I don’t know how quickly my body deals with food, but I ate a bite of a bran muffin only to have to take an immediate shit. I have mixed feelings about large, open bathrooms. I like the space because even if I’m on a jerky train out to Long Island the size of my stall makes me fell like a king who has room to spare even in his poopiest hour. The fact that I was excreting bran muffin made the openness uncomfortable as I was unable to truly utilize the floor in front of me – I can’t pace or do jumping jacks while dribbling out some poo. Soon I started imagining someone else using the space I was leaving unused. My imaginary bathroom friend made me self-concious about the sounds, sights, and smells that I was making during this should-be-private activity. And while he was pacing back and forth, discussing our military strategy for defeating our alien intruders from our snow fort, all I could think was how mad I was for needing to multitask. Really pooping should not be a multitask activity. This is coming from a man who did most of his high-school homework on the can – a guy who has made dinner for himself only to set up a table in front of the toilet for instant ironic snacking. When I say multitask I mean specifically that it should not involve another person. For me, most people that I interact with are imaginary anyway, so those self-created-conversations are what I refer to when I discuss the pain of conversing on the throne.

I like to articulate my points with gesticulation and I like the opportunity to leave the room if my discussion-mate becomes too boring. Babies are constant feces multitaskers. They don’t mind staring at you and taking a dump while they walk the premises to check for shiny things. That’s because they get to have their toilet strapped around their waist. Sure this means that their waste is also trapped around their waist, but at least their good at the poop’n'discuss. They can gesticulate or find a new room to chill in mid-dump. I want that. Potty training was the most useless education I’ve ever received – and I took a psychology class in college.

When both my parents were young they were told they didn’t eat enough. This made them feel insecure about their inability to finish their food. Thusly, my inability to indifference toward fully cleaning my own plate was met with unwavering understanding. That combined with my forced vegetarianism has probably contributed to my 124 lb. frame now.

I’m not blaming them. I’ll move along quickly to the part where I forgive them for making me into the comedic being wearing women’s clothes that I am today as to not redundisize.

I ate 4 donuts on the way to dinner today. This proves two things: Donuts are delicious and I can eat like a motherfucker when I enjoy food. I’ve also been full after three bites of cauliflower meatloaf. My parents trained me to eat how much I wanted of what I wanted. This translates over to my life (as food is simply a parable for life) and my parents have also trained me to live life by doing what I wanted at a specific moment. Food is a fleeting enjoyment. Since I treated food as something that I could eat or not eat without consequence, I began to treat life in the same way – as a series of fleeting inconsequential moments.

That’s not to say I don’t feel guilt or remorse or trepidation. Far from it. Those might be the only three things I feel (besides the flat shaft of my penis as I type with my left hand). I just don’t give in to those feelings. Those feelings effect purely my feelings as opposed to determining my actions. Just as my desire to not finish my garden burger led to me not finishing my garden burger, my desires to spit or pee on the sidewalk lead to me expelling my internal liquids on the New York City streets.

Maybe that’s why I feel guilty all the time. Because I don’t know how to censor my actions for the greater good of my life. Fuck you mom and dad. Why’d you have to make me a terrible human being.

I always understood the notch in the bedpost thing. Not because I like bragging about sex (discussion of achieving my desires makes me feel uncomfortable), but because it is all about nostalgia. It’s about being in your bed and being able to look up to the wood above your head and remember good times you had in the exact place you are right now.

I have nostalgia for the place I am laying right now. I am in a bed I have moved closer to an outlet. I moved it closer to an outlet so that my laptop can sit on my sleeping lap in order to kill the accident-creators in my balls in case the highly improbable happens and I jizz into something that isn’t a tissue. I’ve jizzed into tissues on this bed. I’ve then found the trash can or bathroom too far away and I’ve just set down the successes of my hand movements at the foot of my bed. I’ve spent until 2pm in this exact place wishing that the fan was closer so that I wouldn’t have to touch the floor that for all I know could be molten lava so that I wouldn’t be sweating under my blanket. I’ve stared at the ceiling from my current position hoping that those perseverance posters are right and if I keep doing the same thing something good will come. I’ve been let down by my attempted perseverance. Nothing comes from staring at a ceiling.

