TWENTY TWENTY HINDSIGHT

I wish I could say that I just rescued a puppy from a gun-wielding panther or found a large patch of marijuana while trail-skipping, but it’s been kind of slow around here lately. One medium funny thing did happen—I dropped out of grad school. This in itself is not really all that interesting as my life as an aspiring proletariat isn’t much different from my life as an aspiring master. When you own no textbooks, never attend class, and enrolled in school only to be able to say, “I’m in graduate school,” you don’t really feel like a student so much as a creep for only venturing to campus because there’s a lot of shade and the girls are cute. Here’s the medium funny part: you have to write your reason for leaving school on your withdrawal form, and as, in the words of my grandmother, “the dumbest smart person around,” I wrote, “I’m quitting because school makes me want to kill myself.” I turned in the form at five o’clock the Friday before Labor Day, when, presumably, everyone had left for the weekend. I’m guessing that someone glanced at my form on the secretary’s desk and made a phone call or two, because an hour later, the DEAN called me. It’s a strange experience to explain to a college administrator that if anything made you want to bake your brains in the nearest hotbox, it would have to be way more interesting than school.

Now that my formal education has come to an expensive and unsuccessful conclusion, I’m in the job market. I haven’t had much luck, which is surely more the symptom of North Carolina’s 11% unemployment rate than my absolute lack of experience and/or references. I’ve had to get a little creative with the job search, like sending, for instance, the following email to a local roasting house:

Dear [Redacted],

Love, Katie

I actually got a response to this, which went something like, You’re funny. Maybe we could talk. Send a resume.

My response:

Dear [Redacted],

Love, Katie

Shockingly, I didn’t get a response to this message, so yesterday, I sent the following:

Dear [Redacted]

Love, Katie

Again, no response, and the only person who fully appreciated this, er, cover letter, was my friend Melanie, but she walks her cat on a leash. In Harlem.

Big problems, ya’ll.

If you’ve read not just between the lines but on top of or under the lines, you’ve maybe realized that going to graduate school was the biggest mistake of my life, bigger even than the time with the neighbor’s housesitter on Christmas Eve when my girlfriend was attending Midnight Mass with a gaggle of orphans (see the Broken Heart, Broken Hymen single, “Why Did I Fuck That Painter Who Was Housesitting For My Upstairs Neighbor”).

Why did I bother taking the GRE and writing the essay and paying for the transcripts and begging for recommendation letters to attend a program that makes me want to go into roof tarring? Because I quit my full time job in a fit of drunk and figured that I’d already burned through the employment tunnel so I might as well study instead of making lattes for the entitled. Also, the strip club were I worked made us feed the juke box ourselves and I was running out of quarters. And why apply to this particular program, the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina? Because my sister said it was easy and the SILS students seemed to attend a far more happy hours than the bio-chem PhDs and I already live in Chapel Hill so the commute’s easy.

Terrible decision. I convinced myself that I’d be able to turn this degree into something that sounds fun and impressive, like maybe web design or programming. Turns out I not only hate web design and programming, I am terrible at it, like worse even than I am at dancing on my fists, which I’m actually kind of good at. And though it’s incredibly easy to get good grades in this program (see semester one, when I didn’t attend my own final presentation and got the highest grade possible), actually learning and caring about the material is another issue entirely.

Every semester I think this is it. I’m finally going to put that belt on and harness my creative energy (i.e. adult onset ADD.) and do the work and learn the material and get a job and not create fake gmail accounts at three a.m. to tell my professor that my “roommate” was in a “bike wreck” and will not be attending class tomorrow due to a “head injury.”

This semester is even more painful. I’ve taken all the bullshit classes and now I’m entering the technical phase, which, apparently, is like totes important when you’re getting a master’s degree in information science, which I wish someone had told me so I could have gone into women’s studies. Web design, programming, information security, database? Do these seem like classes you can charm your way through? No they do not. I survived undergraduate by making my professors laugh (and once crying in an instructor’s office), which was easy because I was stoned for most of college and I’m funny when I’m stoned. No more. My professors don’t even know my name, much less my story about the time five minutes ago when I trolled Manhunt with Boutros Bourtos Ghali.

