TWENTY TWENTY HINDSIGHT

Although the population that identifies as homosexual in this country is a relatively small 10.43 percent, a recent New York Times article, “The Americanization of Mental Illness,” argues that, like democracy and the colors red, white, and blue, homosexuality, once a solely Western phenomenon (See: Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s response to a question posed by a likely homosexual during appearance at the notoriously liberal Columbia University, “In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals like in your country…. I don’t know who told you that we have this.”), is spreading. The author, Ethan Watters, whose book Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche, will be published next month, doesn’t actually mention homosexuality in the article (or, at least, the portion of the article that I read because it was kind of long it seemed more important to throw a tennis ball against my neighbor’s house than finish reading), but this is because Mr. Watters lives in San Francisco, a noted hotbed of sodomy and Mexican food, and doesn’t want you to equate homosexuality with other mental disorders, despite what the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Vol II, 1968), which was written by licensed medical professionals, states.

Watters does, however, analyze the spread of other mental illnesses from West to East. Take, for instance, anorexia, which was an unknown dietary plan in Hong Kong until a fourteen-year-old girl named Charlene Hsu Chi-Ying collapsed on a sidewalk in 1994 after skipping breakfast one too many times. What was rare became an epidemic in the aftermath of Charlene’s death, spread in part by  headlines like Thinner Than a Yellow Flower, Weight-Loss Book Found in School Bag, Schoolgirl Falls Dead on Street. What was less common than koro, or the fear that one’s genitals are retracting into one’s body, became as much a part of the cultural landscape as vending machines that sell used underpants. That is, anorexia didn’t exist until the media made it so.

The same can be said of homosexuality. The proof is in the numbers. In 1975, for instance, Googling “Anderson Cooper + gay” produced approximately zero results. Today, however, the same search produces about 938,000 hits. Every time Anderson Cooper shows his well-toned facial muscles on cable news, a gay is born. And so, even if you are not a homosexual and no one you know is a homosexual, it’s only a matter of time before your son tells you he wants to quit Little League and buy a tutu. What follows in meant to help your transition into the world of homosexuality.

In case you’re unfamiliar with homosexuality, let me explain. Homosexuality is a psychological disorder in which one is attracted to members of the same sex. Symptoms among males (also know as “fags”) include a love of the color lavender, the pop music star Beyonce, and hair products. Symptoms among women (”lesbians” or “dykes”) are more subtle, as there are many varieties of homosexual females (see, for example, a common middle-aged variant recognizable by their Labrador retrievers and Life is Good hats and/or tee-shirts), but they are easy to spot as they tend to move in packs. While homosexual men may seek companionship among heterosexual women (”fag hags”) as well as other homosexual men, lesbians (see also “gayelles,” “scissor sisters,” and “Queen LaQuiffa”) tend to segregate from other parts of society, preferring to maintain friend groups composed solely of other homosexual woman. This does not, however, mean that all it takes to befriend a lesbian is membership in what they refer to as “the family.” On the contrary, lesbians naturally separate into different sects and look upon sects other than their own with derision. You will never, for instance, see a softball lesbian sharing a blanket at the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival with a hipster dyke with prominent and colorful tattoos, most likely of inanimate objects. While it is true that they may both have bowl cuts, any chance of friendship is negated by the fundamental disparity in the widths of their pant legs.

There are multiple variations of homosexuality. Bisexuals (see also, “dirty bisexuals”) are noted for the intense jealousy they incite in their partners, who become suspicious not just of other homosexual women but also of heterosexual men, and, at times, of anyone with viable genitalia because, hey, she’s obviously undiscriminating, right? Another variation of homosexuality is transgenderism, symptoms of which include the unstoppable urge to change one’s name from something gender specific (e.g. “Sarah”) to something gender neutral (e.g. “Toast”). Transgendered populations are also marked by a decrease in sense of humor, which is the result of the large doses of hormones transgendered people often take in order to alter their physical appearances. This does not effect all transgendered people, just the one who stomped my foot when I expressed confusion about said person’s adopted pro-noun (”y’all”).

