68. James Gets Cold Sores of the Bum

 

Last time we talked, I said I didn’t want to talk about it. Well now I want to talk about it. Put your fork down cuz this about to get nasty. Mom, this will be too much for you. Dad… you still have a flip-phone so nevermind.

Last August, I had unprotected sex with this dude who showed me all the paperwork from his doctor’s visit saying that he was absolutely STD-free. Five days later, I shit my pants at work and slept with an ice pack shoved up my asshole having sex dreams about being sodomized by popsicles. (I didn’t read The Secret but I heard from someone who read the cover synopsis that if you will things into the universe, the Universe will respond. So I stood on my bed with my eyes closed and arms outstretched like Princess Elsa and screamed, “UNIVERSE I WANT FROSTY THE SNOWMAN TO LICKY-LICKY MY MAN PUSSY!”) #bussy

The next day nothing was better. Every time I had to shit, it felt like shards of glass were passing through me. I had been going through this for a couple days, but I thought it was just hemorrhoids so I was just using some god damn witch hazel which was not doing ANYTHING. So Kelley came with me to the doctor.

The doctor made me lie in the fetal position with my pants pulled down while she made small-talk with me about golf. Honsetly, I would’ve rather talked about Serena Williams’ splits,but the doctor was in charge. It struck me that I had been in this same position earlier that week, and it had been MUCH more enjoyable.

Finally, after whispering into my post-apocalyptic asshole about the world’s quietest sport, she said, “Oh, you’re not gonna like what I have to tell you.” At that moment, I thought to myself, ‘You could literally tell me I have three days left on this earth, and I would still kiss you on the mouth just MAKE IT HURT LESS.’

“You have anal herpes.”

…Divine.

The next week was pretty awful. They gave me medication to treat my outbreak but nothing for pain management. I kindly declined my friends’ offers to score me pot or something stronger from the WASPy people they knew. It took three more days until I started feeling even marginally better. Every time I had to go to the bathroom I told my roommates to crank the volume on the TV cuz I was going to SCREAM on the toilet. It still felt like shards of glass coming out of me, and I would bang my head violently on the wall until I was done. At this point of the story, I would like to thank the rapper Desiigner for the songs “Panda” and “Tiimmy Turner”, because I listened to both of these songs every time I took a dump learned ALL the words to both songs. I’m sure this isn’t the first time you’ve heard this, Desiigner, but you made my first outbreak of anal herpes much more tolerable.

Before the meds started kicking in, I went back to the doctor to get some painkillers. They gave me an appointment with a male doctor. ‘I hope he’s not hot.’ He walks into the room. He’s gorgeous. “What seems to be the problem?” I tell him about my broken asshole and how I wasn’t given any painkillers and I was definitely face-to-face with my pain threshold. “Alright, just pull down your pants and lie on your side.” ….’I really don’t want to do that. He’s so hot, and I’m so…herpes. Well maybe he’s not gay.’ As I pull down my underwear, I catch sight of Hot Doctors pink socks. Defeated, I lie down in the fetal position and pretend to disappear as the Hot Gay Hot Doctor spread my ass-cheeks apart.

Now, if you’re ever diagnosed with the Sexiest Virus ever (formerly known as ASS HERPES), DO NOT GOOGLE IT. I was v depressed at first. The doctor told me I would have this virus for life. So I figured I should find some sort of support group to learn to grapple with this. Well the internet is NOT a friendly place for people who are monumentally terrified. All the threads were people posting things like, “Why did this happen to me? I’ve never had unprotected sex. I feel like my life is over. I don’t feel comfortable having sex again. Maybe we should just only date each other. Is there a website solely meant for herpes-infested people to date each other?” My friends thought that this last comment would be a BRILLIANT new dating app entitled”Herpes Ever After”. They even researched to  make sure the domain hadn’t been purchased yet. They were very excited. I have since murdered all of said “friends.”

Here are the things that you are thinking about me since reading this far:
“Well you got herpes because you had unprotected sex.”
“Herpes is gross, and I don’t want it so I’ll never date you.”
“I’m so glad I don’t have genital herpes. That’s disgusting.”

I thought all of these things, too. I was pretty devastated, because I felt for the first time in my life I was involuntarily disgusting.

After the test results came back from my orgasmic swabbing, CityMD made me come in for my official diagnosis. I met with a very awkward male doctor who didn’t know how to sugarcoat any facts. For this, I am eternally grateful. Because by this point, I just needed some numbers and facts and shit so I could realistically prepare for my future with my new bff ANAL HERPES. Here’s what he taught me:

1. “Cold sores of the bum” is WAY less threatening than the term “anal herpes”.
2. There are two types of herpes: HSV-1 and HSV-2. HSV-1 is commonly known as “cold sores” where HSV-2 is commonly known as genital herpes. I had HSV-1 on my asshole. Yes, the “cold sore version” in my anus.
3. 4 out of 5 people have HSV-1, but many people don’t know because they don’t present symptoms.
4. Some people who never show symptoms of HSV-1 never see any reason to get tested for it. And many doctors don’t even suggest testing patients for HSV-1 because they don’t want to scare them. Yes, your run-of-the-mill STD/STI test does not include a herpes test.
5. You can learn if you have HSV through a blood test. If you test positive for HSV-2, then you know you have genital herpes. But if your blood tests positive for the HSV-1 antibodies, you still don’t know if you have cold sores or genital herpes. You would only learn this from swabbing the infected area while your body is shedding the virus.
6. Both types of herpes are transmitted through skin-to-skin contact, NOT through bodily fluids. And you’re not going to just get herpes from touching any part of my body. You would have to have intimate contact with the infected area.
7. If you have HSV-1 in the form of cold sores, you can transmit it to someone else’s genitals through oral sex even if you aren’t presenting symptoms.
8. Both HSV viruses are transmittable right before an outbreak, during an outbreak, during the healing process after the outbreak, and randomly when the virus is present on the skin without symptoms (which is called asymptomatic shedding).
9. A person with HSV-1 experiences asymptomatic shedding about 5% of the time. So if you have HSV-1, whether you’re aware of it or not, there are 18 days of the year when you could be transmitting the virus to others even though you aren’t showing symptoms.
10. There is no way of knowing whether I contracted HSV-1 through the unprotected pound session I had or if I had received it through oral sex on my butthole earlier in my life from someone who has had cold sores at any point.
11. In my first two years with HSV-1, I can expect anywhere between two and ten outbreaks.
12. I have only experienced one in my first year.
13. I take one pill every morning with breakfast. Her name is valacyclovir, and I am very grateful for her. I will take this pill every day for the rest of my life. I am grateful that I had Obamacare at the time of my diagnosis, and I will need to have health insurance for the rest of my life.
14. Medical friends have said that I don’t need to take valacyclovir every day, and I don’t need to be insured forever. But HSV-1 presents itself when the body is enduring stress. I never want to experience that kind of pain ever, ever again in my life. Thinking about that kind of pain puts stress on my body, and I’d rather be safe than sorry. Yes, I experienced a more extreme outbreak, and yes, they decrease with frequency and intensity over time. But at this time, I plan on being insured/medicated until I’m dead.
15. Unfortunately, you can still contract HSV even while using a condom. The virus is spread through skin-to-skin contact. If the condom doesn’t entire the infected area, there is still a possibility of transmittal. Thankfully, daily doses of valacyclovir dramatically decrease chances of transmitting the disease to my other sexual partners.
16. There is a huge stigma surrounding “genital herpes” while no one gives two fucks whether or not you’ve had a cold sore before. They’re the same fugging thing.

