PROVERBS 21:17

Whoever loves pleasure will be a poor man;
he who loves wine and oil will not be rich.

I’M TOTALLY OK WITH THIS.

Somewhere in the middle of america I’m alone in the figurative

basement of my parent’s house. The furnace rumbles and I reach into the desk drawer and pull out a Parliament Light, search my jack pocket for a match. Rip, swipe, flame, exhale, sulfur hangs in the air. The only light in the room comes from an exposed bulb hanging from the ceiling and from the screen of this laptop. On a whim I look up “snark” on urban dictionary and wonder when it all got so complicated. Why is it so hard to find a woman who I can have a relationship with? Now I’m lurking tumblr’s directory, searching tags for obscure words and phrases like, “deeply committed”, and “unwavering loyalty”, “mexican avalanche”. When did it all get so complicated?  The other computer monitor flicks alive (yes, two computer monitors) and I see that my Google Reader has updated. Finally.

I swivel left in my chair and see that someone has updated their blog, finally! Oh, it’s just that guy from LA who’s always blogging about living the dream. This causes me to turn around suddenly and look at the 4’ by 6’ map of the united states behind me. Red, green, blue, and yellow pushpins stuck all around the country. I count the states between myself and LA, Six. Then from here to New York, Seven. I turn back around and light another cigarette. When did it all become so complicated? I’ve got three thousand dollars saved up. I need to getoutofhere. I can make it. Between you and me, I’m jealous of that guy, I want the struggle, I want the pursuit of the dream. Mom calls out from upstairs that she just finished a batch of Madeline cookies, my favorite. Questions swim about my head. Where are all the ladies at tonight? Could David really pull hot ass if he wasn’t the prince of the internet? When did women get so self aware? Because I’m looking through my bookmarks and there are so many clever ladies just prancing about the internet, they’re skipping through the ones and zeros, taunting me, calling out, “Waskom, leave the basement, come join us,” and, “Take off that oversized hoodied, put down the remote, run a comb through that head of yours, we’re downtown,”  And I’m just thinking where were these women when I was in high school, where were they when I was dropping out of college for the second time?

When did it all get so complicated? I send an Instant Message to a friend of mine, and ask her if it’s harder to get a date with a hot idiot, or a super witty e-babe? She doesn’t reply.
I’m talking about the kind of woman who has a healthy appreciation of Ryan Adams that doesn’t border on obsession, who loves kittens but doesn’t have a folder hidden on her hard drive labeled “Summer 2k4” that’s full of photos of kittens. (yes, I’m calling you out, Amanda.) A woman who’ll watch Mad Men if she has to, but prefers 24 citing that the dialogue is better.

I hear a toilet flush upstairs. Dad ate chili from Wendy’s tonight before dinner, and now he’s paying the price. Serves the fucker right.

There’s no girls in this town. Well, no girls that don’t know me as “Wedgie Wasky” high school was brutal. There’s a loud BOOM. It’s the sound of a door being shut. Then it re-opens, closes again. The hinges squeal.

In reality I’ve never been in a basement, I live in a dumpy one bedroom apartment with no air conditioning, and I’m a junior sub-level manager at a grocery store making fifteen dollars per hour and grudging every second of it, and the only legitimate question on my mind at all times are WHERE ARE THE FUCKING LADIES AT?

I hear a pitch pipe in the key of E, and magically there’s a choir of devils and angels on my shoulder, singing, “this isn’t the way to meet a mate, meet a mate, meet a mate, this isn’t the way to meet a mate, you poor pathetic bastard!”

A door slams shut. The room is quiet.

Memories, light the corner of my mind,

One of my earliest memories of being drunk was right after graduation. Some pals rented a hotel on the water to celebrate and we somehow got a shit load of Zima. I drank a lot of it and in my drunkenness told this girl (don’t remember her name) that I’d never had a beej.

She took me outside and in the parking lot, against a taxi, she gave me my first beej, and I think that’s pretty much set the tone for the rest of my life.