While some homosexual people choose to fight the disorder with psychological intervention or commit to a lifetime of celibacy, and some choose to enter into traditional heterosexual relationships with the hope that their gayness will dissipate in a heteronormative environment, someday making it possible for them to make love to their spouses without imagining Tom Brady in a Speedo to feel aroused, an increasing number of homosexuals are choosing to embrace their psychoses. They enter romantic relationships with other homosexuals, form performance art collectives with other homosexuals, and even raise their children to be homosexuals. In light of this movement towards universal acceptance, study the following principles to best communicate with your homosexual….

1. Two bottoms don’t make a top. While this phrase likely means nothing to you, the principle is well-known in homosexual society. Whereas traditional male/female relationships often include a built-in “top” (male) and a built-in “bottom” (female), homosexuals must negotiate these roles. And because it can be uncomfortable to discuss such preferences when you’re not even sure of your new friend’s name, homosexuals often enter into sexual congress unaware of their partner’s preference for “topping” or “bottoming.” When two homosexuals prefer the same role, one homosexual must relinquish their preferred position, or, as in the two bottoms scenario, sex looks a lot like two people laying on their backs waiting for the other person to make the first move. While it is not unequivocally true that two bottoms or two tops cannot have a fulfilling sexual relationship, it can be a complicating force. Note: femme tops are a rare and valuable breed.

2. Also known as butch-on-butch violence, butchinsense is characterized by the unstated conflict between two lesbians of the same ilk, typically, lesbians who display more masculine characteristics. Caused by a generalized anxiety among homosexuals due to the small number of available partners, butchinsense often dissipates when said butches converse for the first time and realize that they actually have a lot in common and might as well be friends. Femminsense exists, but is far less common.

3. Lesbian bed death is a myth. Actually, it’s not a myth, although homosexual women wish it were. Symptoms of lesbian bed death include owning multiple cats and peeing with the door open, both of which exacerbate what is already a common problem in long term lesbian relationships: that is, a tendency to be boring. There is no equivalent in homosexual male relationships.

4. Your homosexual may at some point express a desire to marry his or her homosexual lover. When this happens, you should never express that homosexual marriage is a really fun game and you’d love to play along. You should react the same way you would when the heterosexuals in your life discuss the same subject. Support your homosexual and then, after she realizes that her partner’s new spoken word piece is actually about the shortstop on her softball team, gently remind her that the whole thing was as real as two four-year-olds reciting their vows and exchanging ring pops, and thank god for that.

Because the spread of homosexuality is inevitable and unstoppable, I hope this information will help you be better prepared the next time your brother tells you about the new friend he met while scarf shopping at Banana Republic.

I’m spending this Christmas as I did last Christmas and the one before that and the one before that and maybe every one until I’m too hold to remember what a lap is, much sitting in Santa’s. My family-of-one tradition is to sit on a bar stool with the rest of the Christmas orphans in the neighborhood. It might seem sad, but I’ve hated Christmas ever since my parents decided that I was going to be a painter and gave me a palette and brushes every yule from six until fifteen when I just wanted a fucking Nintendo. Not only that, but I also hate spending money on things I can’t consume and it seems tacky to steal my family’s Christmas presents. Also, I’m a selfish prick and the only present I’ve ever given someone is a couple’s massage that I personally benefited from. But, in honor of Christ’s birthday, I’ll participate in the best part of the holiday: wish lists.

What I Want For Christmas; or, No More Kitchen Supplies, Please

1. A job that doesn’t involve a script:

Hi. Do you have a rewards card?
Would you like a rewards card?
Do you want a gift receipt?
Do you want to donate to the Orange County Orphan Drive?
No? Would you like a bag? Do you realize that your purchase cost more than I’ll make today?

