Ouch. That Smarts.

"You know," I said to a caseworker in the dictation room this morning, dead eyes meeting dead eyes, "I would never cheat on my wife, but this job can definitely suck my dick."

I've been trying to leave for maybe eight months-- maybe nine.  Maybe it's been since my kids were born, I don't know.  I don't remember.  I've sent out so many emails, it's disgusting.  I've been on Idealist.org so many times it's appalling.  Every time I attach another horseshit resume to another fantastically made up cover letter email, I want to shit studs and puke drywall.  It's repetitive and demeaning and unkind.

The rejection emails do not bother me, not even a bit.  I could care less.  I couldn't care less?  Who cares?

Not me!

I just submitted an excessively and predictably lengthy application to work for the V. A. as basically a mid-level bureaucrat, desk-jockey, paper-pushing, phone-weilding asstriloquist.  And, I've got to tell you, plate tectonics and priorities really must be shifting in this harried little head of mine, because I'm practically salivating at the thought of sitting at a desk all day, answering the telephone, talking to down-on-their-luck, washed up, beaten down, PTSD'd vets about the process of securing, exploring, appealing, and exercising their benefits and horning in on markedly more money than I'm making and sucking at the glorious teat of a federal pension.

mmmmmmmmmmmm...... suck suck suck suck suck suck suck................. moist

But, of course, I'm getting WAY ahead of myself.  The job was open from the 18th-20th, and there are fourteen (FOUR-FUCKIN-TEEN!) positions open in Philadelphia.  Now, because it's the government, they want to make sure you're nice and smart before they hire you, you know, so you fit in with everybody else already on the federal payroll, so you had to submit your transcript(s) in order to complete the application process.

This wasn't easy to accomplish when you work full-time, have two children, and only two days to accomplish this feat.

Muhlenberg, my undergraduate alma mater, made it pretty easy, and relatively inexpensive.  For an unofficial transcript, you fill out the form online, pay $7.25, ($5.00 for the transcript, $2.25 internet service fee) and they email you your grades in around 24 hours.  Done and done.

La Salle, graduate school and true to its staid Catholic roots, is a little bit more rooted in the dark ages.  After tithing $32.50 (don't ask me where they came up with that bizarre number) they will Express Mail you the transcript.  They don't do the eThing.  Fortunately, I had until 11:59pm on the 20th to fax the transcripts to the gub'mint, and I did it by 8:20pm.  And everything was going fine.  What wasn't going particularly fine was looking at my Muhlengrades, which I hadn't really thought about since I graduated back in 2002.

I graduated as prick # 211 out of 450 some other pricks and pracks.  Solidly middle of the pack-- indistinguishable, certainly academically, from one schlub to the next schmeck.  Sure, I wrote, edited, published, promoted and sold a book as an undergraduate, and I was in a lot of plays, and wrote a lot of plays and had one of those plays be a semi-finalist to go to the Kennedy Center, and I distinguished myself as the first Jew on our hallway to have sex with a Catholic girl, (I didn't even have to tithe) and I probably distinguished myself in other ways, too, but, academically, not really very much happening there.

I got a D in biology-- having sex with the Catholic girl didn't help like I thought it might-- and I guess that's because I never went to class.  I guess the biology class I took in high school, where we spent untoward amounts of time coloring in pictures of amoebas, talking about "Power Rangers" and watching "The Money Pit" didn't help like I thought it might.  A cold, hard C- in Critical Thinking, which I think, objectively and non-academically, is something at which I'm pretty adroit.  I bombed a couple other classes, too.  Oh, right.  Intro to Psych.  C-, which is kind of funny, considering that I work in an inpatient crisis psychiatric hospital and I supposedly know my dick from a mushroom.  I did very well in all my theatre courses, but I guess you'd have to be Nicolas Cage on ice and ether to fuck that up.

Joking aside (really, it's no joke: I hate that flat affect fuckstick) I was surprised at how saddened I was by my college grades.  I ended with a cumulative GPA of 3.302.  I looked at the scanned transcript and I was disappointed in myself, something I would have bristled at had it came from my parents-- but it never did.  At least, I don't remember them saying they were disappointed in my grades-- certainly not in college.  Where grades were held in extremely, I think excessively, high regard in my wife's family, in my own, they were not really relevant.  Far more weight was given to the overall experience.  I remember my parents being concerned for how I was doing in college on an emotional level, particularly since, mid-way through my sophomore year, I started going to the counseling center for once-a-week sessions and didn't stop until I graduated.  I had suicidal thoughts for the first, and only, time when I was a freshman.  Bullied mercilessly, lost and lonely, and stripped from the tender clutches of my once-adoring mother, I got very dark indeed-- and told no one.  Because, well, why would I?

