Questionable Parenting

I've thought about what my children will be like in the future, and I anticipate... well... that they will be little assholes. And I love it. I've imagined that I will train them like little animals to do things and say things that will make them irresistible to the public. I'll pull them out at parties and make them tell jokes to guests before ushering them back to their room to stay until I need them again. At least they'll know that they have a purpose, which I think is important to children. I can't begin to explain how important those first years of life are, especially now that I'm older because the things that my parents told and did to me really helped shape me into the driven, anxious, neurotic person that I am today. Actually, I think my parents did a lot of stuff just for entertainment sake, and now I'm hands down one of the most complex, potentially screwed up people that I know.
That's not to say they didn't love me though--I could be one of those kids who didn't get hugged as a child, and let's be honest, that's the not fun kind of screwed up. I'm not afraid of affectionate touch or base-level commitment. I'm just generally afraid of any kind of sexual interaction, the concept of aging, and a general distrust of doing favors for other people. Other than that, I'm pretty solid on the up and up, which considering what kind of money my friends are going to make for future therapists, I consider that a success. But that doesn't change the fact that my parents lied to me: actually, my parents lied to me a lot... and Wendell and Kathy, if you're reading this, I want you to know I know. I also want you to know that I know you know I know. This isn't for us: this is so everyone else knows.
I'm sure it all started with the best of intentions, as most habits do. When my mamaw died when I was six, I was terrified of death and the prospect of people whom I loved meeting their maker. I also really excelled at English as a child, not so much math. So when my mom's birthday came around, she told me that she was 32. And then the next year, she told me that she was 32 again. She continued to tell me she was 32 until I was eleven years old; eventually, I put the pieces together and come to realize that I had ultimately been lied to over and over. My mom instantly went from being 32 to 38, and though I guess I understood the sentiment behind it, all of a sudden, I had missed out on six years of my mom's life. Kathy had been steadily aging after all, and it was devastating because I wasn't really there for any of it. I was living all "my mom is consistently 32," when in actuality, she was getting older and older just like me.
But most of my mom's lies were to protect me, and in the grand scheme of things, I guess that makes sense. Mothers are supposed to do that, especially with their sons. Fathers, on the other hand, I have no idea what the hell they're supposed to be doing. No lie that my dad ever told me was anything but some kind of weird thing that he had made up in his head to terrify me. From the time I was little, he would pick up animals that he had killed and told me they had come back to life, and if the animal was small enough, he'd pick the entire thing up and come after me with it. And in all fairness, it's not like no one got enjoyment out of it--he loved it. But then there's me, thinking that all of these animals were just chilling out underneath my bed gunning for me in the middle of the night. That's why I started trying to make friends with all the animals, as written about in: Wendell Shot All My Friends.
As scarring as all the lies may have been, I think the problem was that my parents never teamed up to discuss what lies they were telling me. My dad sat me down one day as just a wee little child and explained to me about what puberty was. He told me that eventually, my penis would begin to grow and it would grow all the way down to my ankle; that's the reason that all men wear pants. Being the cunning child I was, I asked him about the men I had seen wearing shorts before, and he told me, "That's when you have to wrap it around your leg, and it hurts. A lot." And his logic had me for a while. I would go and check my penis every day to make sure the process hadn't started. I liked shorts. I didn't want to give them up. But a couple months later, my mom told me that if I ever had sex before I was forty, my penis would actually fall off. Again, I think she did that to scare me/protect me, but what she didn't realize is that she had given me a solution--not a threat. All I had to do was figure out what sex was, do it once, then boom: I could wear shorts all the time.
Eventually, I found out that both of my parents were lying: sex didn't make it fall off and as much as my guy friends like to believe that their... stuff... may be down to their ankle, I haven't met anyone who can prove such a claim. The lies continued for most of my childhood, and I began to be able to distinguish what the truth was, what things my parents would say just to protect me, and what my dad just wanted me to believe so that he could be entertained. But the one thing I never really got the hang of is the idea of lying by omission. One day when I was visiting from college, my mom was walking out the door, and I asked her where she was going. She said, "Oh, just down to the gas station. Be right back." I chased her out the door and said, "I'll go with you! I'll grab my keys." She responded, "Don't worry about it! I'll be right back." It didn't make sense because my mom hates being alone as much as I do, so something wasn't adding up. After a little more banter, I forced myself into the situation, and we were heading down the road.
My mom told me to turn behind this sketchy bar, and I said, "This isn't the gas station." She said, "Yeah, I know. I didn't want to tell you. We're picking up your dad's moonshine." Sweet. Illegal alcohol transactions are my favorite. So I pulled into this gravel driveway leading to this yellow painted cinderblock wall with a very shady looking back porch. A woman came out of the back with cutoff jean shorts and not a single tooth in her head. She said, "Pahp ya trunk," and placed a cardboard box into the back. She came up to my window and said, "Ya daddy's already paid," and smiled a toothless grin that closed her eyes. At this point, I felt like all decorum was out the window, so I turned to my mom and said, "Why the hell did you not tell me we were coming to pick up moonshine? I feel like that's something you tell someone before I pull into Popcorn Sutton's house." She said, "That's why I was trying to get out of there by myself. Some things are just better left unsaid, Justin."
And I guess she's right. The older I've gotten, I've come to terms with the fact that some things are better left unsaid, and sure... my parents did some weird stuff to me and Casey as kids. The lies were absolutely absurd sometimes, but in the end, I think they were trying to protect us from a lot of the potential negatives of life... kind of like when we asked why our neighbors had named their German Shepherds Hydro and Codone and my dad said, "Oh that's a seventies band." I guess that we got away from childhood pretty clean and relatively unharmed, especially in comparison to some of our other peers. And you know, I'm not going to act like I'm not excited about doing the same things to my kids.

