Did You Fart On My Pillow?

As a resident assistant for three years, I never had to turn in a single situation revolving around alcohol, which is seemingly the most obvious offense that an RA would have to deal with. In every college party gone awry, there is some jerk who shows up with a badge and a clip board and busts the party up because "freshman Kelly" knew some of the soccer guys and she was really cute and she only drink Smirnoff... blah, blah, blah. That never happened to me. As long as I could look up at the building and not see anyone hanging completely out the window with a bottle of Jager in their hands (you have to have both because I saw plenty of people just normally hanging out the window), then I didn't really care all that much to bust people. I only had two issues that normally came up in my building: people wanting to harm themselves or poop. Out of respect and class, we'll focus on the poop (which is the only time I'll ever be able to fashion that sentence in my life).

This child would NEVER have had pink eye.

I should have known that poop would be a common factor in my college experience, as I seemed to be constantly surrounded by it from the time I got there. As an elementary school student, I was never one of those children that ended up with lice or pink eye. We shunned those students and commonly talked about how their parents must make them sleep on the ground whilst washing themselves in the same bath water over and over. There had to be something wrong with those children's home lives. If you wanted to be decently respected as an elementary school success story, you better never have lice or pink eye, and if you did, it didn't hurt if you brought your Lite Brite to school so other kids could play with it and eventually forgive you. So, naturally, I was devastated to find out as a nineteen year old college student that I had... pink eye.
When I went to the nurse, I was practically berated with a slew of uncomfortable and accusatory questions: Have you found yourself in the company of a lot of smoke? I can't remember my last Def Leppard concert, but I'm going to go with no. Do you not wash your hands after going to the bathroom and then touch your face? No, I do not wipe my butt then take my contact out. Has anyone had any sexual contact with your eye? Are you serious right now? I actually had to pause when answering this question to interpret how someone could feasibly have sexual contact with my eye, and furthermore to contemplate who in the world would attempt the ludicrous things that my mind was coming up with. After some soul searching, I had determined: no. No one had had sexual contact with my eye.
The doctor went on to explain that somehow, some kind of bacteria had crept its way into my eye and made home, kind of like when you move into a new apartment and have a "nesting ritual." This was not the allergy related type of pink eye that people could justify by coming up with a convenient reaction to grass or mold. This was the nasty kind; essentially the STD of the ocular world. I had, by some measure, been eye raped.
I wore my dark rimmed glasses to cover up the shame, but it was no use. People would ask me about my eye and what had happened. Without any warning or lying ability, I would tell them of my infectious disease and they would look at me like a nasty animal. I was the equivalent of a malnourished cat with little eye crusties on the edge of its eyelids. I was an ophthalmological pity case. Some thief in the night was responsible for this; I knew it. I was too clean, too careful for this kind of thing to happen to me. I washed my pillowcases bimonthly. I wasn't the type of person who got pink eye. I felt like the Hester Prynne of the visual world, with my puffed up eye being the letter A I would carry around to proclaim my shame to the world, and in my ignorance of how pink eye was spread, I began to wonder how much other people knew. What if they went around chattering among each other, I can't believe he let someone do that to his eye! I didn't know he was into that freaky stuff... It was too much. There had to be an answer.
So when I was talking to my freshman roommate about the whole ordeal, he said, Maybe Zak did something. I looked at him and said, What do you mean 'maybe Zak did something?' He then began to tell me, with that impossibly smug smile on his face that at one point the week before, he let a guy into our room that had something for me. Then when he was leaving the room, he said that the guy was pulling his pants up. I was livid. Who forgets to tell someone when someone was coming to leave your roommate something then leaves pulling his pants up? How is that a detail that you forget to mention to someone. Sure, I accidentally ate your last pack of Ramen; sorry I didn't mention it, or I meant to tell you that someone called your phone while you were in the bathroom, but if there's one thing I wouldn't forget to mention it's Someone came to leave you something in our room, and they left pulling up their pants.
I immediately starting asking around, trying to pick up any clues that anyone would have. Most people knew nothing, but for those who obviously did, it was like watching an excerpt out of a college version of Winter's Bone. I expected one of them to pull me aside with a Dale Dickey voice and say, I told you to listen. You should have listened. I wanted finality for this crime, but no one would offer me any information to help me solve it. Just a smile and a shrug followed by, I don't know what you're talking about. It's not like I was speaking in a foreign language or asking about international relations between Guam and Peru; I was asking if anyone knew if Zak had air shat on my pillow. No one would answer; no one cared... not like I did.
And the mystery would go on to be ultimately unsolved. Sometimes people would talk about that one guy that got pink eye from the guy who farted on his pillow, but no one would ever mention names. They're secrets were safe in the bonds of idle chit chat and gossip, and when I was around, the conversation would stop. But I know, I always know. And it's a terrible prank, nothing like putting someone's fingers in water to see if they'll pee the bed or seran wrapping a toilet seat. No, this is a dangerous game that requires antibiotics and strips the victim of their innocence and clear vision. The night after graduation, a group of us collected in the parlor of Carnegie. Zak was there as well, and I couldn't help myself. Because it was the last time most of us would see one another (and probably partly due to the half a box of wine I had drank), I had confidence I had never felt before. I asked him, in front of everyone, Zak, be real with me for a second. Did you fart on my pillow and give me pink eye? The room fell silent; we all knew exactly what I was talking about--a grudge that had never fully been let go.  As thoughtfully as he could, he looked at me and said, Dude. No. I didn't fart on your pillow. I would admit to it if I did. But the problem is, once someone flatuates on your pillow, you never really come to trust anyone again fully. Even your best friends, and to this day, I have promised myself two things: 1) I will never again leave my pillows unattended. 2) I will find who gave me pink eye, even if it takes cutting off their hands in the middle of a lake.

Gas Station Nancy

As I prepare to pack up and move to D.C. this week, I've been doing my best to try and say goodbye to the people that have come to mean the most to me. I picked up my friend in Maryville a couple nights ago, and as we were driving back, I announced, We have to stop by and see Nancy. She didn't understand, Who is Nancy? I was almost disgusted by her forgetfulness. Anna, we have to see Nancy. At the EZ Stop. Nancy with the frosted tips. Anna and I had befriended Nancy sometime last year, as we made entirely too many trips to get cigarettes after midnight. She usually works the late shift, so I was confident we would run into her during our 1:00am excursion. As we pulled up to the store, no one was behind the counter. Nothing new: Nancy is usually out smoking or literally hiding in the bathroom or back in the gas station office. As Anna perfectly imitated, she always appears out of some place random and yells out, "Oh! I was just cleaning," as if she ever had to give us a reason for being misplaced. But she really wasn't there this time; we saw the door to the Gatorade open and immediately knew it wasn't her. Nancy does a lot of things at the gas station, but the one thing she does not do is work, let alone stock the Gatorades. As I left, I began to consider the people that I befriend; most 22 year old men do not befriend 60 something year old gas station workers, especially the ones with frosted tips.

Nancy and me, the night before my graduation.

But I have all these very interesting, very odd friends that I'm not particularly sure how I ended up befriending. I have this weird ability to reach out to just about anyone I meet and find some kind of commonality. Nancy and I met over a pack of cigarettes, and eventually we found common ground on the fact that most of our extended family has been in jail for one thing or another. She told me I reminded her a lot of her son, though from the picture I saw, I would never be caught dead in a white suit, but that's beside the point; Nancy and I had something special, and even if it was originally a running joke, I find ways to connect to people in the oddest circumstances.

But it's really no surprise; I always connect with the people that others are most unlikely to connect to. I can't say it's always a productive thing, as I probably take chances on people that I shouldn't. Before we even started college, members of our class starting friending one another on Facebook. I thought it was a pretty normal thing, so I played along. Anyone that sent me a friend request was accepted, and I didn't find that to be a problem until we started living on campus.