In grad school, I ended with a cumulative 3.7, because, I guess, La Salle gives out A's like communion wafers.  I got tons of them, and never went hungry.

I guess, if I'd wanted good grades in undergrad, I would have, I don't know-- studied?  I didn't think you were supposed to study in college, so I didn't.  I never really knew how to study anyway.  In high school, I did my homework on the bus on the way to school, and I did fine, so I didn't really know what all those people were doing in the college library all the time.  I went there because there were hot girls there and I liked hot girls.  Now, when I got to the library, there's just mentally unstable people cursing under their breath and blowing air on their notebooks filled with religious ramblings.  I masturbated, a lot, in college-- and my eyesight was always poor and my palms are still hairless to this day, but I guess educational mediocrity is the price for my ambivalence and spilled seed.  And I suppose, in the end, I'm okay with that.

Especially if it gets me a comfy office chair and a G7 pay rate.

Throw Your Hats Up in the Air, Motherfuckers!

Chances are, I'll never be invited to speak at a graduation.

I don't mind admitting to you that this makes me sad, and angry, and interested in the geographical coordinates of the nearest cat, whose pink nose, charming whiskers, and electric eyes I then might acquaint with my closed fist.

It takes great, significant achievement to become someone who would not only be cordially invited, but thoroughly compensated, to speak at a commencement ceremony. I mean, usually it does-- Mumia Abu-Jamal got to speak (recorded, of course) at a graduation ceremony in California and he just had to shoot a policeman in the back and in the face. That's a significant achievement, though I wouldn't call it "great". That piece of shit is, though, the extreme exception to the rule. And that's good. We can only heap praise and honor on so many murderers before the whole world starts to think we're irreprably fucked up.

I long ago came to terms with the fact that I'm never going to be a celebrity of any kind. I mean, outside of this blog, where I get to be a celebrity in my own mind which, don't get me wrong, is nice. And I didn't even have to shoot anybody!

There are precious few things about the fact that I'm never going to be a celebrity that bother me anymore, but I have to say that being denied the opportunity to address a graduating college class is one of them.

I have to be honest about why, though. It's not that I think the graduating classes of the future, or even the present, are being denied the opportunity to tune in to some great orator, because I am definitely not that. I remember giving a reading of a chapter of my book at a signing years ago, and my tongue was so thick you'd have thought I had prepped for the event by giving head to a rolling pin.

I may be a decent actor, but a great public speaker I am not. Nervous, fidgety, lacking in confidence and authority, I carefully script out every word, and grip onto the podium like it's my tandem parachute buddy.

Though I have very distinct memories of being a real cut-up at my friend Eric's Bar Mitzvah back in 1993. He moved away to Pittsburgh when we were twelve and he invited me to his Bar Mitzvah and I accepted, taking my first ever flight in an airplane. From Philadelphia to Pittsburgh. I think the total hangtime was 38 minutes. For some strange reason, Eric asked me to deliver a speech at the reception. For some stranger reason, his parents didn't intercede. I stood up in my suit and tie, holding a champagne flute filled with sparkling cider, and I proceeded to roast the kid, unscripted, for twenty minutes. The children, seated on the parquet floor in a semi-circle around me were laughing and jabbing each other in the ribs. The old fuckers were roaring.

"Okay, okay," I said, "seriously now, everybody raise your glass in a toast to Eric."

Everybody raised their glasses.

"Okay, now, put them down, I just wanted to see if you'd all do what I said."

These people thought that was the funniest fucking thing they'd ever heard in their lives. And they all put their glasses down, too. I suppose Pittsburgh's not that funny a place.

Come to think of it, you never know, really-- I suppose I could, through some incredibly ridiculous circumstance get asked to speak at a graduation. I mean, why the hell would I ever be asked to speak at a Bar Mitzvah? There is absolutely no reason that ever should have happened. But it did.

I wonder which of my personalities would come out were I asked to speak at a graduation. Would it be me, or Mr. Apron? Would I go on some verbally abusive, masochistic rant, or would I be sentimental and make some inept attempt at pathos and inspiration? I suppose it's possible that, if I were feeling particularly skilled, I would make some attempt at merging the two. I'd definitely write the speech the day of, because that's kind of what I do, even if it's really important.

Especially if it's really important.

Not that graduation speeches are especially important. I know they're really built up in everybody's mind, but that doesn't make them important. It just makes them built up. And things that build up generally aren't good. Take arterial plaque, for instance. And rage. Or... a blocked colon.

