Essay, Humor

CHICKEN WINGIN’ IT

“If anyone asks, we all ate these wings,” I say to the table as my hand hovers over a plate covered with the bony remains of twelve chicken wings.

I’m sweating profusely from eating twelve chicken wings by myself, and I swipe the back of my hand against my forehead. Around the table, there are four other plates piled with chicken bones.

An actual gif of me.

*****

This post was basically decided for me, thanks to two of my coworkers/friends—let’s call them Melody and Aerin, you know who you bitches are—so, like, know that I was basically forced to write this like some kind of journalistic prostitute.

I had a post all about Go-gurt half-written for today, Thursday, but I switched to this because last night I—strong of body and narcissistic of mind—went out on a WEEKDAY like a goddamn Carrie Bradshaw.

Side bar, I wrote “Carrie Bradshaw” because she’s the only modern working-going out woman I know of, and I couldn’t remember what Samantha’s last name was in Sex and the City.

Wait, also side bar. Is it Sex In the City?

*****

Before going out to the local bar—and by “local” I mean the bar close to my work, which is forty minutes away for me—we went to a camp variety show, where I got a damp ass from sitting on moist benches. It was…a lot.

“Are you serious?” my coworker—hmmm, Evan (?)—says. He stands up and motions a hand down his front, pointing out his outfit. White t-shirt, olive chino shorts.

“Are you FUCKING serious?” I say. I look down at myself. White t-shirt, olive chino shorts. A few weeks ago, we went to a party and wore the same outfit as each other—black t-shirt and khaki chino shorts—yeah I’m not original. I don’t have a lot of non-gym short options, especially because I’ve gotten fatter but not gotten richer.

The fact that I’m apparently subconsciously psychically linked to this sixteen-year-old is a complete and utter waste of psychic abilities. Either that or God has a rude sense of humor.

Me.

Warren, in his raspy, young Walter Cronkite voice, laughs.

Every one of my friends—I guess I can call them friends instead of just “coworkers—is looking beautiful. But, frankly, I see them in very worn conditions, so just not have sweat stains larger than the rings of Saturn is an improvement.

We order our wings, after the waitress coming over multiple times, and after a quick but heated debate over the appropriate number of wings for Evan to order, it’s settled. I ordered six sesame and ginger and six tossed in a mixture of barbeque and buffalo.

Side bar, if I ever create a TV show, it will be a sitcom about a redhead, played by me, and an Asian, Sandra Oh, I’m assuming, who are best friends and chefs and I’m calling it Sesame and Ginger because I’m culturally insensitive and also hilarious.

*****

“White was not a good option to wear,” I joke. “You can probably see all of my sweat.”

No, you can’t see my sweat, but Melody points to my shirt, at a spot directly underneath my left collarbone. My stomach drops through the soles of my feet and burrows about six feet into the ground.

“What?” I ask, my voice cracking into a thousand pieces. “What?”

She doesn’t say anything, but keeps pointing. I tug at my shirt, tucking my chin down. And on my shirt is a glob of that fucking barbeque-buffalo sauce. On my WHITE, UNIQLO T-SHIRT.

I waddle—again, I’ve just consumed twelve chicken wings within a fifteen-minute stretch—to the bathroom and wring my hands on the doorknob. It’s locked, so I have to pretend to be a normal, functioning human being instead of a psychotic human volcano. The bathroom’s occupant eventually leaves, and I rush in.

First I wash my hands of any treacherous chicken residue and then examine the spot. In the mirror, the spot looks much smaller, but I imagine I can feel deliciousness soaking through the pearly fibers. I dampen it with a soaked paper towel and spend five minutes just batting at it like a kitten with a toy.

Halfway through the process, I look up at the mirror. Oh damn, I look hot. My shoulders look broad and muscular in the white t-shirt, and my hair lays thickly across my head, with the perfect amount of swoop. Not crazy enough to be a swish but not flat enough to be a flop. Sometimes I forget that I’m a broad person. I still think I’m the scrawny beanpole—with a 10/10 face, of course—but I’ve become…wide—in good ways. I look, like, really hot. Fuck yeah.

Eventually, the glob has diminished into a slight smear, that keeps taunting, but I know have another issue. My shirt is a thin, silky-feeling material, i.e. I now have a wet circle of fabric beneath my collarbone that has all the subtlety of a gunshot wound.

I press my hand neatly against the wet, very “Southern belle,” as I leave the bathroom because A) my last-minute frantic attempts to dry it off have not gone well and B) there’s a very small window where you can be in the bathroom without people thinking you’re shitting.

*****

The whole point of the night was to hang out with coworkers at the bar late into the night until everyone realizes that they’re in love with me. They are, they just need to figure it out. But the bar is so often frequented by fetuses—sixteen-year-olds—that the owner of the bar flips on the lights at 10:30.

Everyone hisses like vampires.

“All right, everyone without an ID get out,” he says. My friends—cool fetuses, not lame fetuses—decide to leave before they’re kicked out. So suddenly our friend group is fractioned off.

Then, later in the night, I spotted a hot British guy, one that Melody and Aerin frequently obsess over. I’m standing five feet away, his back is turned to me, so I say to Evan and another coworker—Miles—“Oh my god, it would kill them if I got a picture of him.”

We debate several different ways to take his photo. I say that I should go with the classic “walk up and take the photo over his shoulder and then change my name and join the Witness Protection Program” but that doesn’t go over so well. Miles and Evan spend a hot second trying to take secret swiping shots of him.

I, in my infinite wisdom, say, “Or we could just do this,” and lift up my phone in clear view, zoom in and hit the button. All of a sudden, my flash goes off. I narrowly avoid smashing my phone on the ground and double over, pressing the flash into the fabric of my shirt as the camera goes off. Serves me right for playacting paparazzi.

Also a real gif of me.

Eventually my friends and I “leave”—decide to vacate the premises before we are thrown out—and I hiss “Fuck you”s to all of the people my age or younger that I pass on the way out of the door who are being ballsy as shit and staying in the bar.

*****

We hang out a park—no stabbings—for a while, discussing various tidbits of gossip, before splitting up to go home.

I guess, as a college student, the night was a technical fail because we got “kicked out” but I ate twelve chicken wings, so I’m counting last night as a win. And that’s all that really matters.

*****

Side bar, should I publish the Go-gurt post? It’s just essentially 400 words of portable dairy conspiracies. I think I just answered my own question: FUCK YES.

P. FUCKING S. I’m so sorry Marco, but I put Sandra Oh down because I figured in between us traveling the world as a pop duo, our burgeoning organic pudding shop and our podcast, we might need a little space. Mistake rectified; Sandrah Oh is OUT.