I think though. I think when I stare and that leads to these blogs. These blogs that entertain my pathetic readers who need to escape from their lives of jobs and life and other things boring to find how the other half lives. The other half that sits in their bed and stares – the fun half. These blog posts are the notches in my bed post for I have no wooden head thing, simply a mattress. And this is the electronic age, shouldn’t my nostalgia be e-nostalgia?

Behind me sit some MILFs. I don’t mean like those busty bar sluts that you see on Milfhunter. I mean like classy supermodel looking people with tiny babies. They’re all part of a group to make them feel whole because their man partners are meant to make them be pregnant. They all watch Sex and the City and they all think they’re Samantha. Except that they can’t be Samantha because they’re too married.

They’re gonna be terrible parents. I’m not just saying that because I am not like them, and I don’t like people who are different than me. Those would all be valid reasons, but they’re not my reasons right now. It’s because their kids keep falling over. Why do they keep falling over? Because the moms are paying attention to one thing specifically: Themselves and the monologues they are making with their mouths. They are technically in conversation, but only because all of them are performing monologues broken up by feigning listening via nodding while somebody else performs their monologue.

The children want to explore the world, but these women are busy exploring how well other people can pretend to pay attention. These kids keep running into walls, and chairs an strollers, and only once they cry does mommy pay attention.

I hate these bitches. And that’s what it be.

Fuck safety. Safety is a word people use so that they don’t have to experience excitement. People think I’m safe. People know I don’t like hurting others and assume I won’t hurt them. Of course I won’t, but that doesn’t mean I’m safe. People think I’m safe because I’m Swedish and Jewish. I’m neither too Arian or too not. I’m a sweet medley of sugar and spice and everything that is socially acceptable and interesting. I’m safe because my parents owned a health food store and I don’t drink caffeine. I don’t take hard drugs. I’m not going to explode. I barely have emotion. I’m safe. Y’know why I’m safe? Because I was too scared to break up with my first girlfriend because she was suicidal and so I just remained somewhat but not offensively distant for a month until she cheated on me and then broke up with me. And my response was: “You’re still gonna act in my comedy show, right?” I’m so safe that I don’t hurt people, and I don’t get hurt. I’m safe because I like to laugh. I’m safe because I wear a safety belt. I’m safe because I’m from the Whitest state in the nation but I’m into racial equality. Fuck safety. Safety is a word people use when they want to be racist but know that it’s wrong to say that they don’t want to live near people that look different than them. Fuck safety. People think I’m safe because I had a bowl cut until well into sophomore year of high-school. Well, fuck people. I changed my hair to boring, strait and easy. I can’t pull off any other hair. If I could sport a mohawk and still play multiple characters on stage, I’d do it, but instead I have to be safe. People think I’m safe because I’m small. I can’t physically hurt things. I’m safe because though I’ve been threatened with a fight many times before, I’ve walked away from every one of them or made a joke about how small my penis is. The worst part is that I’m not just safe, I’m safe BUT… I’m safe BUT offensive. I’m safe BUT quirky. I’m safe BUT your friends won’t say I’m lame because I make jokes about gross things and wear weird clothes. You can say I’m funny and interesting, even though you’re not going to be able to say that I’m hot. You can show your friends that you’re not shallow because you’re willing to be sexual with this scrawny dude known for his sense of humor, who’s not going to pressure you into fucking before you’re ready. Fuck safety. Safety is a word people use to make sure their life is predictable.

Fuck safety. I want to lead on a gay guy to think that I’m bi, and then dump on him the news that I’m full blown hetero. I want to lead on a girl and when we lean in for the kiss, turn away and say “Ew, not with you. You’re way grosser looking than what I usually go for.”

I hate being safe, because safety is just an image. Everything’s safe if you stop worrying, but some people need to worry and then they turn to me because I’m the safe decision. I’m not a risk because my hair is nice and I have cute blue eyes. Well, that’s about to change, I’m gonna go unpredictable!

