Rabbits, Death, Etc.

I've never really liked dead things. One time, I had a rabbit named Grace because, of course I had a rabbit named Grace. Anyway, she died. I was about eight years old when I found her chillin in her rabbit pin, stiff as a board. We got her from the flea market near our house where most things are half dead to begin with, so it was kind of a miracle that she lived as long as she did. Anyway, when I found Grace, I grabbed her and attempted to shake her into life again, but it was pointless. Grace was dead, and I was breaking down. To be fair, I had a pretty ugly road with death at a young age because my mom's parents were 46 and 60 when she was born, so a huge portion of my family starting dying before I could really understand what that meant. That, and I had watched Titanic pretty recently, and that whole Rose lives to be really old and then dies thing really got to me as well.
Because death happened so often, I didn't really understand why it happened--to me, death was kind of like getting a cold. People got death, and then you just kind of died. The whole thing was really unfortunate, but it happened, and in my mind, it was only a matter of time before I caught it myself. I carried Grace to resting place that my parents dug for her, and I said a prayer over her tiny rabbit body, and then I placed her in the grave. I wiped the tears from my face, and then I realized: I just wiped DEATH all over my face. Great.
As soon as it hit me, I lost it--like full blown 8-year-old panic attack. My mom grabbed me and tried to explain that my rabbit was with mamaw and papaw and all the other half-dead animals they had gotten me at the flea market, included but not limited to: my dog Sable, my dog Roxie, my cat Tiger, both of my turtles Jo Jo and Urkle, my dad's old dog Amos, and a gerbil that I had once named Conway that died because he got a penis infection. I'm not kidding. But I wasn't worried about Grace's eternal soul, because her name was Grace for God's sake. I was worried about my fragile mortal body that had been exposed to death--not just exposed really, but slathered in it. I wiped my face with dead rabbit hands, and clearly, if that wasn't terminal then I don't really know what could be.
My parents spent the next 16 years trying to persuade me that people don't die by being exposed to death, but I'm not entirely sure that they're right. Regardless, I'm still here, fighting the good fight and trying to stay away from death and all his friends. I actually became kind of numb to the whole death situation. It's been years since I had been to a funeral because a whole generation of my family passed away before I was 16 years old. Instead, I just focus on the random diseases that could kill me instead of actually catching death itself. I call my mom weekly or so to check in because I've convinced myself that I have anemia or a tumor on a lymph node. For a while it had gotten out of hand, and then she eventually called me a hypochondriac. Now, I've blocked WebMD on my browser, and my fear of sickness and death has gotten easier.
Funerals, at this point, are just hurdles. Very sad hurdles, but hurdles, and as my generation has grown up, we've all also grown apart. I haven't seen my entire family together in one place in a long time, let alone the super-extended family. We never did a great job of keeping up with one another because people were having babies or going to jail or in my weird case, relocating to a new location entirely. But I was able to make a stop home after work trip out to California, and when I arrived my mom asked me the dreaded question. "My nephew Stanley died. Will you go to the funeral with me?" I mean, of course I would go to the funeral with her, but the first words out of my mouth were, "I had a cousin named Stanley?" That's the tricky part of being separated from some of your cousins by 30-40 years--sometimes you don't know they exist until they've passed away or in the newspaper for doing something really absurd.
As I pulled what I imagine was probably an illegal U-turn in the middle of the funeral home parking lot, my mom said, "Oh look. There's Roger Dale. I wonder how life's treating him now that he's out of prison." I wasn't sure if she was being sincere or just being a smart ass. Either way, I chose not to recognize it as I attempted to pull my dad's giant truck into a parking spot made for a smart car.  That, and for some reason, I kind of wanted to be friends with Roger Dale. He's one of the few people in my family that's around my age--and even though he was supposedly an accessory to an attempted murder, it's nice having friends, ya know? I finally got the truck parked, and my mom looked at me and said, "No more than 20 minutes. I'm serious. 20 minutes--in and out. Let's go. Oh, and your aunt Wanda got you a souvenir from her trip to the Amish country, so don't forget to grab it before we leave."
I wasn't expecting to go to a funeral while I was in town, but then again, I don't think anyone ever expects to go to a funeral. It's not something you etch into your planner months ahead of time. Stanley was 55 when he died, which is really complicated to explain because that makes him older than my mom. But in short, my mom had siblings that were legitimately having children before she was even born, so she was an aunt baby.
As we walked up to the funeral home, a whole bunch of people sat on the porch in white rocking chairs that overlooked the parking lot/duck pond combo below. I didn't recognize anyone on the porch, but I didn't really expect to recognize anyone anyway--kind of like when you go to a party with a friend. So, as we walked up the steps, I nodded to them and said hello, but they just kind of gave me a really annoyed look--kind of like when you go to a party with a friend... and you try too hard. Come to find out, there were two funerals going on, and I was trying to speak to people that actually weren't in my family (which at funerals, is poor form).