Essay, Humor, Life

DANCES WITH WHITE BOYS

“I already picked my outfit, but let’s go back through this journey,” I say to my little sister, flipping through the photos of possible outfits.

“No. No. No,” she says, rejecting three of the possibilities. We land—communally—on the outfit I’m already wearing: a light white short-sleeve button-down with neat, cubed stripes and medium brown tapered chinos.

I close my iPhone, making the screen go black on the coterie of headless photos, each angled in a way to showcase the outfits, variations on short-sleeved button-downs and narrow pants—in pairs of black and blue, blue and brown, and pastels.

The outfit is flattering, broadening my shoulders, slimming my waist and just generally creating that V that drives the boys wild. But, in boat shoes and a watch, the outfit feels a little vanilla. A little preppy. It’s a little white bread for me. I like dark, sleek colors, or muted patterns. The Ralph Lauren—oops, just let me pick up the brand name I dropped—shirt and chinos are all fine and dandy, and I know that I’d rather look good than weird and misshapen, but I just feel like a little non-me.

I spent roughly forty minutes curating outfits, trying them on, taking pictures, and getting multiple opinions before arriving at the White Bread option.

Tonight’s our staff banquet. It’s kind of the social event of the season, when the norm is getting sunscreen stains on my gym shorts and a crick in my neck from talking to seven-year-olds. Basically, we needed this, y’all.

My little sister—let’s call her Poppy—is looking chic in a deep blue sleeveless dress with a scalloped hem. I straightened her hair for her, her sitting doing her makeup and me haphazardly taking great swatches of dark brown hair and running it through the scalding clamps. Ten minutes into it, and I’ve already put more effort into her hair than I’ve ever put into my own.

*****

“Omg, look at him,” my coworker—sixteen years old—salivates over a boy, tanned, muscular and coiffed—the epitome of the Abercrombie Zombie.

“I don’t really like his shirt,” I say sharply, drawing her attention back to me. Just as the sentence escapes my mouth, someone else whispers, “Oh my god, I like his shirt.” I lean across the table and pat her hand. “No you don’t, honey. He’s just hot.”

*****

The lights are down and everyone is a pulsing mass on the dance floor. I’m in the middle of the mass, dancing with my friends. We’re being jostled by the people dancing around us.

The dance floor becomes a colony of microcosmic communities. There are constantly shifting dance circles, which vary in size, people dancing in the center, transferring across the expanse with others. There are small clumps drifting in between. The sixteen-year-olds cling together like lampreys on a whale, bobbing in unison. My group forms a loose oval, people stepping in and out.

The dance floor becomes an ocean, rippling and mutating. It ebbs and flows. It undulates with a liquid quickness. The sixteen-year-olds are a darting school of fish. My friends and I are jellyfish, languid and sleek in our motions, playing off each other. The lifeguards are seals, clamoring barks that go up into the pulsating air that’s already filled with deep bass and synthetic notes. The sports specialists—a motely crew of soccer, tennis, baseball—are penguins, muscular and lithe and slick and bobbing against each other. And in the center of the ocean are the Straight White Boys, slamming against each other and dashing up and down in the crowds like dolphins diving through crested waves.

I am a White Boy, so I move with the awkwardness that comes from long, gangly limbs and jarring hip-drops. But the Straight White Boys seem to leap above the awkwardness, and treat the dance floor with a tribal hunger, a clannish mob mentality. They crash against each other, fists in the air, screaming the words. Unabashed. Fearless.

*****

I wish I could dance like they do, unabashed. Unafraid. I wonder what it’s like to claim something without any hesitation. Without any forethought. The SWBs claim their method of dancing as assuredly as their predecessors claimed things like late night television and the Presidency. My predecessors, the Gays, claimed the margins, the outskirts. They sometimes even claimed the skirts.

*****

I have a chronic problem with living in the moment. I’m always too aware of my hands, the stilted movement in my legs. I consciously loosen my muscles, whip my hair out of its neatly, American Crew-ed coif and try to have fun.

I don’t know how many more summers I have of languidly hot days spent walking across the green fields of our camp. I don’t know how many more summers I have before I commit to a job, a field, a career. I don’t know these things.

So I decide to throw up my chin, glint my teeth and have fun. My body slips unconsciously into rhythm, and it syncs up with everyone else, until the ocean glides in beat and the dolphins appear to stop breaking against each other and everything else and start to move in harmony with the current. The seals bring out the laughter in everyone else. The fish dart and tickle and lighten. And the jellyfish, we bob faster, happier, funnier.

*****

I only have so many moments on this craggy, smooth, mountainous, oceanic planet. I only have so many milliseconds with friends. I only have so many shared gazes with cute boys across the room. We only have so many…fill in the blank.

So I stop analyzing things in the moment. I stop placing meanings on the people, stop subconsciously dividing them into genii to make it easier for filing later. I stop noticing the patterns and the movements and start dancing.

Because sometimes that’s all we can do. Throw up our hands, toss back our heads, giggle and act like dummies and the real dorks we are.

THE END

Essay, Humor

RUINING CHRISTMAS

I’m cringing a little bit as I realize that I’m about to write about this. I don’t think I truly have anything to lose—my flickering scraps of dignity are scattering day by day—so maybe it’s empowering and freeing? Mom, never read this.

Red alert, I’m not going to be naming the thing that this essay is about because some of those flickering scraps of dignity came floating back, so I will be referring to it as a “Christmas present.” Sorry, Christians? You’re welcome, Jews?

*****

“Did you do it yet?”

I’m inside the bathroom stall, angling the camera high to capture the best the fluorescent light has to offer. Trying to make it look big but not too big, trying to make my Christmas present look natural, casual and effortless.

“I can’t do it with you guys right outside,” I hiss back, pulling up my gym shorts and opening the bathroom stall. My friends are standing—two of them—outside of the bathroom stall. I’m the first of us to send a Christmas present to a stranger, so this is a communal experience.

But sending a Christmas present while your friends stand two feet away is about as sexy as blowing your nose in a stranger’s jacket at Whole Food’s. It’s also not very conducive for getting the deed done quickly and efficiently.

“I can’t get it…wrapped…if you guys are right outside,” I tell them, retreating back into the stall. Trying to keep everything looking presentable, while getting the lighting and angle right, this is more pressure than it’s worth.

My friends quiet down and exit our dorm bathroom. I breathe deeply, my brain narrowing down to a fine focal point.