The main reason I haven’t dropped out of the program yet is that I really enjoy not working. It’s not that I’m lazy—it’s that I’m a Gemini. I can live off my student loans and government checks easily enough. I’m a little more taco truck than truffle oil these days, but I can handle that as long as people think I’m a starving artist. More importantly, I get cheap health insurance as a student and I’ve become more than a little dependent on the drugs that keep my feet on the ground instead of atop an 11 story crane. Even though going off my meds would certainly be an interesting little experiment, I’ve reached the point in my life where getting high off my own brain chemistry is counter-productive to my principal goal—finding a girlfriend—because retrieving loved ones from the ER and/or police station is only fun once.

It gets worse. I just found out that I’m not receiving a stipend this year. I went to pick up my refund and the cashier looked sympathetic but still called security when I tried to climb over her desk and grab as many checks as I could.

What to do? I’m pretty much fucked. Unless you count the 30 seconds each Monday it takes to submit my unemployment claim, I have no job even though I actually applied for more than one and even did call backs and sent coupons for low-fat Trader Joe’s yogurt to the whole HR department of several companies. The only things I own are a washer/dryer and the silver vagina and an empty bank account. I need that check.

But, I have a plan.

I heard a story about a server/artist who was given a check for $40,000 after telling some dude she was waiting on that she was a painter after she did her side work and counted her tips. YOU CAN BE THAT DUDE!!!

Think of this as an NPR fund drive, but with better prizes and less news. Here’s the deal: you give me $10,000 (or more or less. Every little bit, you know…) and I will do any and all of the following:

1.) Go to your high school reunion with you and tell the cheerleader who laughed in your face and called you a dyke when you asked her to the prom how genuinely happy you are in your life and your gayness, happy in a way that she and her husband Chip will never be because they, like R. Kelly, are stuck in the closet.

2.) Make every one of my Facebook status updates about you for a year (which, incidentally, is actually happening to me at this very moment because Virtual Girlfriend underestimated my mad skillz on the shuffleboard board and agreed not only to blow me up via status update but also to name her first born children Rocket and Panda. The best update so far: “Fact: Katie’s ass is getting me into heaven.”)

3.) I’ll use my ass to get you into heaven.

4.) Get your face and/or name and/or anything else you want tattooed anywhere on my body below the neck.

5.) Name Broken Hearts, Broken Hymen’s debut album after you.

6.) Love whales? Hate forrest fires? Mormon? I’ll canvas for your cause. Even better, I’ll do it in a romper with a blond weave and inch and half long acrylic nails. And I’ll make my Malibu Barbie twin go with me. (See below.)

7.) Speaking of Malibu Barbie, all of my friends are attractive. And I’m not just saying that because I’ve slept with all of them (KIDDING. Only half.). Small boobs, big boobs, short, tall, male, female—they are just flat out hotties. I’m sure I could convince at least one of them to go out with you. No promises on the b.j.s, but I’m sure a couple would be your Facebook friend and super poke you and tag you in promotional photos of Lauren Conrad and Heidi Montag and write inside jokes on your wall.

8.) Got your eye on the hottie with pretty ideas and chocolate rack who won’t make eye contact with you? I can fix this. Along with being a master texter, I am a pen pal extraordinaire. Poetry, post cards, leaving plants on her porch, I can school you in the art of the woo. Believe.

9.) Au pair your babies. KIDDING. I wouldn’t do that to you. I will, however, sell you my eggs, which are only slightly damaged. I mean, fuck, I just found eight dollars on the floor and I lose weight just by thinking skinny thoughts. Talk about good genes!