But once someone directed me to the sign in the lobby, I had things a little more under control. I walked into a long chapel, and everyone seemed to be gather toward the front. I inspected the front of the room, but I didn't see a casket. Luckily, they had decided to forego that part of the funeral process, and even though I was well aware that you couldn't catch death, the 8-year-old inside of me was a little bit relieved. But in its place was something terrifying in a completely different way--family that I hadn't seen in years. I was out of practice when it came to this kind of thing. I barely know what to tell my friends when they lose a family member, but it's so much harder when it's your own family. I tried to survey the room, but I couldn't place any of the faces with names, so I just kept walking forward until I reached the cork board at the front of the room.
There were pictures of Stanley and his entire family, made up of people that I may or may not have met throughout the years. I followed the pictures from the bottom to the top until something else caught my eye--a giant flatscreen TV posted up on the wall with a single candle burning. The background was totally black, and the only thing on the screen was a white candle with a single flame. I'm sure it's supposed to represent something, but for some reason, all I could think was, "I mean, could we have just not put like... a real candle or something in here? And who captured this looping video of this candle... like, how do you get that job?" I spun around and stepped on a tiny little old lady who said, "Hi there. I'm Herman's sister. You know Herman," I have no idea who Herman is. "You know there's nine of us, right? Six boys and three girls. Can you even imagine?" I still had no idea who Herman was, and for a second, I thought that she might have made the same mistake that I did earlier, except she didn't see the sign in the front directing her to the correct funeral parlor.
I didn't know what to do, so I told her that I would be right back, but when I turned around again, there was Roger Dale. I immediately felt startled, but I was also really excited because in my mind, I kept thinking, This is my chance at a friend! We shook hands, and he had a really strong handshake, and as much as I hated it, all I could think was, "This is the perfect place for him to kill me because they wouldn't even need to call an ambulance. They'd just embalm me and call it a day." I froze, and I didn't know what to say, and before I knew it, I had lost my opportunity. My mom called me over to say hello to my aunt Connie who made a grand entrance from the back of the parlor. I watched her hug my mom and dad and brother with big tears in her eyes, thanking them for coming. Then my mom said, "Connie, here's Justin." She immediately stopped crying and said, "You're grown." She pulled me in really tight, put her face against the side of my head, and then it happened. I'm not sure if it was intentional, but she just blew... blew her nose with all of her might, directly in my ear.
I pulled back with a flattened smile and touched her shoulder and said, "I'm going to head over here for a second." I felt like people were watching me, waiting to see how I would react to this whole situation. I sat down in a pew behind my mom and pulled a kleenex out of the box sitting in the pew. I shoved it in my ear and leaned forward, quietly whispering to my mom, "Aunt Connie may or may not have just blew her nose in my ear. So, that happened."
My mom couldn't stop laughing, so I had to take my family outside where we congregated with my aunt and uncle that I'm closest to. By the time I got outside to join them, my mom had already lit in on the story about Aunt Connie blowing her nose in my ear, and on the other side of the circle Was Roger Dale, whose much closer to Connie than I am. I wanted to dive on my mom and tell her to stop or to cut the story short, but it was too late. I was making no headway with Roger Dale, and if he didn't smell the fear on me earlier in the parlor, then he definitely smelled it on me now. I felt like I needed to chime in, so I said, "You know, I'm wasn't upset at Aunt Connie for blowing her nose in my ear. I was just... surprised, which I feel like is the logical response when someone blows their nose in your ear." Roger Dale stared at me with the blankest expression and said, "Yeah, that doesn't happen," and then walked away. I knew that the funeral wasn't about me, nor was it supposed to be, but I wanted to fight back. I wanted to explain how brave I was for enduring getting a snot rocket lodged in my ear. I wanted to tell everyone how I was a survivor. But my mom interrupted and said, "Can we smoke on this porch, or do we need to go somewhere?"
Standing off the porch waiting on everyone to finish up their cigarettes, I looked back on the porch, still unable to recognize if any of the people hanging outside were actually related to me. It's almost comical because at one point, every death felt like the world was ending--whether it was a person or a rabbit. And then somewhere along the way, I wasn't able to even tell the difference between who was part of my family's and who was part of someone else's.
I still miss Grace. She was a pretty cool rabbit, but in retrospect, sometimes I wonder if I might have accidentally killed her myself. As an 8 year old, I wasn't really great at feeding things, nor taking care of them. In reality, my parents probably should have gotten me a goldfish, or like... one of those crabs you can get from the beach that legitimately never comes out of its shell. But no matter how mortified I was by Grace's death or the lethal rabbit death disease that she carried, it wasn't so much that I actually, you know, tried taking care of her while she was alive. And maybe that's the whole point of why rabbits and dogs and cousins named Stanley die. Maybe it's about reminding you of what's still in front of you--what you could be taking care of. Or maybe it's just a solid reminder of how many germs you carry on your face. We may never know.