Calm. Zen. Don’t think too hard about it. Don’t say the word “hard.” Don’t make yourself laugh. Laughing isn’t sexy, or sexy-adjacent. Oh god, now I’m thinking about laughing. I can’t focus.

My muscles are practically in spasm from maintaining the position for so long. Should I use the Grindr app? Should I do it on my camera? Do I have Photostream on? Oh my god, I hope not. Oh my god, is my iCloud on? Should I do a Polaroid?

The bathroom door—the main one, not the stall—swings open, and my nerves are aflame, camera app open. Soft footfalls.

“Did you do it yet?”

“FUCK.” I yank up my pants, even though there’s a good inch of solid metal—hanging slightly wonkily—between us. “GET OUT.”

Ten minutes, two pep talks and one Zen meditation later, I emerge victorious and mentally exhausted.

*****

“Can you send me one?” my friend Luna asks, a year later when I’m telling her the story. I stop short.

“Um, I guess?”

Sending a platonic Christmas present to a friend is like having someone grade me on private blog posts. I mean, it’s good to have an outside opinion but some things are like just for personal lil ole me so don’t crush my soul, maybe?

Sending Luna a platonic Christmas present was literally the hardest—don’t—thing I’ve ever had to do. Nothing is as unsexy as sending something like that platonically purely for curiosity.

“Delete it RIGHT AFTER,” I text her alongside the present.

“For sure!” she texts back.

She doesn’t delete it, and I don’t even feel betrayed because I ending up showing the Christmas present to all of my friends—sans Marco, because we’re trying to not destroy our friendship—on the last night of sophomore year. At this point, we’re so close that it’s not even weird. These are the people I’ve mooned multiple times in semi-public places and countless times in private places.

The girls of our friend groups send “Chanukah menorahs”—omg, sorry Judaism!—and the boys send Christmas presents and afterwards everyone has been thoroughly desexualized.

*****

*peers around from behind closed door*

Hey y’all! Do I have any readers left? Just the pervs and the serial killers? Great, my target demographic. I’m glad we’ve weeded out the weaklings.

But seriously guys, let’s not pretend that none of us have done something stupid or rash or something stupid that ended up giving us a rash.

I like showing my friends Christmas presents because I think it takes both the stigma and the nerves out of it. Like, I’m not a fucking nudist, but why do we take things so seriously? Note, this is not an invitation to send me platonic Christmas presents. Please, I’m not a heathen. Just some side-boob. I’m elegant.

Oh my god I’m literally laughing to myself because this post was such a fucking mistake but I’m gonna publish it anyway because I’m too lazy to think of something else. You guys, oh my god.

But more importantly, did they use to send Christmas presents on Polaroids? Or, even more importantly, something older? Those cameras where you had to duck underneath the curtain? Or an etching, a la Paul Revere’s Boston Massacre etching of 1770? Am I seriously making this into a history lesson?

The only things my “Christmas present” and Paul Revere’s Boston Massacre etching have in common are the fact that both were made in Boston and both portray British people in a bad light.

This post has gone as far as it possibly can. Bye!

Essay, Humor, Life

SEPPUKU

On Friday, I accidentally tried to break the ice at a party by telling everyone about the time I shit my pants.

So if you ever think that you are awkward or embarrassing, remember that you are not alone. Also remember that I am still cringing.

Why I chose this moment, surrounded by work colleagues I only know vaguely, to drop—pardon the pun—this bomb as an icebreaker will forever make me wonder. Now, it’s not that I’m embarrassed of the story. It’s actually one of my favorites to tell. Maybe one day I’ll be confident enough to write it for my blog, where it will live on the Internet forever until our world is sucked into a black hole.

Side bar, I’ve been reading a lot about black holes lately and despite no real evidence of its reverse, the white hole, I firmly believe that these two together create a wormhole that will transport us across the galaxy and are the key to spacefaring. So in other words, I have a lot of time on my hands.

Now, I’m sure that there are a lot of questions, like, “You went to a party?” and “What was your fragrance story?” and “Were there snacks?”

And the answers to those questions are, “Yes, can you believe it?” and “My Body Shop white tea musk cologne mixed with sandalwood bathroom spray (semi-accidentally)” and “No. Not even an onion dip.”

I rarely go to parties during the school year, mostly preferring to stay in with my friends, watch bad comedies and going to 7-Eleven for midnight Slurpees and corndogs. So my party muscles were stiff and atrophied, but my real muscles were looking amazing, and I was wearing this slim-fitting, black tee shirt, so everything was going well aesthetics-wise.

Anyway, I was standing in a rough circle of people when I decided to engage in verbal diarrhea.

Side bar, the poop puns will not end. They’ll give me the runs for my money. OOOOH.

“So, why don’t we all talk about the last time we shit ourselves?” I ask loudly, clapping my hands together.

The silence lays thick and slow as molasses over our small group as what I just said registered. When I say something that I instantly regret, the seconds drop like an IV drip: slow and uncomfortable. Awkwardly, I try to cover my tracks.

“Um, um, um.”

It doesn’t really go over like it should.

“I feel like this was just a way for you to talk about the time you shit yourself,” someone in the circle says.

I laugh—that high-pitched cackle of terror—and say, “Come on, it’s not like we all haven’t done it.”

I can feel my intestines coil around my esophagus and disconnectedly think that seppuku—the Japanese ritualistic honor suicide of samurais—seems like a solid option right now, as I look out at the halo of alarmed faces around me.

One guy offers, “I mean, the last time was like when I was six.”

“When was yours?” someone asks me.

Fuck. The last time I did it, I was sixteen.

“HA HA HA,” I shriek. I briefly tell them the SparkNotes version of the story—again, maybe one day I will divulge the entire SAGA—and then change the subject with all the grace of a MMA wrestler.

The incident of my fuck-uppery lingers in our conversation like a malodorous fume, and not even sandalwood bathroom spray can disperse the nefarious tendrils.

I don’t think it was even the story that made me embarrassed. Like I mentioned earlier, that story is one of my best anecdotes. I broke it out in the first dinner with my now-good friend Nina. I read somewhere that Lena Dunham hates “bathroom humor,” and that’s when I realized that I had a distinctly different style of comedy than Lena. I mean, there were obviously other markers, but I chose that one.

I think what embarrassed me more was the complete misreading of my audience. I’m generally pretty intuitive when it comes to telling certain people certain anecdotes. I can discern which comfort level I am willing to broach with certain people. With Nina, I knew I could tell the story. And I’ve been used to the presence of her and my other friends, along with my sisters, all of whom I’ve told the story to. So like a deer skittering across an iced-over pond, I went from coasting to slamming face-first into a wall.

