TWENTY TWENTY HINDSIGHT

• North Carolina taxpayers for giving me the opportunity to fail out of one of the finest public institutions in the country as well as bankrolling my boyfriend Tyler Hansbrough’s NBA dreams

• Hugh Grant’s hair for its stunning performance in such classic films as Notting Hill (luvz it) and that one with Claudia Schiffer

• Hard working minorities for providing my eggs Benedict every Sunday

• Lesbian celebrities with the exception of Rosie O’Donnell and Condolezza Rice

• Google (Chat mostly, but also Reader. Both are excellent distractions from higher education)

• Baby polar bears

• Weaver St. hula hoopers for providing the community with a collective object of scorn

• Wikipedia, which recently schooled me in the overwhelming theme of Mariah Carey’s collected albums, Or Mimi Can Haz a Noun: Emotions (1991), Music Box (1993), Daydream (1995), Butterfly (1997), Rainbow (1999), Glitter (2001), and Charmbracelet (2002)

• My new divinely-inspired diet: More of Jesus, Less of Me
• This:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-kjM1asH-8&hl=en&fs=1]

We are all fucked.

After you’ve recovered from the above: I’m currently making up for the past four months of ignoring graduate school. Like, I’m busy. Granted, a week of work and stress is a minor price to pay for a graciously-accepted living stipend and a viable excuse not to work full-time.
What I’m trying to say is, I’m gonna put this here blog on the shelf until I learn what an ontology is. Don’t panic–it’ll only be a day or two and then I’ll gladly return to “conspicuous narcissism.”

Love and want,

Katie

This is mine.

This season makes me nostalgic, usually for periods of my life that I only miss when cold, lonely, and/or drunk. At the moment I am all of the above and thinking about an event that happened not-so-long-ago. The following also explains why even if I ever deserve a girlfriend again, I probably won’t want one….

When I lived in Portland a year and a half ago, I was in a not-so-legitimate relationship-thing with a co-worker. That is, I was making out with one lady while living with another. The live-in girlfriend and I were in the midst of a less than cordial breakup. Neither or us were sleeping or eating much. She was trying to finish school, I was distracting myself with a lot of beer and the friendly co-worker.

It was one of those long, protracted breakups with lots of tears and yelling and makeup sex and the eventual, sad acknowledgment that shit would not work out in the end. My ex was sleeping in her office. I got the bedroom. She took all the blankets.

After a particularly unpleasant fight resulted in her punching a wall and spraining her elbow, I took a Xanax and went to the bar. The bartender happened to be going through his own breakup at time and poured stiff drinks in solidarity. A few hours of drinking and commiserating later, I sort of passed out on the bathroom floor. It wasn’t a full-fledged pass out, but more of an underfed, over-drunk catnap. After a little while, my girlfriend found me and hauled my ass outside and into the rain. I then decided that the parking lot was a fine place for a nap, rain or not. After she kicked me in the kidneys while calling me a whore and a drunk (terms that were not undeserved at the time) for a good while, the g.f. hailed a cab, got me in the house, and left me to sleep it off on the bathroom floor.

The next day I received a panicked call from my mother across the country. I hadn’t told her the g.f. and I were having problems, in part because telling your mother anything makes it real, but she found out when she got checked her voice mail that morning and heard a 30 minute long muffled fight as my ex tried to get me out of the parking lot the night before, complete with muffled kicks to the back. There are things, she said, a mother should never hear.

But because the g.f. and I loved each other as much as we hated each other, she forgave me for passing out the bar, I forgave her for stealing the blankets, we laughed about pocket-dialing my mom in the middle of a drunken brawl, and our household resumed a semi-placid state for a minute or two.

Two days later, the girlfriend walked into my work and punched me in the face. A week later, I was living here.

Fags can have the drama. Now I’m into cats and sweatpants and icing out of the can.

This is the best thing that has ever happened to me.

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.

Gchat with my mother:

7:34 PM Mary:
Katie, may i see your blog? Gina told me about it. She was knocked out by your fabulous writing? love, mom
7:35 PM me: Nooooooooo!!!
Mary: really!
me: Nooooooooooo!!!
NOT ALLOWED!!!!
it’s all lies!!!!
Mary: i think i’ll search for it. why does gina get to see it
7:36 PM me: because she’s my friend on facebook
you are really not allowed to look at it
srsly
Mary: oh it’s facebook?
what about your prospec employer?
what if you want a job with O?
me: O?
oprah?
Sent at 7:36 PM on Sunday
Mary: OBAMA!