10.) Write a book that you will love because not only will it be dedicated to you, it will include all the things you want to hear that I am too discrete to write about on the Internet. You think the shit I’ve disclosed is stupid and/or indecent? HA! I’ve done way dumber/crazier shit. I’ll even write about that time with the cop and the nurse and also about the time with the midget in the locker.

You think I’m kidding about this. I get that. Why not just be a grown up and find a way to survive this program and get a nine-to-five and some casual Friday and move to New Jersey? Because I am so untalented at this information shit that even if I did graduate, I’d still be looking at third shift at Taco Bell. But I am serious about the book. The only thing I’m fully motivated to do other than find a girl who’ll scratch my back and make me grilled cheese is write for you. That’s right—just for you. But I can’t do that sitting in this over-conditioned classroom trying to make it look like I’m paying attention but really calculating how to fake my death for Sally Mae. I will seriously do any of the above or whatever else you want (with the exception of b.j.s, which you probably wouldn’t want anyway as my mouth is somewhat of a vagina dentata where 50 percent of the population in concerned). We’ll get it in writing and shit.

C’mon people. Think of this as a non-traditional grant application. At least one of you must must want to put “patron/benefactor” on your resume. Or maybe you’re as broke as me but still appreciate the art of the lie. You’ve got a rich uncle, don’t you? Tell him I’ve overcome great difficulties like bad posture and a heart murmur and, against all odds, still manage to sleep around and fanger tap on the regular. All I ask is that you think on it while I’m over here stealing copper from model homes.

I’m emotionally and mentally peach fuzz and cannot make decisions for myself beyond who to hit on, so it’s helpful to have a twin sister willing to advise me on such matters as What To Have For Lunch, Should I Wear My White Vee Or My Blue Vee, and Is It Cool To Lie On My Resume?  I’m generally willing to listen to her, but the resume thing, which she recommends against, just isn’t possible.  As I mentioned in a previous post, my resume is long and thin, like Tyra in 1996, but without a rib cage.  I’ve had 26 jobs since entering the work force ten years ago, which averages to 2.6 a year, and although this may be slightly higher than average, I don’t think it’s wholly unacceptable.

Unfortunately, the 23 jobs don’t account for the long periods of unemployment in between.  In Portland, for instance, I was hired to “manage” a coffee shack.—which actually was a shack, but a Range Rover and surgeon’s salary shack, with maple counters and track lighting and a $10,000 espresso machine.  The first sign that this might not have been the most busty business plan was that I wrecked my bike on the way to the interview and showed up with elbows and knees painted in fresh blood.  And they still hired me.  Also, the company was called Java Sutra and the main selling point was that the coffee was infused with an Andean aphrodisiac called maca, which, according to God-like Wikipedia, “was eaten by Inca imperial warriors before battles. Their legendary strength was allegedly imparted by the preparatory consumption of copious amounts of maca, fueling formidable warriors. After a city was conquered, the women had to be protected from the Inca warriors, as they became ambitiously virile from eating such quantities of maca.”  Good in theory, right?  But do you really want blue balls with your morning hotdish?  We were in business for three months.

Getting laid off didn’t really bother me both because I’d been fired from so many jobs already that it seemed like a backhanded compliment, and unemployment insurance left me time to do whatever I pleased.  What I pleased was ride my bike and do crosswords and invest the dole in liver damage.  At the end of happy hour, I would run home to shower off the smell of booze and smoke, clean my house like an Ecudorian line cook, and pull out job applications or my GRE study guide so it looked like I had a productive day when my girlfriend got home from actually having a productive day.

I eventually found a job scooping gelato for wailing, syrupy seven-year-olds and their attractive but totally un-fantasystic mothers, but this only lasted for a month or so before I some Real Bad Shit happened, which I’m not going to get into cause it’ll take the time I’d like to spend catching up on LiLo and Sam, but I will tell you that as soon as you are punched in the face by a partner, you become a victim, which is sort of like Catholics and their We’ll Forget About The Condoms For A Small Donation rule: convenient.

