TWENTY TWENTY HINDSIGHT

This year, Thanksgiving is at your house. You thought that your first time hosting a holiday less drink-oriented than Halloween would feel momentous, like buying your first dishwasher or pledging to NPR, but you haven’t actually bought a dishwasher or donated to NPR. Rather, your parents are renovating their kitchen and your brother is with his wife’s family and your sister winters in Des Moines, so your parents come to you. They not only bring the entire contents of their refrigerator—including two heads of past-date lettuce and an unopened jar of mayonnaise—they also bring a full-size charcoal grill and several rolls of toilet paper in case you ran out and were planning on going through the coffee filters first.

Holidays are about getting drunk with people you love either because you want to or because you have to. Over-pouring the Pinot that your parents bought and confessing that it was you who broke the Victrola ten years ago, not the Guatemalan exchange student, is the highlight of any holiday. It is also something you don’t take part in because you don’t drink around your parents. The reason for your familial sobriety is because you made a grand mistake two years ago after your girlfriend found out you cheated on her more than once and more than twice and more even than three times. She was white-washed when she found out, shocked, like the person shared ice cream and washed the dishes with her was a mirage, a stranger, a non-person. You decided then that you are either a fundamentally bad person or an alcoholic. Alcoholism seemed easier to cure than a black soul, so you called your parents in the midst of a metaphysical hangover and told them that you are a drunk, and, not only that, you have been since you were eighteen or maybe twelve or maybe even when you were still a parasite in the mobile home of your mother’s womb.

There are a lot of things you can take back. I no longer love you, I want to move out, Give me back favorite hoodie—who hasn’t said or heard these words? But, I’m an alcoholic is the pinkie swear of confessions, the nickname you can’t seem to shake. And because you never actually stopped drinking, you pretend that you’re comfortably saddled to the wagon around your parents. Your dry liver is an obvious counterfeit when your parents look at your recycling bins when they come up for Thanksgiving, but you attribute the empties to your roommate and they believe you because they want to believe you. The only time your father overtly asks about your drinking is when you’re picking up last minute cranberry sauce at the grocery store and a bartender picking up last minute stuffing yells, Dude! You have to stop walking out on your tab! when he sees you. You tell your dad you drink soda water and eat bar nuts and sometimes forget to pay.

It’s a lie, those glasses of water and handfuls of nuts. You actually spend a lot of time at one bar, your neighborhood bar, an everybody-knows-your-name bar, a bar where wet hounds look up when the door opens, wondering who new people are. Is this sad? Sometimes. Sometimes not. You’ve had exceptionally fun nights at this bar: nights when the shots melt your faceplate and you dance around the pool table and pour beer your head and stumble home, a walk you won’t remember in the morning but you will still wake up happy to be a part of this drunken family. There are also touching moments, like when a rainbow arcs over the sky and everyone walks outside and stands and blinks at the colorful yawn above. Or maybe there’s a hail storm and everyone turns on their stools to look out the windows at the ice splitting windshield and pavement. Despite the occasional monkey barrel nights, however, bar culture is measles for certain aspects of you life, like, for instance, your bank account, which you’ve stopped paying attention to because the daily bar charges make you feel like what you’ve decided that you’re not: an alcoholic.

But can you decide you aren’t an alcoholic? Maybe not. Maybe as soon as those words exit your mouth, they are always and forever true. After your mistaken announcement to your parents, you started thinking about drinking all the time. That is the worst part of thinking you’re an addict: it’s boring. You are always aware of the hour when you would usually go to the bar but are not going to go to the bar, definitely not, unless this coin lands heads up, in which case you will take it as a sign that you should drink. You attended a couple of AA meetings after your mistaken announcement but hearing people talk about booze made you thirsty. Some people say that they aren’t into AA because of the Jesus thing and you agree that putting your problems and fate and your glass in the hands of an invisible man who lives on a cloud pillow makes no sense. Why make yourself feel powerless when getting sober takes power? But you mostly hated the meetings because you didn’t want to be one of the those people. You didn’t want to see yourself in their stories and their sadness and their sobriety. So you kept drinking and if you didn’t drink one night, you woke up elated, not because you were clear-headed and pain-free, but because a sober night deserved a party, and what better way to party than to party?

Recovery programs talk about addiction as a disease, but you know it’s less the flu and more your inability to recognize your own humanness, to recognize that you are a living being who will someday be a dying being and then someday be a non-being, just scattered cells and quiet atoms. This is what addicts don’t accept: their own unshakable death. This surprising considering that they see the symptoms of physical demise when they wake up cloudy and heavy. It’s not just their hands that shake, it’s their brains, a Parksonian tremor that slows after the first fifteen minutes of happy hour and stops when happy hour has past but they’re still at the bar. This is why you don’t drink in front of your parents. You don’t have that tremor but you can’t take it back.

