This project should take your whole life to complete probably.
If you finish early, please check your answers.
I am alone again tonight but don’t worry I am writing jokes about my personality.
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Do you want me to be sincere or do you want be to be myself?
In retrospect, yeah, I shouldn’t’ve started fasting until after I broke up with Colt. I didn’t realize fasting would make me so sweaty and introspective and emotional. I guess there wasn’t much of a decision-making process. And Colt is hard to calm down anyways, once he’s worked up, but every time I heard myself say something like “It’s not like I stopped caring about you all of a sudden,” I would get this chill all through me. I felt like I could see into my intestines. It felt like everything I said was the exact only thing to say at that moment, like my life was leading to it, and I was fulfilling all prophecies. And my sweat smelled terrible. Like insect repellent. Or horse-shoe-polish-remover-scented room-deodorizer.
“Why?” he said. I tried to allude to his insufficiencies, not spell them out.
I stayed up all night after I broke up with him, partly because I was reliving the conversation over and over and over, and partly because I couldn’t sleep. My body hadn’t done anything all day, hadn’t stood up, hadn’t worked, hadn’t digested anything, had basically napped all day; wasn’t tired.
Around 3am I started regretting the break up. I was getting confused. I called Colt and cried to him and sort of was out of my mind. He cried too. It was sad. I needed a shower but I was too weak. That’s what I told Colt when I called him.
“Um,” he said.
“What if I call you tomorrow and want to date you again?” I said. “Would that be okay or weird?”
“I don’t know,” he said. I was partially beginning to think that I was just breaking up with Colt out of boredom. There’s a lot of extra time, suddenly, if you’re not eating or preparing meals or planning them in your head or cleaning dishes or buying Tupperware.
Our collaboration was over, if you could call it that, which I suddenly felt like doing. We had been carving small animals out of wood together, so to speak, for one and a half years, but all that was over. He had asked me once to shave his initials into my pubic hair and I had outright said no. Maybe it hadn’t been a joke. I was clearly the bad guy in the relationship.
I sat up in bed and got a little dizzy. I felt metaphysical and euphoric and bewildered. I couldn’t remember when I had decided to break up with Colt. Maybe, I thought, it was the fast that had gotten me into this mess. But maybe, then again, who knows, maybe the fast was right after all. It kept seeming right. Like prophetic. The word ‘prophetic’ kept appearing in my head. I kept peeing and the pee kept being bright orange even though I was only having water.
I was alone and my body was a large part of who I was, that seemed clear, but the sequence of things was all wrong and there was no food inside to make me feel less confused about this.
Hats for Dummies
A few conventionally attractive people were talking with each other at a party. None were making any sort of sexual advances toward another. None were in romantic relationships with one another. None were giving any sort of serious thought about what was happening after the party. They were talking about the ordinary looking people they knew. None were saying anything derogatory about ordinary looking people. None were disregarding an ordinary looking person’s merit. None were implying that ordinary looking people maintained poor diets. The conventionally attractive people were just remarking that ordinary looking people were consumed with becoming more conventionally attractive. None were saying that it was an unworthy pursuit. None were referencing ordinary looking people’s unsavory bone structure. None were giving any indication that they thought ordinary people should try to look more conventionally attractive by maybe buying a strategic hat. They were just making small talk. It was a party.
A few ordinary looking people were at the party, talking amongst themselves. They posed and directed their body language to indicate sexual efficiency. They laughed at funny jokes. They laughed at horrible jokes. They laughed really loudly. They drank too much punch. They excused themselves to the bathroom to squeeze zits. They tipped their hats but those aren’t hats, they’re hairpieces. They gave each other their cell phone numbers. They yelled out, “Hi how are you!” for no reason. Or maybe they had a reason. They tripped on their own dresses. They bruised their knees and it didn’t matter. They laughed so hard it came out silent and their nostrils, well, their nostrils were moving really fast.
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Narnia
There is a gigantic hole in the back of my fridge that leads to Narnia.
I would never go there. Narnia is for babies.
My Biggest Claim to Fame
My friend Jess was famous but she wasn’t that famous. She wasn’t as famous as Pamela Anderson, though her boobs were bigger and she was prettier and her hair was blonder.
“My hair is blonder,” she said all the time, “Pamela stole the idea of platinum blonde from me, but I am blonder than she is.” I think she was genuinely blonder.
Jess was famous enough to be recognized. People ran up to her and introduced themselves and then introduced her for her. She was that kind of famous. The kind where she didn’t have to talk.
As friends, we mostly talked about her. We had an interesting conversation once about why she hated pickles. Her reasons were well-justified. She seemed maternal to me because she cursed a lot and always asked me if I was pregnant.
I showed up at her house one day and she was out in the pool wearing water wings as a bathing suit.
“I saw Pamela Anderson do that in a magazine before,” I said.
“She stole the idea because she steals ideas from me.” Her hair was blonde even when it was soaking wet. That’s unnatural.
“Come and swim,” she said, “you’re irritating me by not swimming.”
Cousins
1984–1987
Me and my four closest cousins — Erin, Becca, Jaime, and Joe — are born.
I live in Clearlake, and they each live within five miles of me.
1987
Our parents discover that Joe and I like to take our naps together on the floor.
They discover we both like bottles filled with juice.
They discover we both like bottles filled with unchilled jello water.
1988
Erin and I almost drown while trying to have an underwater tea party.
1989
Papa takes a long time in the bathroom; too long for us kids to wait. Nana gives us empty coffee cans and has us squat over them in the kitchen.
1990
I learn, during a game of hide-and-seek with my cousins, that my hearing can tell me what direction a voice is coming from when it yells ‘ready!’