I fantasize, sometimes, about what I would say. There are lots of funny things to say to people who are sitting there in their caps and gowns, the perfect rubes they are.

"Okay, let's be honest: raise your hand if you're naked under that stupid thing? Two hands if you're naked and shaved."

Yeah. That's one of the things that would be funny to say. But you can probably only get away with that shit if you're Jon Stewart.

Happy Graduation, Motherfuckers. You can't have my job.

Where I Left Off

"Well, I'd kind of like to pick up where I left off," I told the therapist on the phone during our initial chat last week.

"Oh, okay," he said, "when were you last in therapy?"

"I stopped going when college ended," I replied, "in 2002."

There was a brief silence on the other end of the line. Well, on both ends of the line, to be accurate. I guess you can't really have silence on only one end of a conversation, can you?

This is the type of horseshit that my new therapist is going to have to contend with every Tuesday morning, at 8:30am. I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that I'm more than likely this cat's first Tuesday appointment-- I can't imagine anybody loonier in their tuning to get up for a 7:00, 7:15, or even a 7:30am session of mind-bending bollocks. But me? I'm ready at crow of cock. If this sonofabitch wanted to see me at 6:30, I'd be there, ready to throw up all over him.

Symbolically speaking, of course.

That's really what therapy is, though, in my mind, at least: vomiting. Vomiting out the contents of your mind and, to take the analogy a bit too far, sifting through the viscous detritus to find the choice chunks to... study.

I hope you're not reading this whilst shoveling in your Sugar Smacks. Do they still make those things?

In any event, today is my first day back in therapy in nine years. As I bang out this blog, I would say that I'm somewhere on the spectrum between ambivalence and elevated anxiety. Part of me knows what to expect, part of me has no idea what to expect. Maybe the techniques will be similar and familiar, but the office and the man behind the clipboard will be different.

Oh, and I suppose I'm a little different, too. A little grayer up top, but still just as immature as I was as a college junior, in many ways. The fact that I can boast a marriage, a car, a mortgage, two dogs and a job aren't really relevant. I'm still struggling with how to deal with my family, still racing frenetically from one obligation to another like my ass-crack is on fire, still battling that depression and anxiety. Still resisting medication. Still... dying to talk about myself.

Don't look so surprised, dear.

I wonder, though, in the end, what good it will do. Because we're doing CBT, there will inevitably be homework assignments that I will have to do-- well, not HAVE to, but that will be in my best interests to do. There will be some that must be written, and no doubt there will be some that will have to be... performed, as it were-- interactions between myself and others that will probably make me uncomfortable, irritated, annoyed, and wanting desperately to stick my head into a sandbox, or a bag of sugar, or Megan Fox's nether regions.

I would be lying if I said I was 100% up for the challenge. I'm not 100% up for anything these days. Oh, go ahead-- make a penis joke. If you don't, I will.

I told this individual, (I feel uncomfortable calling him "MY therapist" just yet, seeing as we haven't even shaken hands as of this moment) that I wanted to pick up where I left off, but I know there's really no way to do that-- not when you "left off" with someone else, and not when you did it nine years ago. Truthfully, I don't really know what I want, or how I intend to achieve it. And I know he's going to ask me, and I don't know what I'm going to say.

I suppose most of what I want is to feel better. Isn't that why people go to people called "doctors" in the first place? I'm pretty sure it is. In the plainest language: I don't feel well. Sounds childish, doesn't it? But some of the most childish-sounding things are the truest of all.

My head/belly hurts.

I'm sad.

You hurt me.

I'm sorry.

I love you.

That's not fair.

All as true as true can be. And though it was often my way during therapy in college to talk the psychological talk, to be elevated and insightful and sometimes even a little poetic, perhaps I ought to just stick to those innocent little basics, and maybe I'll feel better a little bit quicker.

I hope it goes well. No doubt I'll have more fun there than at my dentist appointment at 2 today.

Broadway's Bad Way

CAVEAT BLOGDOR: I am about to do something I abhor, namely, criticize something I haven't seen. Actually, fuck that-- I'm going to criticize LOTS of things I haven't seen. Because this is my blog, and, if I can't be a raging hypocrite here, I might as well just go pull down my pants, hate fuck a rusty tin can and call it day.

Know what I mean?

------------------------------------------------------

Many of you know that, from 1998-2002, I was a theatre major. It was an ill-fated decision, one that, through a circuitous series of less-than-serious circumstances landed me in a psychiatric hospital (with keys, thank you, ma'am) though not necessarily a decision that I regret. I mean, I may decide, one day, that I regret it, but that day hasn't arrived yet. Though maybe it did and I'm just too stubborn or stupid to recognize/acknowledge it.