Your Thanksgiving might have been small—just you and your parents, equal parts Perrier and Pinot—and the turkey might have been grilled, but you still said your blessings and recited your thanks. To good friends and good health and good luck. Afterward, you wonder if you will toast with sparkling grape juice at every Thanksgiving. Will you never again get drunk at a family reunion, one aunt passed out in a lawn chair, another dancing a little too sexy, a grandfather lost in his glass? Or will you someday know, really know, that is wasn’t true, that you were never an alcoholic, the tremors were imaginary, that it wasn’t a disease, it was a mistake. Maybe after you buy the dishwasher and donate to NPR, you will be able to tell your parents this, and maybe the next time Thanksgiving is at your house you will hold your glass in your hand, lift it to your mouth, and toast to friends and to health and to luck and to parents who bring their grill and their toilet paper and their belief in you.

This weekend I played the role of the badkhn—a sort of disgruntled court jester—at fake Jewish wedding. I basically read some real nasty and/or depressing shit about marriage and love and gay people and Jesus and made everyone uncomfortable. I didn’t want to do it because I think marriage should be between one impotent man and one child bride, but it was fun and I’m glad to have been a part of a fake marriage between four girls. The local klezmer band Gmish played as I read, so imagine some melancholy Jew music in the background. Afterward, Gmish played some happy Jew music and all the fake Jews danced and were Jewy. What follows is my monologue. Mazeltov!

———-

Remember when the drummer from the lesbian punk band Broken Heart, Broken Hymen cave-manned you against the handicapped stall in the bathroom of a dive bar and then left before you could pay your tab or get her number? And remember that circle jerk in a hostel in Amsterdam, which isn’t something you would normally do, but it was Amsterdam and you were on drugs and you’d never been with a man before because you aren’t some kind of faggot but, shit, when in Amsterdam, do as the dutch: get high and circle jerk with four German tourists on a hostel carpet. And remember your freshman year when you thought you were taking her virginity and she was taking your virginity because she told you that she was a virgin and you believed her because you were a virgin, the last virgin on your hall or maybe even in your entire dorm, but it turns out that she wasn’t just not a virgin, she was on her period, and afterward it looked like you’d dipped your penis in a in a bucket of red paint, which would be okay except that it was also kind of clotted and distinctly not romantic. Remember that? And remember the time you fucked the Jehovah’s Witness, the two of you snorting coke off a hotel bedside table and bumping your vaginas together until your thighs were like suction cups and made embarrassing farting sounds that you pretended not to hear? Remember how she later asked if you thought Jesus was sad for what you had just done, to which you replied, You got off three times. Nobody’s sad.

These are the things you will think of as you lie in a hospital bed at the age of 90, passing urine through a tube, not even pushing it out but letting gravity and modern medicine drain your kidneys. You might think of today, your wedding day, and you might think of the day your daughter was born, but mostly you will think about the things that happened before today. The things that happened before you joined another family and then made another family, before the mass holiday cards and the family portraits and the all day swim meets that you were obligated to attend. You may think of how much you loved your son when he was so young that his Speedo wasn’t yet embarrassing or creepy, but also wished he were less into swimming and more into watching TV. You might also think about how that same son kind of turned into an asshole in his twenties and is still one today, on what may be the last day of your life before the darkness takes you even farther from your youth. You will think of the wedding and the kids and the grand kids, of course, but mostly you will think of the things that happened before today, the things that happened before you wed, the things that happened when you still had something to look forward too.

You never thought you’d be this person. You never thought you’d stand here before your friends and family and your parents’ friends, who you don’t even know but who you had to invite because your dad is paying for the wedding. You thought you were better than this. Different, radical, above convention and ceremony, not a lamb, an individual. When did you turn into your mother? Today, today you become your mother and your father and every one else who has done this before you and everyone else who will do this after you. And why? Because you are scared. Because you are a quarter of the way through your life and you don’t even know what you want to be when you grow up. Because you just realized that adults aren’t actually adults but are children who pay bills and you are one of these child grown-ups, not scared of the dark but scared of dying alone with no one to change your diapers or clip your toe nails or wipe the drool from your chin. You are here because you are looking for the person who will save you. You are here because this is what people do.

But she won’t save you and he will annoy you. Yes, you will have your moments. Sometimes you wag your tail when he comes home from work, sometimes you want to hibernate under a pile of warm laundry with her, but you will always wish for the past, the day before today, yesterday, when you were still excited to leave the house because who might you run into on a Thursday night? Because anything can happen on a Thursday night when you are young and alive. You could climb a parking deck with Helen Mirren. You could dance in a store window with your neighborhood mailman. You could meet the love of your life. But you’ve already met the love of your life and now nothing will happen on a Thursday night because you are tethered to the person beside you like a disease that isn’t terminal but is chronic. You will sit on your couch and watch movies for the rest of your life. That’s all there is left after today. Movies and couches and laundry to fold.