After a couple days, I was sitting in the dining hall eating a bowl of cereal when a girl appeared behind me. I didn't see her, but I heard her, kind of in the same fashion that Helga from Hey Arnold always heard that one kid with the glasses breathing behind her. I turned around and there she was, inches away from my body. I looked up and said hello, and she responded, You're the boy that lives in my computer. It was the exact kind of moment when you want as many people to be around as possible, as the chance that the next action could end with you getting knifed or chloroformed, but alas, it was just the two of us. I didn't know what to say, so in desperation, I asked her if she wanted to sit down. That was all that was said, and she spent the rest of breakfast staring at me as I finished my bowl of cereal. And that's the trouble with befriending anyone and everyone... you have some hits and misses, and then sometimes, you have people that just stare at you the entire way through your otherwise normal breakfast.
But if there's one job that someone like myself should probably never have, it's waiting. I've had the opportunity to meet entirely too many people this summer, and when I really like them, I want to take them home with me like a dollar on the ground or a lost kitten. And the problem is that most of the people that I feel this way about are people that are most definitely not acceptable in social situations. As a couple of old ladies walked into Big Mike's this summer, Marsha looked around at me and said, Stay away from them. Those are the whores of Seymour. I glanced to confirm who I'd seen; yep, they were easily in their late 60s, probably 70s. If I didn't already love them just from seeing them, knowing they were the neighborhood whores only made me love them more. I immediately grabbed their table, hoping for some conversational diamonds in the rough. They asked me if I had graduated high school yet, which from anyone else would have been offensive. I explained that I was going to graduate school in the fall and one of them told me that I should just stay and date her, an offer that I would have gladly accepted because I love me some cougars.
Soon, they began asking me about school and where I would go. I told them that I would be moving to DC to go to Georgetown and a grim look came over both of their faces. The oldest one turned to me and practically yelled out, You know there's colored people all over the place up there. A sweet boy like you's gonna be walkin' around all sweetly up there and one of those black people's gonna come up and knock the shit out of you. Leave you right there on the street, bleedin'. I am very rarely stunned beyond words, but I didn't know what to say. The other one chimed in, It's a damn shame. You're such a nice boy. I wasn't sure if I should have been more offended that they used "colored" in context as if that's just a normal thing to say or if I should be more afraid that they've already written me off for dead. It was like I told them that I had been drawn at the reaping to go into The Hunger Games. I could just imagine them saying, He was such a nice tribute, but he's no career. I started wondering if maybe Marsha was looking out for my best interest; maybe it was best to stay away from the whores of Seymour, even if they did leave me a five dollar tip for bringing them out pie.
Regardless, I refuse to give up on my search for out of the box awkward friends because in the mass of breakfast creepers and racist old women, there's a Nancy hiding in there somewhere. And maybe it is a bad quality, going around and befriending strangers, but there's something about the obscurity of it that draws me in every time. And even when they're super racist old ladies, there's something charming in the fact that they look out for my best interest by warning me of my unofficial race-related death. If you don't talk to people, you never get the chance to get to know them, and even if you don't get to know them, you miss out on the opportunity to hear the absurd and sometimes creepy things that people say. It's weird that as I'm about to leave, Nancy is one of the people that pops into my head to tell goodbye, but aren't we supposed to have an impact in as many lives as we can? Life is too short to ignore people that you don't think you have time to get to know. If you happen to find yourself in the Maryville area and desperately in search for overpriced gas, stop in at the EZ Stop and tell Nancy I said hello; she'll know who you're talking about.

Children of the Porn

As my friend and I were having a sleepover (at 22 years old, mind you), we were flipping through the porn titles on television, picking out our favorite ones based on creativity and shock value. Neither of us were ever inclined to actually watch one, but the titles were fantastic. They all follow the same basic structure, kind of like a Mad Lib. (Adjective) (Inappropriate term for a female) (Inappropriate term for having intercourse) (on/in/under/with) (dealer's choice: choose whatever word you want), then follow it with either the number 3, 4, or 8. And after considering the gross (that's a double entendre if I've ever seen one) amount of pornography that someone can buy for a shockingly high rate of 14.99, I came to the conclusion; we have entirely too much access to pornography. When I look back on my life, though my parents made a pretty decent effort from shielding me from the mysteries of what naked bodies looked like, I determined that I've been surrounded by the stuff my entire life. It was always by some weird circumstance or random situation beyond my control; my parents wouldn't let me watch the scene of Titanic when Leo and Kate fornicated in the Model T, but I managed somehow to stumble upon some kind of raunchy something on HBO. It made no sense to me, but there it was.

Yes, Kate Winslet? Do you have a question?

My dad had a friend that used to always come up and visit us when I was younger. We always called him Shorty, and to this day, I'm not sure what his real name was, if he even had one. But one day, Shorty called me out of the house from watching Power Rangers, which royally pissed me off, and said he had to show me something out in his truck. Frustrated and unfocused, I dragged myself from out in front of the television and out toward his white Chevrolet. I looked around for my parents, but they were missing... they were never missing. My spidey sense was tingling, and I could feel something weird about to happen. As he pulled something out of his truck, he gave me what I have come to know in my mind as "the man speech," I'm about to show you something awesome. This sh-t is something you'll remember for the rest of your life. And if you like it, you can keep it." Nothing about that sounded comforting, but before I knew it there it was. A Playboy. He would instruct me what to do next,  Check out those titties, boy. That's a nice set of titties. No sir. Not in my driveway. And for the record, I did not keep it.
Growing up, we would always watch WWE/WWF/WCW... whatever it was. Sable was always my favorite and probably not for the regular boy reasons. I liked her because she was built for winning, and wasn't afraid to powerslam another woman. She had cat music, and I was pretty fond of cats. She pulled people's hair, smacked them on the face, and never cried. So imagine my surprise when she was taking up two pages of that magazine wearing nothing but... paint. In my nine years of life, I was never so disappointed in a hero. Nudity was nothing to be prided upon in my family; it was something you reserved for the shower, and you should probably feel bad for being naked in there, too. I smiled because I thought I was supposed to, but inside, it made me nervous. I wanted my parents to show up, and in my own form of Catholic guilt, I wouldn't tell them about seeing Sable... all painted and full of sin... until I was in high school.
And the pornography has followed me around ever since. It's nothing I've ever wanted, but more, just happened upon me. The night I submitted my grad school application to Vanderbilt, I had been watching Easy A, a personal favorite of mine, on Showtime. I had since ignored it to finish the fine touches on what I deemed to be a beautiful personal essay and writing sample. Right as I started to press submit, I heard a sigh from the TV; porn. Again. I don't know how it ended up there, but apparently at some point in the night, TV just throws everything sacred out the window and starts playing the nasties. I was half tempted to apologize in my essay for the surprise porn playing in the background as I submitted my application, but I decided not to. I knew I wasn't getting in; the unholiness had seeped into the essay magically. There was no hope. So, I'm not sure what steps I can take to escape this pornographic undertone that keeps haunting my life. I assume that it came from a spell that Sable cast from the page on to me at just a tender nine years old.
As hard as Shorty may have tried, I just never really understood the point of it all. I imagined that as I got older, the reasons would start to connect. I would understand pornography. But like a lot of things about adult life, there was no clear cut methodology to understanding it. It's something you're supposed to "enjoy," but watching pornography for "enjoyment" makes as much sense to me as watching someone eat a piece of lasagna and getting full. The concept weirds me out the same way today as it did standing in my driveway, averting my eyes towards Sable's face wondering, as the precocious nine year old I was, what does your father think of this?

The Trouble with Balls

Coming from a baseball family, it was hard to imagine that I wouldn't pick up a bat until well into my teens, let alone never really desire to. There were already enough Kirklands for that. When I think back upon my coming of age stories involving sports, there were a lot of tell tale signs that should have warned me to never pick up anything that involved fast-paced focus or quick physical skill. As part of my obsessive compulsive disorder, I like things that have endings, things that are finite. That's why when I get nervous in a conversation, I glance into a corner: three walls that come to a point. There was just never really a place for something as clumsy and round as a ball in my life. Playing sports was like holding one of those slippery cylinder toys people my age played with when they were younger (and you do not know what kind of a struggle it was trying to find a picture of one online). It was just something I was never good at, and honestly, it didn't bother me too much. However, imagine the surprise of my family when I started reading books at an embarrassing rate. What do we do with the child that eats a lot of Chef Boyardee in his spare time while rereading Little Women for the Accelerated Reader points? There was only one solution: recreational league soccer.
And I guess that maybe I wasn't so horrible at it, but in rec league soccer, you learn quickly that if you're the pudge on the team, you get placed at fullback. That's why I jumped on the opportunity to be goalie (or keeper, which I learned is the more professional term), when our regular goaper was struck in the temple by a stray soccer ball. My padded exterior could take the hit, and I knew that it was my time to shine. That was my strategy in sports... play the sideline until someone got maimed or possibly even killed.

This is what sports are to me. An uncontrollable force that ultimately
lead you to throwing something (the water snake) across the room.

