told me I was in the right place. My hair stylist took me to a back room so that I could get dried off and change into a haircutting gown. I sat waiting, staring at myself in the mirror not realizing that I was supposed to find my stylist once I was done drying my hair. Why a changing room was necessary, I still don’t know.

As I looked around me, I realized I was the only person there not from Williamsburg or Upper West Side. I was also the only one whose clothes weren’t worth at least a weeks worth of salary. I was also the only one whose clothes were wrinkled and dirty because I had forgotten to do laundry the day before. I was also the only one who had an enormous pimple extruding from my neck.

I had spent that morning squeezing my pimple and wiping out the juices it left behind with a tissue paper. It had only served to make the area around redder and more noticeable. I chose the other route and pretended I didn’t exist, and neither did my pimple as I sat patiently watching a student grimace as he chopped my hair. My mind turned to the future. In the future I would have to know whether or not to tip this man who was giving me a free haircut. I desperately searched for people finishing up their hair services to see if they were exchanging money. I found two souls just conversing after their curly adventure into head enlarging. They seemed ready to go and I stared at the customer’s hands as they moved around in her pockets. I’m sure she thought I was just creepily surveying her crotch. Finally the customer was ready to depart and the the two hugged and then she left. Hugged? They must be friends. Friends don’t need to tip, they’re on a totally different level than me. Or she’s not a friend, and you’re supposed to hug after a haircut here. I’m fine with that, but if that’s not the policy and I go in for a hug instead of a tip things could get awkward.

I turned my attention back to the present and began playing with my hands underneath my full body bib. I silently laughed at what others might perceive as me playing with myself while a tattooed man plays with my hair. My laughs turned audible when I scratched my knee and I had to stop.

As I left, I assumed everyone was staring at me, waiting for my next screw up to come. Was it going to be a fashion faux-pa or an uncomfortable social exit, or was it simply going to be my gross pimple oozing as I left the building. As much as I like attention, pimple-attention is no fun.

I was in a bar in Seattle when I turned 22. This was a half art museum – half bar setup. My fellow bar mates were an eclectic group of hostel goers from around the world, most of whom had no idea that it was my birthday. Sipping on my local lager, I approached one of the few members of our group I had yet to talk to. The Australian hipster with the short hair to match her short skirt seemed in a daze staring forward at one of the museum’s attractions. It was a samurai sword instruction video with the sound turned off and remixed to include slower and faster motion views of metal slicing through pig carcasses.

I followed her gaze for a minute then turned to her with what I thought was a really brilliant joke: “You have these videos at home?”

Her response was “No” and a look that questioned my sanity.

There may have been a cultural/language barrier, but I tend to think all Australians are stupid because of this girl. This is not an assumption I can make about our other English speaking friends across the pond. My entire west coast trip was spent with the less dentally inclined people of our world. That is to say that while I wasn’t pulling and British birds, my flat would have been full of fierce fannies. I think. I’m not really sure what I just said.

The female former empire-ers were my only friends in the multi-cultural world of hostel jumping and there was reason. The female part was because I frighten easily at demands to chug and find myself attempting to change the subject when asked to brag about the last lady I snogged. The Brit part is because their sensibilities toward humor are more like mine (aka: objectively better). This is a fact I have rediscovered through constant television research.

With the outside planning on getting colder, I’ve been figuring out ways to make my bed a place I never need to leave. So, crackers and cream cheese becomes a meal and I’ve found new ways to stream television on my computer. My success at finding humorous half hours of life has been impressive. Beyond the well known adventures of Ricky Gervais, the Brits have been churning out hit after hit after hit without accolades from us American swine.

Where am I going with this?

If you skip ahead to 2:42 you hear that Beck’s true fear is of our television becoming similar to Britain’s. And O’Reilly’s fears are that we turn into Sweden. (Go to 2:45)

I’d love to move up the quality of life index, the human development index, life expectancy, and in humor.

This all stems from the overall fear of self deprecation. The one thing that capitalism undeniably puts a halt to is admitting failure. Capitalism is a system that feeds the need to prove yourself bigger, better, and stronger than the competition, and in this case the competition has become other countries like Britain, Sweden, Canada, and France. Our stubbornness in assuming we are the best and changing would admit weakness has left us weaker than these countries in technology, living, and, most importantly,  humor. This is something I will not stand. Let us admit our faults – self-deprecation can go a long way, maybe even lead to universal health care.