I feel like these are all things I should have been taught in health class in high school. But either we didn’t learn any of that or else I was too busy slamming my boner in the desk and then fucking it. It’s impossible to tell.

I’m dealing with my diagnosis much better now. I’ve since started using a gay app called Grindr in which men meet up to pork each other in private and then the next day one of them ignores the other in public and then the ignored one goes home and skullfucks the voodoo doll he made of the man who ignored him. I asked my doctor if disclosing my status to my sexual partners was necessary, and he honestly told me it was up to me. He said herpes really isn’t that big of a deal and it’s highly probable that my sexual partner already has the virus and doesn’t even know about it. I’ve decided to disclose, because it’s the responsible adult thing to do. But I only disclose if we’re going to have anal sex, because that’s the only possible way they could contract the virus from me. I don’t let guys eat me out or finger me. So if we’re just meeting to 69, then it’s none of their business. I’m very responsible about it. Still, after sharing the information, some dudes decide to ignore me. The more kind dumbasses just tell me they’re no longer interested, and that’s their prerogative and I clearly have no hard feelings toward those losers.  And then I’ve had more frustrating encounters, like this one:

*Me and Dipshit are making out. He pulls away to ask me in his sexiest whisper…*
Dipshit: Do you have any incurable diseases?
Me: (Whispering back) Yes. But it’s none of your god damn business.
Dipshit: What do you have?
Me: Nothing that concerns you.
Dipshit: What is it?
Me: You’re not gonna get it today.
Dipshit: Today?! WHAT IS IT?!
Me: I HAVE ANAL HERPES BUT YOU CAN ONLY GET IT FROM EATING MY HOLE OR BAREBACKING ME WHICH WE’RE NOT DOING SO IT’S NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS.

That got him REALLY horny for my juicy-juicy so I sploojed everywhere and I left. AND THEN he started texting me and apologizing for being so intrusive but he’s SCARED THAT I GAVE HIM HERPES. Literally minutes after I left. He thought he contracted my herpes by letting me half-heartedly fuck his fist. Boy, bye. I told him to stop texting me and to educate himself. He told me he thought I was cool and wished me success. Well. All I have to say to that is I AM COOL AND I WILL SUCCEED. SO THANKS FOR not SUCKING MY SEED.

Is that too much? Perhaps that’s overboard. Well if Overboard is good enough for Goldie Hawn IT’S GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME.

Funny enough, the only two people from Grindr who have consented to safer sex with me after disclosing my status has been doctors. Yes, that’s correct bitches, the only two people who have let me sit on their condom-clad weiners have been EDUCATED-ASS DOCTORS. Just think about that.

Oh, also, to all the guys on Grindr who have bareback sex just because they’re on PrEP, you are very, very dumb. HIV isn’t the only lifelong disease you can get from unprotected sex. You could get herpes in your bootyhole and then cry on the toilet as your feces slide past your open sores. Poppers won’t help you through that.

Anyway, I’m much better now. I don’t cry myself to sleep due to my diagnosis anymore; now I just cry myself to sleep because of my unbearable loneliness. And I don’t have to sleep with an icepack under my hole which is nice because now when I wake up and my bed is soaked, I just have to lick it to figure out if it’s human urine or nocturnal emission. And my friends have helped me concoct the best pick-up line ever which I have yet to use:

“Hey daddy, you want some anal herpes?”

God how PERFECT would it have been if this were my 69th blog. Oh well, life is hard and so am I.

#DONTGIVEUP

JAMES

“Tiimmy Tiimmy  Tiimmy Turner
He be wishin’ for a burner
To kill everybody walkin’
He knows that his soul’s in the furnace.”
~”Tiimmy Turner” by Desiigner

This is me giving no fucks about my herpes-infested anus.

Here are some articles to reference. And please don’t be afraid to talk to me if you have questions. But I, Ms. Kitty Marvin Hansen, reserve the right to be frustrated over stupid questions. Lucky for you, I’m the nicest person I know so I will probably answer inane questions with an immense amount of patience.

http://www.npr.org/2011/04/15/135442942/even-without-symptoms-genital-herpes-can-spread

http://www.thestdproject.com/hsv1-resources-info-herpes-simplex-1/

http://www.herpes.org/protecting-uninfected-partners/

http://myprepexperience.blogspot.com/p/what-is-prep.html

66. Dr. James’ Diagnosis: The Trouble With Love Is

Dating is hard blah blah blah. I talk about it a LOT. But then again, so does EVERYBODY. Everyone talks about how hard dating is. Everyone. Everyone talks about how fed up they are. And everyone is like, “Why can’t I find someone?” Ok. So then if everyone here and everyone there and everyone everywhere is frustrated, you’d think that we’d all be ready to cut the bullshit and get serious about dating. Right? WRONG, BISH. Because it takes work and we don’t fecking WANNA.

