A Quick Joke About Sarah Jessica Parker

My roommate in college, Martin, was a model and an actor. This, among other reasons, was one cause of the crippling body image issues that wracked his everyday life. His acting professor at the time told him, "Martin, so much of beauty is perception. Look at Sarah Jessica Parker. She's not conventionally attractive, and yet people still think she's beautiful. Do you know why? Because she carries herself like she's beautiful, and people who see her believe it." Of course being obsessive-compulsive as he was, Martin went out and rented the first three seasons of Sex and the City to study. Or more accurately, out of embarrassment, he forced me to rent them for him. Because the best way to look more hetero while renting Sex in the City is to bring your boyfriend along with you for support. We immediately headed back to the dorm, excited to start watching and learning from a master, but we weren't fully prepared for one thing: Sex in the City is terrible. Before we even got through the first scene, Martin had forsaken SJP's supposed wisdom on confidence, despite her on-screen sexual successes, and went back to an old standby -- getting drunk and starving himself. Me, I just felt like if I was going to have to watch someone fuck a horse, I could probably find porn with better dialogue.

People Are So Fickle

Oh baby, baby, please
I feel an urgent need to apologize
I did a terrible thing in a terrible dream
And now I can't look you in the eyes
It started when we were out on a date
When you turned to say,
"I gotta tell you something odd
I know I said we'd get married
But I'm already married"
And that's when you laughed so hard
So I turned and swung
I woke in a shock
My nails digging blood from the base of my palms

It's just that people are so fickle
They fall in love at different angles
So really I could lose you just as quickly as I've gotten you
And that's the kind of thought that makes me nervous
I'm worried if you'll really think I'm worth it
When the rush wears off and you're left with this busted person
But if you tell me you will I will do what I can to believe it

So, baby, all these things that I've seen
Last night while asleep
This morning they're messing with me
And now I'm anxious as hell
And looking for help
To the pleasant and painless, some story to tell
With a through line of calm
That could stop me from being myself

Cause all I think is how I want to be your fever
Just to know I make you heated
Cause I'm worried you might see me more like a blanket
Who's there for comfort and for cover
From the glare of former lovers
All that passion that kissed you and bit you until you were devoured
And I'd like to get better cause thinking like this is torture

And if I can't stop it
You'll be sick of bearing crosses
And you'll jump to cut your losses
You'll go get quarantined somewhere far from me
Where it's much less dangerous
Maybe if I wake up and quit dreaming
I could shake the shit I'm fearing
And I could feel like I'm just freaking out for no good reason
I'll tell you what
It's a line I can cross
Once I get there, I'm not ever leaving

Brief Success!

Did my first round of auditions for the short film I wrote, and while that was mostly fail, I spent that three hours not bored! No! In fact, I successfully took the Awkward-Talk out of Awkward-Talk Eye-Candy Barista. It was some of my finest work, and involved no plans and no trickery! All that remains is friendship, and an offer to try Jiu Jitsu. Which if that happens, should prove a hilarious adventure seeing as how I can barely run on a treadmill.

Friendversary

Few people can say that they've known someone that's not an immediate family member for twenty years, but I am proud that I can say that twice over. Though these pictures are only representative of 1995-2005, I have known both Isaac and Caitlin since we started preschool in 1991, making 2011 our much anticipated (at least between us) 20-year Friendversary.

I don't even remember meeting Isaac. That's how long I've known him. I can't remember a moment of time when I did not have him as a friend. Growing up, his family was my second family (I mean that figuratively. I have to point that out because I do actually have a second family. More on that later). Our personalities and interests always complimented each other; Isaac is logical and athletic, while I'm the creative "indoor" kid. If I got through our conversion into public school starting at seventh grade, it's because Isaac alternated between keeping a level head while talking down my panic attacks and teaching me to play sports in gym class left-handed. We attended school together until high school, at which point he went to a private one in the city, but we still stayed in close contact, going to each other's school dances or sci-fi conventions to play Star Wars (him) or Buffy the Vampire Slayer (me) trading card games. Now he lives far, far away in Washington DC working as a scientist, performing experiments I do not understand but am very supportive and proud of.

The memory of meeting Caitlin has actually stuck with me because it was partnered with a fairly traumatic experience. We were in different preschool classes, but were encouraged to freely move between the two as part of our progressive learning curriculum. I had decided on this day to travel across the hall to see if anyone would be interested in playing the Bank Game with me, a game whose purpose is to trick you into learning math. Caitlin, who to this day still needs to be tricked into doing math, agreed to join me. Then about five minutes later, a kid named Scott Penny partially cut off one of his fingers in a door hinge right in front of us and we both threw up. It was Fate.

The best way I can think of to describe Caitlin is to compare her to other girls: it's kind of the cliche little girl dream to own a horse, right? Well, instead of half-assing it like the general population, Caitlin put her education to work and lobbied professionally to her parents for years. It was such a comprehensive campaign that by sixth grade even I could tell you the minute details of dressage. And you know what? By seventh grade she had her first horse. And by the time we graduated high school she was AHA Youth National Champion. She also loves food and bad television. Oh, and she's in law school now.