And that's exactly why I joined the middle school men's volleyball team as... wait for it... team manager. And sure, I sat most of the time, and my responsibilities constituted me putting up and taking down the net, picking up the balls, and making sure people had their appropriate water bottle. But the day that Jake Baker twisted his ankle was probably the best day of my life. It was the middle of a tournament, and considering that there was practically no funding or interest in middle school male volleyball to begin with, there was no second string. I was the second string. As he was taken off the court, I finally got to join in the huddle. Our coach said something about us playing like p--sies, and while everyone else seemed annoyed and bothered, I was excited. Man talk. How cool is that? I didn't mind being called that because it meant that I was playing, and that's all that mattered until the first shot came to me and hit me in the face. I was removed from the court and replaced by a gimp Jake, who was determined to be more valuable at half-functionality than I was at full.
So, I kind of gave up after that. I just didn't know what to do with all the balls: footballs didn't spiral, basketballs didn't dribble, and I had no idea what kind of secret handshake constituted a successful bump in volleyball. The concepts were apparent to me, but there was something about making them physically happen that was just beyond my imagination. I didn't understand the shortage that was happening between my head and my hands or feet or sometimes my chest, torso, knees, and the occasional wrist hit.

I wish there were more single or double person sports,
like limbo or ballroom dancing.

It wasn't until college that I would try and play any kind of sport again, and that's when I enlisted in intramurals. I was informed that it was "not competitive, and just for fun!" And that was the only exclamation mark I've ever associated with intramurals in a positive light. For the one and probably only time in my life, I represented the Kirkland family in an overly, and kind of intimidatingly, intense version of softball. That's another problem that I've encountered with sports: people get way too involved and blame other people. That's why I like playing tennis for four minutes, or Wii Golf, or ballroom dancing. But all that's beside the point: let's get back to intramural softball. Our team sucked; it didn't take an ESPN commentator to figure that out. We were comprised of the people that weren't good enough to play a college sport in season, so we just kind of gathered together to try and not be horrible. So it was quite a shock to me, at the bottom of the fourth inning when our "team captain" told me that I needed to step it up, or I would be sitting on the bench for the rest of the game. That's when I responded, Or I can just leave now and save everyone the trouble. I don't care, I could be watching TV.
I never cared enough to keep playing or be harshly pep talked into trying harder. I kind of just wanted to drink a half of a flask and stand out on some grass for a while with a leather mitten on my hand, as opposed to the normal routine of drinking half a flask and standing in my room with regular mittens on my hands. After that game, I refused to show up for anymore games or practices, and when people would text me to ask where I was, I would respond, No thanks. I'm going to take a nap instead.
So maybe my unsuccessful sports streaks have to do with most of the maxims that athletes pride themselves on: practice, a positive attitude, actual ambition, hand-eye coordination, and the hope that the other players on your team don't get injured. I never wanted or had any of those qualities. All I wanted to do was listen to my French practice tapes and listen to some Ingrid Michaelson. But I did love the Capri Suns and orange slices; that's actually what probably brought me back to keep trying. And I'm sure one day, I'll find another sport that seems to be calling my name--and after I finish throwing whatever equipment comes with said sport across the field/court/etc, I'll excuse myself for a nice juice box and fruit plate.

What a Perfectly Unsatisfying Moment

As I'm on my trek back home, sitting on the MegaBus once again, I keep listening to an alternating duo between "Greyhound Bound for Nowhere" and "California King Bed" because you have the whole I'm on a bus and I'm traveling between here and there and I'm so interesting thing going on, and surely, there's some kind of hidden melodramatic moment in all of that. But, like most of the moments in my life that I purposefully try to make into a big deal, it's not. There's this woman in front of me with an airbrushed shirt that says Deonna in stereotypical airbrush cursive handwriting, and then in a surprise turn of events, Chris Metts is sitting behind me, and right when I get into super melodramatic mode, I have to re-convince my dad that the Indian woman that keeps glancing back at us is A) not going to blow up the bus, B) probably wearing a red jewel because she's Hindu, and that they have a pretty okay record when it comes to not blowing up buses, C) probably confused because she's never seen a mustache that size before. By the time I get settled back in to have my melodramatic moment, the time is gone or I'm just too tired to try again. You can imagine my frustration.
I shouldn't be surprised because I had to come to terms a long time ago that the world isn't nearly as eventful and emotional as I would like it to be, and when you try to make these moments happen yourself, it's kind of more of a wreck than it would have been before. Regardless, I make it a point to at least try. And in a way, what are we without those moments? Sure, none of them have ever worked out, but in a way, that's the beauty of it... trying to live up to what we believe is perfect in our mind. That's what happened this past Valentine's Day... and on spring break... and with my first girlfriend... maybe this happens too often.
In my first relationship, we didn't have nearly enough in common to be in a relationship; actually, there wasn't much holding us together beside the fact that we both loved to make out. So that's what we did. We made out and we argued, and that was that. So as part of our ritual, we were making out on the trampoline one day, as sixteen year olds do, and we started getting into an argument. I can't remember what it was about, but it was something absolutely pointless, I'm sure. She stormed off the trampoline, and I followed behind, trying to make the situation better when it hit me. This could be a moment. She started up the steps of my back porch that my dad had built. Apparently, when we built the porch, he didn't choose treated lumber. The difference between treated and untreated lumber is that if it's treated, it protects the integrity of the wood. The boards were beginning to warp after time, so some boards stuck up farther than the rest. My plan was to kiss her. Just kiss her mid-sentence. It would be perfect, so as I went in for the kiss right in the middle of her saying something, my foot caught a board. I knew it was all out of my hands, as my body starting falling forward. My headed collided with her chin, and if I remember correctly, that was one of just a very few times I ever heard her cuss. Moment gone. It seemed like the right idea at the time because I had seen it in movies and read about it in romance novels, but there was something terribly difficult when it came to executing it.
But it was nothing in comparison to the disaster that was this past Valentine's Day. I had never been involved with someone on Valentine's Day, and regardless of who you are, you want to be involved with someone on Valentine's Day. The closest I had previously gotten to something romantic on Valentine's Day was splitting a heart shaped pizza from Domino's with Kasi our freshman year. At the end of the evening, we watched Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood, drank Bloody Mary's in my room, and smelled like garlic. So even in the ruins of a doomed relationship, I was determined. The night before, we had stood on the steps of the library and decided that things were falling apart. We were nearly broken up, when we were interrupted by practically the sixth or seventh person walking up to say hello when I was jarred with the obvious: Valentine's Day is tomorrow. Don't screw this opportunity up. There's a moment to be had here. So I prolonged the break up, promising that we would continue to try, and at the time, it seemed totally feasible.

There's the actual dinner in discussion, in all its trendy
Instagram glory.

The next day, I skipped all my classes and went to the grocery store to buy mushrooms and green beans and chicken. I would make the perfect Valentine's Day dinner, and it would be enough to turn everything around. If I believe one thing about this world, it's that food has the ability to make everything better. That's why we bring casseroles to funerals. As I was making the dinner, shuffling between the filling for the stuffed mushrooms and the breading for the chicken, my friend Bridget asked me, Why are you doing this? And it was obvious: because Valentine's Day is supposed to be special. And it wasn't until after dinner that I heard I'm not a big fan of chicken, and I hate mushrooms that it hit me. I had wasted a bunch of time trying to make a perfect moment when I could have just let some kind of perfect moment come to me. Soon after, I found myself sitting in my room, toying back and forth between throwing a half eaten chicken breast and two stuffed mushrooms away. My theory was: I mean, I've kissed this person, so there's really no shame in... yeah. I ate it. But my second theory, and arguably more important, theory was: if a moment is supposed to be perfect, maybe you shouldn't have to work so hard for it. Working hard is for goals. Working hard is watching Silent Hill when you absolutely know that you hate video games, and thus, will most likely hate the movie equally as much. Working hard is for the long-term, whether or not it will eventually work in the end... not for simple moments.
And after I finished the abandoned chicken breast and mushrooms and then starting eating mashed potatoes straight from the pot, I started thinking about Bridget. Bridget, like me, seems to try way too hard to make things work. Also like me, Bridget is great at giving advice but terrible at taking it herself. But that night, as I spooned the bottom of the pot for what I'm sure finished off at least a pound of mashed potatoes in my stomach, her words hit me again: Why are you doing this? And it applied to a lot of things. Why was I trying to make this train wreck work? Why did I even make this dinner? Why are you a 22 year old man sitting in his kitchen eating mashed potatoes out of a pot originally intended for two? And most importantly... how in the hell did you learn to make mashed potatoes taste so delicious?
And at the end of the night, I sat at my desk and stared at the window overlooking Maryville for a long time and decided that there's not really time to try and create these perfect moments (unless you're on a nine hour bus ride, then you can do whatever the hell you want) because if they're supposed to be perfect, wouldn't it make sense that they would be perfectly random? Also, understanding that is half the battle... knowing that to an extent, we're totally not in control of our lives, or at least the things that involve us and other people. That's why going and seeing The Vow with Bridget and announcing that Whitney Houston had died to the Walgreens cashier was more of a romantic date than the well thought out dinner on Valentine's Day. And if you can't go through the streets, candidly informing people of the death of pop's arguably most talented voice with your significant other, then what kind of moments do you really have to live for?