In NYC, the dating pool is HUGE with a population of almost 8.5 million people. That is a FUCKLOAD of daddies #daddiesgalore. Knowing that there are so many single, eligible hotties, we feel like the world is our oyster. We go on a date with someone who seemingly fits the profile of what we’re looking for except for that ONE thing. “Oh man, he would be PERFECT if he didn’t drink.” And then we meet someone who doesn’t drink so we drop Guy #1 for Guy #2 who happens to be PERFECT if only he didn’t live in Brooklyn! But then we meet someone who lives in our actual neighborhood so we can just skip home after a night of blowjobbing so we drop Guy #2 for Guy #3 who seems to be PERFECT except he happens to paint his fingernails. But then we meet a masc bro who crushes beer on his forehead so we move on to them and so on and so on and SO ON. We’re told “NEVER SETTLE” so we don’t! We live in a city where we can have Thai food WHENEVER the fuck we want it. “It’s 2 AM and I fegging NEED panang curry with imitation duck. I’MA GIT IT.” You can literally have whatever you want whenever you want it. They even fucking deliver alcohol. You can pay someone else to do your laundry and fold it and then DELIVER it to your front door. You can order your groceries online. OR you can go to the grocery store, buy all your groceries and then LEAVE THEM THERE and they’ll deliver them to your house later after you recover from a day of adulting. You can go out to a restaurant here and tell the server exactly how to cook your food and what sauce to put on the side and you can sub your kale salad for a quinoa parfait while the chef in the kitchen slams his head in the fridge door repeatedly out of utter frustration for your lack of class. We’re conditioned to believe we can have exactly what we want. We believe perfection exists. So we search for it in the people we date. Everyone does it. Tinder is no longer to blame, Assholes. It’s us. It’s our fault. Let’s own up to it. We write people off for a variety of reasons. “Oh, he’s too femme. BYE.” “Oh he’s a bad speller. What a fucking idiot. BYE.”Oh, he’s too eager. He wants this too bad. Desperate? BYE.”

And you know what, I am fucking eager. And that’s what makes me undateable by NYC standards.

There’s all these fucking weird rules to dating, and I don’t get it. Basically, it sums up to being “COOL” ALL the time, which I fail MISERABLY at. I go down in a blazing ball of glitter when I attempt to Keep It Cool.

Here are the rules to being cool:

HOW TO BE COOL:
1) First of all, your Tinder should only be flattering pictures of yourself looking SO Cool.
2) On Instagram, you need to delete any picture that doesn’t get a sufficient amount of likes. (Sufficient amount of likes= Enough likes that it stops listing the individual people who liked the picture and instead lists the number of likes.)
3) Never make the first move. If they’re interested in you THEY will talk to YOU. Because being Cool gives you the right to also be entitled.
4) NEVER send more than one text in a row to a boy you like. NEVER. It must be a volley of texts back and forth, and sometimes it’s fair to respond with just a stupid emoji. And remember if the conversation dies, LET IT. If they want you, they’ll keep talking to you, even if you respond with monosyllabic, noncommital texts like “K,” or “Cool,” or “Yeah.” Be entitled. It’s like, you could actually die in real life and they should keep being like, “You okay?” for like DAYS, even as your body rots. They should stick around. Because your’e Cool. And Cool people deserve that kind of deranged commitment without any reciprocation. #Coolpeoplerights
5) Keep conversation light. Cool people don’t experience difficult emotions, and they DEFINITELY don’t talk about them. You may discuss breezy topics like: the weather, celebrities, TV shows that aren’t too femme, your favorite places to throw up, etc.
6) You may creep through their Instagram/Facebook but don’t you DARE like any of their pictures/posts. Being Cool means remaining disinterested and aloof.
7) Do not dole out specific compliments. You may say things like, “You’re attractive.” But you’re NOT allowed to say something like, “God, your smile is dreamy.” That is not something Cool people do. Don’t show them your whole hand. Stay in control. Keep a sense of mystery. They should always be wondering, ‘God, does this person actually like me or are they just killing time by sending me inconsequential emojis and making meteorological observations?’ Mystery is the MOST Cool.
7) Most importantly, at the exact moment that the hottie starts to show clear, obvious interest in you, you MUST drop him. Because being eager makes him UNCOOL. And Cool people can only date other Cool people.

I fail at being Cool. I send five texts in a row. I tell men exactly why I think they’re hot. I resurrect dying conversations by asking questions like, “If you could slap anyone in the world right now, who would it be?” Or “What Britney lyric most describes your life right now?” I post pictures of me looking absoLUTEly foul. (See below.) I tell them that I crept through their Instagram. I am honest about what I’m looking for in a relationship when people ask. I check in with them throughout the week to see how they’re doing. I show interest. I make an effort. I put myself out there. I BREAK the quintessential rule of being cool: I’m eager.

My sexiest Instagram post, by far.

Yes, I’m eager. I know that I have my shit together. I feel very comfortable with where I am artistically/personally/financially, and I’m ready to bring in a significant other. I want a relationship. But is that a bad thing? Is it wrong to be honest and openly state that I’m looking for something serious? Am I supposed to pretend I don’t want it? Am I supposed to stop looking for it and then it’ll come? IS THAT AN ACTUAL THING IT’S NOT STOP SAYING IT. No one ever got something they really wanted by not pursuing it. That’s stupid logic. No one tells you, “Oh, you want a job? Just stop looking for a job! Then you’ll get one. Someone will recognize that you’re unemployed by your sharty clothing and they’ll offer you a job. But when they offer you a job, PRETEND YOU DON’T NEED IT THAT BAD. Because wanting something is WRONG.” No. No bitch. No. It’s not like that. It’s like this:

I’m ready, and I’m realistic. I recognize that perfection doesn’t exist. I recognize that no one will have ALL of the qualities that I want. When someone asks what my Perfect Guy looks like I just laugh. Because to me, that doesn’t matter. Yes, ideally I would date someone my height. But if the guy is shorter than me, I’m still gonna give him a chance because PERSONALITY, Y’ALL. I don’t care if you’re tall; I care that you call me back. I don’t care if you’re skinny; I care that you are real with me if you lose interest. I don’t care if you’re younger than me; I care that you are emotionally available. Because I hope that someone would do the same for me. I know that I will never the most anything; there will always be someone out there who has a better body than me, someone who is smarter than me, someone with better skin, someone who is funnier than me, someone who is cooler than me. That’s fine with me. But no one is my combination of things.

And I think I deserve a chance, God damnit.

#DONTGIVEUP

JAMES

“And my hopes, they are high, I must keep them small. Though I try to resist I still want it all.”
~”Fools” by Troye Sivan

My attempt at a 420 look at the ripe old age of WHAT AM I WEARING, MOTHER?!