BOOKS/AUTHORS I CAN READ DRUNK

CAN

• Bret Easton Ellis
• Hunter S Thompson (though not Hell’s Angels, for whatever reason)
• The Great Gatsby
• Camus’s The Stranger (Meursault just talking to himself the whole time, ya’know?)
• Gary Paulsen’s Hatchet
• Tropic of Cancer
• The Lord of the Rings ‘Two Towers’
  

CANT

• Anything by Mark Twain (dialect kills me)
• Jonathan Safran Foer (specifically Eating Animals and Extremely Loud Incredibly Close, the other one about being jewish is readable)
• Blood Meridian (can barely get through, even sober)
• The Brothers Karamazov
• A Farewell To Arms (Italian and craZy WWI terminology)
• The Hobbit (all that singing)

Up early, it doesn’t matter

That I only sleep 5 hours a night, and am hung over most of the day, well. Not so much.

Early in the AM’s I drink coffee, or like today, tea. And g-chat with a person in a country that’s almost a full day ahead of me, it’s already almost the new year where she is. It’s 3pm. I’m jealous that she’s got to the new year before I have.

What did I do this year? Not a lot, but so much.

Love didn’t matter, but it did.

I got a lot of tattoos.

I spent a lot of time staring at Rand McNally maps.

I was vegan, and I think I will be again soon. I just can’t do it anymore.

I dreamed about horrible, horrific things. Smashing the state, changing things that no one can, and so I take matters into my own life.

Promises. I made promises.

I almost killed myself on my birthday, but I got hungry and made a burrito and then my birthday had  past. If I’m still living in this town by my next birthday, I’ll make another burrito.

Too dramatic, tumblr, too much to worry about. It’s cool. Thing is, I can go anywhere. I can do anything, anything. But I don’t.

And that’s just the worst. That’s the whole decade summed up into one sentence.

But you know what, fuck all that. I’m not going to change, a Kafkaesque metamorphosis doesn’t make for good blog reading.

All this “Casting off everything that so easily entangles, let us run with endurance the race,” bullshit aside. I feel great. I hate my life, sure, but I feel FREE. I don’t feel trapped by anyone or anything aside from myself. I have no debts. It’s O K. Chuck is watching over me, and I know he’s just got one thing to say to me about all this.

“Don’t try.” Right?

You People,

I just walked 2 miles to the store to buy more beer, because I might be drunk and I didn’t want to drive. Never-the-less,

I post Gems, Golden nuggets of goodness all day and nothing, and you people go apeshit over Death Cab. I don’t get it. But it is a Death Cab kinda night, isn’t it?

Holy ghost, why don’t you come out to play,

Say it: I started following you a while ago but i dont think you followed me back.

I’m sorry. Like 60 new people started following me in a two day time period. Perhaps you went overlooked, if you’d have left your name I would maybe be able to remedy this :/

Say, it: concerning semi-autobiographical blogging:

Maybe I only know the tumblr you, but it seems to me that you’re this handsome, smart, funny, talented guy.  Who leaves that?  Bitches.  That’s who.

So fuck her.
Not literally.

Maybe, maybe not. Maybe I’m self-absorbed and shallow. Maybe I drink too much, maybe I only love the Idea of Her. Maybe I’ve had a run of bad luck. I don’t know. But I’ll tell you the one thing that keeps me sane, and it’s the fact that I will not discount any idea in this area. I’m completely willing to accept the fact that I will fail, that I might be an asshole, I’m okay with failure, I accept “fate”, and that fact alone gives me comfort that all’s not lost, because I know I’m not this impenetrable force, I am fallible and can and do make mistakes. I think too many people strive for this perfect idea of their “selves” and then refuse to accept the fact that they can fail, that they will fail. I’m okay with the idea that I might end up a homeless beggar one day. I’ve accepted that, and I am not afraid. My lack of fear for my future, and the unknown is something that I embrace.

What the hell am  I talking about, you tell me?