What Happens to Italy, Stays in Los Angeles

The night I got to Los Angeles, Italy stopped me and asked me for a cigarette. Not the country, the fashion designer.

***

Today, I hopped on a plane to LAX with a dream and a cardigan, and from there, that's pretty much where the similarities between Miley Cyrus' experience and mine stops. I was placed in a middle seat, which is not equipped for a man my size to sit in, and then I became best friends with a young man who sat beside me on the plane. He touched my leg a lot and since Prop 8 was overturned, I'm fairly certain that means that we're married, so that's exciting. After I got off the plane, my friend Kara asked about how the trip went, and I was so delirious from the time difference and the journey and being in the land of Jennifer Lawrence that all I could say was, "He looked like a young Frankie Muniz, and he smelled like dreams."

Los Angeles is the closest thing I've seen to Panem from The Hunger Games. It's full of tall buildings and the city is surrounded by mountains, which absolutely blows my mind because I somehow feel like mountains only belong to the East coast. In short, I'm actually in The Hunger Games. Beyond the skyscrapers and the mountains though, my favorite part of the city is the people. They dress oddly, yet professionally at the same time. Though I feel like at any moment I might have to fight someone to my death, at the same time, I feel like the people of L.A. would be sad that I died. They may be kind of crazy, but the plasticky, tanned people of L.A. stole my heart, and that's probably why when Italy asked me for a cigarette, I didn't think twice about stopping.
She was sitting outside of the only 7-11 I could find in the downtown area, and I was jonesing for a Coke so there was really no avoiding her. She was in a skirt, but that didn't stop her from sitting open legged, with no inhibitions about showing off her lady business to the world. I'm not saying I endorse that kind of behavior, but I do have a certain amount of respect for someone when they say, "You might be able to see my bits and pieces, but that doesn't define me as a person." Anyway, Italy stopped me as I was walking down the sidewalk and said, "Baby, do you have a cigarette?" Anyone who calls me baby, particularly women in the 35-60 age range, automatically get whatever they want from me. I gave her a cigarette, and she said that I looked Irish, which is a nice way of saying, I'm sorry you were born without pigment.
After I spoke back to her, she asked where I was from and what I did, and it was on. I told her that I was in town for an event and that I helped plan it, and that's when she told me about her big plan--or rather, her big comeback. Some background: Italy was once one of the biggest fashion designers in the world. She told me to look her up, but unfortunately when you Google "Italy fashion designer," the results are not very narrowed. Unfortunately, a while back, Italy's luck had changed. At this point in the conversation, I had moved from standing in front of her to leaning against the brick wall beside her to eventually taking a seat next to her on the pavement outside of 7-11. As she was lighting up the second cigarette I gave her, she said, "You want to listen to my story because if you walk away, you'll see me on TV in a year and say to yourself, Goddamn, that bitch knew what she was talking about." Little did she know, I had no intention of walking away. Like that little girl in the AT&T commercials, I wanted more. I wanted more. I want it now.
She told me about her downfall: one night, a gang came to her house and pulled her out of it. They beat her and beat her and then told her she could never go back into her house. So, naturally, when a gang tells you what to do, you do it. She didn't go back into her house. With strict orders from the game, Italy didn't get any of her stuff so she took to the streets. When she returned to check on her house, it had been burned down. With no other leads, she assumed it was the gang. I guess I would have thought it was the gang, too, but I also probably would not have left my house to begin with. That's neither here nor there. Since the initial gang attack, Italy's house was burned down nine more times. Again, I'm unsure how your house gets burned down an additional nine times, but it did.
I pulled out my phone to start taking notes because there was a lot of information being thrown my way, and I was too deep in the game at this point to walk away. Occasionally, Italy would reach into her bag which was full of files and papers, most of the time not pulling anything out... just doing collateral to make sure everything was there, I guess. Except one time she did completely divert away from the story and told me how she was going to sue the subway system for emotional damages, which actually makes a lot of sense. If she's successful, I am probably going to sue my local metro system for emotional damages as well.
I truly felt sympathy for Italy because I hate the idea of anyone getting beaten up for no reason. I hated that she had it all and it was taken away from her so quickly. I hated that her sister lives with Bon Jovi now (oh, I didn't mention that before? Yeah, apparently that's a thing, too) and that she's making no moves to bring Italy  into her Livin on a Prayer life. I hated it all.
But that's when the story took a turn. I'm sitting there on pins and needles (considering that it was the streets of Downtown LA, I might have actually been sitting on a needle. God only knows), waiting for what happens next when Italy says, verbatim, "But it wasn't the gang who burned my house down 9 times. You see, there's a mysterious incinerator under my house, and every couple of months, it sets itself on fire and burns the house down again." Classic pit-of-Hell-plot-device. I was eating it up. It took me back to my preteen days of watching the short-lived soap opera Passions on NBC, when Charity was sent to the fires of Hell conveniently located in someone's basement. At that point, I think Italy realized that she had told me enough, and that I was pretty much hooked, so she launched into her plan.
She asked me if I would help her promote her comeback (duh) where she would walk from LA to Virginia (what?!) where her mother lives, and she wanted to market it in the same style that Oprah publicized her and Gayle's road trip across America (signed, sealed, delivered). All that she wanted was someone to tell her story on Twitter because that's how everyone communicates these days. I really don't know exactly what she needed my help with because it sounded like she had everything planned out. I wanted on board though because by the time the conversation was over, I wondered for a moment myself if this woman might actually end up on television. Because I lack any professional credentials, I gave her my email and Twitter handle (as if she has access to the Internet). I wished her the best, and I almost shook her hand, but I remembered that at one point mid-conversation that she reached up inside of her skirt... and I don't play that game.
It's been almost two weeks now, and I haven't heard from Italy. I imagine she's still out there, hustlin' the streets looking for people to listen to her story whilst stifling her rage toward Bon Jovi. She might be back at her house, if it's burned itself down again that is. Wherever she is, a piece of her is lingering with me, and one day when I turn on the news and see that large woman in her puffy jacket and mini skirt on the television, I can say that I knew Italy back when: in that awkward interim between her first rise to stardom and her second.