Parisian Pills and Bags of Tea

So, I'm a generally nervous person with a lot of feelings. I believe Kelly Clarkson wrote a song about me once in which she said for her gentleman friend to keep his hand in her hand, his heart on his sleeve. That line... that's me. It's always nice to be the sensitive guy because lady friends naturally gravitate toward you and think that you're keen without being intimidating. Can I bench press you over my head? Probably not, but damn it, I'll remember your middle name and the kind of Chinese take out you like, and I think that probably counts for something. But the issue is that it ultimately does not translate well in boy world, and that's unfortunate. It's hard translating all of those feelings into short, declarative sentences, and then just leaving it there--so I eat a lot of those feelings and show up at high school trust falls.
And I'm sure that this topic seems tired: we get it, Justin. You don't jive well with your own gender. The horse is dead, put the stick down. No, no children. This is not your typical social awkwardness story. This is the story about how I used pills to make friends, in Paris nonetheless.
The whole thing started in high school when we were presented with the opportunity to go to Paris with the rich high school about an hour away. Us poor South Knoxville kids were like, Yeah, we've been to Paris, Tennessee. It's not as great as it sounds, but apparently this was the real thing... like, Paris, France. So I asked my parents that if I could somehow manage to foot half of the 2,000 bill, could I go. They agreed, and naturally, as a really undisciplined fifteen year old, I think I managed to save up about 600 dollars. Because I'm adorable, we managed to come up with most of the rest, and in a last minute attempt, my dad decided to throw a charity fishing tournament to help all of us make the rest of the money. The fishing tournament only got us about seventeen dollars each, but whatevs. At the end of the day, we all managed getting our money in on time, and we were really going... to Paris.
So we were all excited until I found out the rooming situation. There were only three boys going, so we would automatically be rooming together... in a room... with two beds. Yes, the idea made me uncomfortable, but I could handle it. It wasn't until one of the guys that I was rooming with started to talk about it that I got truly nervous. He told me that we were purposefully going to sleep in the same bed and that he was going to sleep naked and one night, he was going to tea bag me. Oh, you don't know what that means? Go look it up on Urban Dictionary. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you might throw up a little in your mouth. I know I did. I kept all the taunts to myself, too embarrassed to bring it up in fear of what people might say. There were too many things that could result from it... too many ramifications. I couldn't sleep for weeks; there were too many things worrying my mind:
a) Leviticus
b) my general distaste for the human form
c) the fear of suffocation
d) or any combination of the above
So I went around terrified of Andrew, trying to figure out a way to not find myself naked in bed with him... or dare I say, teabagged. My parents essentially told me that they didn't care if I could possibly get teabagged. We already paid for the trip, so I pretty much had to go. I didn't want to tell the teacher because that was too predicable. Everyone would expect it, and it would put an even bigger damper on the trip before it began, so I just tried to keep my composure. I practiced sleeping on my face in hopes that maybe I could avoid the teabagging and/or smother myself at my own hand. The time finally came, and I boarded the plan with nude Andrew and my only hope for salvation: my other roommate, Scott.

Before then, I had never really been away from home, and on top of the pending sexual assault I was facing, I wasn't sure how to handle the idea of being away for an extended period of time. So as the plane was taking off, I took a couple of Dramamine to help me fall asleep. Ironically, the entire situation flipped when we got to Europe. Knowing that I was missing home, Andrew became my go to, and in the worst moments he would talk me down. After a couple of days, I began to let my guard down, and the threats of tea bagging (no, seriously, if you don't know what it is, you need to look it up) decreased with each day.
But with one threat gone, another one arose. Because of my regular anxious nature, in addition to my homesickness, I decided to ration my Dramamine out so that I had enough for each night. After our third night in France, Scott asked Andrew and I if we would sit down with him for a talk. He seemed pretty intense about the situation, so we obliged. After stumbling around his topic of conversation, he finally said, Justin, you really need to stop taking those pills. This could get out of hand quickly. He began to tell us a story about his friend who got addicted to pain killers and eventually was hospitalized with his addiction to prescription meds. The room fell silent, and Andrew and I exchanged glances... not really knowing what to say. After a while I looked at Scott, with pills still in hand, and said, Scott, I'm so sorry. I picked up the bottle and opened it. I didn't know, I won't do it, and I started to slide the pills back in the bottle... and then I slammed them into my mouth and swallowed them, screaming out, I CAN'T STOP MYSELF!!
And Scott and I haven't really talked to each other since. But the important part of this story is that I learned something that I have to remind myself of often: when in a room full of boys, it's always best to make fun of the person with the most emotions... wait, no. That's probably bad. In reality, I think what it boils down to is that when in Rome, sometimes you just have to do as the Romans do. Apparently it is (or was in high school) fun to threaten people of your own gender with sexual advances while they're sleeping. I never really understood it, nor did I attempt to joke about it, but I did learn other things, I guess. Like "when in Paris, pop low doses of sleeping pills." At least one person will laugh for an hour, and that's what we're going for in the end, right?