 

 

61. James Got Less Weave But More Face

For those of you who don’t know me well, let me just tell you that I turned 26 last week. It’s pretty cool. So. 26. Let’s talk.

I have less hair. I absolutely have less hair. It’s cool. I’m not saying this so people will comfort me and tell me my hair isn’t thinning. It’s totally thinning. It’s not stress. I literally have one thing on my to-do list today: a show. It’s not because I wear baseball caps every now and then. I know I could try Rogaine. I tried that Aveda Invati stuff that is supposed to help with thinning hair, but all that did was make my head smell AMAZING. But I’m not really looking for sympathy or compliments or reassurances. I’m simply trying to accept the deterioration of one of my favorite parts of my body: my hair. I’ve always joked that I rely on my beauty to get my way, and now that I’m losing something that I believe has attributed to my charm I’m feeling a bit…fucked. I feel like puberty ended two seconds ago and now I’m losing my hair? I mean, I could always pull a Trump by shaving off all my leg hair and piling it on top of my head. I mean, I would then have a sizable afro. Thoughts? Clearly, I’m trying to put a positive spin on something that is a bit devastating. I mean, I haven’t hooked a man yet, and now I’ve gotta do it with less hair?? How am I supposed to bat my eyelashes flirtatiously behind a curtain of bangs? Is it too much to get bangs-extensions? But, James, let’s be positive. Are you losing hair? Yes. BUT. Are you increasing the playing space for your insane face-making? Um. YES.

Making the BEST of this forehead! #tonguepop

26 has also taught me that I usually hate Timehop. If you don’t know what Timehop is because it’s not a compatible app on your flip-phone, Timehop is a smartphone app that connects to all your social media and reminds you what happened in your life on this day in past years. It’s cool sometimes when it shows you how happy you were when money was just paper that tasted funny. It’s also cool when it reminds you of how weird your friends have always been. But Timehop is literally the coolest when it shows you how funny your grandma used to be or when it shows you a really cute sentimental post from 5 years ago from an ex-boyfriend that you thought you were totally over and now you’re lying in bed creeping on their Facebook feeling significantly uglier and creepier by the minute. And now you’re lying facedown in your pillow failing to smother yourself but succeeding in drowning in a combination of your own sweat and drool. I can’t help but feel like I’m accumulating more and more painful memories as I get older. I’m sure the same could be said for the accumulation of awesome memories but those don’t permeate my consciousness as frequently. Well, these revelations only increase the amount of time that I spend facedown in my pillow hoping that my bed will swallow me up. I wish there were some sort of equation for how long things will hurt. Someone once said that in order for you to get over your ex-boyfriend, it will take half of the amount of time that you were dating. So if it was a year-long relationship it would take you 6 months to get over that person. Frankly, I think that equation is bullshit. Because honestly, I dated someone for more than a year and I don’t miss them at all; nothing inside me yearns for them in the least. But someone that I’m totally over that I dated a million years ago that my Timehop just showed me a cute moment we had and I feel like I can’t breathe. I just wanna lift up my mattress and lie under it until I become Flat Stanley. What’s going on, James? I thought we were cool. I thought we could exist in the same world with this person and not fall apart? And then Timehop resurfaces a bitch from Christmas Past and you go and creep all over their Facebook and then you feel worthless? What’s that??

And then the whirlwind explodes for me. I look at my friends who are married. I see people my age who own property. I see other 26-year olds who are financially stable. They’re creating families while I’m jumping up and down at the NYC Pride Parade in order to collect handfuls of free condoms that I’ll never use. (I actually went home with my bags of condoms and put them into a flower vase and put them on a table in the living room.) We all lost our health insurance at the same time, but now they pay for their own while my plan is to start wearing a helmet everywhere I go. They’re adding money to their retirement funds while I’m crying in the aisles at the grocery store when the peanut butter has gone on sale for $1.50. They’re posting pictures on social media of them doing cute stuff with their significant others while I’m still contemplating, ‘How much buttcrack can I expose and still be considered, like, sexy?’

Honestly, I rarely feel 26. I look at my receding hairline and I feel like I’m in my thirties. I look at the success of some of my friends not working in theater and I feel like a kid. Then I look over at the Stitch doll I sleep with, only confirming my adolescence. When people go out drinking and I stay home cooking mango curry with dry-fried tofu I feel… old. The only time I feel my age, 26, is when I look at my massive amount of student loan debt and think to myself, “Well, that looks right!”

But I am absolutely 26. My birthdays don’t feel discernibly different anymore, but with the passing years I do notice an increased awareness of loss. Loss of two grandparents, loss of hair, loss of feeling in my left shoulder where I had surgery on my collarbone, loss of carelessness, loss in my steadfast belief that everything happens for a reason. But I do feel like I’ve gained knowledge; I feel like I finally understand why some people get sad around their birthdays. Every year is a reminder of mortality. Every year where when we’re expected to celebrate the day we were born, some of us can’t help but be reminded that someday we’ll die. And then we’re reminded of all the people we’ve lost along the way, all the people we wish we could still call on the phone, whether they’re no longer alive or no longer in our lives. And while I miss my personal collection of lost loves, I don’t want to be sad every birthday. I prefer to take the life I have left ahead of me and using it to commit atrocious acts of fuckery.

Who’s down?

 

 

#dontgiveup

JAMES

57. James is the Glue

The first thing I ever wanted to be was a comedian. Well, the very first thing I wanted to be was a magician, because I used to be obsessed with Harry Houdini. But then I learned that even with his powers of sorcery, he was felled by a punch in the stomach. ‘Fuck that,’ the 8-year-old James exclaimed! Well, then I wanted to be a firefighter, but then I realized that I was terrified of fire; I just wanted to look like the firemen that I saw on TV. Finally, I decided I wanted to be a comedian…with the body of a firefighter. Even as a small, prepubescent pervert, I wanted to be making people laugh so hard it hurt while my body… made them so hard it hurt.