I’ve stopped listening to my own words one week into the seasonal employment season. I’m like a stoned robot ringing up books. I keep telling myself that I am better than this. I am better than this headset and this name tag and way better than this headset. Unfortunately, I’m not really better than this, as you can see because I am this. It’s embarrassing to work at a big box when I spent least a double wide or a newish used Cadillac on higher education. It’s especially painful when people I know come in for the latest Booker winners and food porn. One so-called “friend” started laughing and pulled out her phone when she saw me behind the counter. I was okay being an unemployed loser because I liked telling people I was taking a “sabbatical” and working on “my art,” but it’s somehow more humiliating to have an actual job. When people I know from college or before come through my line, I have to pretend not to be jealous when congratulating them on finishing their PhDs and buying houses and having a car with both headlights functioning.

2. A Time Machine (or, Things I Regret Over Recent Months)

*Accidentally sending the following text to a former mentor: “Sorry I didn’t call you back last night. I had to explain to Chet why he needs to shit before we have sex.” There’s really no Chet and no shit, but I still didn’t mean to send that to Dr. Bronsky.

*Telling a cashier at the co-op that she looked a girl I slept with in the graveyard. Just like that, “Paper or plastic?” “I’ve got my own bag. You look like a girl I slept with in the graveyard.”

*Telling my mother that I want a hundred dollar gift certificate to Starbucks for Christmas.

*Leaving notes for a story about vegan polyamourous virgins in the pages of a children’s book.

*Letting my mom find out about my blog, although this has been somewhat of a mixed drink. I like that my parents know that I’m writing so they don’t still think I’m just spending my afternoons shooting heroin with my hooker friends, but I recently learned that my mom told a friend of hers that should shouldn’t read this if she’s offended by “raunchy gay sex.” That’s embarrassing.

*Writing that I was dropping out of school “because it made me want to kill myself” on my withdrawal form and then having to explain to the centurion dean that if anything made me want to kill myself, it’d have to be more interesting than grad school. This is true, but because my plan to win 600,000 dollars and raise a child star didn’t work out, I’m thinking that school might be something to reconsider.

*Telling Cassie (The Cutest Girl Ever) that when I was a kid I used to put my fuzzy (blankie) in the freezer every night and then forget about it and then have a crestfallen tantrum when I couldn’t find it. And that I did this until I was fifteen. I thought it was cute, but I see now how this may seem indicative of more deeply rooted problems, symptoms of which may include sleeping with a pacifier and not paying my own phone bill. She already thinks I’m dumb because I thought the capital of New York was New Jersey until ninth grade. This doesn’t help.

3. The Ability to Shit in Public

I am prudish about many things, such as sitting on upholstered furniture, sex involving ranch dressing and veggie platters, and talking about shit. Poop jokes make me clam up like I did when the cashier at CVS asked me what color my discharge was when I bought Monstat last week. But because the shit thing only comes up I’m around adolescent boys, it’s not generally something I stress about. I also have a former roommate who liked to ask me about my day while she was sitting on the toilet, so I had to get more comfortable this if I wanted to bitch about work. She was obviously good for me and I’m much more comfortable discussing bodily functions now. Point being, that’s why I’m about to say what I’m about to say: For Christmas, I would like the ability to shit in public. Not on your lawn so much as in a public bathroom, including but not limited to the one at my work. You are familiar with this problem. A friend told me she is so paranoid about shitting at her lover’s house that she goes whole weekends in a state of cramping anxiety. Help, Santa.

I guess that’s my whole list. Well, the preceding three and enough money to keep this blog going.

This will probably be my last entry until after Christmas. I’m weirdly exhausted from working EIGHT HOURS A DAY. It’s uncivilized to work this much, especially when you have to wear a uniform. Also, I’m working on a thing that I’m reading on December 30th with Phil Blank and Jordan Hutchison (”Soup”) and a couple of other bands. The last one we did was a good time but it’s harder to write about Christmas than it is to write about why no one should ever get married and things that make the gays stupid. If you’re in the area, come on. It’s at Nightlight (405 1/2 W. Rosemary, Chapel Hill).

I look forward to writing you again when you’re back at your desk compulsively checking Gmail. Happy winter, people. I hope you all get some Christmas strange and that Wii you’ve been asking for.

See the new page? Click it!

Happy baker’s dozen birthday, blog!