Crushes don’t stop when you get married. You will flirt with the girl with the toaster tattoo who makes your Americano. You go to the coffee shop instead of percolating at home even though you should be saving for your anniversary cruise, a trip you don’t even want to take because the only people who take cruises are those who convince themselves that cruises aren’t what they are, which is seeing the world from a mile’s remove, seeing the world from an endless buffet. You will think of someone else when you fuck your spouse, which isn’t all that often, which you are okay with because you can only fuck the same person so many times until it is like fucking yourself, which you can do without pretending to care if she gets off. You will think of someone who isn’t him, someone who doesn’t piss on his feet in the shower because he thinks it cures athletes foot. You will think of someone who isn’t her, someone who doesn’t talk about yeast infections and stretch marks and hasn’t sucked you off since she found the Nailin Palin porno on your computer. When she gets over the sexy Republican porn and you have your monthly fuck, you will think of the woman at the gym who wears her iPod attached to her biceps with a pink band, biceps that are so much better than your wife’s biceps, not too muscular, but lean and toned, not like a lesbian gym teacher but like a pilates instructor, which she is your fantasy: a pilates instructor and a massage therapist and a really good cook with an insatiable sex drive and a beautiful wine collection. You will turn to the Internet, to Big&Busty69@hotmail.com and fuck her through your finger tips and thank God that email doesn’t cost 99 cents a minute. You will fuck her in your mind. You’re wife will relieved that you’re not pressing your erection into her back every night when she wants to go to sleep and wake up and be 19 years old again, just like you do.

The gays are the worst. The gays, the bane of the good Lord’s existence, the people who beat Jesus with strap-ons and drowned him in a vat of lube, the people who will rot in a hell where everyone’s a bottom and they lie in bed for eternity waiting for someone else to make the first move, even they, born without a conscience but with a hungry prostate, desire to make the same mistake you are about to make. They get teary when they see two mommies; they framed the People magazine spread of Ellen D’Generis and Portia DaRossi sitting cross-legged on velvet pillows surrounded by friends, family, and vegan fare; they talk about “equal rights” and “marriage equality.” They are naive, these queers. They should thank the bigots for saving them from the misery that is marriage and run from the altar as fast as possible, Dykes on Bikes piggybacking fags and twinks. We should all be so lucky.

Romeo and Juliet are the most romantic couple in history. They married and then they died. They didn’t have to pay bills. They didn’t have to go to parent/teacher conferences. They didn’t take turns cleaning out the litter box. The honeymoon never ended because it never began. Real love is real death, side by side in a glass coffin, not talking for eternity.

But for now, at least for tonight, there is no disappointment, only possibility. You don’t yet know that he will get drunk at your office Christmas party and ask your boss when the baby’s due even though she’s just bloated. You don’t know that her mother will move in with you in just seven short years, bringing three cats and her collection of nutcrackers. What you know tonight is that the arch of her foot is the most beautiful geometry in the world; that the color of his eyes exists only in his eyes and nowhere else; that everyone else in this room is secondary; that all the love you’ve ever felt is nothing against this new love; that you will spend your last years together, too old and ugly and tired to change the channel or fold the laundry, but still glad that if the lives you’ve created have to dim, at least they will dim together.

A solid crush is the umbrella to most life’s rain drops. Ice cream truck changed it’s route? Netflix queue out of order? Soon to be the only Wal-Mart greeter with active menses in the history of the big box? Just look to the nearest XX chrome pairing for relief.

I was recently telling my therapist about a crush I had on a girl I didn’t know very well. I was like, “Yeah. I don’t know what it is. I like her tattoos, but she’s not really funny and I don’t generally like people who can’t make me laugh, and I definitely don’t like people who I can’t make laugh. She didn’t even LOL when I told her about the time I ran naked across a golf course when the security guards busted me for swimming laps in a water trap, but I still want to gay marry her and shit.” My therapist, who, after a year of hearing me couch bitch about not feeling like work should be necessary necessity for a lady of leisure such as myself, suggested that I was only crushing on this girl because I didn’t want to get a job. I was indignant. Suggesting that my heart shiver was a result of poor work ethic? Bish, plz. But once season two of Mad Men came out on DVD and I had hours to spend contemplating Peggy Olson’s bangs, I kind of forgot all about said crush and even had to pause for a moment when she called and think, Who? Did I give my number to a bar stranger again? Gotta stop doing that.

Despite seeking them everywhere from the cab driver to the produce stocker, I don’t actually get crushes all that often. But when I do, I get them hard. I read her texts and emails to my seriously-over-it friends. I contemplate the merits of last name hyphenation and adoption versus turkey baster. I become a hand-holding gayelle, a table-for-two gayelle, a sober sex gayelle. I really feel like a one-gayelle-gayelle when I’m in crush. It is lovely. It is also, however, temporary. This isn’t because I’m embarrassed by the term “partner” or even because monogamy makes me want join Fred Phelps on the battle lines. It’s because when I like a girl—like like her like her—I forget that she is a real person. I forget that she is Judge Judy about sleeping late, that she talks about money all the time, that she thinks it’s weird that I have secret ambitions to be a renowned slap poet. In my head, she is inhumanely perfect.

But then, reality. I slowly realize that I don’t know her, that the person I love only exists in my head, that we aren’t compatible as friends, much less as foster mommies. I realize it’s the idea of her, not the her of her, that has me twitterpated.