Unmaking Plans

I'd finally had enough of chasing after a ghost who did not want to be seen.- Looking for Alaska

As a freshman in high school, I told my college counselor that I wanted to go to seminary at Duke University. My plans, because I was so entangled in the web of Evangelicism and after-church dinners, was to join the ranks of the religious right and eventually become a youth pastor in a local church in Knoxville. But as I was sitting on my couch in Arlington last night as a graduate student in PR at Georgetown University, it hit me for the first time in my life that seminary at Duke was never going to happen. At some point in my life, those plans had changed, and no matter the age, I don't think that's something we're ever really prepared for... the changing of plans, that is.
But even though the Baptist church beat the desire to bring the message of Christ to pre-pubsecent children, the core of my plan remained the same: I loved the idea of communicating good news to people, and it's ultimately what prevailed when I chose public relations--but everything else, well... that didn't happen. It didn't change what I said to people up until my senior year of high school though. I continued to tell people that I would become a youth minister because that's what I had set out to do, and similarly, I told people in college that I would be a lawyer up until my senior year, when I affirmed for once that I was actually going into public relations instead. There's something commendable about sticking to your plan, even if your plan isn't what you originally intended. I have a habit of choosing a goal and refusing to back away from it, no matter how bad of an idea it ends up being.
But I recently had a friend tell me, If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans, which I'm sure comes from another source before that. And as I was sitting on my couch, considering how painfully obvious that it was that I had not gone to Duke for seminary, I found myself talking to Rebecca Neely on Facebook chat; for those of you unfamiliar with our background, Rebecca is a girl who took out a restraining order on me my sophomore year. The details are too long to explain in a paragraph, so I'll promise it as a blog, as I have before. But the important part of the story is that the restraining order did not go through, and Rebecca and I silently vowed never to talk to each other again. It was our plan, because that's what you do when you take out a restraining order/have a restraining order taken out against you. However, there she was asking me about how to overcome the fact that the guy she was talking to a guy liked Nickelback... and three years later, I was talking to her as if it had all never happened.
All of these seemingly unrelated anecdotes all dial back to one common denominator: at one point, I had a plan for my life, and even though I love my life and most of the details that help make it mine, very little of what I had planned out for myself ten years, or even five years, ago ever came close to being true. In having to realize that, I've also tried to become a little more relaxed in how life goes. I like to tell people I'm spontaneous, but at the end of the day, I'm not. It's similar to the way that I tell people that I really like hummus, then leave it in the fridge for three months or like when I tell people that I love to go out to the club, and then I stand near the bar taking visual inventory on who is going to eventually end their night with their head in the trash can. I'm a planner, and it's painful because life is not something that you plan. People and events and goals: they're not plan-able things, and when you attempt to put them in a box, I feel like the results are similar to putting my cat in a car carrier for an 9 hour car ride. You hear a lot of weird noises, and eventually, you just have to let the cat out.
And of that list of things, the most difficult part of life is making life work with other people. We are not a species that is easy to get along with, and we do not happen to come together that often. That's why I've always been so fascinated, and yes, jealous, of people my age who have managed to get married and possibly even reproduced by now. Somehow, in this crazy world, they've managed to come together, at least for the time being, and plan their lives together. They've agreed to this insane compromise of "we're going to make our lives work with each other." How could you ever know? We're constantly changing and becoming new people, and you're taking this giant risk investing in someone who could readily become a new person in the course of your lifetime or even a couple of years. But still, we choose to do it because the only thing we fear more than the chaos of life is having to face that chaos alone.
It wasn't until just this past year that I had to actually consider the idea of what it would mean to plan my life with someone, and when I was forced to choose between a relationship or the plans I had made for graduate school, I chose my plans. And I had to let it go, and when you really have to let something go, I think it kind of startles you.  You find yourself in a position when you've had to choose and you've had to change plans and you go down a road that you never thought you'd be going down, and after a while, you begin to change a little, too. And in such a big place with plans changing all of the time, I've considered what it would be like to take the power away from life--if you eliminate the variables out of life... the people, the places, the decisions that ultimately affect you the most, it could be easier. The details out of my control make me more frustrated than my own errors because I never had a chance to control them.
But it's selfish. Yes, people like me like to believe that life is something concrete and constructible. If I could know the exact date I would die, I would want to. But, that's a selfish thing to do because with all the time that you're spending on planning and hoping and getting things correct, you're taking away from the most valuable asset you have in the world. We define ourselves by what we've painted in our future and not how we've reacted to the moments of the past. And as I was riding the escalator up from the metro today, I was considering this topic and this blog, and I thought about two people. I bitch and complain about the people I've invested in who have disappointed me, and the plans of my past that have gone awry, and the simple everyday losses that I face... when in reality, I haven't had too much to complain about.
The first person I thought about was the man I pulled out of a river a couple years ago. By the time we pulled him out, he had drowned; in the course of five minutes, he had changed at least two people's plans: his and mine. Because of how unpredictable the world is, his life was over. As for me, I was presented with the chance to save a life, and ultimately I couldn't. No change-of-plan has ever hurt more. And when you see something like that: the life literally drained from someone's face--someone your age lying in front of you, not breathing... well, it kind of makes you wonder what's the point? These people and places are all fleeting. You can't depend on anyone, and even when you can, everyone eventually dies. Obviously, I was not too happy halfway up the escalator.
But I had enough time to think of someone else because escalators in DC are long. The second person I thought of was my mom. Over the course of two years, she became pregnant twice. She carried both babies, little girls, to seven and eight months, respectively, before she miscarried. And when I talked to her about it, she told me that she never asked God why it happened because that's not fair.  She told me to never question God because I didn't have the authority to do so. And then there's me: going around barely invoking the presence of God because I still feel like I have some kind of say-so in how my life goes, when in reality, the role I play in how the world works is minute. I can't control the people around me, how they treat me, and the extraneous circumstances that may change my route in life.
But as the escalator neared the top, I realized that I had something that a lot of people don't. Yes, my plan has changed quite a lot and in turn, I've changed a lot as a person. But I was moving toward this light, as overcast and dim as it may be, and at the crest of that escalator, I could continue to live. I would live amongst the mess and the assholes and the roadblocks, but the operative word is: live. And as I neared the top and quickly reflected on all that I had contemplated on a morning metro ride, it seemed apparent to me that maybe I didn't need to go to seminary after all.
People go and change and grow away from one another. Circumstances cause us to have to head in a different direction than we ever anticipated, but I like to believe that maybe the plans we are forced to take are better than the ones we had in mind for ourselves to begin with.