Later that night, I texted Nina and told her about the misadventure.

She was—obviously—shocked that I had fucked up so badly, but joined me in commiseration about being socially inept.

It was brought up only once the next day at work, so I guess that’s a blessing. But I’m waiting for it to rear its ugly head at the most inopportune time, which will probably be at my wedding or—more likely—a court hearing.

There’s no real way to end an incident like this, so in other news:

Pro of the Week: Eating waffles with peanut butter and raspberry jam

Con of the Week: severe farmer’s tan

Neither here nor there: Someone telling me that they read my blog but “not to tell anybody.” Because there’s nothing quite like receiving a backhanded compliment.

If there’s any takeaway from this occasion, it’s that I better believe in karma, because obviously I’m doing something to piss Someone Upstairs off.

Essay

HE HATES ME FOR MY PERSONALITY

I was thinking about high school today, and not like an overarching “best years of my life” golden nostalgia, or a “fuck that cess-pit” vitriol, but just about popularity.

Usually, when people ask me if I was popular in high school, I generally say yes. Okay, that’s a little bit of an under-statement. I usually say, “Yaaaaaaaaaas.” But I wanted to seem not weird. I mean, I wasn’t like the party-starter or the fire-starter or the non-starter, but people knew who I was and I wasn’t generally egged in the halls.

Looking back, I’m realizing that people knew who I was because I was essentially a human firecracker shitting out rainbows—I was The Gay Kid. There are other LGBTQIA+ people I graduated with, and that were in the grades below me—but the ones who were in my grade weren’t as socially tone-deaf as I was, and so I was kind of Queen of the Gays. No big deal.

Funnily enough, I never officially, publicly came out in high school. I’ve been out since I was 15, but that was to my friends and family and sometimes random strangers, but I never had the ominous “Yes, it’s true,” Facebook post. Somehow everyone just knew, but I feel like I contributed to it by being like, “Ugh, yes Zayn’s biceps are godly.” That probably was been a little too “homo” for a “no homo” to save.

But I was thinking about popularity and high school and all the boys I stalked on social media—

Side bar: So unrelated, but I had a major crush on a boy in high school and I used to go to his Facebook page so often that I could click on the search bar and his fucking profile would pop up. That’s the digital equivalent of the Kermit the Frog sipping tea meme.

—when I remembered a little occasion where I really felt I had eclipsed the bigotry associated with being stone-cold gay in a Catholic, all-boys prep school. Yeah, that’s where I got my high school diploma.

There was this guy in a math class of mine, who I knew just like tangentially—as in we had had friendly conversations about the Pythagorean Theorem—who I found out didn’t like me. Actually, he really didn’t like me.

I found this out through Paul—the scrumptious bby of a friend I mentioned in my last post—who was talking to this boy—I guess we can call him…ugh, what’s like a really regular name, Herbert (?)—basically about how much I suck as a person.

Essentially, this is how the conversation went when Paul told me about his discussion with Herbert:

ME: (probably looking at myself in the mirror)

PAUL: So I had an interesting conversation with Herbert.

ME: Which Herbert?

PAUL: Herbert C.

ME: Oh, we had a class together!

PAUL: Yeah. We were talking about how he didn’t like you.

ME: I’m sorry, what.

PAUL: Yeah, and we had this long conversation and finally came to the conclusion that he doesn’t like you for your personality.

ME: Why the fuck are you telling me this?

PAUL: No but don’t you see how great this is? I showed him that the reason he doesn’t like you isn’t because you’re gay, but because he hates your personality.

ME: Yeah but he still doesn’t like me.

PAUL: Yeah, but not because you’re gay. This is progress!

ME: (shatters mirror)

Aside from the glaring issue of Paul have the social tact of an elephant, I was—shockingly—not pleased to have my bubble burst. I thought that everyone loved/tolerated me. Or if they hated me, I could brush it off. But no, apparently my personality was anathema to my classmates.

Now, a few years after the fact, I think I can appreciate that not everyone will love me. Just kidding, it still bugs me. But I think I can accept the fact that it bugs me. And maybe one day I can appreciate that not everyone will love me. But by then, I plan on being so famous that I can sweep away in my Givenchy—okay, reading back, I can understand why Herbert might not have been a fan. It makes a little bit of sense.

High school is such a weird time, because I don’t think you can replicate it with any other type of experience. It is the absolute fucking worst, but there’s something amazing in that worst-ness. Like, college is amazing for learning to lean on yourself, but high school is the first time you can really chisel away and see yourself. You can rage against the flat botanical wallpaper of your surroundings; you can seethe and fall in love and wallow. I mean, you can do that in college and in life, but there is something uniquely beautiful about the passion of high school emotions. I don’t think I loved or grieved as fully as in high school, because it was such an incomplete, full-thrust power.

That got really serious, so let’s bring it back to the silly. Once, in summer camp, when I was doing the deep-water test, I dove into the water and my bathing suit slipped down to my knees and everyone saw my butt.

Essay, Humor

VENTI CARAMEL ICED COFFEE

“Can I get a venti caramel iced coffee?” I tell the Starbucks cashier. She nods and scribbles my name across a plastic cup the size of a baby crib.

“I’ll pay for it,” he says, pushing his card across the counter. I smile at him.

“Thanks!” Fucker.

We sit down at a small circular table, him fiddling with his car keys and me leaning forward, perched on my elbows.

*****

I’m sitting in the library, books strewn across the table obnoxiously, forcing my tablemates to cramp into the corner of the space. They shoot glares at me, which to me are like Nerf pellets but to them are probably daggers. My phone gives a small, discrete bzzz.

I slide it open and click on the yellow Grindr app, the black mask of the icon like a gay Phantom of the Opera except even less faces and more torsos. A message has popped up from a cute Latino guy with curly hair and a mild-mannered smirk.

“Hey. At first I thought you were looking for a centurion, but then I read it again and I’m mistaken,” he texts. Screen Shot 2015-06-28 at 9.44.16 PM I laugh out loud. My profile, a 10/10 picture of me, has the caption, “Looking for centenarians. Anyone born after 1914 need not apply.” The fact that someone A) knew what a centenarian was and B) knew what a centurion was, is enough to make me text back an answer.

His name is Corey, and he goes to a college near mine. He wants to hang out—no sex, just mac n’ cheese—but I’m swamped in finals and migrating back to New York directly after. After a few more minutes, I find out that he’s actually from the adjacent town to mine in New York, so I give him my number.