The Megabus Diaries: Vol. 1

10:20am
After a horrible morning of waking up and grabbing my bag that is safety pinned together, we headed to the bus station. I had a premonition this morning of children, and I immediately reconsidered even going. Our truck was a horrible combination of my morning hatred, Dad's worry about traveling, and Mom's awkward compensation for the high tense emotions by mentioning everything she sees out the window on the way there. After looking at the stop for fifteen minutes, we decided to part ways with Mom to wait at the stop like normal people. We found a woman and her daughter to mingle with, but they were obviously the wrong choice to sit with. You never want to sit with anyone that is too chatty, apparently. Upon boarding, we secured upper level seats in between the cast of a Tyler Perry movie and a woman with her... children.

11:40am
I regret publicly announcing my glee for The Golden Girls coming on the bus television. In some weird form of psychological punishment, the driver has decided to play us the entire first season of the show. After an hour, I had the slight urge to pee, so I decided to go inspect the facilities to see what I was working with. The children were blocking it, and the portly one announced to me that he threw up in it. I noticed drying chunks on the side of the door, and when I looked at him with my you're shitting me eyes, he gave me a coy smile, as if to say, I'm the child you saw in your vision. I will make sure he doesn't make it back on the bus when we stop next.

1:20pm
The girls are still on TV.

2:00pm
Freedom. We've finally made it to the rest stop. I was beginning to shake from my desperate longing for a cigarette, or a "nic fit" as I like to call them. The driver announced that we had "dirty minutes" to get back to the bus, which I can only assume has something to do with pornography. In unison, Dad and I announced our short term goals, Dude, I need a cigarette/I gotta go piss. After a couple seconds, I devised a plan; Wendell would wait in the Wendy's line, and I would smoke. We would tag team out for him to pee. At the smoking station, I met two friends: Chest Tattoo and Betty White. Chest Tattoo and I exchanged a knowing look and took deep inhales from our cigarettes as Betty White joined us to light up. Once I finished, I told Dad about my new friends. He responded, I bet the guy who did that woman's tattoo is probably named Lefty or Stubs or something. We made it back on the bus with about two dirty minutes remaining; The Golden Girls, Season 1, Disc 3 has officially been started.

3:20pm
We're picking up more passengers. I don't know who thought that was a good idea, but they're never going to know what happened on the first three discs of The Golden Girls. I'd be pissed.

3:45pm
One of the DVDs broke, and all the passengers looked up with hopeful eyes. I sat whispering, Please let it be Grey's Anatomy. Nope. The driver just skipped to the next disc in the season. One woman started crying. Dad announced to the bus, Oh! This is my favorite episode. Then I got a message on OKCupid, the highlight of my day so far... I really need to reevaluate my life.

5:20pm
We're all essentially catatonic. I'm beginning to believe that Jim Jones took this same approach to bring his followers together. Dad and I have allied with the woman that looks like Sally Field, the woman behind us, and possibly the token black guy. I haven't seen Tattoo Chest or Betty White (the smoker, not the actress... I see her every time I look up) in ages. I'm worried about them. Someone came up and said they were watching movies on the lower deck. In an emotional outburst, I offered that our deck stage a coup against the bottom one; the woman lied. They're in the same Golden Girls hell that we are. Oh, and I saw a Chick-Fil-A. I'll never forget, Dan Cathy.

6:45pm
Had a weird impulse to bite the kid's ear in front of me. I'm chocking it up to bath salts and boredom. However, in my delusional state, I have come up with a theory. Some seats have green lights over them and some have yellow. After surveying the bus, I've determined that the green lights are over people who have been "chosen," kind of like LOST. The other lights are over the lost souls. For the record, the vomit twins are sitting under a yellow light.

9:50pm
Sitting on the metro headed toward our ride so that we can see Batman... and the whole ride was so, so worth it. Golden Girls and all.

What a Waste of Waffle Fries

Most of the time, my posts are based strictly on my life (with a little flare at times, because who doesn't love a little bit of a fireworks show), but on this night, I felt compelled to address this "Chick-Fil-A debacle" that seems to have closeted Christians and gay-rights supporters coming out of the wood work. Upon googling what I would hoped would be the supporting image for this post, I was delightfully surprised at how fruitful the search "Jesus Eating Chick-Fil-A" was. Sure, typing that into my browser felt a little sacrilegious, but when I think of all the things I've typed into my browser before (David Gallagher in 2012, Amy Winehouse No No Cat, How to Make Meth), I kind of feel like I had nothing to lose.

But I'm getting off topic; let's talk about these heathen Christians at Chick-Fil-A. Actually, no. I've tried to make a firm stance not to get too political on this thing; if anyone other than people that know me read this (I'm looking at you, 46 people in Russia that randomly follow my blog), there's no reason that anyone should know what I'm pro or con for or against. I want to talk about the politics of restauranting. You see, I have a decent amount of exposure in the restaurant business... and by that, I mean I worked at Quiznos for a couple years, and I currently wait at a small diner/cafe called Big Mike's in Seymour. I understand these people. The last thing I want to do is discuss my political and/or religious beliefs with anyone there. I don't need to know if Big Mike is a Taoist or not because I really couldn't care less. We all worship at our own bath houses, so to speak. We have our demons and our beliefs, and it's really none of my business. What I do care about is the struggle I've been facing in pursuit of my chicken product.
I like Zaxby's because it's secular and has that rustic feel. The stores usually find things that are quaintly (insert Zaxby's location) and pin it up on the wall. They know my order and extra ranches only cost 25 cents. Sure, they're pricey, but does it matter when you can go eat quality chicken strips (doused or not doused in your choice of five different sauces) without feeling like you have to adhere to certain specific verses from Leviticus or Romans? And then there's Chick-Fil-A. Not nearly as convenient because they're closed on Sundays, much more formally decorated, and has this air of pretension you don't find at other fast food places. I get the same feeling from a Chick Fil A visit as I do when I visit any of my friends that live in West Knoxville. It's intimidating, but damn... it's good. That Chick-Fil-A sauce is like nectar from the gods, and by gods, I mean the Christian God. The only God. So it makes sense that Chick-Fil-A doctrine should meet up with that of the Christian religion. I'm not saying that I agree or disagree with their extracurricular stances, but if it came down to my personal stances on political matters or my ability to receive Chick-Fil-A sauce, I'm not certain which one I would choose. Sure, there's always Zax sauce, but in a life that is already so short anyways, is there really any time to compromise on something that big?
And like most political blog posts, I'm sure that you can pick up what side of this moral debate I'm on, but in reality, eating Chick-Fil-A because of an anti-gay stance is a little extreme. It's not like they're making you eat a Bible, mostly because that would be sacrilegious... if anything, they'd make you eat a Qa'ran. But that's neither here nor there. The restaurant is just trying their hardest to uphold what they believe to be the moral center of the world, no matter how twisted or elitist that world may be. And in comparison, aren't we trying to do the same thing by supporting a world that recognizes all people as equals? We're all fighting the same fight, if you look at it through a very vague and obscure perspective.
When I walk into a Chick-Fil-A and get my eight piece nugget meal with waffle fries, I don't walk back to the table thinking that I've donated to an anti-gay stance; I walk back to the table making fun of the cashier for saying "my pleasure." I spend the next fifteen minutes making sexual innuendos until the person I'm with reminds me that I'm 22 years old and that I need to stop. If I really cared about the underlying issues of my consumables, I would have stopped drinking Fanta years ago, as it was originally a German soda that was in production to replace Coke during World War II. By drinking Fanta, I'm not supporting the genocide of Jewish people, just like eating Chick-Fil-a does not support the prolonging of legalizing gay marriage.
In short, there aren't that many places in the world any more that you can be without some kind of combative argument going on. Sure, it sucks that a place that makes such delicious food has such a narrow minded stance on something so trivial to the rest of us, but that's kind of what America is about. You can be as intelligent or ignorant as you want to be, simply because that's your freedom. I go into gas stations all the time where people say some of the most ignorant things I've ever heard. I still need gas, so I still go there. And when money is running a little short, or I'm looking to quench my thirst for that orgasmic combination of honey mustard, barbecue, and a dollop of mayonnaise (that's right Chick-Fil-A... I know), I'm going to continue going to the place that provides it.
And for the record, if you want to really help push the Christian agenda and the gay rights agenda at the same time, let's maybe focus a little more on these little assholes that are being raised into the world that believe it's okay to target children as young as kindergarten and first grade based on their "sexual orientation." For the record, I thought that both men and women had penises up until I was in the sixth grade... that may explain a lot. Or hell, let's maybe look at these grown adults on the street that do the same thing... probably the same grown adults that teach their children to treat their peers like this. There are bigger fish to fry than boycotting or supporting a relatively second-rate restaurant chain when there are more active approaches we can be taking, dare I say... together, to fight wrong doing and prejudice in the world. If you'd like to talk about it more, let's go to Zaxby's. Not because they're pro or anti-gay rights, but because they have this amazing Tongue Torch sauce that you just have to try.