Example. A year ago, I met a girl who I quickly became junk-struck over. There was something about her, mostly that she didn’t like me, which is generally what I look for in a partner. I mean, she liked me enough to make out with me, but she wasn’t exactly trolling Women Seeking Women for a food stamper whose only ambition is to get through the year without a DUI. Also, I may have said something about how if she wasn’t so good at face-sitting I’d never hang out with her because Pisces is the Heidi Montag of the astrological calendar. I may also have referred to her as a dirty bisexual and maybe also as women’s studies gay. This didn’t exactly work in my favor, and after she expressed her nonnegotiable lack of heart color for me, I started acting like a monkey on salvia. Among other dramatic gestures, I cut off all my hair in a moment of solidarity with Britney Spears because at the time I really felt like understood what she was going through. A construction paper scissor haircut is never a good idea but is an especially bad idea when you work at a salon and your co-workers make you wear a hat for a month and start calling you Patches. The crazy thing? I didn’t even really know this girl. I mean, we’re pals now and I’d still take her up on a bathroom make-out party, but I also know that the girl in my mind a year ago is the not the girl reading this right now and wondering what the fuck I’m talking about.

Back to the title.

Meeting people can be weird. They might be close talkers or look a little too deeply into your eyes or say that you remind them of their friend Barbara who is seventy but has great skin. Meeting people from the Internet is, by definition, weird, and writing a blog about your life puts you in an interesting position when meeting these people. So when I met my Virtual Girlfriend in San Francisco after a prolonged textual relationship, I was hell of nervous, like the kind of nervous you get before smuggling someone else’s urine into your parole officer’s bathroom. It’s not just that I was meeting someone from the Internet, it’s that I was meeting someone from the Internet who knew a lot about me before she was anything but Facebook pictures and status updates to me. She knew that I think I look like Nick Jonas even though the only obvious resemblance is that we are both white. She knew that my neighbor thinks that my name is Kyle. She knew that I once cured a yeast infection by sticking a dozen cloves of garlic in my vagine and that the next girl I slept with after that was attracted to me because she loves puttanesca. She knew not just what I think about the world, but what I think about myself. That I desperately want to be 12 years old again, a little girl in a bowl cut who gets mistaken for a boy, still convinced that success is inevitable, that the golden cloud will always be there. And what did I know about her? That she makes one of three faces when she’s drunk and happy. That she works a real job. That she gives good text. But after meeting her, after seeing her actual face and hearing her actual voice, after knowing just a little about her and about her life, I want to know it all.

Is this real? Of course not. She exists in a series of ones and zeros, in emails and text messages and the stories we tell ourselves about the future. But she is no less real than the others, the ones who live nearby, the ones whose hands I can touch and whose scents I know, the ones who become the size of myths as my desire for something, for anything, grows. At least is it time and space, not the sad truth that person in my head is simply a fantasy born of the hope for something different, that will keep this imaginary. Because she does exist. In my head and on the Internet and maybe even in real life, she is real and she is it.

The following is part of the “Love, Me” project, the brainbaby of this blogger, who asked a bunch of nerds to write love letters to ourselves. I’m generally pretty good at the stamped-sent-I-love-you-I-miss-you thing (see, for example, July 2007, when I sent a birthday candle and a match tied together with piece of ribbon in an envelope filled with dried flower petals across this gray nation, which was totes heart-melty even though I tried this again about six months later with less success), but if I saw myself in a bar I definitely would not hit on me because I don’t hit on dudes in wife-beaters, so this shit was not easy.

———-

Dear, Katie

When I was asked to write this letter, I immediately thought of all the 14-carat things I could say about you, like, for instance:

Despite your resemblance to opalescent 80’s icon Molly Ringwald, your ass is black, which I know because my one black friend said that your junk trunk is filled with sweet meat, which I’m pretty sure is his way of expressing that your butt has some complimentary cognitive dissonance with the rest of your casper self.

I was also going to mention something about the arch of your foot, which really compliments your gams when you wear Lucite heels before realizing that I was thinking about Phoebe Price and that you actually have ciabatta feet and cankles. At this point, I ran out of positivities to gift besides the fact that you have managed to avoid the consequences of your bad behavior for most of your 26 years, but then I remembered that you have no job, no girlfriend, and your mom pays your cell phone bill, so even if you’ve never gotten arrested, you’re still sort of a loser.

Upon realizing that this love letter was going to have the emotional heft of a Facebook poke, I decided to consult someone who knows you better than you know yourself: your twin sister, B—. The following is a transcript of that conversation….

K: sup boo?
B: get a job. leave me alone.
K: chill, my brother, just help me for a sec.
B: two minutes. that’s all.
K: ok. ima ask you some questions. just answer. don’t question.
B: two minutes.
K: what is katie good at?
B: huh? what’s this third person shit?
K: just go with me here.
B: fine. but i’m prolly not the best person to ask. bitch owes me $30.
K: $30? why?
B: i sold her running tights.
K: so she runs?
B: no, she walks around town in her tights so people think she runs.
K: that’s very clever.
B: yeah, she’s clever at being lazy. she paid me to do her job for her for four
months.
K: look at that entrepreneurial spirit!
B: but when i quit she stopped turning shit in and returning their calls.
K: yeah, that sucked. you should at least have given her two weeks notice. or
found a replacement. now she doesn’t have any references.
B: i see wal-mart greeter in her future.
K: and you call yourself family. i’m telling mom.

At this point, B— gets distracted and I am left waiting from 12:13 to 12:25, a period of time I spend designing an emoticon to represent “Bish, plz. That ain’t my baby.”