This isn’t to say that my entire life in Portland was full of booze and memory loss (although most of it was).  I also interned at a gay rights non-profit, where I spent most of my time taking walks along with river with the bear accountant with the rocket ship tattoo and testing my gaydar on the bike messengers who worked in the building.  The one time I went to Friday happy hour with the staff, I got so drunk that I told the outreach coordinator’s husband that he should get a manicure cause his hands were seriously calloused before realizing he was in a wheelchair and his hands were constantly pushing rubber.  Actually, I already knew he was in a wheelchair, but I said it anyway.  And when my girlfriend came to pick me up, I was like, “Babe.  You’re tired.  Just go home. I’ll get a ride in time for dinner. I love you.,” so I could smoke cigarettes without judgment.  I later rode home with my boss, who started crying in the car because she had gotten divorced approximately six minutes before, and I was all, “Hey, let’s party! I’ve got Adderall in my bag!”  The non-profit and I went our separate ways soon after—they to make political strides and me to another four internships, seven jobs, and zero references.

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?

I know that not all of you are family, but from the number of people who stumble upon this blog by Googling “dyke drama,” “dickthroat,” and/or “Lindsay Lohan,” a whole lot of you are at least distant cousins. The following is meant for the sinners among us.

———-

Dear Gays and Gayelles,

As some of you know, I am an ambitious and dedicated graduate student. Meaning, I have a project due in a week that I haven’t started yet because I’ve been too busy mourning the break-up of our model duo, Lindsay and Sam. However, it’s Spring and life starts anew, so I have decided to pull myself together and get this shit done. And I need your help.

Basically, I’m doing a project of the disclosure of queer identity on Facebook and I’m passing this here scientastic survey around to get some info. Just skip the next “What Peanut Butter Are You?” quiz and contribute to the repository of homo sapien/homosexual wisdom. You dig? Great.

Yes, please.

——

Thanks, peeps. Feel free to pass this on. Oh, and if you’re not queer, sorry for the mistake. It must be your haircut.

Dear friends and lovers,

I know that I give incredibly astute advice (see below), but I am coming to you today with a very serious question.  Before I ask, know the following:

1.) I am a terrible student.  I slept through my first three classes on the first day of school yesterday.  Why?  Sweet dangerous Firefly. And why was I drinking sweet tea vodka far into the night when I had to get up in the morning and fake being a scholar? Because I am a terrible student.

2.) I am a highly distracted man. Like right now, for instance, I’m supposed to be doing my homework but instead I’m wikiing vodka and worrying about LiLo and Sam’s apparent break-up and planning my gown for the inauguration. What I’m saying is, I need a job with short bursts of action. Ten hour days? Destined to fail.

3.) I talk a lot. An example—a few months ago, I was at the bar with my pals Shannon and Clare and I got put in silent timeout for seven minutes because I said something mildly offensive to fifty or so percent of the population. It was the worst seven minutes of my life, thus I need a job where I can talk a lot. A job telling lies would be ideal but I don’t think I’m qualified to be a press secretary.

SO, the favor—I’m enrolled in this terrible master’s program in a field I neither understand nor give a fuck about. I could not be less interested in this shit. My current plan—forgo the letters at the end of my name in favor of beauty school. I mean, shit, the stylists I work with are generally happy people and make plenty of money and have enough time to write or paint or play or contemplate Condolezza Rice’s sexuality (totes gay) as much as they want.

And that, friends and lovers, is where you come in….

Should I drop out of grad school for beauty school?

I just walked to class and realized when I got there that I was 15 minutes late. Why? Because I FORGOT WHAT TIME MY CLASS STARTED. There are only three weeks left in the semester and I forgot when we meet. FUCK.

In light of the fact that grad school and I are headed for an irreconcilable breakup, I’m taking suggestions for new careers. Anyone? Srsly. I’ll buy you a beer if you come up with something (ANYTHING) that doesn’t make me want to move back in with my parents and/or kill myself.