Eventually, I delete Grindr because having it on my phone always make me feel like I need to shower incessantly. But we begin texting back and forth, at first gingerly, and then more frequently.

Corey is dorky but funny, and works for an engineering company back in our college town but travels back to New York occasionally. He’s two years older than me, a junior to my then freshman. I find out his last name, immediately stalk him on Facebook and find that we have three mutual friends and he’s not Hispanic, but Mayflower white.

Corey keeps asking me out, so after the fourth or so attempt, I accept his offer and we make a plan to meet up when he’s back in New York.

Weeks pass, and I kind of create a boyfriendish allure around him. He’s at the top of my messages, and has sent me enough pictures for me to be relatively sure that he’s not a forty-five year old serial killer looking to make me into a sports coat.

“Do you want to see Maleficent with me?” I ask. Looking back, I don’t know why I keep insisting on bringing dates to children’s movies. I’ve brought a date to see Frozen—pre hype—and that ended about as well as the Hindenburg. Additionally, Maleficent was so subpar and I really would’ve liked to see Angelina Jolie portray a more fleshed-out “villain.”

“Yeah!” he answers, and we make a plan to meet up that night at a public mall.

Hours later, after I’ve planned my outfit but before I’ve prayed to the gods and made my ritual sacrifice, Corey Screen Shot 2015-06-28 at 9.46.27 PM suggests that we buy tickets ahead of time, online. When I point out that it’s unlikely that the movie will be sold out, since it’s been out for two weeks, he insists that we “don’t want to miss out.” Also, he can’t order the tickets because his laptop is broken so can I please order them and he’ll “pay me back with coffee or…other things ;).”

“Coffee is fine,” I text back and order the—per his request—IMAX tickets, knocking me back about forty dollars. I don’t think I would pay this much for a prostitute, much less a date, but the metaphysical check has been cashed and I’ve selected two seats—so basically we’re married—so I can’t back out now.

*****

“You’re tall,” is the first thing out of his mouth when I walk up to him. He’s been leaning against the metal railing.

I have no idea how to respond to this fact. For some reason, because I’m over six feet, people feel the need to point out that I am tall, as if that’s a secret my parents have been hiding from me for 18 years and they’re springing it on me in an Italian restaurant. Being tall is one of those things that people assume is socially acceptable to have an opinion on. No one walks up to someone else and says, “Hmm, I didn’t think you be as ugly as you are,” or “Oh, you’re Jewish? You don’t look Jewish in your pictures.”

I answer with a “Ha, yeah,” mingled with a fake laugh. He is still looking jarred, but manages to pull it together enough to walk with me towards the escalator. We still have a little bit of time before the movie, so we’re going into a Toys “R” Us because apparently going on dates regresses us into middle school.

“I actually turned down a threesome to be here,” Corey says, in what I can only assume is an attempt to break the ice and not an attempt to get me to break his neck.

“Oh,” I say, laughing. Note to reader, I will be uncomfortably laughing throughout this entire date. Brace yourself.

On the list of things that have been said to me that hover in between Flattery and Fuckery, this is right up there next to someone saying that it “wasn’t your looks” that made me single.

I’ve texted out three SOS’s, so this date isn’t going categorically great, so I breathe a sigh of relief when he suggests we go get coffee, which means A) I get coffee B) the movie is nigh and C) I get coffee.

I decide to forgo my usual grande and get a venti, because I’m going to eke everything I can out of this $40 dollar date. The barista gives me the venti iced coffee, which is large but barely even a movie theater small.

*****

We sit down at a small circular table, him fiddling with his car keys and me leaning forward, perched on my elbows.

I’m rambling on. He’s quiet. When people get quiet, I tend to talk more. So I’m all chattering mouth in the silence, chattering teeth from the iced coffee, and gesticulating arms. At this point, the date is basically a dead horse. Not even one you want to beat, just one that was formerly stumbling on weak legs and now has completely given up.

We chat, and he’s perfectly nice, but it’s obvious that I’m carrying the date. And my arms are not that strong.*

*This statement has now become false, as I have been working out and my arms are pretty toned.

“Should we go over to the movie?” I asked brightly, rattling the melting ice around.

*****

The movie is good but not great. Much like myself, Angelina Jolie is visually stunning but seems too skilled for the meager sliver the writers carved out for her. I wanted her to be violently cruel, tantalizing evil, all scorned and scorching.

Times I get up to go to the bathroom: 3

Times our knees knock together: 5

Times I awkwardly crane my head to talk to him: 2

Times he seems about to put his arm around my shoulders: 1

By the end of the movie, I am exhausted from getting up to relieve my bursting bladder, which has been going full steam ahead from the massive amount of coffee I just drank.

We parked in different levels of the same lot, so we walk over together. His car is closer, so I mosey over with him. “I can drive you to your car,” he offers, standing next to his car.

“No that’s fine,” I laugh. He offers again, and I survey him and realize—for the first time—that I would be nervous to be in the car with him, with anyone that I didn’t know, and that makes me squirm.

He leans in and I lean in for a hug. Out of the corner of my eye I see his head swivel and feel a kiss placed awkwardly close to my ear. I pull back from the hug and see him looking expectantly at me.

Oh, fuck.

Our heads careen towards each other as we kiss. It’s all scrape and stubble and the lingering acrid embers of the coffee. What do I do with my hands? I think. I unclench them and swing them halfway towards Corey before swinging them back and keeping them firmly at my sides.

The kiss ends and I smile and say goodbye. I can feel his eyes rolling over my neck as I walk away and I don’t look back until I can hear his engine breathe to life. I wave then, and I can see him waving back through the slant of the windshield.

*****

It’s only later—when I’m recounting the date to my friend—that I realize that I’ve just had my first kiss, my first boy-to-boy kiss.

*****

Corey and I exchange a few texts after our date, but the connection we had via digital communication has fizzled with the reality of our selves. I don’t think about him until eight months later when I accidentally swipe right for him on Tinder while trying to find subjects for a photo essay.

I blindly send him a message detailing my photo essay without looking at who the profile belongs to. A few days later, I’m at dinner with my friends and am alerted to a new Tinder message. My phone gives a small, discrete bzzz.

I slide it open and click on the app’s red flame. It’s one of my potential subjects. I look at the message:

“Um, hi to you too?”

My eyes flash to the name at the top of the page: Corey. I let out a half-shriek-half-laugh. Okay, it was more like three quarters shriek and one quarter laugh.

My friends ask me why I’m gasping. This time, it’s a full laugh, and I tell them all about Corey and the threesome and the hands-clenched kiss and the coffee peeing.