K: what has katie done that impresses you?
B: hmm. didn’t she seduce a professor once?
K: no.
B: oh, right. it was her boss. and she got fired.
K: laid off.
B: whatever.
K: so basically, you’re saying that she’s good with ladies.
B: ask the mime.
K: let’s not talk about that.
B: actually, let’s do talk about that. what’s worse, that she was a mime or that she
was 18?
K: dude. she was cute.
B: she had a locker.
K: right. so katie is sort of a mentor.
B: yr an asshole.
K: moving on. what do you like about katie?
B: she has pretty eyes. they look just like mine

So there you have it. Big ass and blue eyes. Granted, both of your good qualities are more gene-meshing leftovers than skills you’ve actually had to cultivate, but I see great things in your future. You may have surpassed the age cap for child stars, but you still get carded for your Pall Malls. Keep wearing those running tights and it’s only a matter of time until a dad-ready fag sees you on the street and thinks, “Now, that’s the kind of girl I want gestating my babies.” Surrogate city, my friend. Surrogate city.

Love, Me

———-
The other lovers:

Cherry Bomb
This is Where I Write
Ms. Bea’s Helpful Hints Blog
Rollertrain
Fluid Pusher

So long 25. What an interesting year you’ve been.

Election Night
Now that was a party. We danced, we cried, we waited in the cold to get into the bar for most of it. Months of hard work—all the witty jokes about Palin’s Eskimo pie, marching with the Obama contingent at North Carolina Pride to better peep potential life partners on the sidelines—it all paid off. There was the time we skipped work to watch Arcade Fire play for free in the Town Commons while brown-bagging Sparks and congratulating ourselves for living here, not just America, but Carrboro, a place even Canadians love. After the show we all went to the bar to drink domestic beer and congratulate ourselves again over what just happened, what we had just seen, what we had just done for Him, not for Jesus, but for Obama. Later we went to the afterparty, just a few of us, drinking more cold beer and asking Regine questions, important questions, questions no one else has probably asked her, like where did you get those boots? It was worth all the the bumper stickers that January morning when snow fleeced the East Coast and people flooded into the capital to see Aretha’s hat on the jumbo tron while blowing on their hands and wishing they had stayed in Connecticut and watched it on the couch. This was an especially important day for my family, immediate and extended. My mother may be a little disappointed that the Bash Bush Bashes she hosted for the last eight years are no more, but she’s pretty sure the renewal of civil liberties are worth it. My grandmother, an octogenarian fireball who spends her time gambling in Jersey City, signing petitions, and sending the findings of her closets to her children and grandchildren (e..g half-dead pens, rosary beads, decade-old postcards), couldn’t make it to DC, but she sent a contribution to my aunt who did attend: a box of Depends. Yes, that was one exciting snow day. We got to the bar at 11 in the morning, left when Erin M. got cut off at two in the afternoon, and went back late for a fancy dance party. On the way home, I slipped on some ice or maybe on my liver and smashed my face open and spit my front tooth on the sidewalk. I couldn’t eat, drink, or brush my teeth for a couple days, but I would sacrifice a tooth for our handsome new president anytime.

Equal Rights
The tide seems to be tiding toward gaydom. California denied the fags and faggettes the right to marry, but a bunch of other less important states realized that gay marriage will fix the economy. Who has more money than gays? Republicans, but gays still have a lot. Look at how many records Barbara Streisand has sold. The gays have waited forever to get hitched. When you’ve patienced this long, you’re not going to shotgun that shit. You want it all—the wedding planner, the tux(es), the destination, the hyphenated last name. Fuck the stimulus package. It’s all about samsie sex marriage. And while I’m theoretically glad to the whole gays-are-human thing is catching faster then Swine Flu, I’m actually a little disappointed. I like being oppressed. I like telling people that I’m a lesbian seperatist, which isn’t actually true but makes me feel like it’s okay if I forget to shave my legs every once in a while. And as much as I appreciate that my mom gets pleasure out of texting me with gay marriage updates (e.g. “gehys kn mrry n main! kl!”), it makes me feel kind of guilty when she says things like “I’ve got big plans for the garden. Maybe you can get married at home one day.” How does one say, “Mom. I’m never getting married. I’m never gestating. Any girl willing to marry me probably needs a green card. You want to talk gay marriage, I want to talk gay boobs.” I’m also afraid this is going to encourage straights to refer to their legally sanctioned husbands and wives as their “partners.” You people have everything. Do you need our oppression too?

Athletics
As dear Jenny W. used to chant over the bar, I finally became One Of Us. I caught Tar Heel flu pretty hard, although I pretty much talk through the first 43 minutes of the basketball games and pay attention only long enough to holler at the end. I did listen to the last quarter of the Villanova game on the radio, which is basically devotion to the max. But even though Tyler Hansbrough is the cutest special giant in the NCAA and I love nothing better than watching drunken co-eds set bonfires in street, I was maybe the sole resident of Orange County, NC who woke up without a hangover after the ball dropped because I stayed home to Tweet about Gossip Girl. It was a decision not based on a of lack of desire, but a fear of leaving my house due to previous Bad Decisions and Terrible Mistakes that finally caught up to me like a bad case of herpes. That shit was not good for my Fear of Missing Something Syndrome. I get weepy just thinking about it.