The Taking of WMATA 123

I just wanted to go home.

I could see them eyeing me from across the car, one of the most unfortunate times to be a bigger guy. I was a meal--a Thanksgiving feast to all these drunkards, and in the midst of all their McDonalds munchies, I looked like a combination Big Mac, Supersize Fry, 20 piece nugget, Diet Coke smorgasbord. The white people were, officially, out of control. I had always wondered what it would be like to be in this moment--the day that people reverted back to their animalistic ways. And all I could do was sit there and think, How did I get here? What led me to this moment? Let me tell you.

***

About six hours earlier, my roommate and I decided to go into the city for a Beerlympics competition. Sure, it seemed a little college-y, but I'm an addict for competition. Shortly after we arrived, we were sorted into teams, and the games began. After a handful of beers, we decided to go and meet some friends in another part of the city. After navigating the crowded floor of Cafe Citron via a combination of walking/salsa-ing to Jennifer Lopez hits, we finally found our group. As a classic group of 20-somethings, we danced awkwardly in a circle for approximately 20 minutes, fist pumped, and then decided to leave. No one was inebriated beyond help or anything, but it was obvious that we wouldn't be driving--there were only a couple options left and, sadly, one of those was taking the metro back toward home.

The Saturday night metro isn't really a place that you ever want to be because it's a completely mixed bag. Sometimes people throw up; sometimes people are making out; sometimes you don't even want to know what happens. So before we got on the metro, I called our other roommate, our last hope, before we got on the train headed toward our apartment. Normally, I would have given up after one call, but the mixture of competition and low-grade beer made me more optimistic than usual. Five calls later, there was finally an answer: a groggy roommate who was not going to pick us up. The moment had come to face what would be the most absurd and slightly dangerous Saturday night metro yet. Most of the time, if you just keep to yourself everything turns out fine. I mean, sure, you might get awkwardly approached by someone, but it's a relatively painless process because the metro runs on a timetable, or at least that's what we like to believe. We transferred over from the red line over to the orange, and it seemed as if the ride was going to be relatively patient, until the next to the last stop. On the way to the station we needed to get off at, the train came to a halt in the middle of the tunnel, and we were stranded in the car with a train full of people and a faulty speaker.