Regardless, I was a theatre major, and, forever and all times, that is what I shall be known as in certain circles. Yesterday, one of my patients asked what my educational background was after what I thought was a pretty successful group I had just run.

"Psych, I'm assuming," the patient said with a smile.

"Actually, theatre-- with a Master of Education degree, too."

She looked at me in what I determined was a slightly uneasy silence, but the smile didn't totally disappear from her face, which I guess is good. Ever since I graduated from college, I've always felt like an idiot telling people that I was a theatre major. It sounded like something someone who is definitely... not.... me would have done for four years and I immediately felt guilty and ridiculous about having done it.

Four years of my life, and roughly $112,000 went to... that?

It's funny how our view of ourselves sometimes conflicts with reality. This said, again, by someone who has keys. But, really, it's true. I like to think of myself as so grounded, so practical, so discerning, so reality-based-- someone like that wouldn't be a theatre major, would they? Surely someone whose eyes scan the world for bullshit like a radar-detector pierces through traffic to find that errant speeder would have clearly detected the masturbatory nature and the ineffectual results of flitting time galloping amongst the redwoods as a theatre major.

But I didn't.

Ironically, the one thing I was afraid of about becoming a theatre major ended up not happening. See, I was one of those pillocks who was of the opinion that, if you studied something, if you took it apart, if you engaged in its analysis through educational avenues that the subject of your studies would lose its, well, its magic-- for lack of a more scholarly, erudite term.

Yeah. Turns out that doesn't happen. Like, if you study comedy, Sarah Silverman is still funny. And hot as corduroy-covered balls in August. Imagine that.

Studying theatre actually enhanced my appreciation of the art form, I'm happy (and still a little bit surprised, even today) to say. Maybe it's because, really, I didn't study it (or, frankly, anything) that hard in college. I cut so much Biology that, when I finally decided to return to class to take the final, there was an unfamiliar woman at the front of the class, handing out the exams.

"Who the hell is that?" I whispered to the person sitting in the seat next to me, whose name I didn't know, because I never went to the class.

"That's the professor," the brown-haired girl in the North Face fleece replied.

"What happened to the other one?" I asked. The girl looked at me like I was a pig's asshole.

"She's on maternity leave."

Silence.

"She was pregnant?"

I went to my theatre classes far more often, but the scholarly articles were pretty deadly, from what I remember, and I didn't read most of them. I did what was routinely called "excellent" work in the acting, playwriting, and directing classes, because that's all I really gave a shit about. In college, I was routinely in more than one play at a time, writing, editing, publishing and promoting a book, appearing in a friend's film project, co-writing and appearing in a campus television show, and there was a time where I was churning out an original one-act play a week. Amazingly, I still found time to masturbate and say inappropriate things in the dining hall. AND I was always prepared for my acting, directing and playwriting classes.

These classes definitely deepened my appreciation of and respect for theatre. One of the highlights of our theatre education in college was an opportunity to travel to New York City to see Liev Schreiber and some other assholes in some Harold Pinter play. I was pretty juiced. It was awesome. I didn't give a shit about Liev Schreiber. I was excited to be riding shotgun in the Theatre Department Chair's Nissan Quest and to see a Harold Pinter play.

I've seen precious few shows in Broadway. The Harold Pinter play that I can't remember the title of... um... "Cabaret," "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," "A Little Night Music," and.... that's probably just about it. There's probably one or two more-- maybe. But, maybe not. After all, I've pretty much always been an hourly sumbitch, and Broadway's a little rich for my blood. Not only that, I know I can see fabulous theatre pretty much whenever I want in Philadelphia, and I don't have to sell blood and seed for three months to be able to afford it. Besides, isn't everything on Broadway now basically just a recreation of a movie or some shit?

"Spiderman"? Le Shudder.

"Mary (Fucking) Poppins." "Billy Elliot." "The Lion King." "The Addams Family." "Catch Me if You Can."

And now, oh sweet Jesus-- "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert."

Really?

Now, as I intimated in the caveat of this blog, I have never seen the Broadway show "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert." And I never saw the movie, either, although I heard that portions of it were filmed near my neighborhood. And I'm not necessarily bashing the movie, or the musical, or both. What I am bashing is the seemingly intractable notion that plays have to be something else before they become plays worthy enough for Broadway.