Romance
The best part of my 25 year was a gift from Craig’s List. I was the recipient of two Missed Connections, neither of which I responded to, but was, none the less, a little flattered and a little creeped. The second Missed Connection, said something about the Ramona Quimby tattoo on my arm, and inspired the following response from an anonymous w4w: The girl with the Ramon Quimbley tattoo is everywhere and she’s shady. Don’t bother. Now shady I get, but “Ramon Quimbley?” Seriously? Did your parents not read to you as a child? That’s just sad. Speaking of Craig’s List, no LTR this year. When I moved to Carrboro two years ago, I thought that all I would have to do is say, “Yeah, I just came from Portland,” and the girls would jump my shit like fruit flies on a nanner. Wrong. My chance of finding a boo here—or maybe anywhere–decrease every time I write this blog, but the comments are worth it.

But it’s all over now. As Kirk R. said, I am now looking down the barrel to my 30s. And even though my liver looks forward to the year my birthday involves a quiet dinner at home and maybe some mommy/mommy time instead of a lap dance and a WUI, I realized yesterday that if my friends in their 30s and 40s are any example, sometimes maturity just doesn’t take.

In light of the recent developments in Iowa and Vermont—two hotboxes of leather, ribbed tank tops, syrup, and white people—we at the Federation for the Advancement of Gays and Gayelle (F.A.G.G.) are enlisting your help to end the debate over gay marriage.

It’s time for the faggotry to stand on their twinkle toes and refuse to be defeated!!! It’s time for the dykes to stamp their hiking boots and shout NO!!!

I know you got all teary at the People spread of Ellen and Portia cross-legged on velvet pillows surrounded by friends, family, and vegan fare, but if queer folks really thought about what marriage entails, we would run from the alter as fast as possible, fags piggy-backing Dykes on Bikes.

Here’s why:

Gays are cheaters. All of us. And while everyone knows fags have embraced this fundamental part of the gay DNA, the stereotype that dykes have U-Haul on speed-dial gives breeders the false impression that all we want is a girl who’ll refer to your dogs as your “kids”.

This is far from the truth. Yes, like all couples, we nest for the first part of new relationships—the part where we’re actually having sex. But then the novelty wears off and you realize your gay’s habit of pissing in the shower because it supposedly prevents athlete’s foot is not endearing, it’s fucking gross. At this point, your romance sags like Rick Warren’s tits, but you don’t move out or even talk about leaving because a) you’re a pussy and it’s easier to pretend that you don’t think her mom is ridiculous for calling her husband her “partner” just because her daughter’s queer, and b) where would you go? Potential housemates apparently aren’t into the Scorpio sun/Virgo rising combo, which you discovered after your last breakup and subsequent Craig’s List search. But when your g.f. eventually hears about that time in the bathroom with the girl from that band, say goodbye to the teddy bear you’ve had since you were three. Cozy is headed for the trash compactor.

When this happens, as it inevitably will, the dramz will commence. There is no drama like dyke drama. It doesn’t just effect the two or three or four people who are directly involved in the messy shit; it involves everyone. We immediately pick up the old tin can and spread the news far and wide. Shit is bi-coastal. Someone in Chicago spends a few hours tribading with the barista from down the street and Seattle knows it by happy hour. If it’s real bad, some Lohan/Ronson shit, we say things like, “Well, there’s always Austin,” and start packing. We change our names to something more gender-neutral and start the fuck over.

This cycle works for us—we cheat, we fight over the dog, we realize we don’t actually want the dog but we don’t want her to have the dog, we leave, we cheat, etc.—but it wouldn’t work if we could get married. Divorce is ugly and expensive and you have can’t just load the Subaru and move to Portland. You’re gay—you’re never going to change, no matter how long it’s been since you skinny-dipped with that very young but very cute baby d. Marriage will take all the fun out of taco-bumping. Isn’t this why we chose to be queer? So we could avoid legal entanglements like marriage?

The only reason breeders support marriage is because they want us to be more like them. They’re jelly that we will never get drafted and come out five years later with PTSD, a flat-top, and one less finger. Why the fuck would we want to be more like them?

Take, for instance, the stirred shit between one B. Palin and her ex-fiance Arctic White Trash. Did you see those knotted panties on Tyra? Talk about fierce. I can’t tell who’s more fucktardy, B. Palin or AWT. Shit makes Queer As Folk look like Bob Ross. You don’t want to get thrown in jail for a little cheek-spread, but you also don’t want to end up on Tyra’s stage.

We aren’t like them. We are special. We didn’t have friends in high school, so when we finally get to San Francisco, we bond like morning-after lube on the inside of your thighs. We talk about being gay ALL THE TIME. We have our own bars because straights get sick of talking about gaycism and don’t want to come near us, whereas we will never tire topics like homosexual undertones on The View or, another favorite,The L Word: Helena vs. Bette: Who Would Top? They only want us to get married so we stop talking about ourselves.

Do not give in, Family. We can defeat this if we throw our softball caps and our tiaras in the ring and FIGHT.