Handsy on the Metro

When I was planning on moving up to DC, one of my fraternity brothers who had lived in DC before asked me what I was most excited about.

The metro. Definitely the metro.

And I mean, he tried to warn me. He told me that it would be fun at first, but that it would get old. As a recent graduate, I built it up to just be the jaded attitude of adulthood. The metro was awesome. The metro is how the cool kids go places. And you know... maybe it is. But the thing about the metro is that you have to know what you're doing; it's kind of like walking into a gay club or a drug deal. You don't go to "ya boy's boy Demetrius" and go and ask him what kind of illicit materials he has available this week. That's pretty much how the metro works. You don't go to mingle and conversate, and you don't dare mosey. You get on the metro to get shit done.

But very similar to my first drug deal and gay club experience, the metro took some getting used to, and it didn't come without it's fair share of errors. As a young resident of what some (okay, very few) have come to call "The District,"all I wanted to do was talk to people, which seems like a natural thing to do considering that back in Tennessee I have fifteen minute conversation with gas station attendants. But I quickly learned that no one wanted to talk back to me. Occasionally there would be a man with an airbrushed Obama shirt or a disheveled homeless man up for some incomprehensible rapport, but on the up and up, the metro just wasn't the place where you had conversation.
I made a series of errors on the metro in my first week that could have gotten me arrested and/or killed. Occasionally, when I would get bored, I would take pictures of myself with sleeping people to see if I could get away with it. Once when the doors were closing, I stuck my leg inside thinking that it worked like an elevator, but all that happened was that my leg was closed inside the door, like an unforgiving guillotine. Essentially, what I'm trying to say is that there is nothing fun about the metro. It's not a game, and it's not a social site. Most of all, it's not for children or people without direction.
It wasn't long until I became "one of them." I had a bonified metro pass with reloadable features, and I judged people who used paper passes. Once I descended into hell the escalator, I make eye contact with no one. People do not watch out for each other once they are underground; you are simply on your own.
Today seemed like any other day--I talked to my mom on the way to work, scanned my metro pass to get in and board, and just like every other mid-week venture, the metro was absolutely packed. I wore my colorful sweater and corduroy pants, you know, because it seemed like that kind of day, but with it, I wore my blue Chuck Taylors. I always try to wear something against the norm because DC is a boring place when it comes to fashion. People wear the same black slacks and loafers every day, so it's important to find some kind of way to stand out. The person standing fartherst from me couldn't have been more than a foot away, but the rule still applies: no looking and no conversation. The man standing directly in front of me was looking down at my shoes; it wasn't surprising to me--like I said, people don't really wear things like that to work.
But after the first stop, I could feel someone staring at me. You know the feeling... that pressing awkwardness when someone's eyes are quite obviously fixed upon you, and when I looked up the same man was staring at me. He was probably around my age, Hispanic, and a decent looking guy. I nodded at him and gave him a brief smile, then quickly turned away. But the longer I stood there, the more pressing the feeling became. He is still staring at you. You can feel it. So, I glanced back in his direction, and indeed, he was still staring. Feeling a little more energized this morning than usual, I decided to play his game.
We held each other's gaze for about fifteen seconds, and then he lifted his hand off the bar he was holding and gently put it over mine. For a second I was stunned... I mean, you don't look at people on the metro, and you definitely don't talk to people on the metro, so I can only assume that you are under no circumstance supposed to purposefully touch anyone on the metro. I glanced up at his hand, and glanced back at him, and he was still staring at me... smiling. The woman next to us looked at me, then at him, and gave us this knowing smile as if to say, I support your decision to be homosexual together. Congratulations. I did something akin to a smile/mouth stretching exercise and slowly pulled my hand down by my side. Yes, I risked the possibility of eating it on the metro, but it seemed kind of worth it to avoid this awkward situation with [this stranger/creeper/my new boyfriend].
The man immediately apologized, and I said, I mean, it's cool. I'm not bothered. Thank you. It's not a big... okay. And then I just kind of turned perpendicular to him and tried to evaluate what had just happened. Yes, a good sixty-five percent of me was really weirded out by the whole ordeal, but there was this other thirty-five percent that was oddly appreciative. People in DC, and a good number of people in my life, do not show emotion, let alone physical affection. I don't know if the guy was interested or potentially blessing my hand with some odd Hispanic ritual, but something compelled him to do it.
Because DC is DC, I'll probably never see my mysterious hand-holder ever again, but if you ever read this, I will never forget the thirty second visual exchange we shared, and the five seconds that woman thought we were a couple. And for a number of reasons, I hope that you're the only random man who ever caresses my hand on the metro. Let's be honest--it just wouldn't be the same with anyone else.