I realize that we're in a recession, and Broadway producers ("The Producers"???) won't vom up the big bucks for anything that they aren't 106% sure will be a June-is-bustin'-out-all-over hit, but, come on. Does nobody have an original idea for a goddamn show that's worth promoting and producing? It's... sad. Broadway: big, flashy, gaudy, awesomesauce Broadway is sad. It's almost as sad as... as.... a theatre major.

And that's sad.

Always a Little

There's a film I love very much called "The Impostors," starring Stanley Tucci and Oliver Platt. It's a delightful, loud, boisterous, silly farce, a tongue-in-cheek nod to the films of yesteryear, where big hats and bigger reactions ruled the screen. Of course, even in a film that is so desperately funny, I tend to look for the quieter, softer, more sullen moments.

I'm just that way, I guess.

There's a scene towards the end of the film where the first mate of a ship approaches the Captain, played by the wonderful Allan Corduner. The scene is a lavish party on the boat, given in the captain's honor, with lively swing music playing in the background and all the elite ship's guests dressed to the nines. The first mate observes the captain for a moment and he says,

"Sir, you look sad."

The captain looks listlessly off into the distance and, almost casually remarks,

"I am always a little sad."

That bit of dialogue, lasting for maybe four or five seconds, is my favorite part of the film, and I suppose it is that way because we love what we feel instinctively is truth, and, for me, that's what that is. There's just those tiny, fleeting, almost absurd moments where you identify. Where you acknowledge. Where you catch yourself almost whispering out hoarsely,

"Me, too."

Back in college, when I was seeing a therapist once a week, I delicately broached the topic of anti-depressant medication with my therapist.

"Well," I said, "it's been a year-and-a-half, and I guess you know me well enough by now. What do you think?"

Rick sat across from me, curly carrot-topped, snowflake sweater, ruddy cheeks, content in his gayness and his charming, gap-toothed grin. His eyes crinkled as he crossed his corduroyed legs and said,

"What do you think?"

"Jesus, Rick," I said, "do you have to be such a fucking therapist all the time?"

He laughed. Which, of course, is just what I wanted. My own private audience for my weekly one-man show. And you couldn't ask for a better audience of one than Rick. He was, quite simply, to die for. And he thought the same of me. It was almost unhealthy.

I told him that I felt I ought to be farther along than I was, that I thought I had all the insight I was going to have and my mood wasn't changing, my writing was still intractably dark, and I was still bitter and angry and sullen about the same things I was bitter and angry and sullen about years before.

"I don't know," he said, "part of me thinks you're exactly who you should be right now. But you're never going to stop wondering, I suppose, so I'll give you a referral to a psychiatrist. Mostly to shut you up."

The next week, I found myself in a strange-looking, uncomfortably dark office on the other side of town, and in wheeled a quadriplegic psychiatrist in a motorized wheelchair, mouth-operated through a blow-tube. I talked to this guy for an hour. "Don't stare at his legs, don't stare at his legs, don't stare at his legs" I repeated to myself in my head, over and over. He diagnosed me with chronic, low-level anxiety and depression and told me about medication he would prescribe to me, if I wanted it.

Turns out, I didn't want it.

And so maybe that's why I'm always a little sad. Maybe things would have been different if I had called up Dr. Hot-Wheels and said, "Hey, let's get those prescriptions filled." But I kind of doubt it. After all, they're pills, not pixie-dust.

I don't know why my brain is wired, or cross-wired maybe, the way it is, why it ventures into dark places sometimes, why it can't shut off at night sometimes, why it broods and obsesses and why it finds the sick and depraved funny, and why my lip trembles when I'm driving in my car sometimes.

Of course, the miscarriage didn't help.

It's been over a year, and the searing, shattering pain has worn off, but the cold, flat ache remains. The uncertainty about whether we will get pregnant again persists, and I hear it in every silence that passes between us, in every off-hand remark, in every sigh and in every cough. I hear it and my ears bleed.

But at least now I know why I am always a little sad.

Dance With Me

My wife has observed that I have this tendency to utilize the literary device (gestalt? I forget what it’s called) where you start out talking about one thing and then meander off in another direction only to circuitously wend your weary way back to your original idea. It probably won’t surprise you to know that this isn’t intentional, or purposeful, or my intelligently and deftly applying skills honed in any number of creative writing classes and workshops I could have, and should have taken. It’s just the haphazard, comfort-seeking way in which my brain works.

Or, rather, doesn’t.