Ah yes, readers, let the fuckery commence…

But let me start at the beginning. Let me start at a time when I had a more innocent sense a humor, a time before I laughed incessantly at the thought of a “dick fart”. Yes, readers, let start with the first person who taught me the meaning of comedy: my grandfather. (Just for the record, while my grandfather is mentioned in the cultivation of my comedic talents, this blog does not in any way reflect his personal endorsement or his condemnation of my disgusting fucking sense of humor. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming…)

Flashback to my early teen years: I was having an angsty time in high school just like every other teenager tossing and turning on the tumultuous, cum-stained waves of puberty. I distinctly remember a specific time during which I thought everyone hated me; I’m pretty sure I was having a disagreement with every single one of my friends. I also struggled heavily with depression when I was younger. In middle school, I frequently cried hysterically to my mother and said, “I wish I were dead.” Once, she burst into tears after I said that to her. She asked me to stop saying it, so I did but I didn’t necessarily stop feeling it.

In a nutshell, the struggle was REAL for this lanky gay in his early, early teens. So my mother suggested I spend a weekend at my grandparents’. I remember feeling a combination of absolute nothingness and utter desperation to get away from everything. This was the first time I fell in love with my tried-and-true method of problem-solving: running the fuck away. So my mother dropped me off at my grandparents’ house, and I stayed with them for about a week. I spent my days playing with my Neopets on the computer, biking to the local swimming pool and being rendered breathless by my grandfather’s flawless sense of humor. For example…

One day, I was sitting on the computer checking on my Neopets, wondering if anyone would ever need me as much as these digital monsters, and all of a sudden I heard a quiet chanting coming from the living room. This was also the time in my life when I was really into the TV show Charmed so I’m pretty sure I had come to the conclusion that the mysterious chanting was coming from a demon that had come to take my life. I bowed my head, I solemnly bid my beloved Neopets goodbye with a lengthy, inexperienced tongue-kiss to the computer screen and walked towards the living room, resolved to die at the hands of this inevitably sexy demon. As I reached the living room, I raised my eyes to make full eye contact with the demon, but instead I saw my grandpa standing the middle of the room, arms extended halfway in front of his body, palms to Jesus, eyes closed, chanting in Latin. He must have felt my presence, because he slowly opened his eyes and smiled at me. I smiled back knowingly; he was up to some type of fuckery.

“What are you doing, Opa?”

My grandpa replied back without a single hesitation, “Oh, I’m just sacrificing this baby lamb to Jesus.” And with a twinkle in his eye, he resumed his Latin incantation to Jesus as he offered up the nonexistent baby lamb while I LAUGHED MY FUCKING ASS OFF.

This memory has stuck with me for at least a decade now, and I think it’s because it was one of my first lessons in comedy:

• Don’t hesitate. Just go. When I asked him what he was doing, he just said the first fucking thing that came to his mind. He didn’t judge his thoughts and think to himself, ‘Is this funny?’ He just trusted his inner comedian and succumbed to a violent, hilarious case of word vomit. I know that even if the first thing that had come out of his mouth wasn’t initially funny, he would’ve worked his way into it. Cuz he’s a fucking pro and shit.
• Commit, god damnit. My grandpa fucking went for it. He stood in the middle of the living room, chanting in Latin for fucks sake, over an imaginary lamb carcass. Does my grandpa even know Latin??! I don’t fucking know, but I believed it! And he wasn’t giving a half-ass performance of his “Latin” incantation; he was giving all he had! And he went on for a considerable amount of time in Latin/Gibberish. (Let the record show that it is highly probable that my grandfather actually knows Latin. Among the many things he studied in college, I know he took a few classes in Theology.)

Luckily, he gave me subsequent lessons in being absolutely ridiculous:

It was a sunny day in Horicon, Wisconsin as we rode down the highway. He was driving while I stared lackadaisically out the passenger-side window. The lady driving in front of us was cruising at a speed much slower than that which my grandpa desired. Honestly, it is very likely that this woman was driving the legal speed limit, but my grandpa just wanted to go faster. Or he just wanted to make me smile. Either way, we just road along behind her for a bit. But I guess the forlorn look on my face was too much for my grandpa to handle, because he looked over at me and said, “Hold on.” Then he slowly rolled down his window, calmly reached out his head and yelled, “DRIVE FASTER, YOU OLD BITCH!” I remember laughing so hard I cried, while my grandpa put on his shit-eating grin, rolled up his window and continued driving. This was Lesson #2:

• Make fun of yourself. More specifically, be aware of which groups you belong to, and feel free to make fun of them all the time. Quite frankly, my grandfather also could have been classified as an “old bitch”. Therefore, he had a right to make fun of other old people. He had the right to “berate” this old woman for “driving slow” when she was surely driving the speed limit.
• Do the unexpected. My grandpa is a super well-mannered man. He studied like a million things in college, including a P.H.D. in “How to Be a Gentleman”. He never raises his voice and he never swears. So he knew that it would be fucking hilarious for him to scream profanities out his window at this woman. Also, just so the whole world knows, this woman absolutely did NOT hear him yell at her. Her window was rolled up, the wind was roaring, she was an old bitch, etc.
• Know your audience. He looked at me and thought, ‘Here’s a teenager who gets scolded if he ever swears in front on his parents. Hell, his mother won’t even let him say the word “fart”! I know that watching an old man swear will really make him laugh.’ And he was right!
• Go all the fucking way. He didn’t pretend to yell; he yelled at the top of his voice. You have to give it 110%! I apply this to my life by abusing the literary device “hyperbole” every time I tell a god damn story. Everything is funnier when it’s bigger, especially an “accurate retelling” of any “historical” event.
• Comedy is the best medicine. This might have been the most important lesson that I’ve taken away from all of my grandpa’s jokes. Comedy can literally fix anything. If I am ever sad, I trust that my grandpa still knows how to make me laugh, even though my sense of humor has devolved into a disgusting rompery of foulness. For example: my roommates are currently singing a Christmas carol where they replace random words with “ass-queefs”, and I can’t help but randomly bursting out in laughter. Despite my current extremely sophisticated sense of humor, I know that my grandpa can still have me rolling on the floor laughing. #partridgeinanassqueef

I’ve taken all my lessons, and I’ve fully integrated comedy into my daily life. I use comedy every fucking day. Comedy is the adhesive that binds the book of my life, and I find myself constantly using comedy as a heavy-duty sandpaper, aggressively (read: effortlessly) smoothing over all the rough patches that I encounter in life. I do it now without thinking. I find it to be my innate duty, necessary but exhausting.