Brocation

So, I've self-admittedly never done too well with boys, or boy-like things, or the whole let's compare penises mentality. I like my penis; I think it's a real nice penis. It's been a recurring theme in my life (the struggle with males, not my penis), and honestly I'm just too emotional for the "your mom is fat and ugly and stupid" banter... I hear it, and I go home and tell my mom how beautiful she is, as if she has a wire implanted on me and can hear all the conversations that are had when I try to do the bro thing. So I stick with the things I shine at: Grey's Anatomy, matching my belt to my shoes, having an excellent command of early 2000s pop lyrics, and a keen sense for finding the nearest pizza for under ten dollars. You could say I have quite the skill set.
But occasionally, I get the inclination to "bro out." It always ends in the most devastating way because it's kind of like when you tell someone that you're fluent in Spanish, and someone asks you to have a conversation with them. I've done it with: an interest in sports, the seven year stint that I tried hunting with my dad, the summer I only drank alcohol that cost less than five dollars, among other things, but no bro-ing out experience was more valiant and admirable than my attempt at brocation. I present it to you diary-style:
Prologue
By my own personal definition, a "brocation" is a vacation that you take with your bros (or in my case, your bro [singular]) to a "bitchin" location so you can, you know, mack on the honeys and stuff. So during my freshman year of college, I was going through an assortment of things that young boys at liberal arts colleges go through: self-identity crisis, mild family issues, and the establishment of a friend group in a place where I didn't have too many friends. So in hopes of normalizing things a little bit, I tried to do what seemed like the most logical thing to do: find a fellow dude and prepare for a spring break trip. In retrospect, maybe I should have reconsidered my choice, if I really wanted that "dude" experience, but with little time left and a pressing feeling that I needed some kind of vacation, I went to my best friend Ellison.
Two Days Before
Ellison and I weren't too different our freshman year, and he seemed to be the most willing person around to listen to all the issues I was going through. Without any idea of what he was getting into, he agreed to take the trip with me. When I went home to ask my parents' permission (because that's what you do when you're 18?), they really had no idea who Ellison was. I just kind of assured them that it was all going to be okay, and that they owed me this... which in retrospect was probably even more melodramatic than the trip itself. In just a matter of days, Ellison and I got into his sea foam green Toyota Prius, appropriately named "the anti-boner" and took off for Myrtle Beach.
Day One
Our plans were shaky at best, and at the end of the day, we were headed toward Cherry Grove Beach, which ended up being the part of Myrtle Beach where young Jewish families and older couples over 60 go, which is pretty representative of our ambitions at the time. The entire trip down to Myrtle Beach was set to Led Zepplin I, II, III, and IV, which I agreed to only because of it's manly qualities; other than that, most of my time on the trip down was spent sleeping, taking pictures of the ride down (like the one above), or singing Brocation all I ever wanted, brocation, have to get away to myself.
And once we got there, Ellison had already searched the area on his iPhone (the first of our friends to have that absurd technology) and located the nearest MagiQuest in the area. Originally, I had all these plans about how we would go out on the beach and have this very stereotypical spring break, but it didn't really happen.
Day Two
Ellison went out on the beach for a minute, but then he quickly retreated from the sunlight hopped in his car and went to MagiQuest, which is... in case you didn't know, an interactive video game where you fight things with a wand. I, on the other hand, went to the beach. I took a picture of a black couple (with their permission), and then I fell asleep. I got second degree burns all over my body.
Day Three
Ellison apparently bought a week-long pass to MagiQuest. I couldn't move out of the bed. A Mexican woman tried to come in and change our sheets, and I think she told me to get up. I couldn't understand, so we had an argument in Spanglish. I won. Ellison eventually came back with aloe, and we watched HBO... you know, because we could.
Day Four
The Mexican woman came back. I didn't win this time.
Day Five

As an 18 year old, these are the kind of things I did with
pictures: a clear indication I was not a bro.

I had healed enough that we decided to go get lunch. I walked around MagiQuest as a visitor, in the same way that a lot of parents do for the players that don't have their driver's license yet. I tried to play miniature golf, but the sun was too much, even through clothing. We decided to visit our friends in the area, and their motel room didn't have carpet, but rather astro turf. The entire motel room smelled like burning rags, which turned out to be marijuana, and there was large fruit with alcohol bottles shoved inside of it. We decided that we were nervous with out surroundings, kind of like a dog, so we left.
Day Six
We drove home, and my parents met me at Ellison's house. We had pie, and I think I might have shed a layer of skin in the Berryhills' kitchen. My parents took me home, and I kind of missed the Led Zepplin.
Post-trip
I concluded that maybe I wasn't meant for the regular kind of spring break that all the other kids were taking, and maybe I would never be. There's no way of really knowing, but it never kept me from trying. Since our trip, I've taken other approaches to trying to be more of a man, but at the end of the day, it's just kind of exhausting. If I learned anything about my four day bed-rest, one day indoor video game experience, it's that there's not one definition of a man, and when you try to do something for any other reason that wanting to do it, you kind of screw yourself over in the process. Being a dude is hard, and it's not for everyone, and I think if Ellison and I took one thing away from our lackluster adventures, it's that being a bro is not as fun as it looks.