That said, I will confess I had an idea for what I was going to blog about before I sat down at the computer, but I made the mistake of sitting down at the computer with an ice-cold can of Diet Coke and a bowlful of peanut butter M&Ms and I thought to myself, “Holy shit, if I don’t immediately write on my blog about how fucking fantastic peanut butter M&Ms and chilled Diet Coke are, well, then goddamn me to Hell.” And so, I’ve just got to devote a few lines to my snack, even though it has nothing it all to do with what I wanted to blog about for today, and I doubt very much that I’ll be able to gestalt this shit back around at the end. But who cares?

You can’t find peanut butter M&Ms everywhere, and that’s just as well because, if you could, well, they wouldn’t be as special as they are—would they? When we spot that orange bag, we go for it. Now, our house, being basically an eighty-two-year-old furnace with a quaint hole in the kitchen ceiling, keeps pantry food at a comfortable, slightly-toasted temperature. This propensity is especially preferred when it comes to two bad-for-you snacks:

Cadbury mini-eggs, and, you guessed it, Harvard Gal: peanut butter M&Ms.

Your dubiously-aligned teeth pierce the candy shell and just absolutely sink into the pre-warmed mookie goodness and instantly pleasure splinters go shooting through the windmills of your mind. There is a Hebrew phrase that my father taught me that sums up this sensation perfectly. You are supposed to say it after an especially good, satisfying, heavenly meal, and, in English transliteration it looks something like this: “Chhhat-tsee-tsee-un.”

Translation: Half-a-fuck.

Yes, children, consuming warm, mookitty peanut M&Ms is, for most intents and purposes, equivalent to half-a-fuck.

There’s nothing more I can say, though, about the merits of Diet Coke. In caffeinated or CFDC variety it is, without qualm or question, the perfect libation. Definitely ‘nuff said on that score.

‘Kay? Thanks. Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming.

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So, anyway, on Sunday morning, my wife and I woke up, as we fortunately always seem to do, and she turned to me and asked me if I went to any dances in middle school. I laughed, because that’s a nice thing to do when your wife asks you a question.

“Yes, I went to one, when I was in seventh grade.”

“Did you like it?” she asked me.

Sad to admit it, but I laughed again. When I was done, I replied,

“No.”

As she asked me more similar questions, I realized that I had attended exactly one dance in middle school, one in high school, and one in college. And people say I never give things a fair chance. Fucking people— always talking smack.

I don’t remember much about the middle school dance. Clearly, I didn’t actually dance with anybody. I mean, that’s kind of a given. I do remember that I, along with three other awkward gimps, got in trouble for sitting on a rolled up gym mat. There was no sign on it that said, “NO AWKWARD GIMPS MAY SIT HERE,” at least, not that I recall, but I suppose it was just one of those unwritten, unspoken rules that you and your three other awkward gimp compatriots were just supposed to know. Well, we didn’t, and we got sent to the assistant-principal, Dr. A. Dr. A was a severe--looking, skinny, dour woman whose face was contorted in such a way that it always looked like she had just swallowed a cup of Halite. She walked with a cane and I can recall being very afraid that, if I said the wrong thing in her presence, she would break it against my neck.

I mean, really-- why do they even have dances for middle school students? Is it just for the teachers and the adult chaperones to have something to laugh at so they can feel better about themselves? We're all so fucking terrible looking-- gawky, mawky, mawpish, mopish, and just awful. We barely know the opposing gender exists, so why does this painful ritual exist? Isn't it just an attempt at prematurely sexualizing us? I'm surprised FOX News hasn't jumped on this idea yet.

"JUST LET OUR KIDS BE KIDS!!!!!"

Hahaha. Shut the fuck up, FOX News.

In high school, I was convinced by some friends (yes, I had a few back then) to attend a Halloween dance.

“You’ll get to wear a costume,” one of them said. This was enough to make the sale. I came in an Army officer’s dress uniform that I had picked up for twenty bucks at a thrift shop. The pants were large enough to clothe five of me at the same time, and my mother did a hack-job on the waistband so that they would stay up through the evening’s festivities. The “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” army policy was just beginning to take hold that year, and I wore a name tag that said, “Hi, My Name Is Ham-Pies” and I spent the evening dancing the tango and other absurd dances with my gay friend, who was wearing a yellow polyester leisure suit. I wonder why I wasn’t asked out by a girl that year.

The college dance I attended, though, was quite special. It was the formal ball hosted by the theatre association. I mean, “formal”? “Ball”? How bad could this be, I reasoned with myself. I was dating a girl at the time who had been begging me to go to the dance, and I was very much against it. But the words “formal” and “ball” kept swirling around in my brain. I had conjured up images of my classmates in enormous hoop-skirts, massive mounds of cleavage pouring out of Victorian-era dresses, hair in ringlets, and the budding men in gleaming black patent leather shoes, white gloves, long coats.