P.S. Thanks to my dear friend Nina who helped me brainstorm what I should write about for this essay and who accepted the fact that I had texted her solely to shoot down her ideas until I could think of one better with grace and aplomb. Thanks, N. ❤

Essay, Humor

“PARIS HILTON,” SAFE SEARCH OFF

Fourth grade. Miller’s basement.

“Look,” Miller says. We’re sitting at his desktop computer. He logs into the server and pulls up Google. What he typed in next changed my life.

“B-U-T-T-S.”

The screen was suddenly full of butts. Rotund, marble buttocks of Grecian statues. Pale plumber’s cracks peeping out from the tops of jeans. Butts in bathing suits. Butts in khaki pants.

And a lingering image of a politician. Not a naked one. Just a headshot.

Miller looked at my hanging mouth. “Isn’t that crazy?”

Miller was my friend who lived down the street. At nine, he was already like 5’10”, skate-boarded, and had had a “girlfriend.” We were in Boy Scouts together and had the same group of friends. He was too loud and too crass for me—nine-year-old Danny was a total prude—but he had video games, and I loved being Princess Peach in Mario Kart (? Maybe? I don’t know. Some game like that), and this was just the next level in our friendship.

Apparently aside from allowing me to engage in digital drag, Miller was also going to be the one to introduce me to porn.

After looking through the images of naked butts, I had to go home, probably for dinner or to color or do math homework or something.

In the next few days, my curiosity about this new, sparkling world grew. So one day after school, when no one was home, I sat down on the cracked-leather green cushion of the rolling desk chair and steered myself in front of our massive desktop computer in the TV room.

I pulled up Google and stared at the blank white space in front of me, with the pulsing black bar at the beginning of the empty search engine. Finally, I gathered up the courage to type out three simple, life-altering words.

“Paris. Hilton. Topless.”

I don’t really know why Paris was the first person that came to my mind. This was 2004, which is what I like to think of as probably the peak of Paris Hilton’s relevancy. Over ten years later, I know more about her aunt Kyle Richards—of RHOBH fame—than I do about her. Although I know that her dog Tinkerbell just died. So RIP to Tink, I suppose.

But it was Paris whose name and boobies I witnessed on that fateful afternoon. It would be years before I watched her sex tape(s), so for the moment it was just a handful of pictures of Paris topless at a pool and the very scandalous pictures of her topless and kissing another girl.

At nine, seeing anyone’s naked body was revolutionary, so don’t worry if you think this means that I’m secretly straight and playing gay for the attention. That’s not why I’m playing gay. I’m doing it for the book deals. And the boys’ booties.

I did several different variations to look up nudes. “Paris Hilton topless.” “Paris Hilton boobs.” “Nicole Richie boobs.” I had little-to-no pop culture knowledge—an embarrassing secret that I have more than made up for in the years since—so I only really knew of Paris and Nicole from their show “The Simple Life.”

Side bar: that’s a great show.

This went on for two days.

My parents went out to dinner, and my sister Margot came into my room, where I was cutting out paper dolls and coloring in their skirts. I am only slightly embarrassed of this.

“Why were you looking at naked pictures on the computer?” Margot inquired. I jolted, and looked into her hazelly-green eyes, which were searing back into mine from behind—frankly—unflattering glasses.

I briefly contemplated playing it cool before cracking. “How do you know that?”

“It’s on the search history,” Margot rolled her eyes, overcome with disgust at my ignorance. A decade later, not much has changed.

“What is the search history?”

Margot dragged me down to the TV room and clicked open a tab on the computer. In that tab was the evidence of my softcore Internet meanderings. “It all stays on the computer?” I whimpered.

The Internet had betrayed me. Up until this point, the Internet had been my friend. It had allowed me to play car chase games and visit Club Penguin. Now it was the humming reminder that I was—in my mind—a grade A pervert.

“How do I get rid of it?” I asked frantically.

“I know how to do it,” Margot answered. At twelve years old, she was full of superior computer skills.

“Can you do it for me? Please?!” I begged her.

Margot considered this for a second. I waited.

She looked at me. I looked at her.

“Give me your sour Skittles,” she said finally.

“Deal.”

One bag of sour Skittles later, Margot was erasing the evidence of my curiosity from the computer.

Margot held our shared secret over my head for the next few years. She blackmailed me into giving her the remote, the better seat in the car. Until I got my own computer and discovered how to mass delete Google searches, I remained firmly under her pink-glitter Claire’s Boutique thumb.

Miller and I drifted apart, as he went—presumably—into hard drugs and I dealt with being gay. Margot remained kind of a bitch. And I kept Paris Hilton close to my heart.

Eventually I branched out into actual porn, and began to prod at my burgeoning homosexuality with the timid eagerness of a foal learning to walk on awkward, stilting legs. By the time that I was thirteen, I was a master at both finding and deleting gay porn, so much so that I felt like I was on par with the world’s greatest computer hackers.

This was entirely a delusion, as I then downloaded a virus onto my laptop from a nefarious gay porn site. But all in the name of self-discovery, right?

Side bar: I really want those fucking sour Skittles back.

Essay

NOT LESBIAN, BUT ITALIAN

Looking back at my life, I made it very clear from a young age that I was gayer than Fire Island. My first crush was Prince Eric from The Little Mermaid. I would wait until everyone had gone to bed and I would play Radio Disney and pretend I was talking to Aaron Carter (circa Lizzie McGuire).

But at the age of eleven, after an encounter in the bathroom (not a cute kind because 1). Ew, I was a child and 2). It was traumatizing), I learned two things: the word “gay” and that I could never be associated with it. So after being a loud, slightly outgoing, large-toothed child, I withdrew into myself. I shut down everything, and became this shy, quiet kid. I buried any feelings for boys, so deeply and thoroughly that I convinced myself that they didn’t exist.

I went to a tiny, tiny Catholic grammar school, which was, in my mind, a chaotic hellscape of pleated skirts and plaid ties. You think that clichés aren’t actually as bad as they seem, but my school lived up to the hype. And so in a class of nine boys and fourteen girls, a buck-toothed, scrawny, redheaded boy stood out. Spoiler alert, this boy is me.

I had come into the school midway through third-grade, interrupting the placid ecosystem of kids who had known each other since kindergarten. Our school was situated in the center of our community, which was technically a neighborhood of the larger, seedier city, but it had the mentality of a small town. It was an enclave of upper-middle-class, white, Catholic Stepford suburbanites. And I stuck out like a middle finger in a sea of thumbs.