My favorite book is Twilight and I enjoy making fun of chubby kids at the playground and I just bought a new car that’s fast and I eat food out of the dumpster and my uncle touched me and I buy 10 lottery tickets a day. Go fuck yourself safety.

So, maybe I was walking home and realized that if I were coming home from the other direction I could peek into that coffee shop where the cute girl who flirts with me because it’s her job works and see if she was making coffee today. So, maybe I walked an extra 4 blocks in order to circle around and come back toward my apartment the correct way to look through the coffee shop window. So, maybe I saw that she was working and waved through the window, to which she waved back because she wasn’t busy. So, maybe I didn’t go in even though I had thought of a perfect entrance convo starter of complaining about my ATM mishap as though it had just happened this morning as opposed to three days ago. So, maybe it was because I blanked the second I looked in the café and knew that if I attempted to talk to her it would come out as: “You.. ha… I’m… I don’t know … why I came in here.” So, maybe I had bought soymilk on my extra four block journey in order to look as though I had been on an important expedition as opposed to just a useless circle of city strolling. So, maybe that extra half-gallon of Silk is now staring me in the face every time I open my refrigerator embodying why I’ve been called a pussy so often in my life. So, maybe I found my work schedule that was emailed to me and checked to see if the cute girl I sometimes work with was working today in case I wanted to make another adventure outside searching for rejection. So, maybe I found that she was working and I put on my jacket to go to my place of employment with the sole purpose of flirting with my co-worker. So, maybe I walked in, pretended I just had to pick up my paycheck and while she tried to talk to me I came up with an excuse for having to leave because I was too scared that something offensive was about to come out of my mouth. So, maybe I cried myself to sleep while stroking it. So, what?

In the wind down from T-gives I have written a couple of short storyish things while on the subway. It’s interesting to me that they all have to do with family, but it’s not interesting to me that they are not that interesting. So I’ll post them on my blog because that’s where I throw my crap. My blog is to me as a tourist outside the monkey cage to a monkey.

They don’t want me here. I’ve entered a world I’m not allowed in. I write on a napkin, alone by the door, nursing a beer while I wait for my blintzes. The only other customers being served that this restaurant are families who only speak Russian. My waiter is disappointed in my lack of attempt to speak a native tongue I couldn’t even pretend to understand. I’m two blocks away from where my father grew up, and I want to tell everyone in the restaurant that fact. I want to tell them that I’m not some weird tourist – that my great-grandmother never spoke English and lived in this area of Brooklyn her whole life. THat the reason I came in wasn’t to voyeuristically watch another culture, but rather because I missed the comfort of my grandmother’s blintzes. My food is tossed in front of me with little regard for its presentation or whether the fork and knife stay on the table.

I don’t really understand the fascination with house music, and even less the corresponding videos playing on the TVs mounted in each corner. I had come in here because it was the café with the most clientel, and therefore I assumed the best food and least likely to be a mob front.

Every time someone walks in or out a cold gust of wind blows the napkin I am writing on over ot the neighboring table. They then hand me back my napkin, tell me that it’s okay in Russian and I nod in order to replace language with universally understood head gestures. The waiter wants me to leave. I’m taking up a table that could be given to someone who knows how to order and includes the necessary meat portion of the meal in that order. THe girl with her parents, home for the holidays, is very attractive. I keep looking at her and she keeps catching me. She wants me to leave too. I can’t wait to ask for the check. I need only my hands and not my use of incorrect words to ask for the check. A simple use of a space object pencil and paper, and my bill is placed o my table – he wishes the numbers looked as different as the letters do in Russian and he could overcharge me.

I liked my grandmother’s blintzes better.

I never thought I looked that Jewish. A little, sure, my nose is quite bulbous, but my straight hair and blue eyes were enough to keep me safe during the holocaust. I walked through the subway station to be stopped by every person in this family of religious panhandlers asking me “Are you Jewish?” They weren’t asking anyone else, they were beelining it for me – to assault me with pamphlets about G-d.

When I was in college my theater department typecast me as the cold war Jew. Both major parts I played were historical Jews, integral in the McCarthy trials who had a complicated relationship with Ethel Rosenberg. I was one of the two Jew-males available for these roles in my department, but I don’t think that the fact that I’ve been to a seder was an important factor.