If you’ve ever doubted the brain’s capacity for fantasy, doubt no more.

I ended up renting a tux for an absurd amount of money at “After Six Menswear.” Not only did you have to pay to attend the ball, too, but I plunked down $189 on a hotel room. I can remember, very, very vividly getting dressed in that ridiculous tuxedo in front of the full-length mirror in our hotel room and, as I affixed the bullshit fake bowtie, my girlfriend came up behind me, sat down on the bed and looked at me with a smile, but with her brow furrowed and said,

“You’re going to be so handsome when you can buy clothes that actually fit you.”

She was so sweet—- but not quite as sweet as a peanut butter M&M.

BOO-YA!!!!!!!

Healthy Lifestyles

In college, I took lots of classes because I was required so to do.

I probably would not have taken a religion class if I didn't have to, but I did have to, and so I took one. I loved it. I got to perform my impression of what the first Jewish president would be like were the country under threat of a nuclear attack. It was pretty offensive, but that was my point. It's going to be a long time before this country elects a Jew as President. I mean, we can't have leaders of other foreign powers referring to our President as a "schmecky little nebbish."

You already know that biology didn't go so well.

When I came to the college to interview, I did an audition, too-- whoring myself out in front of the chair of the theatre department in the hopes of scoring some scholarship dollars, which I ended up scoring. Being as it was a semi-progressive school, the submission of SAT scores were not required. The theatre chair asked me to give them to him, just, you know, to show him.

"Wow!" he said, "your verbal scores are off the chart!" And then he looked further down on the page and his eyes almost popped out of his head. His face contorted in an improbably-shaped grimace.

"I guess you won't come here if we make you take math, huh?"

"No," I replied, "I'll never graduate."

"Well," he said, "we'll get around that somehow."

The way we "got around that" was enrolling me in a class called.... shit-- I don't remember what it was called, but it had to do with logic and syllogisms and argumentation. If it only had to do with argumentation, I probably would have walked away with an "A," but I've never been very good with syllogisms and/or logic. I got a "C." No Dean's List that semester, dangit.

By far the strangest class I had to take in college was gym. Everyone was required to either play a sport (ha-- no) or take gym for two semesters. One of the semester classes that was required for every student was Healthy Lifestyles. A college-level continuation of the health classes most of us took in 7th and 10th grade, we looked at full-color photographs of pimply penises and vaginas sporting cauliflower-shaped growths. And they told us to eat broccoli.

I listened.

Forced with some decidedly unpleasant gym offerings for the next semester, I picked a class that I knew I would have at least a modest amount of success with:

Fitness Walking

Seriously, does my lack of ambition know no bounds?

We all showed up for the first class. Most people were wearing shorts, t-shirts, and sneakers. Some of the girls, I observed, were even wearing sports bras. Hey-- you can tell if you're an astute observer. And I fucking am, and I always fucking was.

Anyway, the teacher stood in front of us and took roll. When she got to my name and I said, "Here," she stopped taking role and she stared at me.

"What's with your attire?" she asked.

Uh-oh. I looked down at myself. Plaid button-down collar shirt, pleated dress trousers, pocket-watch and chain, brown socks, and wingtips.

"What do you mean?" I asked in return.

"How are you going to partcipate in this class dressed like that?" the teacher queried.

"Well, this is Fitness... Walking, right?"

"Is that supposed to be funny?"

Jeez, I thought, this lady sure asks a lot of questions.

"Well, no, it's just that, I mean-- I can walk in these clothes." Heads were beginning to turn my way, some bearing expressions of bewilderment, others, disgust.

"Where are your sneakers?" she asked.

"At my parents' house."

Defeated, the teacher shook her head and continued calling roll. Towards the end of the semester, my relationship with the Fitness Walking instructor improved. One day we were "fitness walking" around the campus and I said to her,

"Hey, remember when you thought I couldn't do this class while wearing dress shoes and khaki pants?"

She turned to me and smiled.

"Shut up," she said.

My wife and I have just joined a gym. We're both synched up with the Healthy Lifestyles program offered by our health insurance carriers (I know, I have health insurance-- like a big boy-- aren't you impressed! Don't be-- it's not through work) and just seeing the phrase "Healthy Lifestyles" made me think about college, and smile. Those two things don't happen together very often. I hated college. Sure, I managed to publish a book and lose my virginity there, but, aside from that, it was pretty much a waste of an appreciable amount of money.