If you’ve read since the beginning (Hey, Mazog! And Betsy.), you know that this all started because I decided to attempt the Master Cleanse—a ten day hell that includes consuming very little except for laxative tea and nightly cocktail of salt water in an effort to cleanse your body of impurities (i.e. shit out your colon). It seemed like the supposed spiritual clarity that comes with the cleanse would distract me from my stomach eating itself, but I mostly felt waterlogged and bitchy so I quit after thirty-six hours, at which point I drove to a twenty-four hour diner and ate mac ‘n cheese so fast that I burned my esophagus. I kept up the facade as if I were still practicing spiritual anorexia until I was busted with cheese fries and an Americano a few days later.

At that point, I could have ditched the blog, but writing gave me something to do during class and I figured that if I’m going to tell people I’m a writer, I might as well write, so I kept at it. After the aborted cleanse, I wrote mostly about stupid shit I’ve done. I had a lot of those stories to tell. I also started to write about the comings and goings of the neurotransmitters hanging in my gray matter, specifically, my couch-sitting adventures in therapy. A year later, I’m still spending a hour week discussing my problems with a problem expert—and at times, discussing other peoples’ problems because I’ve run out of my own. Therapy has gotten boring, but I’m still into the blog.

So what has changed in the past thirteen months of writing this very Googlable, very public, private diary? Well, I broke up with a job or two, divorced graduate school, spent six months living/drinking on the dole, got the world brunch tattooed on my arm in a failed attempt to permanently secure my place in the middle-class, moved into a new place but forgot to get the electricity hooked up and then sweltered in the dark for four days, danced in a horsehead and corduroy pasties whilst waving a machine gun around and being ridden by fifty-year-old seemingly homeless front man who is actually not homeless but sleeps on a velvet sofa in the basement of a bar called the Mansion. Also, a bunch of the gays moved away and now only a third of my friends are queer, which is weird because I have to explain things like how you can tell a dyke by the length of her fingernails. Also, my other butt cheek moved away, and I flew across the country to meet someone from the Internet (sort of). And that’s about all that’s happened.

Actually, there is one other thing… new pussy! Kidding. But I am now a person with a person—a person with a person I like more than the Monday crossword, which is the only one I can do, and more than my four-poster bed, which is a grown-up tree-house and my favorite place to sleep, and more even than my 1990 Don Mattingly baseball card with a stick of gum still in the pack. But being a person with a person really is different. I’m not so restless right now. I’m happy doing boring stuff with The Cutest Girl Ever even though her feet sometimes feel like she wears socks made of ice and also I sometimes have to roll her on her side because she snores way bigger than one would think possible for such a pretty young thing. This is a good thing and a different thing and maybe a thing I wasn’t ready for a baker’s dozen months ago. So that’s different.

Some highlights from the past year-ish of blogging:

Answering questions you didn’t actually ask

Analyzing your personality/fridge

Co-opting Facebook memes to make myself look smart/kill time while waiting for my unemployment check

Communicating with my family almost entirely through Gchat

Text Message From A Stranger

And, mostly, bitching about not knowing what I want to be when I grow up.

And now I’m going to say something serious. Ready? Thanks for reading this. Not to get all Christmas sweater and menorah, but I’m grateful for everyone who takes time to read my blog when you could be planting virtual trees on your Facebook farm or judging Tiger Woods or writing Twlight fan fiction. The blog has been good for me, if for no other reason than at least it’s not quite as big a lie when I tell people I’m a writer now. It’s sometimes been a pain in the ass, but it’s mostly been a good pain in the ass, like the kind you get from a dude named Hank at a truck stop. So thanks for reading this. It’s a thing.

