hello

We just turned 3. And in the meantime I’ve apparently turned 20 again.

Older generations look upon ours with scorn. They say we’ve been brought up with the expectation that no matter how little effort we put into life it is our right to become rich and famous by our late 20′s. Which, in my case, is somewhat true.

I’ve never been able to give much thought to my future. When I was a teenager I figured I would die by 25 and so lived life accordingly, giving little or no effort to bettering myself or developing talents and instead indulging my every self-destructive whim. Then when I was in college for film production I couldn’t figure out what on earth I was doing there or what I had in common with any of my peers. I went to some classes, others I skipped entirely. I received a smattering of knowledge in various subjects that I’ve failed to find any applications for in real life thus far.

It wasn’t until I drunkenly slammed my volvo into the back of a parked car ten houses down from my parents’ house in San Jose over winter break that I really started thinking about actions and consequences and the future. After all the minor scrapes with the law I had had in my adolescence I suddenly had an actual criminal record, albeit a rather benign one in the grand scheme of things.

Bicycling to and from school in L.A. at the age of 20 gave me a lot of time to think about what was in store for me next. Most important was the humility I gained from the experience. I no longer lived under the delusion that I was a free-floating rebellious independent thinker who was only in school to buck the system and party. I was in reality a spoiled kid from the suburbs who acted recklessly and without any regard for the people who consistently supported and funded my life. I traded invincibility for introspection, braggadocio for meekness. What was I going to do after graduation? Was I even going to graduate? If I wasn’t the devil-may-care kid I’d thought I’d been then who the fuck was I?

Somehow I pulled it all together and was able to graduate in 4 years plus one summer course. I even received an A on my final film, even in its (still) uncompleted state. The challenge of attending and graduating college that had dominated my life since junior high had been met. Suddenly I needed a job and a car and a place to live. All my wasted hours and unpreparedness that had preceded this moment came rushing in at once and I was totally at a loss of what my purpose was.

Through a friend I took on an office job at a commercial real estate firm where all the employees were young affluent white males that waxed idiotic about their latest gym stats and conquests. I made $10 an hour. I shaved my head and felt like a sellout and a peon. But strangely more like a real person. I started getting in shape and even quit smoking for a while. I was able to afford rent and food and nothing else.

I spent two and a half more years in L.A. working at meaningless office jobs for a pittance, scraping by week after week with no idea how to escape the rut I had dug myself into. That’s when I decided I had to move. As soon as my lease expired in L.A. I packed up a uhaul and moved to San Francisco. I had few friends and no leads on an apartment but I had a job lined up working on photo sets so I had a start. I found a place to move in, and then an even better one. After months and months of long grey days alone in my room I finally made some friends. Then I joined a moped gang. Suddenly I was having a blast. I was making $20 an hour plus tons of overtime, which allowed me to reinvent myself with new styles and furnishings. I was 25 going on 26 and it seemed like the world was opening up to embrace me and I was excited about all the opportunities that lay in store.

Jesus I’m rambling. This is definitely a “skim” article for all of you, I’m sure. I know I personally loathe really long personal diatribes aired on the ‘net. Plus this is supposed to be sad, right? Who cares if I pulled myself miraculously out of aimlessness and despair? Didn’t we all go through the same process after school?

Well, here’s the sad part. I’m 27 now. Years of smoking and drinking under the warm summer sun have started to catch up with me. I’m definitely not a kid anymore. I guess I’m a man, for all that that means. I’m a smoker again. And a drinker. I wake up every day to a body covered in tattoos depicting the highs and lows of my life thus far. There will never be a day when I don’t wake up to these, until I don’t wake up anymore.

Out of pride and anger I resigned from my full-time job with benefits. I was labeled a fool, and rightly so, but the daily misery was taking a toll on me. After years of progress the future once again looks uncertain. But the clock has never stopped ticking, and now I’m finding myself late in the race.

Sad. Sigh. I spend my days trolling the internet, scrounging change for a daily cup of coffee, moving my car three times a day to avoid tickets I can’t afford, smoking through haggard coughs behind the dripping eves of my front porch, and spending what money I do have on frivolous dates and old friend alcohol to keep me sane yet depressed, with company yet alone.