Whenever the train stops in the tunnel, I immediately imagine that we're under the Potomac, even if we're not. I imagine that the walls are going to cave in, and then I'm going to have to swim out of the tunnel Fear Factor style--and then I immediately regret smoking because I'm going to lose and then there's not going to be any trained swimmers to save me. And then something happened on the metro, as if everyone else was also thinking that the walls might cave in to. Essentially, everyone went bat shit crazy. It all started when two large women got up from their seats and addressed the young men who kept staring at them. They had green and purple tubes coming out of their hair, kind of like The Hunger Games, but without any regard to trying to look glamorous. This only caused the guys to egg them on more, which caused the one with green tubes and suspenders to get up and start grinding on the pole, which in turn caused everyone to pull out their cameras and start videoing the entire thing. I, too, pulled out my camera because I knew that if I made it out of that godforsaken train car, I wanted to write about it--our fear and our pain. 

My friend Samantha sat their, her eyes full of worry. We've gotten close, but none of us wanted to go out like this, and under the influence of alcohol, it seemed all too real that this could really be it. Suddenly, one of the guys next to us announced, "Maybe we need to start voting people out." This seemed like my moment, so I began working with the gay guy and his overbearing friend next to us. If I've learned anything this summer from watching Big Brother, it's that America LOVES the gays, so that's a good addition to my alliance. We also decided to include the girl who was passed out in the seat in front of them because, well, God only knows what would happen to her if we didn't... but it was at that moment that we heard screams from the other side of the metro, and we looked down  the car to see that the two large women were pulling away from each other and saying, "We'll give you something to take pictures of!!" and then they started making out again. The guy they were with who was wearing a Juggalo shirt stood propped up against the door nodding his head, and someone screamed, "Let's eat someone! Let's eat someone!"

It was at that moment that I realized that we weren't on Big Brother, nor were we in a metro car anymore... this was Lord of the Flies kind of stuff. Over the course of 20 minutes, we had progressed from a normal, semi-unstable Saturday night metro train to an island full of one-time-young-professionals contemplating who to kill for food. I worried first and foremost about the girl who was passed out. Being a young female passed out in an urban setting is already dangerous enough, but being in this urban setting only made the situation more pressing. I knew the obvious choice was probably the outlandish lesbians, but I couldn't help to feel paranoid: I was one of the meatiest options. I would provide the most nutrition--I could sustain at least half the car for at least thirty minutes. I thought about the future and what it could have been, and I began to actually wonder if that train car was where it would all end. In the mean time, everyone was screaming, begging the metro car to start moving, and the speaker would occasionally erupt into a loud noise that mostly sounded like, "Passengers...time...sorry...thanks."

And then the train surged forward. All the lesbians, alliances, and Juggalos couldn't keep me from the excitement I had in my heart. It was as if I had been saved, and once the doors opened, I hugged Samantha goodbye and ran out the doors with my roommate. One young man stopped to tell a metro worker that he was an "inbred piece of..." well, you get the idea, and in a last moment attempt to restore civility to the world, I yelled, "Everyone has lost their damn minds. Go home. Everyone go home," and people started moving toward the escalators. You never know what the future holds, but when you're stuck on a metro of potential-cannibals, you do learn to appreciate whatever is ahead. Again, I survived the Saturday night metro, but as for the next one... you can never be sure.

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?

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.