Reckless, Abandonment

I've slept with the same pillow since I was six years old. When my mamaw died, my mom asked me if I wanted any of her things, so I chose her pillow--made of goose down and covered with a light brown pattern that had been further browned with age and the occasional snuff stain. The pillow protected me when I was younger when I would take trips away from my parents. Though she was only a total of 90 pounds, the pillow meant my mamaw was there, and I once believed that she could defend me against any monster, bully, or pain that the world had to offer. And the pillow became this thing that helped to nurse whatever I was feeling in my life, and over the years, the color was browned more and more with time. I replace the pillow case often, but underneath, I know that it's still there: the protection.
In recent years, the pillow is what I have fallen asleep with at night. I held it tightly against my chest in place of whomever I wanted to imagine it would be. Most nights, it's not so much a longing as much as it is habit. I hold on to whomever's identity I instruct the pillow to be, until the identity fades or is replaced by the next. But recently, I put the pillow away and stashed it in my closet because the dependency, even if just habitual, is unhealthy. I had grown tired of replacing identities because it seemed hopeless: an interest in someone who took it for granted.
The optimist in me believes in the pillow, and the realist inside me looks at it like Desdemona would: a means of suffocation. The pillow, something I love, is ultimately what kills me most.
And it's more than just a love thing. Sure, it plays an important part in most people's lives, but it really comes down to the general make up of human interaction, the give and take and whatnot. The reason that we find ourselves holding these pillows and writing this poetry and scrolling through our phones looking for a name we're comfortable enough to call is because we're missing something. We love the idea of knowing that someone is there, but when we have found that we're empty handed, or even worse... betrayed, we have to do something to compensate and deal with the loneliness. And you'd think that if we would take a moment to address why we're feeling the way we do--why we so desperately cling to the pillow--instead of trying to fix it, we might be able to accomplish a lot. We're a smart species, but we struggle so much identifying the cycle of our loneliness: someone was reckless with our heart, and we abandoned them. Those two words: reckless and abandonment.
These spoiled relationships are comprised of these two qualities, and they're two aspects that define human nature at it's most basic form. When we get comfortable, we become reckless with what we've been provided. It's a pattern that has repeated itself over and over throughout the course of human history, and with all the things we've destroyed, we still have not come to understand the power that we have. And with all the things we're capable of being reckless with, we are the only resource that has the ability to give feedback. Conversely, the other quality is one that any living creature can understand. When a person isn't feeling loved or a dog is getting beaten or a flower has been placed in the shade... all of those things attempt to abandon the situation. We need to feel nourished; we long to feel loved.
So, I've given you all these metaphors: the pillow, Desdemona, the flower in the shade. What does it mean? Well, to scale back and make it personal again, I've always been horrible at the cycle. Not so much the reckless part, even though we've all been at fault of being reckless with someone's feelings. It's more the abandonment. I like to believe that I'm pretty intrepid; if I find someone that I've ever deemed worthy of my time and compassion, I'll stick with them as long as I possibly can. That kind of dedication has proven to be dangerous in the past. With best friends and love interests, it always seems like only good can come from good intentions, but I've too often found myself in a situation where I care too much. And I push forward until I have nothing left to push with, and that's when I abandon ship. In my mind, I like to believe that a lesson can be learned from that, but ultimately those abandoned just find other people--people who similarly don't understand how to show they care, or potentially worse... can care as little as they do.
And as I've gotten older, like most things, it's hard to hold on to that hope. After a relationship gone awry and friendships gone astray and attempting to do that whole "coming of age" thing where you pick up this new life and try to hold on to the best things about being a child, I've become a little less apt to believe in the goodness of people and their intentions. We're so careless with each other's feelings because they're not tangible. We don't believe in their ability to scar and fray and tatter, and when they do, we surprise ourselves with the damage we refuse to take responsibility for. I was talking to my roommate who was, at the time, dating a girl he was admittedly not terribly interested in. It wasn't that he didn't like her... he just didn't like her enough. I tried to explain to him that the person who cares the least is the one with the most power. It's hard to explain the power that we can possess over one another.
In the face of all of that, I guess I had developed somewhat of a wall. I remember talking to people who just wouldn't let anyone in, and I pitied them for that. I was sad that they felt so alienated that they had finally just given up on the personal relationships they could potentially develop with people, but after the past year, I found that I had gotten to that point, too. I find myself struggling to trust people, and I've come to a place that when I've been burned, I can't find a reason to go back. I've come to a terribly sad place where I'm waiting on people to fail.
But, like most transitions in my life, it comes at a horrible time. I went home for a little over a week to collect my thoughts and emotions and try to put the pieces back together. I had decided that when I came back to my life in DC, I would rely less on those around me. I would not put weight in people because people lie and people leave. Even those at home are going to move on without you, and maybe it's just best to turn off that love you have for people. And in just over a week's time, I've already met new people and had people from before try and restore faith in our friendship, and I've had to ask myself Is it worth it? Because as many times as people may be reckless with you, you can't go through life abandoning the world. Life is too short, too fleeting for that.
And in my mind, a place I spend most of my free time, I tell myself that it's not worth it. People who have proven to not be trusted, should not be trusted. And in a way, people you haven't met shouldn't be given your trust to begin with. But last night, I spotted that pillow, the down pillow that has browned over the years. I put it up in my closet sometime in early December when I had just gotten to a point where I was over everything. And that's where my heart came in, because as many times as my mom asked me to throw that pillow away, I clung to it because I knew that it was worth more to me than what seemed logical. And sure, there are people and situations that are toxic--it's inevitable. But what I think is hardest is getting your mind and your heart to meet in the middle and determine what people and situations are actually worth it. It's a struggle I face everyday.
I pulled the pillow down and slept with it last night. I had no one in mind when I did because I don't think that's what the pillow is about. It's what I made the pillow become over the years, but when I think back to six years old and why I wanted it to begin with, it's because it reminded me of something familiar. It's small designs reminded me of the painted gold frame of my mamaw's bed, and the smell of tobacco reminded me of how often she would hug me. The pillow represents the love that another person can give another, and to abandon it... well, it would almost be reckless in itself.