Not on Thesis Thursday

Every senior at my college is expected to complete a senior thesis. Most of the time, these projects are dreaded and feared for the three years leading up to it; for me, it was kind of like waiting on Christmas for way too long. I knew that my thesis experience would be magical, and it was. I had chosen the perfect advisor and later the perfect topic. I dedicated nearly an entire semester to writing six chapters of a novel, and there was no better circumstance that I could have. It was magical, with moments of absolute perversion and deception. All of my thesis meetings were on Friday, so I had the ritual of "Thesis Thursday."
I've had Obsessive Compulsive Disorder my entire life, and not the kind where "you have to have your pencil and paper straight on your desk." I'm talking, look into corners and count to eleven, and if you didn't do it in the correct order, you have to figure out some way to redo it before the person you're talking to thinks you're having an epileptic seizure. Part of that means that my routine is important, and it comes with a certain level of superstition. When I was little, if I didn't check the door four times, my mom was going to die in a car wreck. Even now, if I don't feel my away around the entire steering wheel, I imagine that I'll never get married. It's a horrible life, but ever so often, it can be helpful. On Thesis Thursday, I would have one Reeses, two bottle cherry Cokes, seven cigarettes throughout the night, and if I repeated that schedule every Thursday and wrote my ass off, then I would end up with an exemplary thesis. I'm sure that sounds petty, but if there was one award that I cared about in college, it was gaining exemplary thesis status.
The routine was all that more important on duty nights. As an RA in Carnegie, duty forbids you from leaving the building, let alone campus. If any part of my night was forsaken, the routine was thrown. I did everything in my power to ensure that my part of the deal was held up, and for nearly every night of my year long thesis process, it worked... so, imagine my surprise when my routine was foiled at the hand of... you (insert devious face akin to something you would see on a telenovela).

Scene: standard night of thesis writing, dimly lit room
Time: approximately 2:00am
Characters: me, roommate, roommate's girlfriend... thing.

I've never been the jealous type; I don't covet what other people have because most of the time, if I want something, I find a way to obtain it on my own terms. So, it never bothered me that my roommate was so persistent in having his girlfriend stay over. I didn't even mind occasionally hearing them have sexual intercourse. I was focused on my thesis. My characters. The plot. Sure, I found the groans and moans to be, at best, distracting, but you have your "screamers," as the kids put it, and your "WASPs." I was not one to judge on how vocal you should or should not be during some routine premarital sex. As I was rounding the two in the morning mark, I had realized that I had exhausted four cigarettes, the Reeses, but not a single cherry Coke. This was my boost or my Pokemon level up, if you will. I needed my cherry Coke like a boy needs a good southern girl, or air, or something else. Finish the simile to your liking, because even now, I can't seem to focus at the thought of opening up that 1970s model refrigerator to see NO CHERRY COKES. I began looking around the room, as if someone would be standing there empty handed. Nothing.
So, I walked into my roommates room, and there him and her lay. On his futon. At the foot of the futon, a garbage can containing two empty 20 ounce cherry Coke bottles. I stood over their bodies, my thoughts immoral. I was enraged, and though I'm going to clear up any sadistic suspicion of murder or assault, I can't say my thoughts were far from that extreme. I leaned over, whispering, Not on Thesis Thursday, bitches. I retreated back to my room, unable to leave for any more cherry Cokes. It was determined by the OCD gods: no exemplary thesis for me. Law had sequestered me there, because any more action than that eerie whisper would inevitably call for legal action... learned that the hard way sophomore year with an impromptu order of protection, but I digress.
I knew that I had to focus because my advisor expected pages, and in such a frazzled state, I hadn't come close to meeting my quota. Two hours later, most of that dedicated to Facebook, I returned back to the kitchen so that I could get into our bathroom. I opened the door, and there they stood: naked as a newborn. I had obviously caught them post-coital, or possibly on the way to bring shame and disgust to our shower. The gang was all there: penis, boobs, vagina. It was all that I could handle when I burst out, surely waking the rooms above and below me, Are you kidding me?! On Thesis Thursday?! They stood there, blankly, waiting on me to lunge forward or use my crafty RA powers to document them, but all I could do was go to my natural state. I held one finger out, waved it up and down their naked, unkempt bodies, and said, You need to fix this. Now. and I slammed the door.
The whole night was a disaster, I smoked at least nine cigarettes that night, didn't have a single cherry Coke, and I'm pretty sure I ate the remnants of a hamburger someone had left in the dormitory's lobby. I was a mess, so it was no surprise that I walked into my advisor's office the next day with an agenda: accept absolutely no fault for my lack of product. I opened her door and said, We have some things to talk about. I have four pages for you this week. My roommate had sex with his girlfriend all over the place last night, and he gave her my thesis Cokes. I'm sorry. As I continued to tell the story, all she could do was cover her mouth and listen. At the end of my rant, she took a sip of her coffee and sweetly said, We all have off weeks; it's really okay. I'm sorry, too. I don't think there was much more to be said. How can you punish someone who has obviously been deprived of not only two invaluable working necessities, but also his visual innocence?
I would go on to get an exemplary thesis; most people would say that this would disprove my theory that my OCD tendencies must be upheld for good things to happen, but to that, I have a retort. I think that those OCD gods, wherever and whomever they may be, looked down upon me that night and saw that I was in much deeper than I ever anticipated I would be. They pardoned me, kind of like a judge or lame duck Presidents, in the face of something much more grotesque and complicated than not upholding my compulsions. I will always be grateful for that, and I'm sure that if anyone learned anything that night, it was to always respect the sanctity of another man's carbonated beverages.

I Don't Need to See Your Sonogram

Tonight at work, I was walking toward the sink with a handful of dishes when my coworker stopped me mid stride and said Do you want to see my baby? If memory serves me correctly, she's a grand total of a month and a half pregnant, which means that her "baby" looks like the skimpiest sea monkey ever.  As far as Juno is concerned, the baby doesn't even have fingernails. I wasn't actually sure how to respond because honestly, I had no desire whatsoever to see her sonogram, but there it was staring me in the face; sonograms are supposed to require some kind of emotional reaction... like the Sarah McLachlan commercials. Maybe it's because I'm not a parent, but I have very little interest in seeing what your baby looks like while its inside you unless you have one of those creepy 3D shots or your baby is visibly rocking like 14 fingers.

I mean, as far as I know, this could be a child or a squirrel,
or an old school doppler radar map. I had some pinhole
photography that looked like this once.

It reminds me of last semester of when a girl in my class Cassie discovered she was pregnant. She found out on the same day that we all received our grades for our senior comprehensive exams. All of a sudden, it didn't matter at all that I had aced an 8 hour long test over four years of college; I was planning on how I could steal her baby. I was sure that it could be a candidate for the Antichrist, but if given to the right person (i.e. me) it would have a chance of being a productive member of society. Everyone was freaking out about the grades, and all I could do was stare at her. For the next couple weeks, she would come into class holding her back while lowering herself into her seat. I didn't have the heart to tell her that her actions were completely illogical, as the only thing she was carrying was a pocket of cells the size of her thumbnail... at best... so I just let her do it. She would excuse herself to pee, then she would go have a cigarette after class. The whole thing annoyed me, so I tried my best to avoid conversation about her or the baby. Finally, she cornered me on campus; I was in the midst of finishing all of my final projects when she asked the big, awkward question: Oh my gahhh, Justin! Do you wanna see my sonogram? I saw her pulling the papers out, and I was tired. I was tired and frustrated and maybe even slightly delusional as I blurted out, No, not really. She gave me pregnant woman eyes, though I was suspicious if there was actually any fetal matter inside of her to begin with. Her eyes were a hybrid of devastation and unbridled anger, Um, you don't want to see them? I figured that I had already screwed up. No reason to try to save myself now, Nope. I'm just not really interested. Maybe some other time. Or maybe not. Go big or go home, I suppose.

Early twenty year olds having babies are like seven year olds
having Tamagotchis. Only a certain percentage of them
are actually capable of keeping them alive.