Following directions isn’t really my thing and I’m not about to share my bedroom with fifty other idiots, so, barring an uprising by the Federation for the Advancement of Gays and Gayelles (F.A.G.G.), enlisting in the military is about as likely as that time five minutes ago when Sean Penn friended me on Facebook. Regardless, I accompanied my roommate Small Fry to the recruiting office in Durham recently. It was an exercise in cheek-biting for me: it’s hard not to laugh at military recruiters when you are so fundamentally opposed to what they stand for (e.g. obedience, nationalism, khaki) and what they do (e.g. kill, depose, Skype) and know you are wasting the time they could spend coercing other young people to sign over their autonomy. They likely had just as little hope of signing us based on appearance alone. It’s not that we’re obviously dykes, which we are (despite national policy, gayism is probably recognized as a benefit in the armed forces. Would you rather be defended by Bull Dyke Barbie or Malibu Barbie?), we just don’t look like the kind of people who would join the army. We look like the kind of people who put nutritional yeast on popcorn or the kind of people who talk shit about people who put nutritional yeast on popcorn but still kind of like it. But there we were.

The recruiters’ office itself isn’t what I expected. When you walk in, there’s no one to welcome you with stars and stripes and patriotic songs, ready to salute you in the right direction. Left for Marines, right for Army, around back for Blackwater. Instead, you just wander around until you find the branch you’re looking for. There were two recruiters in the Air Force office. They didn’t try to sell us. They didn’t talk about the army of one or the benefits or the camaraderie or the honor in fighting for your country after that big September thing. They just handed us forms to fill out and left us alone. Although I might have given them my sister’s social security number and an ex’s phone number, I was mostly honest on the paperwork. Have I been arrested? Yes, but it was just a misunderstanding. I wasn’t really trying to pass myself off as a forty-two-year-old Canadian woman with a taste for Bartles & James and the charges were dismissed after I gave the judge a mani/pedi. You’re also supposed to list all the drugs you’ve done and the number of times you’ve done them. If I actually wanted to earn my pilot’s wings, I would have lied, but because I was more interested on getting out before happy hour than being fitted for a uniform, I wrote the truth. It’s not like I’ve ever traded my body for a crack pebble or anything, but I went to college. I wore Birkenstocks and rolled one-handed joints on the way to school. And, besides being the inevitable gateway to excessive napping, weed was never really a problem for me. When I stopped smoking, I didn’t even really think about it. I just stopped. And that’s what I told the military recruiter. Look, brother, there’s nothing wrong with smoking a few trees. It’s Of The Earth, my friend. A gift from our planet to our minds. He looked at me like I’m John Waters trying to get into the police academy and said he didn’t think the Air Force was an appropriate fit.

When Small Fry first told me that she was thinking about joining the military, I changed the subject (Look! Boobs!) and waited for her to put this terrible idea to bed. But she didn’t put it to bed. She talked about detonating bombs and wearing a tailored uniform and never cooking again. She made her hands into guns and shot everyone who walked by the window. This is what I need to gain discipline, she said. This will make me grow up. Her thinking is stupid, like waiting for your power to get cut off because then you’ll be forced to start paying your bills on time, and yet, I kind of get it. There is no discipline in our home. The two of us live in a tree house world. We try to take the recycling out but only manage to get the cans out of the pantry and into the living room. We create imaginary futures for ourselves. We’re going to move to San Francisco and live in bunk beds and have a bunny that hops behind us everywhere we go or maybe a fairy who hovers by our shoulders. Or maybe someone will recognize the appeal of two nearing-thirty girls who sit around wearing eye patches and gypsy masks, getting up every once in a while to practice chest-bumping before resuming our Facebook sentry. Yes, that’s what we need: someone to find us and and love us and give us a reality TV show.

I left Small Fry with the recruiters and wandered around, thinking about what do to now that this option that was never really an option isn’t ever going to be an option. Med school? Americorps? Teaching English in Korea until the economy recovers and we can get back to the lives we think we deserve: comfortable lives, exciting lives, full lives, mornings that don’t start with trying to think of a reason to get out of bed, not finding one, and closing the blinds and dreaming for a few more hours. Being in that office, walking past rooms where people were signing the papers because they want to or because they have to, some excited, some scared, all making real decisions, big decisions, decisions that will influence the course of their lives now and forever—people who are, really, just like us—made me think there might be no fairy and no benefactor and no one else to make us grow up. Are we past the age when it’s acceptable to walk around town barefoot with our pants rolled up because we feel like playing Tom and Huck? This is the point—out of school, underemployed, desperate enough to consider the military—where you realize that you’re on your own. That’s where the military comes in. Sign here and stop thinking. Do their push-ups, make their beds, polish their door-knobs, call them sir and write your girl back home. Your inability to make decisions won’t matter anymore. It will, in fact, make you a better solider. There is some solace in being a robot. I understand this, and part of me wishes I could get over my ethical reservations and my unwillingness to take orders and my past life as a stoner and my unshakable belief that things will work out, maybe not for everyone, but for me. Because what if it doesn’t? What if this is all there is, looking for ways to adulthood, wishing you were one of the thousands of people who sign up, who put their fate in the hands of others, who follow orders. Maybe we all want to to sacrifice our autonomy, not to an organization run on obedience, but to a fate we think we deserve. We are no different than anyone else in that building. We just think we are.