I used to call myself “the glue”. The first time I called myself that was my senior year of high school. I was really worried about going away to college, because I felt like the glue of my family (which is comprised of me, my two parents and my three sisters). I remember crying to my dad and saying, “You guys are gonna fall apart without me! I’M THE GLUE!!!!!”(Cue EVERY crying emoji.) Okay… So first of all, yes, I have been dramatic for a long time. But second, I wasn’t being a pompous ass thinking that my family needed me. When I left, who was gonna smooth things over with a joke? When I lived at home, if my sisters were fighting with my parents I would easily diffuse the situation by firing a well-timed joke. The gunfire would cease, everyone would laugh and immediately the tensions would disperse. What were they gonna do without me?? My father looked at me with compassion in his eyes and chuckled, “We’re not going to fall apart.” I went away to college, and my family didn’t blast itself into smithereens without my tactful, diplomatic jokes. Life went on, but I kept comedy in my back pocket as my reliable Secret Weapon.

Now I work in a restaurant. Every shift starts with a brief meeting, and sometimes the morale of my coworkers is kind of negative. Hospitality is hard, and customers can be assholes. Unfortunately, this negativity can spread like poison in the bloodstream. But I take it upon myself to be the antidote, and I try to lighten the mood by making a joke. For example, there was once a competition in one of the preshift meetings about who could tell their most embarrassing story. I gladly told one of the many stories of me shitting myself. I think people were more horrified than anything, but I know that, even if for only a moment, they forgot about their shitty days as they thought to themselves, ‘Wow, I’m so glad I’m not half as nasty as James!” But my job doesn’t end there! When we all go downstairs to start serving guests as they give complicated martini orders as if I’m a fucking Starbucks barista, it’s easy to succumb to the general soul-sucking energy that the customers bring with them. So even then, I continue to make jokes in an effort to keep the mood light and easy as I trip theatrically on a chair in the dining room and suggest that we put some orange cones and caution tape around it. Or how about the one time when I was reaching across a table to grab some empty plates and the guest turned her head and got a face-full of my crotch, and I asked my manager if I should charge her extra for that. Most people just think I’m fucking weird, but I don’t really care as long as someone is laughing (…most of the time that “someone” is just me).

Meeting people is a pretty vulnerable situation, but I use the same gameplan every time: make them laugh. That’s it. Step One: make them laugh. Everything else comes after that. Once I can make someone laugh, I can figure out how to navigate the rest. Later in the conversation, I can make another joke by referencing back to my initial joke or use a piece of information that they revealed to me earlier. For example, if when we met they told me they were a professional goblin hunter, later in the conversation I will ask them to clarify: “I’m sorry. Now when you said ‘goblin hunter’… Is that a real thing or was that your way of telling me that you murder ugly people?” That way, I continue to make them feel more comfortable by making them laugh, and I’m showing them that I care to get to know them because I’m listening to the things they’re telling me. Once I make someone laugh, I know how to win them over. Eventually if this relationship grows into a friendship, I will know how to diffuse an argument between us in the future. When someone is mad at me, if I can make them laugh it’s gonna make it real hard for them to stay angry. And no matter how upset they are with me, once they laugh they’ll remember what it is they love about me (besides my devilish charm). And if they’re sad about something else, it’s even easier for me to make them laugh. I just give them two pieces of good advice and then my third piece of advice is something silly. For example: “You know what you need to do? You need to be brave, tell him how you feel and then eat all the fucking ice cream.” Tada! The rule of threes! It also helps to deliver a joke in the midst of a serious moment. For example, a friend is opening up to you, crying and wondering if someone will ever love them. And then you look them straight in the eye, wipe away their singular tear and say, “Hey. Now you listen to me. You are the filthiest fucking person I know, but I love you, you nasty fucking bitch.” Bingo bango! Sentiment with humor! Never fails. And if it does fail, you slap them in the face and give them a cookie; after that, at least one of you is bound to feel better.

Comedy is my foolproof lubricant in vulnerable situations. I have a bad habit of using comedy in my moments of uncomfortable vulnerability. For example, if I text someone and say something like, “Hey, I really miss you,” but they don’t respond right away, I am bound to then text something like, “Oh, man, sorry, that text was meant for my mom… and the dick pic I meant to send to you accidentally went to my mom. Fuck! Oh man. I hope she likes it? No, that’s fucked up. I hope she hates it! Wow, but I hope she doesn’t tell me that she hates it; that would really hurt my feelings. Does it turn you on when I use a semi-colon in a text? Maybe my mom won’t recognize my penis, and she won’t know it’s mine. I’ll tell her my iPhone was hacked by North Korea. That’s a thing, right? Also, do you love me?” And then I would insert a slew of emojis, starting with the crystal ball emoji and ending with the poopie emoji. I know in my heart that I should just sit patiently in my vulnerable moment, but sometimes I just can’t HELP but scramble to use comedy as my emergency parachute, uncertain if anyone is waiting to catch me as I careen towards unknown terrain in the Land of Vulnerability. That way, I’m safe either way. If the feeling is mutual, they’ll return the sentiment and my joke will just make them laugh. But if the feeling isn’t mutual, my joke serves as a landing cushion for me and it distracts them from my moment of vulnerability, like that super bright white light that the Men In Black use to erase people’s memories. Their conscience will be scot-free and unburdened while over in my apartment I’ll be sobbing wildly facefirst in my Stitch stuffed animal.

This leads to me the lesson of comedy that I appreciate the most: comedy is an excellent way to deliver a sincere message. You get people to like you and make themselves vulnerable to you by making them laugh, and then you sock ‘em where it counts.

Comedy is my lifeline. It’s my signature and I scribble it on everything. But it does get a little tiresome, being the social lubricant all the time. I feel like people look to me to save the day sometimes… “Oh, I’m sad… James will fix everything! Make it all better, James! Do that thing where you tell a disgusting story, and I forget about everything!” Whether this pressure exists in the physical world or only in my head, I frequently feel it’s my responsibility to be some sort of superhero of comedy, like it’s my duty to heal the hurt with my jokes. Don’t get me wrong, I love nothing more than to make someone explode with laughter and know that it was me that did that. But sometimes, I just wanna sit back and be the one made to laugh. Sometimes I don’t wanna be the superhero; I wanna be the damsel in distress who desperately needs to laughs until she sharts. Sometimes, I wish I was 15 again, sitting in my grandpa’s Buick while he screams out the window at an old woman to drive faster. I just wanna be sitting in that passenger seat, breathless with laughter while my grandpa smirks to himself, secretly satisfied that he made me smile while pretending he didn’t do anything remotely out of the ordinary. If only. But I can’t go back. I can only go forward when my eyes are open. So. In that case, I fully intend to soldier onward, carrying the blazing torch of comedy handed down to me by my grandfather and ignite the world with shart-inducing laugther.