I can’t emphasize how small this world was. The nuns lived across the street from the school in a convent, and the one baseball field was the center of the track team, the little league team and the Boy Scouts. Boys could play baseball, or join Cub Scouts. Girls could play softball, or join Girl Scouts. I would play center-field and focus more on my socks than the ball. And I only wanted those cute little patches at Cub Scouts.

Fortunately (unfortunately) there was one other student at our school, Our Lady of Perpetual Guilt, who was perhaps equally as awfully awkward: Sylvia Mazzarrato. She had the unfortunate luck of coming into the Christ clique even later than I had: fifth grade, which at that point you might as well just tap out. She had wiry black hair, a pronounced underbite, thick Italian brows and coarse hair on her arms. She had the kind of look that I’m sure blossomed from a duckling into a mildly attractive swan, probably on par with 2007 Kim Kardashian.

But while I was quiet and nerdy, Sylvia was loud, spoiled and just a little bit stupid. She didn’t do anything to endear herself to our peers, so she was teased even more than I was. And it was on one particular day in eighth grade that she uttered the line that would stay with me forever.

We were walking down from our classroom in a messy line—as Catholic schoolkids, we were raised on line-walking the way Beverly Hills child stars are raised on lines of cocaine—and the girls were laying into Sylvia as per usual.

In a religious school, homosexuality was the ultimate taboo and insult. We didn’t even realize understand it, and this was in the days of Ellen DeGeneres and Rosie O’Donnell as the ultimate gay icons. Adam Lambert had not yet arrived on the scene. But raised on a healthy diet of Biblical texts, small-town bubbles and that staunch suburban hetero-normativity, these kids were vicious and took no prisoners. Every boy who didn’t watch football was gay. Every girl who didn’t like nail polish was a lesbian.

“Hey, Sylvia,” one of my classmates leered towards Sylvia, her eyes glinting with the gleeful eagerness of all small-town bullies, “Are you a lesbian?”

And sweet, simple, slightly stupid Sylvia, who was always putting her foot in her overbite, retorted back with blind lashing, “I’m not lesbian; I’m Italian.”

The girls roared with laughter, like the ogres disguised by pigtails and knee-socks they were. How stupid, how very stupid, Sylvia was, they were probably thinking. To mix up Lebanese and lesbian.

As a thirteen-year-old, who admittedly was a little gullible and doozy, I didn’t understand the joke fully. I knew that Sylvia had f*cked up, but I didn’t understand. Only now do I realize the joke, and I want to slap those girls and tell them that “lesbian” is derived from the name of the isle of Lesbos, a place in close proximity (relatively) to both Italy, where Sylvia’s father hailed from—he had a restaurant, or something like that—and Lebanon.

At the time, I didn’t say anything, and it’s easy to say more than five years later that I wish I would have. But at the time, I wouldn’t have touched Sylvia with a ten-foot-pole. As the only boy who didn’t like sports, I was already basically Sacha Baron Cohen’s “Bruno.” I wouldn’t risk my fragilely positioned reputation for Sylvia. I didn’t need to have the target on my back bedazzled anymore than it already was.

I can’t remember, but I don’t think that anyone ever asked me outright if I were gay. Which, come to think of it, was probably the biggest indicator that they all thought I was gay. They only asked Sylvia that question to rile her up, to make her mad. But I’m pretty sure they all just thought I was gay and didn’t even see the point in asking.

So since I was never asked that question, and because I wasn’t nearly as witty when I was thirteen as I am now, I never got to have an iconic answer like Sylvia’s. Granted, hers was accidental and due to a not-so-firm grasp on geography, but I want one none the less.

So here are some answers I would say to those eighth grade fuckfaces.

“Yeah, I am gay. Gorgeous And Youthful.”

“Gay? Yes, I am. And you’re ugly. Are we stating facts?”

“MAMA’S QUEER!”—A slightly stronger approach that I don’t know if I can pull off.

“Ask your boyfriend.”—Would’ve work if we hadn’t been in eighth grade and no one would have a boyfriend for another two years and also did I mention my huge teeth? I wasn’t seducing anyone away from girlfriends.

But as a nigh-upon twenty-year-old, I hope I would answer in a way that is befitting of my elegance and grace and just say, “I am. And?” Because that’s one thing I’ve learned since grammar school. Bullying only works if you give them what they want. Bullies thrive on making people uncomfortable, and I’m convinced they are more pathetic and lonely than they make their victims feel. I try not to give people reactions that satiate their small-mindedness, because that’s the best revenge.

Or I would answer with a dirty haiku.

*All names have been changed to protect the privacy of the individuals involved, who now hopefully can’t sue me!*

Essay, Life

THE BALLAD OF RICK AND BEING SICK

I worked a children’s Disney show this weekend, so obviously I oscillated between “I hate kids, why do we insist on putting the future into their jam-sticky, gremlin hands?” and “Oh that kid is so cute!”

And because I was surrounded by kids, I began thinking about him. The original little jam-sticky gremlin. The original “that kid is so cute”. The original two-foot-tall Tower of Terror.

Me!

Sometimes, I think that I would love to be a dad someday. And then I remember what I was like as a child. I was an overly-coiffed, under-socially aware, little know-it-all. Seriously, I was kind of an asshole. Like, I’m an asshole now, but back then (circa 2000) I had no idea the level of my asshole-ness.

And for some reason, a memory popped into my head. In the middle of third grade, I switched schools. We had moved houses the previous August, but I was just now being integrated into the local elementary school. And obviously, as such, I was ready for anything*.

*I was in no way prepared; again, I was eight years old.

In my new school, I was the new kid. And since everyone else had been going there since kindergarten (obviously a lifetime), they all knew each other and I was this strange, primped beast. I didn’t really make a lot of friends in elementary school because A) I was superbly gay even back then, and it was a Catholic school and B) I was superbly aloof.

But this memory doesn’t particularly have to do with me being aloof. I was sitting in Mrs. Angelo’s** third-grade class, chatting with Lucy Duffy**, who had a weird birthmark on her arm, but other than that was just kind of a maniac.

**Names have been changed for anonymity, I guess? I doubt they care.

Mrs. Angelo was a tall, slim ribbon of a woman, with teased, jet black hair and a cake-face of white foundation and dark, Gothic lips. Seriously, even as an eight-year-old, I knew that I was dealing with a member of the undead. She also assigned a lot of homework for being a third-grade teacher.

Anyway, I was talking with Lucy, and spouting off the kind of nonsense that kids do.

Me: I think I’ll change my name.

Lucy: Do it!

Me: My middle name is Patrick, so I wanna be called “Rick.”