My Virtual Girlfriend passed me an article in some Canadian weekly about the quarter-life crisis, a term you may not have heard before but a feeling you probably get every time you talk to your mom.

You: Great news! I found thirty dollars in a toilet at a bar!
Mom: You’re on birth control, right? God forbid there’s more than one of you in this family.
You: What? It was only pee. I washed it off.

The author basically summed up the last ten months of this blog in a couple of pages. I used to think the “theme” of this blog was I’m gay! And I drink. But this piece light-bulbed that it’s less about climbing cranes and sleeping with your girlfriend and more about how I wish I could take back almost every decision I’ve ever made, like, for instance, putting my Jerry Springer cameo on my resume.

You know how when you were a kid your teachers were like, “Katie H. You are too smart to be sitting under your desk. And take that paper bag off your head. You could be anything you want to be.” When you heard this, you thought, Hmm. She thinks I’m smart even though I just said that the capitol of New York is New Jersey. That’ll get me far in the world. Work? Shmurck. I’ll just coast by convincing people that my gray matter is above medium. Maybe at some point a teacher/parent/parole officer told you that you needed to actually work for success, but by that point, you’d already decided that work is for dummies and poor people.

And remember that test you took in third grade that sent you to the smart person classroom? The one that designated you “gifted”? How wrong is telling a bunch of premies that they are gifted, like your neurons were wrapped in Rudolph paper and dropped down the chimney? This is where is all started. You didn’t have to work very hard in school, so you didn’t. Who wouldn’t prefer to get stoned with other privileged slackers and fall asleep on the model mattresses at Bed, Bath, and Beyond rather than go to AP History or develop work ethic and/or life skills?

Everything in life can be attributed to some mistake your parents made (i.e. You have a drinking problem because your parents wouldn’t let you sip wine at dinner.), so you blame them for not making you prepare for adulthood, which is unfortunate because you actually are an adult, albeit one who uses up all the text messages on the family plan. Yes, it’s definitely their fault. You are in the midst of a quarter life crisis because your parents told you that you are smart. But it turns out you’re not. You belong in a trailer park, pit bulls chained to a stake in the ground, clocking third shift and spanking the kids. Your parents should have beat you instead.

But you’re not in a trailer park. You’re drinking an Americano at a coffee shop, standing at a counter instead of sitting down because you think that counts as exercise. You’re listening to NPR pod-casts on the MacBook your grandparents bought you for graduating from college. You were born lucky, and yet, you are twenty-six years old and experiencing that kind of crisis who should really wait until your forties to have. It’s not the sports car or the mistress or the new career that you want. You don’t actually know what you want, just that you want something.

You do not know what to do with your life. It’s the paradox of choice: there are too many options and too many things to dismiss. You could have been an archeologist but you don’t look good in khaki. You could have been a dentist but latex gloves make your palms sweat. You could have been a child star but the Mickey Mouse Club isn’t interested in little girls in Umbros and a bowl cut who only liked the Hansen Brothers when she thought they were girls.

Facebook makes it worse. You look at the profiles of friends and acquaintances from your past, back when you had potential, and you judge. Marriage? Babies? Jobs? What happened to you? When did you become your mother? When did you become my mother? They are still paying off the wedding that was mostly attended by their parents’ friends, sure to be divorced and alone and broke in ten years, just like the rest of us. At least, you tell yourself that.