Riding in Cars with Boys

My mom always told me to never get into the car with strangers, but honestly, the older I've gotten, I've always had a habit of bending the rules that my mom set forth for me way back when. I have a love for strangers, especially weird ones. Luckily I never had too much of an affinity for candy, otherwise I would have ended up in the wrong Astrovan a long time ago, and then I would have ended up being the Elizabeth Smart of the East Tennessee community. Regardless, I've managed to make it twenty-two years based on the kindness of strangers, and it's honestly a mystery as to how I have managed to not be murdered.
I guess it probably dials back to the fact that I love people, no matter who they are because everyone has an interesting story to tell. I've never really cared what someone looked like or how dangerous they looked... I always cared more about how they got there and if they were willing to tell me about it. I don't have many regrets in life, but one of the moments that stands out to me most distinctly was during my sophomore year of college. My parents had asked me to meet them at a car dealership because my mom was getting a new car (little did I know, we were actually trading in my clunker Jeep [may he rest in peace] for a car for me). As I turned off the interstate, there was an old man with a Duck Dynasty type beard walking down the road with his thumb out. I was immediately stopped at a red light because the Knoxville infrastructure somehow legitimized putting a stoplight on the off ramp from I-40 to Emory Road. Even from a distance, we locked eyes for just a moment. I smiled and nodded at him, and he returned the favor. I'm sure most people would have summed it up as just another vagrant looking for money or a free ride, but I can't tell you how many times I've wanted to go back and pick him up. From then on out, I had a stronger itch than ever to collect strangers on the road and put them in my car, kind of like a collection of hitchhikers.
So, after a couple years of waiting, I got my opportunity. The evening after my friend Dixie took me on one of the most painful hikes I've ever been on, we were completely exhausted on the way back toward campus. As we were navigating the Smoky Mountains tourist traffic, we came upon a young man with a giant pack on his back loaded down with all sorts of goodies hanging off of it. I looked at Dixie and asked if we go pick him up, as if he were some kind of stray kitten lost on the side of the road. Either way, I saw it as an opportunity because first and foremost, we had an opportunity to help another human being... and on the off chance that he was a crazed lunatic, I finally had an opportunity to test my self-protective skills with the metal pipe I carry in my car. We took about a mile deliberating the options before I made the executive decision to go pick him up.
He told us about hiking the Appalachian Trail and how his trail name was Leaf, as his walking stick was stabbing me in the neck from the backseat.  He was asking us questions about our lives, but not in the simple "everybody talks like this" kind of way, but more like if Ralph Waldo Emerson hopped in your backseat after a couple weeks alone in the woods. We ended up letting Leaf out of the car about two thirds a mile down the road, so we weren't actually that helpful at all in getting him where he was going. I had (kind of) helped a hitch hiker though, and I didn't get stabbed, so I considered an overarching victory.
Since then, I hadn't found myself in a vehicle with someone I didn't know up until just recently. DC is a bustling place where no one ever really knows each other because people move in and out so quickly that by the time you've introduced yourself, they're closing the door on a UHaul. But this week at work, I was asked to take a taxi from our office across town to deliver some materials to a client. I tried not to show my nervousness, but I didn't have any knowledge as to how you make this work. I mean, I had a couple of movie references, but most of the time, nothing in real life is like the movies. My plan of action was to go to the edge of the street and hold out my hand, but if they didn't seem to be slowing down, I would leap onto the hood until they came to a red light, then hop off and quickly dive in the back door. Luckily, the first one I saw stopped.
The ride was fantastic: a nice greeting once I got in, simple address request, light classical music on the way there. I was exhausted this week, so I took the twenty minute ride to collect my thoughts and just reflect on the week. My mind hasn't stopped lately, as I've been trying to get a handle on all of my 20-something thoughts. I've been thinking about how I want to approach my career and finals, and how being single during Christmastime is a total buzzkill. I wondered if I'd ever get married, and then I wondered what shade of leather I would make all the furniture in my "man room," when I was a fifty year old bachelor. It was so great that I was even looking forward to the ride back. But when I got in the taxi on the way back, there was no classical music. I didn't have time to begin my in depth life-changing contemplations/start planning the interior decorating for my bachelor pad because the taxi driver was too busy telling me how to hail a taxi properly. Apparently what I did wasn't hailing a taxi, as much as it was waving at cars going by, as if I knew the driver or if it was a parade. I knew it was going to be a very long taxi ride back.

About two minutes into the drive, he asked me if I smoked. Nervous, I answered, Yeah, I'm sorry because, you know, I'm obligated to apologize for each of my life decisions. He told me, Oh, it's fine. It's your body and your decision... at first, I thought that was it, which would have been a refreshing turn of events, but he followed up with, you know that smoking will kill you, right? which was a hard sentence to comprehend through his Dominican accent. It makes you die a slow painful death. That's why you've coughed so much since you've gotten in. It's already happening. I don't have any addictions in the world, except for women. I'm 58 years old, and I sleep with too many women. It wouldn't be a problem if I weren't married. Cue his extremely loud laughter and my nervous hiccups in the back. It all made sense to me: my mom didn't warn against me riding in the car with strangers because it was dangerous... she warned against it because people are really friggin' weird and kind of annoying sometimes. He went on to ask me if I had a girlfriend, and then told me that if I didn't get on it soon, I was going to be 50 looking around... wondering why I was still alone. I took his advice pretty hard until I reminded myself that he's married and sleeps around with all kinds of people. Guessing that I had become uncomfortable, due to my nervous texting and constant shifting closer to the door, he told me that he would leave me alone.
I felt bad because as weird as the conversation was, I felt like my body language was saying, Hey Dominican cab driver. I don't like your or your extramarital affairs. Stop talking, when it reality, all I was trying to say was, Hey Dominican cab driver, stop talking. After about three minutes of silence, he chimed in with, I can make excellent empanadas. There was no segue or any previous indicator that we had talked about empanadas, but because I was afraid I had already hurt his feelings, I took the bait. He went on to tell me about how he tried to contact Starbucks' corporate office to market his empanadas, but they didn't want his recipe. Eventually, they would pay. He was going to open up his own empanada business, and if I was interested, I could join him. He fries them instead of baking them. I think the latter half of the conversation was in Spanish because I couldn't understand what he was saying anymore. Eventually, things got quiet again.
At this point, we had hit dead stop traffic, and I was paying to sit in a cab and listen to him talk about empanadas. After about two minutes, he told me that people that smoke have to carry tanks of oxygen around and wear masks. As the meter kept rolling, I knew I had to make a quick getaway. This man had painted my future as a 50 year old, empanada-businessman, who was lonely but actually died around 34 from smoking. I asked, Hey, I can get off here, if that's cool. He said, your destination is still five blocks away. Desperately trying to escape the car, I said, Oh, that's fine. I like to walk, and I can get Starbucks on my way back to the office. Shit. He hates Starbucks, Justin. I quickly handed him the money and leapt out of the backseat in the same way that I thought I would have to leap in.
In the end, maybe it isn't such a good idea to ride around with strangers. I know that one day, I'll tell my children about the perils of riding in cars with strangers, but I won't scare them out of it with ambiguous stories of men in van with candy and ill-intentions. I'll tell them about how sometimes strangers do psychedelic drugs and talk over your head in that annoying, transcendental way. I'll tell them about how sometimes they criticize your way of life and then implore about why you don't have a sex life. And most of all, I'll take them to Starbucks to have that conversation, and we will most certainly not be ordering empanadas.