Even thinking back on this, I cringe a little. Mostly at the idiocy of being a child. I never really liked being a child because I think I always knew how little power I had. And how dumb I was. But also at that god-awful nickname. But, it was 2003 and it was a different time.

Coming off of the band-wagon that was the late ‘90s, I was dead-convinced that the epitome of cool were those cheesy, awkward 90s-00’s white-boy nicknames. “Bobby” was a big hit for me. “Jake,” “Chad” and “Billy” were some other gems. So “Rick” was not entirely unprecedented.

Apparently early 2000s hyper-masculine names were incredibly appealing to me then.

I thought “Rick” was infinitely cool until it was explained to me that nicknames didn’t really work like that. At that point, I was being called “Daniel” fulltime. I had not yet reached my stage of wanting to be “casual and cool” (aka 12), which is when I first started going by Danny. So for those few brief moments in third-grade, I was someone other than Daniel. I was Rick. I was a god.

Sometimes I think about what my life would be like if I were straight. And Rick became the manifestation of that. I think about what he would be doing if he were a real person. What kind of guy he would be. What kind of human he would be.

So I wrote out a little list of what Rick would be like:

1). Embarrassed of the name Rick, and change it to Ricky

2). Love muscle-tanks

3). Slap two pieces of pizza together and call it a pizzandwich

4). Be a ladies’ man

5). Be kind of a tool

6). Love Dr. Dre’s Beats headphones (like a lot; idk why this is so specific)

7). Be really into Survivor

Straight Rick sounds a lot like Gay Danny, except with a slightly less firm grip on reality, and probably a slightly stronger BO. Just kidding, I sweat like a pig. Just kidding(?).

I’m also sick right now, and I can’t tell if it’s allergies or a cold. Could it be both? Could I possibly have that bad of karma? Let’s not answer that. Let me live in ignorance. And igno-dance the night away.

I’ll end this. This is going on too long. I’ll end it. Or will I? I will. I promise. I swear.

Essay, Humor

THE SHAMBLES IN THE DINING HALL

I regularly embarrass myself. When you’ve got as little self-awareness and as high self-confidence as me, that’s a given. But I really regularly embarrass myself.

Like the other day in the dining hall. I was sitting with my friend, and it was peak-dining hall hours. It was also a snow day, and because we don’t have a lot of TVs since we’re college students, everyone ends up eating.

I had asked my friend—let’s call her Shelby—to get me a drink when she was standing. I asked for iced tea.

She leaves. I probably perused Instagram or something of the similar ilk—as I was typing out “Instagram,” I got a notification about a new follower! Hint, @thedanosaurus, hint—or stalked cute boys on Facebook. Also, side note: cute boys, stop with the privacy settings. It’s really bumming me out.

Shelby comes back, carrying two glasses, one of water and one of iced tea. She sets the iced tea in front of me. Immediately, I sense in my psyche that something is not right in Whoville. The froth ratio is way off, and this liquid is a deep oak in color, instead of its usual burnished mahogany.

But I disregard this and take a sip. And immediately flip out.

“This is Brisk,” I tell Shelby. She looks at me, not understanding.

“Yes.”

“I asked for iced tea,” I hiss like a viper.

“That’s what I got you,” Shelby hisses back.

“No, you got me Brisk. If I had wanted Brisk, I would’ve asked for Brisk.” (I literally cannot use italics enough to adequately convey the amount of DRAMA I put into those words).

“You’re being crazy,” Shelby says.

“SUSAN, I ASKED FOR ICED TEA.” Susan is a throwback to Rich Kids of Beverly Hills, as the much put-upon mother of main character Morgan Stewart, aka my idol, aka my queen, aka my ass-spiration and aspiration.

Now, I know I sound crazy. But I swear I’m not. There is a clear distinction between Brisk (Brisk) and iced tea. Brisk comes from the soda fountain rack. Iced tea comes from the tall, brewed vats directly adjacent to the soda fountain rack. The one I use says “Unsweetened Tea” which is ironic because it is literally sweet tea. And that’s the tea I drink, just sweet enough to make your teeth ache but not sweet enough to make you look like you’re from the Appalachian backwoods—is that offensive—and it is delicious. Brisk is an abomination. Side note, I’ve been listening to a lot of Kanye West lately—it’s related, because he’s “the abomination of Obama’s nation” and also he’s good.

“You’re yelling right now,” Shelby reminds me. Thanks Shelby for the Amber Alert, but you’re the one who messed up.

“I don’t care! I’m divorcing you,” I shriek like a Fury—I’m reading Eumenides in my class, so I am all about the Furies right now—and start gesticulating wildly.

“I’m not the one who fucked up. I refuse to drink this,” and I gesticulate wildly at the glass. In my impassioned frenzy, I backhand the full glass of iced tea harder than Maria Sharapova in the 2006 US Open.

The entire contents of the glass gush onto the table and waterfall over the edge. Shelby cackles like Kris Jenner, as I dry-heave with embarrassment.

The carpet beneath us is soaked, and Shelby drops a single napkin over the mess before sitting back and watching me. I start wiping up the mess, fully aware that I was acting as psychopathic as a guest on Maury.

“I hope you’re know that you’re a crazy person,” Shelby says as she watches me mop up the liquid, the sodden mess of napkins growing exponentially. Once the Brisk—that accursed “beverage”—is gone, we sit in silence. I have ceased cry-laughing.

Side bar—was I dating myself with the Maury reference? Also side bar, since I’m so alone, I’m technically always dating myself. Solo high-five…because no one will touch me.

The rest of the lunch passes in a haze of murky embarrassment. Shelby spends the next few days reminding me of the “iced tea incident”—loudly and with great zeal—to all of our friends.

I should add that I was partially kidding about being so upset about the iced tea. I should also add that I was partially deadly serious about being so upset about the iced tea. I’m very particular, and I really don’t think that’s a bad thing. If I were Oprah, would anyone call me “psychotic” and “over-dramatic” for demanding a certain kind of iced tea? I didn’t think so, unseen audience member.

I didn’t think so.

The Wunderkindof

Too good-looking to be this funny. Politics. Pop Culture. Millennial Ramblings.

Category Archives: Essay

CHICKEN WINGIN’ IT

DANCES WITH WHITE BOYS

RUINING CHRISTMAS

SEPPUKU

HE HATES ME FOR MY PERSONALITY

VENTI CARAMEL ICED COFFEE

“PARIS HILTON,” SAFE SEARCH OFF

NOT LESBIAN, BUT ITALIAN

THE BALLAD OF RICK AND BEING SICK

THE SHAMBLES IN THE DINING HALL