The Legend of "Ass and Cats" and Friends

When I decided to go to a private liberal arts college, it seemed as if it was going to be a haven for smart, intellectuals who liked to sip coffee and talking about the political happenings in Egypt, and while that was the case to some extent, it really was more of a haven for weird people. And I don't say that as a condescending proclamation. It takes a truly weird person to be able to identify other weird people, but I like to believe that my freak flag is one that is a little more appropriate to fly in public. On the up and up, successful people at Maryville College were commonly people who were too busy in academia to be successful in high school. We were not particularly well bred for social interaction, and in the safe bubble of campus, we didn't have a lot of help with that. And because of our core classes, we were given the opportunity to dabble in subjects across the board, exposing us to the different kinds of weird that dominated each major. I settled in the English department, my favorite collection of freaks: we spent our times wrapped up in words, too busy to acknowledge that we only spoke to each other in metaphors and anecdotes, and too pompous to even consider that there could be another major better than us.
But the best thing about being in the English department is that I could always rely on someone being a little more weird than me. For the longest time, I always depended on the guy who consistently wore cargo shorts to class and would relate every piece of feminist literature to being raised by his mother, his grandmother, and his aunt. It was like waiting on the whitest version of The Secret Life of Bees every single class. I didn't come into college as an English major, but rather stumbled on to it by accident. I was originally going to be pre-med, but after a lack of witty Grey's-like banter and a lot of really intense peers, I decided that I didn't want to do that after all. Discovering that I enjoyed the witty banter more, I doubled up with Communications and English, instead. I spent my days listening to how my peers were scorned by the over-feminization of their childhoods and countless tales about how the despair of being fifteen led them to be an English major. I always just kind of liked words, so I was left out of all the perils and angst that most English kids took to get there.
Our senior year, we had to take comprehensive exams, a test that can cover any material in any class, which is a literature major's worst nightmare considering that very few of us actually read most of the material that we covered in class. We were all focused the week before, when we were asking one of our professors how many people have failed the test, a feat that could land you in an unwelcomed fifth year of college. None of us had been sleeping, so we were all on edge. As our professor was answering our question, one girl screamed out from the back of the room and started crying. She ran out of the room and disappeared into the hallway; between her screams and my lack of sleep, I almost passed out, and I suddenly felt like I was going to throw up.
She came back into the room and announced that she had seen a wasp, when I turned my head around Exorcist style and barked back, What the hell is your problem? Sit your ass down. My professor told me to calm down, but in all fairness, I wasn't the one that exploded in fear over a wasp. I've never dealt well with people who have such strong reactions to such small events--kind of like the girls who would scream when someone would turn the lights off in elementary school. Why? What are we achieving? Nothing, but so is the problems with a class full of strung-out, sleepless weirdos.
But no one tops the young man I shared my World Cultures: Islam class with. We affectionately came to know him as "Ass and Cats," after a couple of close calls my friend had with him in class. I was never an expert at getting to class early, nor really good at getting to class on time. As I was casually strolling out of my dorm at 9:27 to get to my 9:30, I got a text that said Get to class now. Ass and cats is trying to sit next to me. I need you to get here, stat. When I got to class, I asked her who Ass and Cats was, and she pointed to him. I asked her why his name was Ass and Cats and she very stated, Because he smells like ass. And cats. Ass and cats. We kept Ass and Cats our secret, as if we had just discovered that Bruce Wayne was Batman. We protected each other from the prospect of Ass and Cats who was generally known for going full blown Chopin on his keyboard in the middle of class.
One day, he was going exceptionally hard in the keyboard paint when he announced in the middle of one of our professor's lectures Shut up. I was hoping that maybe I was the only one who had heard it, but the entire class turned around to catch a glance at the young man. Our professor didn't miss a beat. A couple minutes later, the typing grew increasingly louder when he yelled out, SHUT UP. Our professor stopped in the middle of the lecture and finally addressed him, Excuse me? He casually said, Oh, I'm not talking to you. I'm talking to my computer. Ass and Cats must have felt my sympathetic vibes because we've all been in that place where we've awkwardly been mistaken for yelling at our professor before... okay, maybe not the exact situation, but I know what it's like to feel awkward, so I felt bad.
After class, I noticed that he tailed me very closely as I walked out the door. He only stayed a couple steps behind me, and though I didn't keep tabs, I could feel his presence behind me. Knowing that I was being followed, I took a couple of wrong turns to obscure parts of campus to see if I could lose him. No luck. Eventually, I went into the campus chapel and turned around to see him standing face to face with me. He looked at me and announced, Why are you following me? And just like that, in his own world, I had become the awkward one. In some very topsy-turvy parallel world, the tables had turned, and I was the weird liberal arts kid that I had so desperately tried to avoid. And then it hit me... maybe I was the awkward one.
The only way that anyone is awkward is through the perspective of another person, and though I wasn't raised in a non-prostituting brothel nor had a panic attack over an insect nor yelled at my professor, that didn't fully rule me out of being the awkward liberal arts kid. For all I know, I could be the Ass and Cats of my DC life, going around smelling like an obscure combination of feces and felines. So I try to consider what the repercussions of judging others is, and what it's like to potentially being the off one of the group. None of us are exempt, even the public school graduates. The world is unforgiving, and we're all only one nickname away from being an awkward urban legend of yesteryear.