Fortunately, it was just my parents' money. And they would only have spent it on crack anyway.

I'm excited about the fact that we've joined a gym, but I'm also a little scared of it. We've only gone twice since we joined on Sunday and already my legs feel like I've been riding a horse bareback for a week straight. I suppose, if I'm really training for the police academy, I have every business joining a gym, but I hope I don't become one of those people who is always saying, "Sorry I stink, I just got back from the gym." I hate that.

Sailing the Friend Ship

Most people don't know what they want out of life.

This is why there's lots of fast food restaurants and different cuts of engagement ring diamonds. We say we want this, but it changes. Maybe, later, we'll want that. Tacos might be fine on Tuesday, but, come Saturday, you might find yourself wanting Indian.

Last night, Saturday, I found myself having Indian, alongside my wife, and across the table from an old friend of mine and her husband. I hadn't seen this old friend of mine in eight years, and we dined happily on Boti Kabab and Navratan Korma and chatted away like no time had passed, even though, for my wife and my friend and her husband, there hadn't been any time to have passed at all.

When I came out of the bathroom (where I had to go immediately upon entering the restaurant) I blurted out something patently ridiculous. "I had this idea in the bathroom," I said to my dinner party, "about a sketch I wanted to write about a guy-- who-- you know how sometimes you get distracted in the bathroom," I said, now to my friend's husband, to whom I hadn't exchanged seven words with since we arrived, "and sometimes you come out without having done up your fly?"

He nodded.

"Well, I wanted to write a sketch about a guy who's so distracted in the bathroom, so haphazard, and he's in there peeing and his phone rings and he's answering it and washing his hands and everything, that he comes out of the bathroom without remembering to put his penis away."

Hi, friend I haven't seen in eight years and new husband I've never met: I'm totally inappropriate and bizarre. Who wants naan?

Making friends, being with friends, reconnecting with friends, going out with friends-- it isn't easy. Not for me, not for anybody, I don't think. After you graduate from college, the rules all change. It's no longer acceptable to sit around in a small room with clunky wooden furniture and talk about bullshit until four in the morning. There are no more groups of six or eight or twelve people to bum around with, to go en masse to a shitty local diner-- there's no more of that. It's different.

While my wife and I were driving to the Indian restaurant and were stuck in merciless traffic, I turned to her and said, "Why are we doing this? I just want to be at home snuggling with you on the couch under a blanket watching the Olympics." My wife said, "I know-- me, too. But we have to make some sort of effort to get out there and be at least semi-social-- not all the time. But sometimes. When we're sixty, I think it will level off and we can become hermits."

I nodded. Sixty. "I suppose I can endure thirty more years of this."

Because I felt so comfortable in the company of my wife and my old friend and her husband, and because I have no concept of how the things that come out of my mouth might effect other people, I turned to my old friend and said to her, "You know, on the way up here-- I told my wife that I'd rather be at home with her watching the Olympics."

She smiled and her eyes widened in identification.

"I know! Me, too! No offense, of course, I'm having a wonderful time with you guys-- but we're just such homebodies, and we love being together at home, and that's kind of the whole point, isn't it? Falling in love with somebody that you just want to be with all the time."

It made me feel good to hear her say it, too. It is the whole point. It really is.

Maybe I'm just saying that as someone with no real, true, consistent friends in his life, or maybe I'm saying it as someone who played the slots and came up a big winner in the wife department. But it's a constant struggle. "Friends require a lot of maintenance," my mother warned me a few years ago, "that's why Daddy and I don't have any."

And she's right-- you have to constantly worry about when you last called so-and-so and whose turn it is to do thus-and-such and who last paid for dinner or who last Facebook'd whom. That shit takes a lot of work. And you only know it's time to call a friend when you get that guilt pang in the back of your brain that says, "Oh, shit, it's been a month since we last spoke to Schmenkman and Blatsdorff-- I wonder if they hate us?"

Well, Jesus Christ-- that's exhausting. It's even more exhausting than getting stuck on the highway on the way to get Indian food.

I don't particularly know what friendship is anymore. I feel like someone who's been stuck on a deserted island for twenty years and has forgotten what Lobster Thermidor is, or what vinyl car interior is-- or Smart Start. I know it changed somewhere along the line, and I know it's different for everybody, and I know I have to leverage going out and socializing with my immense, overwhelming desire to putter and putz around the house, to sit and write while my wife sews, so that, every so often I can turn and steal a glance at her and smile and be thankful for what my life is, even though it is bereft of so many of the people who used to know me and count me as their friend.

It's funny, though. I had a great time last night. And I'm thankful for that, too.