Game on, Life. Here comes the giggles, you fucks.

“If I go crazy then will you still call me Superman? If I’m alive and well, will you be there holding my hand?
~”Kryptonite” by 3 Doors Down

#dontgiveup

Love,

James / The Glue

This is what I looked like when my grandpa started teaching me to be funny. If only he would have taught me how inappropriate it is to wear a tye-dye shirt in front of a tye-dye background. Also. I’m posing with my stuffed animal. How can anyone be cooler than me?

53. James Struggles With Authenticity

Hey. How are you. I don’t care. Let’s get down to business, shall we?
#letsgetcracking #thegoddamnedshowmustgoon #shesfucked #imready

So I’ve been having this real struggle with authenticity lately. Clearly, I’ve been reading a lot of Brene Brown. She talks about the relationship between vulnerability and authenticity. She defines authenticity as “the daily practice of letting go of who we think we’re supposed to be and embracing who we are” (Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown #readit). Authenticity is about letting people see who you really are, imperfections and all. It’s about cutting away all the bullshit and courageously showing the world your true colors. I feel like I do a good job of showing my true self because I wear fur vests in public, but I do know that I struggle with speaking my heart when I fear negative consequences. I’m not great at expressing my feelings when they are anything but positive; I don’t particularly enjoy telling people that I feel uncertainty, insecurity, fear, anger, sadness, disappointment, etc. I’d rather tell people that I feel awesome all the fucking time. But that’s not real life. No matter the emotion, telling people how you feel requires vulnerability. You are making yourself vulnerable when you say, “Hey, you were the best part of me day today (I’m Irish in this example),” the same way you’re making yourself vulnerable when you tell someone, “Hey, you really let me down today.” God, just the thought of saying that aloud made me want to vomit up all my iced coffee, but that would be a waste of caffeine. Unless it means I get to taste my coffee twice. Hey… that doesn’t sound so bad.

Okay. So Brene gives a gameplan for practicing authenticity. She says that when you’re venturing into vulnerable territory, if your only goal is to be authentic then you can’t be disappointed. But if you dive into a vulnerable situation with the intention of receiving approval or acceptance from someone then you have the possibility of feeling shame when you don’t receive those things. If you’re going into a situation thinking to yourself, ‘Hey, I’m just gonna speak my heart and be myself, and all I seek is the pride of courageously showing my honest, imperfect, vulnerable self,” then you can’t be disappointed! Because you don’t need approval from the listener to feel okay.

The thing about vulnerability is that it sounds immensely gratifying in theory. “Oh my god, I would love for someone to see my true colors… as long as I don’t have to go first.” But that’s the even more courageous thing to do, to be the one to open up first. And all those “firsts” in a relationship are terrifying, because it’s all uncharted territory where both people are fumbling around a jagged obstacle course in the dark. But remember whether it’s the end of the first date and you’re the one to ask for a second date or it’s the end of the second date and you’re both naked and you don’t know who’s gonna take it up the ass, someone’s gotta go first.

So I’ve been having this struggle lately:

If you have read any of my blog posts…. or if you have read even half of a blog post, you know that I am a person with MANY feelings. I know that people think that EVERYONE has many feelings. Okay, maybe that’s true. But I talk about ALL of them. All of them. If a friend gives me side-eye even for a split second, I will want to ask them if we’re fighting. They might respond with, “Oh, no, my contact was sliding around in my eye, and I was just looking for it.” But I feel like everything needs to be said.

Let me repeat that:
I feel like everything needs to be said.

In my life, I have had a few lots of many relationships with the menfolk. And of these relationships, the ones that burnt to the ground were incinerated by a lack in communication. So. All of the relationships that I have had have gone up in flames. Cool, right? But let me define lack of communication. Because it wasn’t always the same. At times, one of us was feeling a certain way but didn’t feel comfortable sharing the information with the other. For example, I have been known to tell myself, “Oh, this thing is really bothering me, but I will fix it all on my own. No one will help me. This thing will be fixed by me and me alone. The Bible says, ‘This too shall pass’. So I’m not sure if that particular verse is referring to kidney stones or heartache, but I’m going to assume that it applies to all things. And I know that there’s that saying about accepting the things I cannot change, but instead I’m just gonna assume I am omnipotent and I can fix all things, including the things I cannot change. So. Suck on that, Life!” But there were also times, when I just didn’t want to make myself vulnerable by sharing my feelings with my partner. I thought to myself, ‘Why should I have to open up? Why do they get to know everything about me, and I get to know nothing about them? Because then they get to hold all the cards while I sit here naked?! Hell fuckin nah!’

(Clearly this is the part of the blog where I’m halfway through my jumbo iced coffee, and all the caffeine is starting to hit me. The man next to me stares at me in bewilderment, wondering how I can possibly type a blog this fast with my eyes closed and drool careening from my mouth-hole. [He just looked over and read this. I wonder what he thinks. I would turn and wink but my fur is too big, and it’s blockading my face. Blockading. Yep.])

Withholding my feelings from my partners was very, very bad. Very bad. Because those small things that started off in my head as “inconsequential, petty things that I could either fix on my own or just get the fuck over” eventually snowballed into “humongous, non-negotiable deal-breakers”. Yes, some of my relationships were fucked from the get-go. But some issues could have been resolved if I had said something. I’m not crying over spilled milk…that would be a waste of tears because I would just lick my spilled milk off the ground. But really, I’m just mindfully reflecting on my past.

But there were other breakdowns in communication. Sometimes when I would be texting a boy that I had the hots for, we would be texting like madmen, sending 9 million texts a minute. The text thread would be growing exponentially while we both sent text messages like we couldn’t possibly be bothered by real life happening around us. And then. AND THEN! The boy stopped rapidly texting, and maybe the next response came ten minutes later. And then I read the response and thought to myself, ‘Well, I’m just gonna wait ELEVEN minutes to respond to this text. That’ll show him! HOW DARE HE HAVE OTHER CONCERNS BESIDES TEXTING! Yeah, that’ll really put him in his place.’