Curb Your Enthusiasm, Seinfeld, and Stella are my favorite TV shows of all time. Marx Bros, Woody Allen and Judd Apatow are among my favorite movie creators. All are Jewish. Maybe this is why the family of peyos growers hand picked me to assail with literature telling me “not to eat the flesh of an animal that is still alive.” Because I look like I’d laugh at a contest to see who can go the longest without masturbating. How is it that I am part of such a group of chosen humorers? It’s not just oppression because Jews aren’t the only onces who have been on the wrong side of a genocide.

So we have to find what was different about the ways Jews were anihilated than the Blacks, Native Americans, Aborigine, Irish, or other Catholics. The holocaust left 60-75% of the Jews of the area dead, so why did the 25-40% survive. Who were these survivors. Obviously they kept themselves alive via humor, thus the excess of comedians of the chosen genes.

In most annihilations of people, the oppressors let some people live for whatever reason. Always humor is one of those reasons, but sometimes there is a less forgiving audience. Slave owners, Brits, and Christopher Colombus were not funny, while the Nazis had a good sense of humor.

I don’t think I can eat again. Let me rephrase that. With my stomach distended like a child on a Sally Struthers infomercial, I think eating would be more difficult than listening to Dennis Miller’s standup without wikipedia on speed dial. That joke was funny because of the hypocrisy of the phrasing.

Instead I sit in the middle of my mattress with my fan on high blast hoping that the moving of air will allow me to move my bowels as well. I have three glasses of water, two of them empty sitting to my right and I’ve gone piss 40 times so far today. Yet I can’t force out a shit.

Two nights ago I went to deposit my tip and tutoring money into my bank account. I was excited to use Chase’s ATMs that you just shove your wad of cash into and it reads how much you’ve given it and deposits that amount directly. It ate my money. I had an immediate reaction similar to when the same thing happened at the YMCA when you were 10 and your were trying to buy a small bag of fruit snacks and the twirling metal hand of food-giving held onto the ripples in the bag a little too hard. I pouted. Then I realized that I had just deposited around half of what I already had in my bank account, and if that transaction didn’t go through, paying rent was going to prove difficult. The ATM gave me a receipt that had a phone number to call during normal business hours or I could visit a branch to try to resolve this problem, but it was no longer business hours and the next day would be devoid of business hours as everyone who worked at Chase would be shoving fistfulls of mashed potatoes into their mouth while watching Packers destroy Lions – which sounds like we have found a way to find nutrition in the meat of jungle cats.

Now I sit with hot air molecules masquerading as cooler air molecules by moving quickly at my face surrounding me, and I need to go to the bank and fix this grown up vending machine error. But I’m scared. I want to go to the bank so that the voice I talk to has a face that can see the pain on my face as I explain the necessity of the money I lost in staying in my apartment, but what if this poop I’ve been waiting for all day finally decides to mount its escape while I discuss my predicament? I’ll be in that bathroom for hours waiting for the turkey, potatoes, cranberry sauce, stuffing, sweet potato/curry noodle kugel, pecan and apple pie (which one do you think I brought to the table? I’ll give you a hint: There are only 350 Indian Jews in America and I like to be in the minority) to find its way to its new home of the toilet while my stomach retreats back to its normal size. That’ll be embarrassing.

I take the LIRR once a week in order to make myself to out to long island to tutor a 36-year-old conspiracy theorist, veteran, with marital problems in precalculus. During these trips I bring a writing book to keep me company. This is what that attempt at masking my loneliness has produced:

Three seats in front of me sits a boy and a handheld game. He needs the full experience of his game; entering tunnel sounds, jumping for coin sounds, complaining to his mom about how the game cheats sounds and all.

I sit, staring out my window, with only the faint sounds of my pen scratching against paper to comfort my desire to be productive.

It is a dreary November day – we’re past the point where the changing leaves make the outside world into a constant rainbow of foliage, yet before the point where cloudy white pillows of snow will blanket the ground. The sun has no desire to see our monotonously grey landscape and has allowed  the clouds to blindfold its view.