Confessions of an Extrovert

My brother Casey was diagnosed with autism at three years old. As a family, we decided not to tell him in hopes that it would never be something that he would ever let define him... if he happened to find out, so be it, but we weren't going to go out of the way to tell him. No point. He was always going to be the same Casey. One day after watching an episode of Dr. Phil, Casey came into the living room and made an announcement to us: You know guys, I was watching an episode of Dr. Phil and there were these autistic people on there, and after thinking about it, I might be autistic. We all just kind of sat there, looking at one another wondering who was going to step up with the obligatory "ding ding." Casey had figured it out on his own, and I wasn't really sure how learning something so pivotal would feel... until today.
I'm sure that a lot of factors went into my big discovery today: the immediate homesickness, the desperate need to keep my cell phone alive so to have directions to get to the apartment I'm staying at, the lack of sleep that I got in anticipation of this drive, but at the end of the day, regardless of the factors that led me to it, I have something I have to admit: I'm. an. extrovert. Much like the way that I used to say that I had secrets that I kept from people, and that I was super mysterious, I also liked to believe that I was an introvert... or at least someone who could be at peace with himself for eight to ten hours to make a car ride up the coast. But as the day went on, I couldn't take it. I began talking to myself more and more, laughing at my own jokes to fill the void of the usual laughter that follows me witty banter. I would befriend people in cars: people that looked like my dad or people my age, possibly an old woman who looked kind of lonely. They would never make eye contact with me, but I'd follow them and keep watch on their cars. I'd hope that maybe they were secretly doing it to me as well. But if that wasn't evidence enough of my extroversion, stopping at the Wendy's in Fisherville, Virginia definitely was.
I walked in and they were everywhere: humans. I wanted to talk to them all; I wanted to hug them and invade their personal space. I wanted us to talk about all the things we had in common and the couple things we didn't, and then I would prematurely add them on Facebook, secretly doubting whether I had sent them a request too soon, but convincing myself otherwise. We would talk occasionally online, sometimes reminding one another of how we met or the one time I ordered the Asiago Chicken Club, and it would all seem important again. Once I sat down, I felt distanced again... nervous, even. I didn't want to be alone. I had convinced myself in a matter of seven minutes that Fisherville might just be the city for me to live in. No need to travel for three more hours; there were people here, and they would suffice just fine.
And as I sat there, holding back tears until the gray haired man with a small ponytail held together with a red rubber band sat down next to me (it took everything in my body to not say, hey girl, I like your weave.), it hit me... you love people way too much. As if someone had sat the social sorting hat on my head, I knew at that point, if I had ever fought the idea of it before that I was... indeed... an extrovert. And then all of my past, selfish mistakes came rushing in. For some reason, maybe because Rory Gilmore was and I wanted to be too, I thought I could at least pretend to be an introvert. I would purposefully go after introverted friends and introverted relationships. It made all the sense in the world; all the times that these people that were so like me would tell me that they needed their time to just be by themselves or think, I would completely freak out. There must be something wrong with me; my funny is obviously broken. Why couldn't I constantly entertain them?! Why were they so weird. They weren't introverted like me. They were nothing like me at all.
And in my own version of a Dr. Phil show, the illusion came crashing down on me today. I've never been close to an introvert; I couldn't be if I wanted. And I suppose this is as good as time as ever to just go ahead and apologize for all the years of deception and loosely veiled attempts at being an introvert. I'm sorry when you said you needed "some alone time" that I interpreted that as "you should come along with me for some alone time." I apologize for all the times that I thought that "I don't want to talk about it" meant "Just keep asking me; I'm just trying really hard to make you work for it." Apparently, I never really understood what it meant to be an introvert because I wasn't ever really comprehending the concept of maybe not wanting to talk to people. I don't understand your people, just like you don't understand mine. But if I can promise you one thing, it's that the claw marks on my driver's side window don't lie... I long for people; I suppose it's the curse of an introvert.