It’s good to be back.

mbw

Financial Crisis!

Last night I actually kissed a piece of mail for the first time.

I got my check for my 2nd job.  It was 5 days late.  I kissed it because I had been freaking out all week.  I don’t get paid until next Wednesday and I had $30 in my bank account and no food.  There was going to be A LOT of ramen and mac and cheese going on over the weekend.

But then!  The check!  It showed up!  I kissed it!

It was for $100.  Yes, $100 will get me that excited.  Sigh.  All of this makes me think I should just go into the venerable practice of whoring.  Because, you know, there are perks to being all cash money all the time.

Like my body?

More Reasons to Keep My Damn Mouth Shut

I spent a long, long day at Bumbershoot, Seattle’s excellent arts, comedy and music festival, where we saw many, many excellent bands.  My friend EZ and I had decided to see the guys from Human Giant as our comedy selection, but it turned out David Cross was a surprise addition to the comedy lineup. David Cross rules, so we got passes for the show. David Cross, in case you were unaware of this, is dating Amber Tamblyn, who recently was in that movie about magical pants.

Walking across one of the lawns toward to Intiman Theatre, I joked to EZ, “Hey, maybe we will see Amber Tamblyn.”

“Yeah,” said EZ, “We can tell her how much we loved her pants movie. Or we can just be rude and yell PANTS at her.” We had a good laugh. Why would Amber Tamblyn take time off from her busy pants-promoting schedule to come to lil’ ol’ Seattle?

We get settled in our seats and guess who sits directly behind us in the tiny theater.

Yeah.  Amber Tamblyn.

Obviously, I am awesome!  What I say happens!  I am like God and all the infinite possibilities of the world are open to me!

So what do you think happened later when, sitting on the lawn watching the patently awful Saul Williams, I flinched as a seagull flew too low?

“Why are you so scared of them?”  EZ asked.

“I’m afraid one will shit on me,” I explained.

Two seconds later, I had a big ol’ bird shit on the leg of my jeans.

Sigh.

What ails ye?

On a whim, I went back into our archives and looked up everything in the category ‘decrepit’.

From the post ‘Utterly, Disgustingly Decrepit’:

Then lo, this morning, I woke up by getting a Charlie horse in my right calf muscle.  It was so fucking painful I wanted to die.

So now I’m limping on BOTH SIDES of my lower half.  Nothing is healing and I have to walk the 1.5 miles into town today to get something signed by my dissertation advisor.  It’s going to be a long, slow, painful penguin walk.

There were a multitude of these from 2006-2007.  However, it appears that our physical calamity has evaporated and been replaced by ennui.

You guys.  Boredom and melancholy are dull.  Let’s hurt ourselves!  Otherwise, we fail at finding the funny in the sad (read: broken extremities), even more than we fail at life in general.

Even my body hates me (or, ESPECIALLY my body hates me)

Last week I went to the doctor, all wheezy from some asthma caused by seasonal allergies. Thinking I’d just get prescribed another inhaler, I told the doctor the issue, she listened to my breathing, and then freaked the hell out and put me on a steroidal medication to try and get the inflamation in my bronchial tubes down.

So, I guess it was worse than I thought. Oops. The unfortunate side-effect of said medication is that it compromises my immune system in a major, horrifying way, apparently. I did not realize this until Friday night a mosquito decided to make its home in my bed, eating me up. Well, okay, no big deal. Until! Yesterday I woke up for 4 infected bug bites, an infected eye, and a whole host of other horrifying problems that I don’t care to detail here (because they are FEMALE in nature and Grace is worried about what kind of ads that would generate).

Now let me state for the record that I am VAIN. I also routinely wear 3 different kinds of eyeliner. So this having to go to work with no makeup on covered in red welts like some kind of horrifying troll isn’t sitting well with me and I kind of feel like going home, crawling into a hole and dying.

On top of all that, I’m super-stressed at work, and as a consequence to THAT my jaw popped out of place after I spent all night clenching it. So now I can’t eat, my eye is swollen shut and I’m covered in infected bug bites and I’m not even wearing any makeup, which makes the rest of it 1,000x worse.