The kid is now crying because he let his mother play and she lost his final life. She is laughing. I am crying on the inside because my paycheck is a week late, meaning I have to continue to try to survive on the $1.78 left in my bank account (a fact more difficult to swallow knowing that I need $6.50 to buy a ticket back from Long Island). I am laughing on the outside because my life is relatively simple and I’m worried about the lack of beauty in the landscape I pass by.

 

There was a Hawaiian-shirted man driving his convertible jaguar with a toy dog yapping out his side window and a pipe in his mouth. That is an eclectic group of things that I don’t like together. THere was a man with bling draped around his neck as he read War and Peace in a playground. That is an eclectic group of things I do like together.

 

I’m on the LIRR and a high school class is coming back from a field trip. The entire class is Black. Both teachers are White. It reminds of my work at a café where we have sing-alongs for the local children three mornings a week. African-American nannies crowd the café with their white child obligations getting sung to by some hipster guitarist. They sang “Wheels on the Bus” yesterday. At one point in the song the sort of bearded ma with the guitar sings: “The bus driver says: ‘Go to the back of the bus, go to the back of the bus!’” I felt uncomfortable making any lattes and then comforted myself by considering the mixing of dark brown espresso and white milk a metaphor for how society should function. Sure there is less espresso, but even if there is an overwhelming amount of milk, the overall color reflects both pieces equally.

My parents wanted me to suffer. They got mad when their little mistake came out with exterior genitalia and they immediately thought: how can we make sure this child experiences constant hardship throughout their life without doing anything tangible to be blamed for? So they named me Elf. The first gnome ever discovered was a wooden carved statue in northern Sweden with the name Nisse carved into the pedestal. Thus my parents; people who grew up small and were going to raise me a vegetarian – people who knew my fate of an adolescence cursed with miniature stature, decided to name me after one of santa’s little helpers.

This name also offered an opportunity for my late-blooming puberty to offer me even more hardships in the form of misunderstanding the gender of my name and therefore being. And it assured that I would never have my name pronounced right the first time and each first day of class would start with the entirety of my schoolmates laughing at the teacher’s earnest attempt at reading a foreign word. This name caused a bird-apocalypse with one stone.

I no longer have first days of class, I now grow too much gross scraggly hair on my body to be confused for a female, and I stand a reasonably tall 5′9″, so the name has lost some of its power. That is not to say that my parents’ desire to see my constantly suffer has not come to fruition. Now I deal with an introduction conversation that is so routine that I begin answering people’s questions before they ask them. [What was your name? - Nisse - Wh..- It's Swedish. - How.. - My mom's Swedish. - And.. - It means elf. - (Then they say something that I don't listen to but I laugh afterward because I know that they attempted to tell a joke)] Now I deal with girls who get excited about my name because they are “obsessed with gnomes” (This is far more common than any of you assume) – girls who have high pitched voices and were treated well in middle school. Girls who remember fondly the time when they thought leprechauns and Santa and the Easter Bunny, but now recognize that it’s not cool to like those things and therefore go for the Arcade Fire of the imaginary being world – gnomes. The girl who is the hipster child. The girl I typically have no interest in but is always attractive in a mousey brunette with old navy shirts and capris sort of way.

Then I get stuck being told that I need to understand when you weigh as little as I, and when you dress as absurdly as I, and have as little sexual confidence as I, that I need to count my lucky that Miss. Mousey and Typically Attractive talks to me let alone wants to let me make out with her. And, yes that is all Mousey desires. Mice don’t like to fuck. Why do I weigh so little? My parents raised me to not eat meat. Why do i dress so absurdly? Because my parents lined my dressers with free health-food t-shirts. Why do I have such pitiful sexual confidence? My name is Nisse. And this forces me in this pathetic cycle of being told to keep chasing mice that I don’t want to chase.

So I thank my parents. Because without their desire to torture me, I might have turned out sans neurosis. I could be sitting in an office married to some vaguely mousey girl who went to Boston University with me instead of typing hateful words while sitting in a pile of my own peanut butter and jelly sandwich crumbs with fresh memories of female rejection swarming my head.

Thanks for not letting me become boring.