Sincerely,

President and Founder of F.A.G.G.
(Donations accepted via PayPal. Email kherzog@gmail.com for details.)

I actually wrote this a long time ago, but my left shoulder’s burning from all the fanger-tapping I’ve done today and my eyes feel like that time I used my roommate’s hard contact saline solution (the one with the bright red DO NOT PUT IN YOUR EYE label) because I was stoned and wanted to clear my cloudy peepers before my college graduation dinner with my family. Lesson: don’t put other peoples’ shit in your eyes.

But, back to the subject at hand, I began pondering the under-40 obsession with Portland again after I saw this mixed tape compliments Bitch magazine. Granted, some of the songs are better than medium, but calling your own city a “mecca of greatness” is a little like telling people your GPA.

———-

December 17, 2007

Several recent New York Times pieces present Portland as a utopia of fashion/cycling/food/coffee/art/music/queers/etc., but it’s LIES, all LIES.

The Truth About Portland (in bullets):

• Bike lanes are great, yes, but apparently the Times hasn’t seen the scars on my knees or been to any of the quite touching funerals I’ve held to honor the lives and deaths of every single one of my favorite pairs of jeans. Did the Times feel the costs (financial and mental) of repeat visits to the Community Cycling Center, where the mechanic with a pink cycling cap and full-sleeve aquatic tattoos told me to get a one-speed with fat tires or stop riding home from the bars? Did the Times get scrapped off Alberta Street by a bum after running into a stop sign at three in the morning? I didn’t think so.
• I think the Times might also have missed out on the four months of unemployment I collected between jobs six and seven of 2006. And while the Times and I probably agree that there’s absolutely nothing wrong and there may even be a little right with collecting unemployment, $416 a month doesn’t go very far when your rent is $400 a month. That’s right—a twelver of PBR and a pack of Camel Lights for an entire month’s work trolling Craigslist.
• And I wonder what the Times would think of the Portland art scene after getting stuck in the Portland Art Museum when a caterer burnt a piece of toast in the basement and fire alarms went off and huge metal doors lowered from the ceiling to protect the art but also trapped you and your girlfriend and some tourists on the top floor with nothing to look at beyond each others’ increasingly panicked faces?
• Speaking of art, what kind of strip clubs don’t take passports? The kind in Portland.
• Gays are great if you are single, but moving to a city populated almost entirely by hot, progressive, poly-whatever queer folk with your beautiful but preoccupied girlfriend is the last thing a monogamous relationship needs. Maybe the Times has self-control, but for some of us, PDX is a 24 hour Eden of cute, tattooed apples. NOT COOL.
• And who the fuck decided that it’s acceptable for an entire city to start drinking at three o’clock in the afternoon Monday through Thursday and before noon on the inevitable three day weekend? (Seriously, try to get brunch on Friday and you’ll be standing in line for your Bloody Mary with half the city because nobody in Portland works on Fridays.) Where was I? Oh, right, happy hour. I forgot what I was talking due to happy hour-induced brain damage.
• Is NYT aware of what constant rain does to people? Let’s hear how much you love the city after you’ve walked under an umbrella for 120 days in a row. Actually, you would be under an umbrella, but Portlanders are too tough for that shit so you’re just wet.
• According to some “reputable” news sources, Portland is full up with celebrities, or at least quasi-famous artist types. But when was the last time Carrie Brownstein came caroling at your door? And Beth Ditto? Way too busy being an actual celebrity on that little island Madonna owns to hang with you at the Nest. Same goes for Chuck Palahniuk—doesn’t leave the West Hills, despite repeated invites to what ended up being some very good dinner parties. In fact, the only famous person I saw was Mirah and her ass crack as she bent down to pick up some produce at the farmers market. Sure, maybe Tegan and Sara recorded their album in the neighborhood but how many times did you actually see them, despite casually dropping by the coffee shop/grocery store/tattoo studio you heard they patronized? That’s right—NONE. And who did you see a mere six months later walking down the street your new neighborhood after your beautiful but preoccupied girlfriend became less preoccupied and noticed that you weren’t really resisting the hot, progressive, tattooed queer girls at all, and, upon noticing, followed you to work (job number seven) and punched you in the face and then threw all of your shit (including the teddy bear you’ve had like forever and the art project you’d been working on for six months) out of the house and into the endless rain? SARA FUCKING QUIN, that’s who. A famous person. Not in beloved Portland, Oregon—in North Goddamned Carolina.
• So, New York Times, why don’t you go to Portland for longer than an afternoon in August when everyone is hot and naked and slightly buzzed? If you still like it after seven jobs and constant rain and having to find a new place after the bathtub in your apartment filled up with the entire building’s raw sewage (true story), you’ll at least have earned it. In the meantime, please find somewhere else to write about every once in a while. I hear Madison has a great arts scene.

Dear Friends and Lovers,

I want to apologize for not calling.  I know, I know, it’s been a while.  And, yes, I got your text messages and your emails and that one mixed tape that I keep meaning to listen to.  I  meant to call, really, but my sister’s kid stayed with me for a weekend and then I had to do my taxes and there was the Peaches show and my driver’s license expired.  What can I say—life’s been crazy.