A few weeks after previously mentioned bike wreck, I wrote the brilliant advice column Ask Nicole Georges re: consequences of said incident. The letter was really long and essentially recounted the story I just spent an hour retyping on this right-here blog, but here was her A, prefaced by my Q:

“ANYWAY, the whole story is long and blurry and ends with me discharging myself from the hospital when no one was looking (after the CAT scan results, of course) and trying to hitch a ride home and falling asleep on the side of the road and being rescued by a benevolent city bus driver who dropped me off at my front door. ANYWAY, since then, I’ve gotten in two other bike wrecks–one my fault and one not. Both times I walked away with some nasty cuts and some harm to my poor Bianchi but no lasting damage to either of us.
ANYWAY, here’s my question–can I go back to the hospital after giving them a false identity, including name, birth date, address, and social security number? (The name, by the way, was the only thing taken from real life. The rest was completely made up, which I stress so that you understand that my ex-gf will not be billed for this.) SO, back to the question–what if I HAD gotten a concussion when the douche on a mountain bike ran a red at the bottom of a hill and smack into me??? What then??? How do I procure the services of the ER after falsifying information, refusing to give them a urine sample, and peacing the fuck out when the nurse turned her back?”

–Uninsured in Orange County

“Dear Uninsured:

I don’t know the answer to this question.
Here’s what i do know about the success of giving a fake name to the E.R.:
I knew a guy in Kansas City whose prescriptions from the hospital were all made out to one Benjamin Weasel.
Success.

Do you look particularly memorable? Do you think they’d remember you months and months later?
What if your ex girlfriend goes in sometime to get a new kidney and they give her a hard time b/c you committed “Identity Theft” on her?
Why don’t you wear your helmet and take a taxi from now on?
You should go to a party where Michelle Howa is. When i was trying to ride my bike home drunk from a party, she fastened and adjusted my helmet onto my head so snuggly, I could barely get it off when i arrived home.

To summarize:
Don’t be dead, and also, I hope that your ex girlfriend moves out of state before she needs that kidney or you will be in some serious karmic trouble.”

love, nicole.

I’m wee sick of thinking about food so in honor of tomorrow’s nationwide Prop 8 protests, I’m going to shift my attention to a food-like substitute that is near and dear to gay hearts across this great country: Alcohol.

I can’t speak for all gays (although I did help copy-edit the 2005 edition of the Homosexual Agenda while interning at F.A.G.G.–the Federation for the Advancement of Gays and Gayelles), but this particular gay has an ongoing and periodically destructive romance with booze. Dear alcohol and I have made some Real Bad Decisions together. There was, for instance, the not-so-long-ago occasion when I climbed an 11 story crane in the middle of the night with a cute girl and a can of Sparks. Here’s the thing about Sparks: No decision you ever make with Sparks as your guide will end well. None. If Sparks tells you to watch a movie and go to bed, IGNORE IT. You’ll end up watching a movie through your neighbor’s window and then crawling into bed with your landlord’s wife. True story.

There is one recent episode that especially embodies the Dumb Things I Have Done With Alcohol As My Companion. We’ll call this one Whew! That Was Close….

After a friend’s birthday last summer, I, being a responsible young man, was riding my bike home when I took an unfortunate spill. Onto my head. Sans helmet (which, BTDubs, is rare–I always wear a helmet. It’s just that I happened to forget it at the bar on the night in question). Anyway, so I feel off my bike woke up with a beautiful girl holding me in my arms, which was great, until the ambulance and the cops showed up. It’s a long, blurry story, but here’s what I remember: the pigs and the EMTs were trying to get me to lay down on a stretcher in the ambulance and I was trying to convince the pretty girl that I wasn’t drunk, just, um, sleepy?

After trying to convince the po-lice and the EMTs that I should just lock my bike to a sign post and walk home, I submitted to their authority and agreed to go to the hospital. But first I told them that my name was an ex-girlfriend’s name. Why? Because I don’t have health insurance and her’s was the first name that came to mind. What? It’s not like I gave them her address or anything. I think.

So off we went, flashing lights and all. Though I genuinely respect health-care professionals, I was a raging bitch to the poor nurses and doctors in the ER that night (it was the Sparks!). My bad behavior was rewarded with equally bad bedside manner. A nurse friend later told me that they probably didn’t give me an IV as punishment, like, we’ll show that bitch what a real hangover feels like. Also, they told me to stop saying Fuck. Not asked, told.

They eventually gave me a CAT scan, the results of which were fine. I think. By that time, I wanted to be home so badly I was about to try levitating my ass across town, so I did the rational thing: waited until the health-care professionals were distracted by some other asshole and peaced the fuck out.

And then it was five in the morning and I was LOST in the giantist medical complex in this corner of the free world and, being a considerate young man, I didn’t want to wake any of my pals for a ride, so I wandered around for a while and stuck out my thumb every time a car drove by. I don’t know if it was the neck brace or the half-lidded eyes or the sobbing, but not a single car stopped for me. Thanks a lot, Samaritans. After an hour or so of trying get my bearings, I gave up and maybe kind of laid down on the sidewalk and sort of went to sleep. Don’t judge. I was tired.

My hero came in the form of a city bus driver who stopped after I’d been out for a few minutes, helped me on the bus, and DROVE ME TO MY FRONT DOOR.

I woke up the next morning with a pounding headache and a wrist band with my ex-girlfriend’s name on it.

A note: A lot of you have heard this story already. Next time I’ll try to come up with something novel. Also, both the crane thing and the hospital thing were incredibly stupid and pissed a lot of people off. That was the old me. I’m in therapy now.