In all honesty, it took her wedding pictures to convince me that there was something growing inside of her besides a lot of doughnuts. I thought she pulled a Baby Mama and printed off a picture of a squirrel sonogram and was flashing it to people in the same way that a 17 year old flashes a fake ID: just long enough for you to see that something exists in your hand, but not long enough to see that it's fake. Other than me blatantly stating that I didn't want to see her blastula, I was awfully nice to the girl. She ruined all further forced enthusiasm the day that she came at me in class. That was the day that I decided that I really, really needed to steal her baby. While humming the national anthem of Genovia from The Princess Diaries, one girl asked me... um, is that the Genovian national anthem? Proudly, I affirmed her suspicion. She responded through laughter, How many times have you seen that movie? I had figured it was somewhere around 7 or 8. Anne Hathaway and I are pretty tight. Completely uninvited into the conversation, Cassie responds, Is that the day that you decided that you liked boys, too? Honestly, the question didn't offend me as much as the fact that the phrasing of the question was embarrassingly vague. In terms of the question, which viewing are you talking about? The second, the fifth? Oh yeah, and homosexuality isn't an insult, but I knew I had to retort. My friend Kelly began to rise to verbally assault her, and I eventually said, Cassie, when did you get fat and try to pawn it off as a pregnancy? I guess I had been holding up all this resentment about her offering to show me her old school doppler radar map/squirrel/baby pictures. Cassie didn't say another word, and I haven't spoken to her much since that day in class. I don't think I could check out her lizard baby's pictures if I wanted to now.
So back to my coworker, I glanced over at her pictures and said, Oh, how adorable because I think sometimes expectant, unmarried mothers want that confidence, even if it's false, that they're babies won't come out with a cone head or absurdly wide set eyes. So I looked at her inkblot of a sonogram and then quickly walked on to the sink. I worry because Facebook seems to be telling me that babies are the new black. Everyone seems to be accessorizing with babies, and I love my accessories, but I just don't think that people our age are ready for so many babies, just like I think it took a special kind of seven year old to adequately take care of a Tamagotchi. But I suppose I can't control what it is that people do or not do, and that includes fornication. If I could, I would have stopped my roommate from having sex with his girlfriend on the couch a long time ago. But there is one thing I can control: looking at that really weird black and white picture that you claim at two months to be an actual baby. This isn't a Gerber commercial; this is poor, premature photography that I don't know if I'm holding right side up.

Mean Girls Don't Live in Singlewides

The day that it was announced that I would be valedictorian of my high school graduating class, along with Sarah, I specifically remember Lindsay looking around in astonishment and whispering to the girl next to her But his dad didn't even graduate high school. The secret was announced loudly enough that it seemed to echo across our nearly silent AP English class, and I started watching people turn to me waiting for my reaction. Unsure of what to do, I just kind of sat there... familiar with these kind of statements. I had heard them since I had met Lindsay all the way back in elementary school. Senior year was almost over, and there really wasn't much left to say to anyone in the class: my best friend who transferred in from D.C. wrote in my yearbook, Thank you for making this school bearable and showing me that even in this cesspool of ignorance and inbreeding there is hope of intelligence and kindness. What he didn't understand is that for years on end, I was considered one of the weird sources of ignorance and inbreeding that somehow managed to knife my way in or bought off some of the teachers with some meth we made at home the night before. After all, my dad didn't graduate from high school, and without a high school degree, the only skill you can could lend yourself to is mixing bathroom chemicals together for human consumption. But of course, that would have required my dad to have made meth, or even know where to start. Instead, he just did construction, which seemed a lot safer on the up and up.

Chillin' in the singlewide.

In reality, I had been subjected to Lindsay's snide, yet somehow almost sympathetic, comments for years. When I wasn't throwing up as an elementary school student, I was usually conversing with the teachers. I had some kind of weird connection to adults, and I really liked having conversations with them more than anyone else. In second grade, I was trying desperately to explain to one of the teachers that I was getting ready to move. She asked where I was moving to. No, we're not leaving where I live; we're just changing houses. All of the kids around us seemed to stop; it didn't make sense to them. When my teacher told me that if you don't leave your house, you're not really moving, I knew that I had to explain it all better. No! I am moving. They're taking the house that we have now, the one on wheels, and they're going to roll it into our back yard. Then they're going to bring the new house and put it where the old one was. Then we're going to take our stuff and put it in the new house, then that house will be gone! I was so pleased with myself; I had articulated it perfectly, so there was no reason that they wouldn't accept me. Everyone loved the guy that moved, kind of like how you were guaranteed popularity if you had a cast or got braces. But I was wrong; I immediately became trailer boy, and the one person who would never forget that was Lindsay.

After a while, most people had seemed to forgotten. I attempted to make my way up the ranks of high school, and eventually I found myself in the honors and Advanced Placement classes. In a surprise turn of events, I became a contender for valedictorian. The AP class was comprised mainly of kids from the subdivisions; however, in every class there seemed to be a couple ambassadors of sorts that represented the country side of South Knoxville and the city side. Considering I practically lived in Seymour, I would be the country representative, and Josh Wesley would be the city rep. I'm actually pretty confident Josh lived in a subdivision area, but he was black, so it's only logical to consider him the city representative, right? No one dared draw attention to Josh's race, partly because that kind of language at our high school was asking for a lot of issues we all hoped to keep at bay, and partly because Josh was literally one of the nicest human beings I've ever met in my life. So instead, it made more sense to draw attention to the lesser known prejudice of socio-economic status. While on yearbook staff, my friend Alex told me that I should go and check my GPA with the principal. It seemed really unnecessary, but I knew that the yearbook staff was privy to information the rest of us were not, so I obliged.

There's Wendell. Even with his lack of high school diploma, the
obvious prerequisite for having children, he managed to raise
me without dropping me, beating me, or blowing me up in a meth
lab fire.

After I asked about my GPA, it was noted that one of my AP classes didn't count. After doing the math by hand, I convinced my principal and assistant principal that my GPA that had been sent off to colleges was actually wrong. I would later find out that one of the other girl's contending for valedictorian had her mom call in and demand that AP art not be given the additional credit value. Suddenly, Lindsay's remarks kind of made sense. I'm not saying that Lindsay was the one that requested the class depreciation because most of the girls I was going up against thought with one singular mind; it honestly could have been any of them. But the evidence was clear: having me be valedictorian was akin to having Sarah Palin become our country's president or having Michael Vick represent the ASPCA. There was no room on the graduation stage for such trash, and all Lindsay was guilty of was being a social custodian.

I find it ironic that as I'm writing this, Mean Girls is playing in the background on ABC Family... and not just because there's actual quality programming on ABC Family for once. It's ironic because in retrospect, those kind of people really do exist. On our graduation day, Sarah gave a speech about something... maybe, stars? I couldn't really focus because I was about to give my own speech in front of what seemed like a gajillion people, and I couldn't get past the fact that I looked like a really sketchy looking lamp shade in my graduation gown. After Sarah, I gave my speech to a surprisingly receptive crowd. Lindsay, our salutatorian, would follow. Regardless of what people say or do, I really have no desire to see them fail. Sure, she had said a lot of mean things, but I didn't want to see her go through what happened next. I'll paraphrase:

You know, the next step of our life is going to be more complicated than ever. Decisions aren't just whether you should have Lucky Charms or Cocoa Puffs...

Silence. Come on girl, pull it together.

...Cocoa Puffs... she shuffled her papers. ...and Cocoa Puffs... She was frozen. The girl that had attempted to socially dominate our entire class for years on end had frozen before us; it was my "Regina-gets-hit-by-a-bus-moment," but I couldn't seem to enjoy it. We were all hanging on Cocoa Puffs and years of elitism, and she wasn't giving us any more. After a thirty or forty second Cocoa Puff cliff hanger, she returned and gave what I still believe was an abbreviated version of her speech. We all crossed the stage and eventually threw our hats into the air. Mine landed in the flower arrangement in front of Lindsay and our principal scoffed at her, believing that she was the one that threw up. Afterwards, I quickly picked it up and haven't spoken to Lindsay since.

A lot of my friends are still initially surprised when they come and visit my house because it is in fact, still, a doublewide. Even now, sometimes I try to explain that it doesn't move anymore and if we do in fact want it gone, we'll have to tear it down. I'm not sure what it is that makes people believe that I would live elsewhere, but I've never minded the house I live in or that my dad didn't graduate from high school. Actually, sometimes I miss it because it used to make me feel like I had to overcome an image and work harder than everyone else. As for Lindsay, I imagine that she's somewhere in the world inflicting some kind of hellish elitism over some other trailer kid, and for that kid, I apologize on her behalf. She doesn't mean any harm; her designer clothes are impervious to any kind of sincerity or sympathy and that's simply not her fault. In the end, those kind of things don't matter. I will continue on in search of further education and success, and she will have all the money in the world to buy as many Cocoa Puffs... and Cocoa Puffs... as her heart desires.