I guess this is a good time to mention that of the three of us, my post-HS contributions to society have been slightly less... prestigious. Sometimes I think that maybe I should be in a similar place, but then I realize I'm just fooling myself. Unlike the two of them, private school ruined me. I got accustomed to the pro-learning environment created by the Montessori education. Going to public school was kind of a slap in the face. Caitlin and Isaac are smart on more than one level - all of us can understand the material, but they know how to play the game. They can buckle down and get through any dreck the educational system throws at them because they know the ends justify the means, but I just can't learn from a teacher who doesn't care about their material. Plus, my body rejects busy work like a poison. In the last couple semesters, I've just now found my groove in college five years in, but unfortunately it's a groove that's moving me nowhere towards getting a degree. But I'm taking classes that I enjoy, I'm learning, and I'm coming out with a portfolio that I'm proud of. This is good enough for now.

I've meanwhile been trying to think of the best way to honor Friendversary. At first, I was just going to make Caitlin a photobook chronicling our two decades worth of adventures for Christmas, but I'm feeling more and more like I should think bigger. And this isn't just because she had a similar photobook idea tonight and is probably going to find out any day now that her mom already gave me her entire collection of pictures. My new idea is that when Isaac comes back for Christmas, the three of us get together and shoot reenactments of old pictures twenty years later, as my training in the arts has to be good for something. Then we can still make a photobook and like give it to our moms or whatever. I've just got to find someone now that I trust can take quality pictures with my SLR camera because I know letting go of any bit of control will turn me into a monstrous perfectionist.

Social Butterfly

I'm going to admit something to you, Internet:

I'm more often than not a fairly awkward mess.

I feel as if this is as good a place as any to start a new blog, because while introductory, it also serves as a fairly deft warning. Awkwardness Ahead. Expressing myself can be a battle. Don't get me wrong, I get by. Really! But I often find myself wondering about the rare combination of personality defects that make me both welcoming and off-putting.

On one hand, I have an honest face. And by this I mean that any stranger in any situation thinks that I'm the one guy in the line at Best Buy customer service who needs to hear the intimate details of his private life or his feelings on ObamaCare, oh and hey, while we're here, he should also definitely inform me of that time he hired a stripper to bite his friend. Something like this will happen 85% of the time I make eye contact with someone in public who is not otherwise occupied. Combined with my database of kneejerk polite responses and head motions in the face of uncomfortableness, social situations like these often continue to spiral downward without end in sight.

However, put me in a group setting, somewhere where I'm expected to interact with strangers and not be ambushed by them, and suddenly I'm the weird shy dude. In fact, "shy" is the number one adjective used to describe me by acquaintances who don't know shit about me. I guess I can understand why that happens. In unfamiliar settings, I have a very specific game plan: observation. I'm not one to waste words to begin with, but this is different. It is through steady, almost militant observation of everyone else's interactions that I can usually find one person who I can probably be friends with. Then I get said person alone, lower their defenses with clever traps, and finally I attack!!! Kind of like a friendship velociraptor. People who observe me observing usually have one of two reactions: 1.) they think I'm creepy, or 2.) they think I'm shy. Interestingly enough it's usually the people who recognize that I'm just harmlessly creepy that I end up getting along better with. The shy group is mostly made up of idiots. On the very last day of my high school career, I had a girl come up to me and tell me that everyone thought it was adorable how shy I was and that I was "secretly cool." I think this might have actually been an insult, though I don't think she meant it that way. Mostly it was just a stupid thing to say to someone in general.

In respect to my problems getting out there and meeting people, I have maintained a small but very tight knit group of five friends. The amount of time I have known these five people are 5 years, 10 years (maybe 12, this is debatable), 11 years, 12 years, and 20 years. So I kind of play to keep in that regard. I also have like four other friends who live scattered around the country that I rarely get to see and, for purposes of this particular post, do not really count.

You see, lately I've been doing my best to be open to making more friends. My group gets together every Sunday to play games at the same coffee shop we have been going to for years because we fear change, but the others in my group, in very non-change-fearing ways, have been inviting new people. Getting along with them has surprisingly not been an issue because at Scrabble nights, I'm in my element. But it's got me thinking - maybe I should be bringing around new people. But who should it be? And how should I go about it?

There's the cute guy at work who I've kind of been friendship velociraptoring, but I'm having a hard time figuring out if he finds me charming or terrifying. Never a good start. And recently I found out he might have a fiance, so every time we're really having strong conversation and we start making plans, I awkwardly tack on a tense "andyourgirlfriendistotallyinvited." We have yet to recover from that once. Or there's the kid who I hit on while we were both studying one night at the coffee shop but who turned out be a high school junior, and who actually came to one game night, causing a lot of pedophilia snarkiness because I'm apparently the only person in the world who thinks he doesn't look like a high school junior.

My one recent success was I admit kind of cheating at the game. The first time I met my boyfriend's coworker Michael I knew it was meant to be. We were playing a game called the Game of Things, where you try to guess who gave what answer to a particular question. I was able to correctly identify Michael 100% of the time because he always gave the answer I found funniest. The velociraptor had awakened. Thusly, through some effort and several months, I have requisitioned him from the boyfriend, and he and I are now gym buddies. And also after-gym-Wendy's buddies. My first semi-solo success in honestly years. It feels good, Internet. And hopefully it's the kind of semi-success story I can awkwardly start bringing to this new blog on a semi-regular basis.

I can dream.