When We Were Young

I miss the days when we were young.

And I don't know why we tried so hard to speed through it all, blindly claiming a title of "adult" that I'm still not so sure that we understand. But we graduated college, and there was really no time taken to just enjoy what we had stumbled into: the real world, as if we hadn't been living in the real world before that. I remember sitting on the phone as we tried to figure out how we would pay our rent with the job that we had taken just to ensure that there would be money in our then-hopeless accounts. We decided that we wouldn't worry because the odds were in the Mayans favor, and we wouldn't have to live much longer past our graduation if we came up short.
In a surprise turn of events, neither ever happened. We lived on into 2013 and even in the months that the bills seemed to be beyond our control, there was something that happened that made it all work. And even though I never said anything to you about it, I know that your parents helped you out that one month when your tire blew out right on the interstate. It was still all too new of a place for anyone to come to you, so you sat on the side of the road and cried. You cried about the tire and the money and the loneliness. You cried because you wanted to go home; not just home but your bed, the one you grew up in with the wooden spindles you'd trace with your fingers as a child. I know how you felt because I felt the same way, and I called home, too.
Sure, we struggled. We never expected not to, but in the middle of all of that I wish we had taken the time to realize just how beautiful that struggle was. We were always chastised for saying that our generation was special so we took those moments as a punishment; we made them into something that was supposed to teach us a lesson without realizing that maybe after all, we were special. It had nothing to do with "our generation" or the generations before us that apparently struggled harder than we ever could have imagined, going here and there uphill both ways. It had to do with us, and the only promise that we would go on to make about our experience is that we would never try and make our children feel as small as we did. We were special because we made it. Everything else was just a bonus.
We continued through our twenties, landing jobs applicable to what we actually hoped we would do, and most of the time, it surprised us more than it surprised anyone else. Eventually, it meant less to prove ourselves to those around us and more that we actually did something that we secretly believed would never happen. In the meantime, we made fun of our friends back home that would get married, without ever willing to admit that we might be jealous. We might be doubtful. What if we had stayed back and chosen the path that seemed safest? Wouldn't it at least be a bit easier if we had someone with us along the way? There was no time to reconsider though; we made the decision we did, and you know, I wouldn't go back and change it. It made me have to look at myself in the mirror and be content with the solitude. It was just me standing there, and I had to be okay with that. We all did.
In all the hardships that we faced, the moments that came in between seem to have erased them from my memory. Of course there's still fragments, but can you say that they really mattered in comparison to the rest? People in their twenties are not supposed to go to Italy, but it was what we wanted, so we counted noodles out of a box for a while. A couple tablespoons of tomato sauce, and that was our dinner because... soon, we would be eating real Italian pasta. And I'm not sure how we pulled it off, but we did. We made it happen because we promised ourselves that we would. We wouldn't settle for the fates that had been determined for us because, deep down, we knew that we wanted more. I don't care what anyone says, we deserved more. So we took it by the throat; we choked the life out of it. All of our dreams did not come true, but isn't that why you dream so many of them? Surely, we thought, if we made a list a mile long we would be able to accomplish at least a handful.
Look at us now. You've moved into that house in the subdivision, and you got married, even though you said you never would. Kendall needs braces, and it's completely bullshit that it costs about as much for those as it did for us to leave the country. But I guess we have the kind of jobs you need to pay for stuff like that. And I'm waiting for the final manuscript to come back from the publisher, and as much as I've loved it, I miss the days that I would hungrily sit in front of the computer and write that blog. No one picked it apart; my words were only up for my scrutiny. No one was asking me to put it down and come to bed; there wasn't a dog scratching at the door to be let out. And in the darkness of a computer screen gone black, I begin to see the slight wrinkles developing on my thirty-nine year old face.

Do you know how long it's been since we met up for Italian food? I miss it. I miss being young. I just wish that someone had reminded us to stop trying to rush though. I wish that we hadn't been so stuck on the ideals of growing older. I wish we had been reminded more often that the world was at our fingertips. Maybe it still is.

Sure we're too old to be on the Olympic gymnastics team or to have someone buy us liquor because we're underage, but I sometimes wonder what we're missing by looking so closely at the past. We haven't missed it; we've just been looking in the wrong places.

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.