But would it be nice to sleep beside someone you actually love, someone who isn’t grateful for the unspoken agreement that you pretend to be asleep when she leaves, someone you sleep with because you actually want to, not because of some idea that picking people up, getting what you want, makes you somehow desirable, worthy of attention, possible to love?

Or maybe you aren’t like this. Maybe you cook dinner with your partner instead of binging on Velvetta and making elaborate plans to shoplift your way to a new life. Maybe you wake up in the morning and get out of bed because you want to, not because you thought of a clever Facebook status. You might be twenty-six years old and exactly where you should be, on the path luck set you on, content with the choices you’ve made, with the job you have, with the person beside you. Or maybe you are like me, twenty-six years old and still looking for the person or the job or the thing that will save you.

Sorry for the long delay in twentytwentyishm (Actually, before we get started, I want to worn you that I’m on my friend “Clare’s” bobo laptop and her backspace doesn’t work and I’m not good with first round grammar so if I spell warn with an o, that’s wihy. SOrry.)

Anyway. I’m in San Francisco and part of me wants to gay marry this city and part of me wants to move to Kansas and join on of those churchs that hate fags. Even the dogs here are gay. I saw a Labrardor driving a Subaru yesterday.

I’ll explain more about this west coast reconicense mission later this week when classes start and I have hours to blow, but I want you to know that I met someone from the internet and almost got abducted. The two are unrelated.

I hope everyone in the virtual world is feeling babycakes and making sexy eyes at the table next to you.

I’m working on some new face-pounding rhetoricisms for your hand-ticking pleasure, but time’s been short this summer of adolescence. It has been one aquatic summer, I’ll tell you that. So until I get all wordsy up in your brain space, the following pretty much sums my life ….

Photo cred goes to brother Erin Matthews, who also gets credit for folding my laundry last night. We’re both looking for patrons/benefactors/sugar mamas if you know anyone.

Apologies for the recent delay in bullshit-spouting. It’s the end of my first immensely successful* year of graduate school and I’ve been uncommonly busy in the past five days due to the impressive lack of neurons I’ve fired over the previous four months. My final term paper (”In Yr Bed, On Yr Facebook: Queer Disclosure on Online Social Networks”**) will be done as soon as my intern gets her shit together, at which point I’ll resume lie-telling/compliment-fishing, but in the meantime, here’s what I’ve been thinking about:

Over Panzenella Scramble (good, but with that weird Mexican cheese that melts well but tastes like flavorless sno cones) on Sunday afternoon, the palsies made a list of summer goals (i.e. camping, beach trip, tennis tourney, tailgating, spray tans, and turning Carrboro into South Beach). In the spirit of Summertime Self-Improvement, I’m working on a personal list as well. All I’ve come up with is to make out sober-style at least once before September. Considering Operation Don’t Be A Douche 2009 entails yoga, patio gardening, and Netflix (aka near solitude), this is unlikely to happen.

Oh, and I want Kim Stolz to follow me on Twitter.

Three more days of fanger-tapping. Pray for me.

*Lie.
**See what I mean when I say school is gay?

Apologies for the recent decline in productivity on this here blog. Three reasons:
1). I had to finish my semester and shit, which I’m pretty sure I did, although it does kind of seem like I’m the only one finished. Did I forget to write a term paper or something? It’s possible.
2). I’m sick, which is apparently what happens when you try to smoke oncoming disease out of your blessed temple with a box of Parliaments.
3). Omar Little and I have been spending a lot of quality time together lately, which, as I’m sure you are aware, is sort of a full-time job.
4). My volunteer hours as an orphan-hugger/kitten-saver tend to increase this time of year. You understand.

BUT, I do have some very exciting news….

IMA BE A ELF.

That’s right. An elf. Come to the Carrboro Arts Center this Saturday between 3:30 and 7:30 to peep some sweet local crafts and this bitch in pointy ears.

In other news, I played bloody knuckles for the first time since I was just a baby d in Umbros and turtlenecks last night. Bloody knuckles is the new Boogle.