But, as all of you know, I always take the time to care for my Earthly temple.  I mean, what are we if not hot bodies?  That’s right.  Lonely.  And this maintenance doesn’t just mean limiting carbs and going to Body Pump twice a week and drinking laxative tea every night.  It also means caring for my immunities and making sure my STD count stays at a respectable zero.

And the results are in, my friends!  The results are in.  But before we get to that, I want to pause a moment and acknowledge the world we are living in today, right now, and probably even tomorrow.  Tough times out there, right?  You can’t enjoy your morning latte without hearing poor people bitch and moan about this so-called recession on the news.  And just this morning my friend Jen Anniston called to say she’s marrying that girly fuck with the floral tattoos.  What’s his name again?  Right.  John Mayer.  Tough times all around.

Even I–seemingly spat from the womb covered in gold dust—am going through a rough patch.  Don’t worry, I’m not losing the condo or anything, but my dealer just jacked up the price of an eight ball by 11%.   Eleven percent!  For a second I thought I was going to have to get a job, but then I realized that I have valuable information, information that you want.  And I’m going to give it to you, friends and lovers, for a small fee.

That’s right—I’m offering you the results of my STD tests in exchange for a small amount of legal tender.  I’m not going to spoil if for you, but I will say that there’s some very interesting data on those print-outs.

I know I can’t prevent you from sharing these results with each other, but in an effort to discourage any potential file-sharing, I’m saving the last, most special result until all the others have been disseminated.  If I learn that there’s been some open source shit going on, no one’s getting it.  And, yes, you could just get tested yourself, but you’re phobic of needles, Amy.  And, Dora, don’t even pretend any nurse could find a vain in your body that hasn’t collapsed.  Even your toes have tracks marks.  Isn’t it easier just to come to me?  Besides, I’m offering this information for 5% less than your standard clinic.

Now, you may have noticed that there are a few familiar names on this list.  I just want to say, Mike, that  a little oral does not mean you’re gay.  Don’t stress it, bro.  And Carly, you’re a great kid, but you and Mike are obviously way more compatible than the two of us.  And because you two are such a terrific couple and I feel a little bad about doing both of you so soon after the wedding, I’m going to give you a package deal.  Two results for the price of one!

Alright, people, I’d update you on my new life-happenings (those hydbrid SUVS truly are lady-killers, let me tell you!), but all this finger-tapping is giving me callouses.

Love you, mean it!  Call me!

A friend recently asked me what to put on a mixed tape she’s making for a girl she’s emotionally ejaculating over.  I wasn’t much help, as the only person I’ve ever made a mixed tape for was for my first boyfriend Justin Stephens (1993. Camp Lab Elementary. We kissed behind the batting cages.).  No, my method of seduction is only aural in the sense that I find the drunkest girl in the room and tell her that my name is Ajax and I love her.  The most heart-swelling (and, later, heartbreaking) mixed tape I’ve ever received is now my default make out soundtrack, both because it’s a really sweet tape and because it’s a symbolic middle finger to the ex who stole my skateboard.

I do, however, have a couple of ideas for a Fuck You, I’m Leaving mix.

The key is to be clear.  You don’t want her to think your songs or ironic or playful.  You want to leave her with the unmistakable impression that It Is Over.  Your mixed tape should say Remember that time the landlord came over to mow the lawn when I was sunbathing nude in the backyard?  Well, she turned gay over diesel fumes and grass clippings and now I’m actually YOUR landlord.  You have until the end of track nine to vacant the premises.  And don’t even think about taking the dog.

———-

Fuck You, I’m Leaving (interpretation in italics):

1.  Yr Mangled Heart (Gossip)

You keep building me up only to let me down.  You’re letting go of everything that used to be.  I just want what I deserve, and that, dear heart, is someone taller.

2.  I Think I Need a New Heart (Magnetic Fields)

Seriously, I can’t tell the truth—it’s in my DNA.  Remember when we spent Thanksgiving at my parents’ house and my dad told you the mobile over his ficus tree is a Calder?  Yeah, I made that.  In third grade.

3.  Straight to Hell  (The Clash)

I do got a photograph of you, but I photoshoped Lindsay Lohan in your place.  She and I had a really good time at Machu Piccu.

4.  Used to Love Her (Guns ‘N Roses)

Don’t worry.  I’d never actually kill you.  I might, however, fake my own death so you stop nagging me about my taxes.

5.   Love Rears Its Ugly Head (Living Colour)

When I say I always played the fool, I mean I was a fool for agreeing to buy that used Accord with you.  Dibs on the spoiler!

6.  Cry Me a River (Justin Timberlake)

You might not have been my sun or my earth, but I did cheat on you with a Britney Spears lookalike.  Sorry.

7.  Date With The Night (Yeah Yeah Yeahs)

By “night,” I mean the barista up the street who gives me free cookies.  Please stop crying and get out of the bathroom.  I need to do my hair.

8.  Closing Time (Leonard Cohen)

We’re drinking and we’re dancing and the band is really happening and I can’t take my eyes off the drummer.

————

This is only the first installation.  Expect more when I’m done making Happy Birthday!  I Gave You Herpes! cards.

He finally asked!

(Thanks to CS for the discovery.)