Virga

virga (vur-guh) noun: streaks of water drops or ice particles falling out of a cloud and evaporating before reaching the ground


A lot of people died in my life before I could even comprehend what death really was. That's the burden of having parents born to exceptionally older parents. Funerals were nearly commonplace in my life, and even though it hurt to lose people that I had grown up with, I was oddly okay with it all. Everyone that was dying was old. They had lived these event filled lives and had these children and passed on all of these stories they had created. Their funerals were heavily attended, and everyone that was there had some story to tell me about any decade of their life I was curious about. These deaths were not terrible things; they were memorials to people that had an amazing impact on the lives of those blessed to be around them. That's why when my aunt and uncle recently passed away within just a couple months of each other, I didn't think too much about it. They were old and had lived. They generated from this cloud above us, fallen from the heavens, and had splashed onto the ground. We had noticed their descent.

I wasn't surprised or startled by death until I was around nine years old. On a routine Friday night trip to pick up Burger King for our family, we were driving home in some ugly green car that was all of 500 or so dollars. The engine was extremely loud, and it embarrassed me to even be seen it it, but the brakes on my mom's Crown Victoria had gone out. As we were coming up Chapman Highway, we saw one car try to shoot across the traffic as another car crashed into its side. Mom slammed on the brakes, immediately stopping the car. The cars had joined together and starting sliding toward us. The car beside us didn't brake as soon, slamming into the wreck stopping the cars from moving any further. Before the whole event was finished, five cars were in a mound, some turned over. Mom pulled to the side of the road and put the car in park; she looked at me and told me to stay inside and not to look. I watched her run toward the highway, and I couldn't keep my eyes from glancing over. I saw a man about my dad's age hanging out the driver window, bleeding. He was screaming for help, and even at nine years old, I knew that he wasn't going to live. Shortly after, Mom came back to the car and said she couldn't leave me behind like that. We drove home, and I spent two hours on the couch by myself; I didn't even eat Burger King that night. I later heard that two people died in that wreck, and I thought about the man who probably was in his late thirties at the time: virga. And at such a young age, I wondered how it was that we had ended up with a car, just days before, that had brakes. How was it that we stopped before the accident, and who exactly was the man in that vehicle that stopped that screaming mess of jagged metal from sliding into us?

A couple years later, I was sitting on my couch watching The Price is Right. It was the first summer that Casey and I had been allowed to stay home by ourselves. Throughout the summer, I would be picked up by the preacher's wife so that I could hang out at their house with their daughters. In retrospect, there weren't a lot of things that I liked about attending the church that I did. Most of the people there were judgmental and snide. I didn't feel comfortable there, but I did love the preacher. Corey had been the pastor of the church when I decided to publicly confess my love to the Lord. He eventually convinced my dad to let my brother and I have a cat, and after even more work, convinced him to come to church too. Corey was loved in our house; he was so much bigger than I imagined life could be. The day I got the call that the jack his van was on had slipped, I nearly spilled my cereal right in the middle of an installment of "Plinko." If God couldn't protect a preacher, who exactly would he protect? Death had taken on quite the jaded perspective; it seemed to me that there was no explanation or science behind the length of human life. And at times, it seemed to me that maybe there wasn't a God at all.

I hadn't thought much about the wreck or Corey since I was little; as I child, I tended to mull over things longer than other kids my age, and without another answer, I chocked it all up to fate or God's plan or something that was so much out of my control that it was frivolous to try and answer it. Death continued to be kind of commonplace growing up, as I watched more and more people pass away. Always of old age, but pass away nonetheless. I began to count people at funerals that I had never met before. The stories seemed to matter less because what is a life essentially lived the same as all the others? That's not to say that all life isn't important, but on the sound of a tin roof, it's hard to distinguish one drop from the other. They all plink and pop the same way, making this harmonious noise that provide the comfort necessary to rock me gently to sleep at night.

The memory of the wreck had all but faded until about a year ago. On a standard trip to Coulter's Bridge in Maryville, my friends and I had embarked on a swimming day. The air was muggy and thick, and at times, it almost seemed that the water was the only salvation from the thick blanket of air that sequestered us to our air conditioned rooms. Not long after we had arrived, a man asked us if we knew how to swim because they believed another man was drowning in the river. A friend and I dove in, searching the water for some kind of body. We didn't know what we were looking for, and in all honesty, I didn't want to be the one to find him. Eventually, another swimmer found his body, and it was me that drug him from the water onto the bank. No one else was strong enough, and just like that, I found myself in my own mom's position; my brother and I were raised to try and do the best we could for other's. I could carry the most weight, so I drug this rag doll of a man from the depths of the river to the rescue squad that would pronounce him dead at 27. His name was Hanin.

I've lived on the outskirts of Knoxville my entire life, and sometimes, on rainy nights, I go out on our back porch and listen to the rain on our tin roof. As my weeks left in Tennessee wind down, I find myself getting up in the middle of the night on stormy evenings so that I can sneak out and catch every last thunderstorm that East Tennessee has to offer. Most of the time, I smoke a couple cigarettes and watch the smoke float up and around the porch ceiling toward the rain falling down. I like to imagine that it can make it all the way up to the virga: meeting it in the middle before those water droplets dissipate into the atmosphere. And then I think about the man in the car that day, and I think of Hanin. I wonder what their lives would have been like if they had lived on until their droplets found the ground like most of our's eventually will. I've never found virga to be fair because it's as if saying that some droplets are more important or stronger than the rest. All rain should be allowed to fall, but alas, it doesn't. Before I go back inside to climb in bed, I make sure to remind myself that I am indeed mortal. Young people for generations have faced the invincibility complex, oftentimes forgetting that we are subject to be deprived of life at any moment.

And a couple nights ago, as the valley has been getting hit nightly by rain, I think I came to some kind of revelation. I've focused so much on this virga: this overlooked existence that is often forgotten because it never is seen by the eye. I'm guilty of doing the same thing to the drops that hit the ground that others do to the drops that don't. I reached my hand out from under the tin roof, and I caught a couple drops in my palm and thanked whomever is up there for giving them the opportunity to splash onto the Earth.

I would like to dedicate this post to poet, Claudia Emerson, who introduced me to this word that has been on my mind for months. Whether I end up being rain or simply virga, I hope my words inspire as many people as her's have.

Pudding Tears

It takes a lot of work to be me. A lot of caffeine, and if it were legal, I'd probably dabble in narcotics. I realized it today at work; when in the public eye of society, I can be unusually positive... almost optimistic to a fault. I can essentially be called ugly and will respond with, "But at least I'm alive!" It's obnoxious, but it's what people have come to expect out of me. That's why every morning before I go to class or work, I drink a Monster energy drink and eat at least two Little Debbie cakes. The sugar delivers me to my audience in a way that they would want. I work for everyone in my life, and they'd be devastated to know the thoughts that circulate through my head as I wear a nearly creepy smile on my face. The thoughts are mean. Vindictive. Sometimes illegal. And the worse the thought, the bigger the smile, until I look nearly Asian because I'm smiling so hard that my eyes are squinted closed. Don't thank me for my upbeat behavior. Thank the bottling company that makes Monster. Before I got out of the car this morning, I sang to my Monster... Let me give your heart a break, let me give your heart a break, there's just so much you can take. And as I sang, I began to think about the semester that I drank so many Monsters that I was nearly confident that my heart would explode. That's how I anticipate my death will happen: caffeine induced accidental suicide. I imagine that it will be in the next four months, but the closest I've gotten yet was sophomore year.

Sophomore spring semester was my Marissa semester.

Sophomore year of college was a rough time for everyone. I was trying to balance about seven different major life events at once, and in the midst of it, trying to be more and more personable with each passing day. I was juggling a life of about seventeen different student organizations, the aftermath of my parents' recent marriage debacle, an unrequited love that could never be matched, keeping the biggest secret of my life, being an RA, 16 hours of class, pledging for a fraternity, and the dissolving of my close friend group. In response, I just kept drinking more and more energy drinks. I was doing fine for a while, but then I started to crack. My grades began slipping, and I eventually started to give up on everything. One of my favorite fall-outs was the day that I skipped all my classes to go to a private Ingrid Michaelson concert. I'm sure that sounds a lot less rebellious than I thought it was, but you don't understand. She's so complex and different, like me, so skipping class and meetings to see her was essentially the most badass thing that I could think of. When I was confronted by a staff member about skipping the entire day and what would later be referred to as my Dale Earnhardt semester (I was on top of my game, then I crashed hard in the turn), I responded, Okay. So? What are you going to do? Kick me out? Not my finest moment.
I could see myself deteriorating. I was spinning out of control, kind of like Marissa on The O.C. Actually, it's pretty much exactly like season two Marissa. The pseudo-bisexual relationship, the dabbling in drugs, the complete dismissal of authority and everything that mattered in life. One could even say that the events at the end of the semester were somewhat similar to her shooting Trey. Nothing was making sense anymore; no one understood me, but I looked fantastic throughout the entire year. Marissa would have been proud, but I'm not sure anyone else was.