A Dusting on New Year's

Well, congratulations, we did it. Unless you did something really bad, really fast, you've made it to 2013. It's a feat that we all kind of considered unlikely in the back of our heads (oh you tricky, Mayans), but in the face of apocalyptic threats and the other unfortunate things we've done up to this year, we've happened upon a year that wasn't supposed to be. For those of us who never really worried about the future, this New Year's doesn't mean that much, but for those of us who did things in the face of a potential world ending, you're responsible for correcting those boo boos and actually planning for a long term future.

New Year's has always had this vague importance in the back of my head because I love the idea of a fresh start. After you graduate, you don't get "new semesters" anymore, so you're left reaching for as many fresh starts as life will allow you. You can make these resolutions that probably will not be fulfilled, but it's cool because at least you took the time to realize there is something that can be improved upon. In my case, I always made big goals that ultimately went completely ignored about 17 hours into New Year's: massive weight loss, the dismissal of red meat, no sexual interaction with anyone at all. That is until recently when I decided to tackle resolutions that were more attainable, which includes but is not limited to: learning the Nicki Minaj part to "Bottoms Up," and watching every episode of Will and Grace.
But my greatest superstition surrounding New Year's is that the way you spend your New Year's Eve is representative of how the following year will play out. In my case, the superstition has always proven to be somewhat true, especially in the last couple of years. Last year, for instance, I spent the better part of my New Year's Eve at a fraternity party watching a freshman down an entire bottle of Jaegermeister, while I casually sipped on a couple of beers. In the final thirty minutes, I rushed home with a friend so that I watch the New Year's ball drop on television with my family. In return, I watched a decent number of people, including myself at times, party senior year away. Then, I entered the chaos of post-grad life, and just in the final moments of 2012, I have settled down enough to catch my breath.
But New Year's Eve has not always been so docile, and it's usually reflected in the year that followed it. My sophomore year of college, I went to a party at my friend's house; it was my first year I had ever spent New Year's away from my parents and brother. I was intoxicated with the idea of running into a cute girl, talking by the beer cooler, and possibly... just maybe... getting that New Year's kiss that I had so desperately longed for ever since I found out that was what people do. My friend's attendees were not people that I was used to though considering that I was apt to get tipsy off the small amount of mouthwash I didn't spit out after brushing my teeth. I was the valedictorian of my graduating class and not well-versed on social decorum, so I immediately felt out of the loop. In between moments of Zak introducing me to his cohorts, I sat on the couch, channeling Dick Clark (may he rest in peace) and trying to hear the musical performances. I remember partially making a breakthrough after accidentally making a joke about Natty Light. When someone pulled it out of the cooler, I casually announced, Hey! That's what my Mamaw drinks all the time. It wasn't until I joined a fraternity that I understood the humor in the joke. Other than that, the night seemed to drag on.
Zak would always introduce me to his friends as "our valedictorian," then go on to tell people how smart I was and how I would go on one day to be a lawyer, which in essence was a complete lie, but whatevs. People seemed to be impressed until a stronger alcohol or cute girl came by, so I embraced it. By eleven o'clock, I had met just about everyone at the party, and I needed to go to the bathroom. I walked in and two people were in there... I know what you're thinking... you thought they were having sex, right?? Nah, just cocaine. The guy turned around from the bathroom counter and asked me if I wanted to do some blow, and without having the educational lyrics of Kesha (or Ke$ha, if you prefer the stylized version), I had no idea what to say. I quickly backed out of the door, falling over a bucket on my way out.
Soon after, I found Zak and told him that I was leaving without trying to explain my run-in with Johnny Depp and Penelope Cruz in the bathroom. I just wanted to escape quickly before the cops came and busted the snort-sesh happening just a couple rooms away. My dear acquaintance/pusher who really seemed to like me about ten minutes before came out of the bathroom, and I told him that I was leaving. Apparently, what you're not supposed to do is act sketchy or deny people who offer you cocaine. When I told him goodbye, he flipped out saying "Dude, you come up in here thinking your f*$&ing better than us?!" Then he lunged at me as if he were going to hit me. Zak immediately dove between us, and all I could think about was that I had somehow stumbled into a scene from The O.C. I had always considered myself the Marissa-type, but I just wasn't jiving with the idea of doing cocaine, or fighting someone who was doing it, for that matter. Eventually I escaped, but the year that followed proved to be as tumultuous as the night that ended the year before.
The night did teach me a lot. One time, my roommate in college did cocaine, and I remember what would happen if I tried to fight him on it, so when he came in rubbing his gums and announced that he had done coke in the back of a club in the Old City of Knoxville, I just kind of high fived him and told him it was cool. I Wikipedia-ed cocaine to make sure he wasn't going to die, then I made him watch Blow the next day as I spread pixie sticks all over our coffee table. But moreover, I learned that sometimes New Year's is best spent in doors.
People asked me what I would do with my first New Year's in DC, and what eventually happened is that I stayed in with my roommate, watched Carson Daly (oh how the times have changed), called my mom at midnight, then forced a neck nuzzle upon Andrew at midnight because I still haven't gotten that New Year's kiss. Eventually, I dominated an entire bottle of champagne, then I went to bed. No, I didn't party it up in DC, and I don't know what that night spells out for the rest of my year. From the sounds of it, it sounds like I'm just going to be chillin with one dude for the year, occasionally making trips to the gas station, and end the year drinking a lot by myself... but then again, the final night of the year has never been a literal translation, so there's still hope. No matter what, it's nice to know that this year contained a little less illicit drugs and a little more of my norm: friendship and wine.