If you really need to deal with life, take a
cup of refrigerated Swiss Miss. Add chocolate
covered nuts to it. Eat it and cry baby. Cry all
you want. You deserve it.

I remember the day that it all came crashing down, or at least one of them. I like to refer to it as "The Pudding Disaster of 2010." I was in the middle of my pledging process during Signature Week; it may be one of the most hellish things I've ever been through, because like most fraternities, it requires you to chase down your future brothers and do mostly pointless tasks for their approval. At the time, I was also running for Student Body President, regardless of my recent apathy for student organizations... actually, apathy for my life all together. I had just gotten the news that I had been elected, and I came back to campus from a fraternity meeting; it was super humid that day... one of those days that you can feel the moisture suffocating you, Othello style. Like most days during the week, I went into my boss, Aja's, apartment and plopped down on the couch. Most of the time, I stared blankly at the television or took a nap... which in retrospect was probably inappropriate, but whatevs. But on this day, the air condition was out in her living room, so I sat there recently anointed successful college politician and DKE brother, and Aja appeared from her kitchen. You want a pudding? All I could do was nod my head.
I had spent most of the semester with a giant knot in my throat, hoping at some point, I could muster up enough saline to cry, but alas... it hadn't happened. She handed me the pudding, and I put the first spoonful in my mouth and immediately looked up at her with tears in my eyes. All I could say is This pudding is so cold. And then I cried. And I kept crying. And I'm pretty sure I cried that night for almost two hours. The energy drinks and caffeine and everything else had ran out, and all I had left was pudding. In between heavy cries and crying hiccups, I would eat another cup of pudding until Aja ran out. I'm not sure what happened, but like most humans... it wasn't my fault. I still maintain that theory, and I refuse to admit that maybe... just maybe... I had let myself get out of control.
Eventually, I replaced the energy drinks with cigarettes, and when people tell me how expensive they are or how they give you cancer, I've trained myself to smile and say I know, it's a bad habit. But the reason that I puff, puff is because of the people in my life. Look at what they've done to me. They make me smoke a cigarette like an emphysema patient gasping for oxygen, which is kind of ironic because that's kind of where I'm heading. But we all have our roles; I just happen to be the eternal optimist running on excessive amounts of B12 vitamin boosts and nicotine. And in private, I come out of the pudding closet and cry myself to death while watching the episode of Grey's Anatomy when Denny dies. It doesn't make me less of a man; it makes life a little more bearable, you know?

Being a Socialite: The Legend of Faux Hawk and Biggins

If there's one thing I pride myself on, it's party etiquette. I can't help it that I acquired my own unique set of social skills early on, and I'm kind of a special light when it comes to social outings. Most of the time, I like to entertain and only drink so much that I may not be inhibited in my entertaining duties. In the social event world, I'm a bit of a Betty Draper. Not fat, angsty Betty from season 5, but rather season 1 Betty that shot at the neighbor's pigeons... the Betty we were all rooting for. I've hosted a decent number of successful soirees in my day, and in my own mind, I like to think that I'm a bit of a legend. And imagine my surprise when I go to a social event, and I have to deal with those kind of people. I'm not talking about the standard kind of party-killers that most Southern gentlemen like myself fear: the homosexuals, the African Americans, etc. I'm a 21st century kind of host; I expect these kind of roadblocks. No, I'm talking about partygoers without manners... an issue that I've never personally faced. I suppose all of this would make more sense if I got to the root of the matter: the real story.
One evening during my college's January Term, colloquially known as "J-Term," further colloquially named "Play Term," there was an off campus event that I was invited to. I wasn't feeling up to par that night and didn't really want to attend, but I've always had an unbridled fear that if I skip going to a party, eventually I'll stop getting invited. Being a seasoned socialite, I couldn't imagine the thought. If I never got invited to another party, class itself would come to be obsolete in my friend circle. I had an image to maintain. Knowing that my one and only class didn't begin until 1:00 the next day, I decided to attend. My friend, Patrice, and I had a plan. Thirty minutes: in and out. We'd say hello, make sure that people had noted our presence, and then we were out. There was a movie night planned; all the party should have been was a preliminary pit stop on our way to a Disney movie night. However, after a couple cups of hunch punch (a disastrous mixture of grain alcohol and cheap Gatorade), I had lost Patrice. I agreed to drive, so there was no hunch punch in my future. I saw Patrice across the room, held up my wrist and tapped it, and watched Patrice shake her head with a smile on her face and run out the door.
The rest of my night could be likened to an episode of Where in the World is Carmen SanDiego because as small as the apartment was, she was no where to be found. Having seen Patrice on hunch punch before, I knew there was only so much time she had left before her insulin drained dry or she passed out somewhere, but my fear was that if she wasn't in the apartment, the location of her demise could practically be anywhere. Having seen some of my less than formidable male-peers, a passed out girl is essentially the same as a girl saying "sure, I'd love to hook up tonight." I stopped being a socialite and started being a dad. I needed to find Patrice, and it needed to be fast. But, like a true socialite, I can only oppress my social tact for so long.
I began to get more and more stressed out and my fear of not finding her quickly turned into annoyance; the party began to transform to a gathering of freshmen and sophomores who had no idea how to drink properly. And then there was me, without a drop of alcohol in my system. After failing to successfully reach the front door to search outside, I made my way to the back entrance when I was nearly knocked down by the door. The time had come: the return of the perfect socialite. A rather rotund sophomore and her flamboyant freshman counterpart burst from the entrance, smelling like they had already dipped into the finest bottle of Takka their combined nine dollars could buy. They acted as if they were Beyonce and Jay-Z, while appearing more like Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown... from the later years. Regardless, I responded, Hey guys. How are you? Faux hawk looked me up and down, pursed his lips together and laughed in my general direction.
Now, before we continue, let me explain that in socialite mode, no one, and I repeat no one, is allowed to give me the up and down. I'm a social rock star. And in the now obsolete world of class rank, I was a senior and these were underclassmen. Ignore the fact that those standings mean absolutely nothing in the real world, but in the world of college party-going, it carries a lot of weight. Without being conceited or arrogant (or redundant, apparently), running into a senior with a door (no matter how rude) is a privilege. Embark on it.
So, Biggins and Faux Hawk began to walk past me, and I had reached my limit. Without any kind of tact or previous thought, I spun around and yelled "HEY!" They didn't turn around; I had to do it. "Biggins! Faux Hawk!" That got their attention. "Party etiquette, please!" The room turned around and apparently saw the hatred in my eyes. I'm usually not one to remark on someone's weight or absolutely cliched and predictable hairstyle, but I'm also not one to run into people with doors. Kind of like corporal punishment or starving your children for a couple nights, sometimes it's appropriate to make an example out of common, careless rule breakers. I continued out the door, searching for Patrice and ended up coming back inside, making my way to the front door before it came flying open. The man on the other side screamed, "Where the f-ck is she?" and then I vaguely remember falling to the floor.
I can only imagine that the whole event must have been pretty rich for Biggins and Faux Hawk, in the same way that all those 1960s housewives would have loved to have seen Betty get clocked by a flying door with an abrasive, possibly abusive, man on the other end. The rest of the story has been pieced together by second hand accounts. Apparently, even on the ground, I had some pretty hilarious commentary, and I soon after found Patrice. I vaguely remember her singing "I Love You Like a Love Song" through tears on the way home. As for the rest of the night, I have no recollection as to what happened. I ended my night with a concussion and a bruised reputation as the premier socialite.
Since the event, I easily regained my title as esteemed party-goer, with more classy interactions than I can count. I've even had interaction with both Faux Hawk and Biggins; sadly, I can't say that either have improved. Actually, the interactions ended more disastrously than the original one. What I'm trying to say is that being a socialite is hard. If you've ever watched Gossip Girl and thought that it was overwrought and way too dramatic, it's not. Most people don't understand the trials and tribulations that people like Serena, Betty Draper, and myself go through. People expect us to be perfect, and in most situations, we are. But you can't help it when you get slammed to the ground by a stray door, and you can't help that every once in a while, you have a Biggins or Faux Hawk show up at an otherwise successful gathering.