Now, stop gawking at me and thinking, ‘Wow, James is totes a crazy person.’ Because I know you have done it, too. I feel like I have a pretty solid head on my shoulders, and yet I have done this a MILLION times in my life. I’m a very mature person; I wear lots of black and I only shit in my pants once a year, but I still act like a child sometimes.

So. I’ve learned that communication is vital.

Now here’s the current struggle. I always know how I feel. 99% of the time, I know exactly what I’m feeling and why I’m feeling it. And I always want to express my feelings. To everyone. But it’s hard with someone new. With someone new, there’s all this uncharted territory; no one really knows how everything works yet. And someone has to be the first to open up and be vulnerable; someone’s gotta take the giant step on the New Frontier currently known as Authenticity. For example, if I miss a Someone New, and I want to share this information with a Someone New. But before I vocalize my feelings, I need to solidify my intention. Am I saying, “Hey, I miss you,” because I want to hear it back? Or am I saying, “Hey, I miss you,” because it’s how I feel, and I simply want to practice authenticity? Because I have to be okay with not hearing it back. Also, it doesn’t mean as much if I’m only saying the words to hear them back. I mean, honestly, how many times have we all told someone, “I love you,” just because we needed to hear it back in that moment? And if that’s the intention, to feel love, then the purity and honesty behind the words, “I love you,”  are diminished. The real act of courage is opening yourself up without the guarantee that they will return the sentiment. Coming face-to-face with the queasiness of uncertainty; that’s vulnerability.

So it’s been a real struggle for me. Because I want to actively practice authenticity. I want to be courageous enough to open myself up without needing the other person to reciprocate. But how do I practice patience and kindness with myself while I sit in the wasteland of terror in my moments of post-vulnerability? How do I become content with speaking my heart without waiting for the approval of the listener? How do I keep myself from banging my head against the wall until exhaustion after I’ve bared my soul to somebody? And at what point do I stop practicing courage, vulnerability and all the other horseshit and just put my hood over my head and drown myself in the couch cushions??

I really should have started this blog with a joke. This is some real shit, huh? Ok. Two guys walked into a bar. Then they hugged each other, gave each other butterfly kisses and lived happily ever after. Get it?! It’s funny, because TRUE LOVE DOESN’T EXIST.

….that was a joke, get it? Alright, back to our regularly scheduled programming: Vulnerability Hour with James Marvin Mayo Hansen #holdthemayo #XtraMayo

So I was really mulling over this predicament last week while I was flying home to surprise my family for Thanksgiving. Stacy and I took a cab to my mother’s office and we waited for her to come back from her lunch break. She walked in and exclaimed, “What are you guys doing here?!?!” And she gave me a big, strong, back-breaking, I-love-you-I-mean-it hug. Then we were like, GIVE US YOUR CAR WE’RE GOING TO SURPRISE MARVIN (my father).

Stacy and I drive over to Home Depot to surprise my father while we laugh maniacally about how brilliant we are. Then we discuss how hard it is to drive again after being in NYC for so long. I propose that the hardest thing about driving is remembering to put the car in park before turning it off. We nod together thoughtfully.

We arrive at Home Depot where my father works in shipping and receiving. We promptly find a woman named Stephanie who we wrangle into helping us surprise my father. Then we find my father’s boss, and he excitedly decides to join in the surprise. They page my dad over the intercom while Stacy and I hide behind a stack of poinsettias. Stephanie finds my dad and tells him he’s in trouble with Boss. Clearly, Stephanie got carried away, because now my father thinks he’s getting fired. So my dad is standing in front of Boss who says, “Marv, you can’t take all day. The thing is….” then me and Stacy jump out and surprise my dad! “SURPRISE, YOU’RE NOT LOSING YOUR JOB IT’S JUST JAMES YOUR FAVORITE SHITHEAD I DIDN’T TELL STEPHANIE TO TELL YOU YOU’RE GETTING FIRED I DON’T KNOW WHY SHE DID THAT YAY HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!”

When my dad saw me, he looked at me with the same fear in his eyes that he used to get in my childhood when I would wander into his room in the middle of the night like a “tiny” spectre because I was afraid of monsters under my bed who wanted to murder me for my amazing fashion sense. Then my dad gave me the same kind of hug my mom did while Stephanie and Boss laughed devilishly and high-fived over their Tony-award winning performances. When my dad pulled away he was wiping tears from his eyes. In front of his co-workers. And in that moment, I decided who I wanted to be. I want to be my dad. I don’t want to hide my vulnerabilities. I don’t want to pretend I’m not moved to tears by something that makes me super happy. I don’t want to act like nothing can penetrate my shield of Cool Guy exterior. I want to be fiercely, unapologetically passionate. I want to tell people how I feel. I want to get giddy and excited about drag queens without worrying about compromising my masculinity. I want to lipsync to that one song on my iPod that just GETS ME while I stomp the pavement while Harlem children point and laugh at my red harem pants. I want to be authentic and vulnerable just like my dad.

Also Dad, I’m sorry they made you think you were getting fired. That situation just snowballed out of control. Stephanie and Boss are amateur actors, and they raised the stakes a bit to high for that particular scene. But they’re committed to their craft, and they will learn someday. I love you a lot, and I want to grow up to be just like you. Because you’re awesome, and your children are super hot. Especially James.

“Bang my head against the wall. Though I felt light-headed, now I will not fall; I will rise above it all. Found what I was searching for. Though I felt light-headed, I should’ve fell and hit the floor. Instead I rise above it all.”
~”Bang My Head” by David Guetta feat. Sia

#dontgiveup

JAMES

Here is a picture of my niece, Ava, wrecklessly practicing a handstand while I sit idly by and take pictures.

 

 

50. James Gets Fingered In Public

Yep. It finally happened. It took me about three years of New York life until someone tried to finger my party hole in public. Let me start from the very beginning, a less horrifying place to start.

So the other day I was doing some thinking. It was depressing, and it required much binge-eating afterwards. But before the massive crying and cake-eating I realized I haven’t had sex in over a year. (Note: My scientific definition of sex is the peepee in the pooper with vigorous in-and-out humping.) It is currently the end of September in the year 2014. The last time I had any D in any A was approximately June of 2013. When I relayed this information to my roommates, they responded calmly with: “ON PURPOSE?!?!” The answer: no, not on purpose. It happened by accident for a little while. But about a month ago, when my Dry Spell Epiphany came uponst me, I decided that I didn’t want just sex; I decided I wanted to be anally penetrated by someone for whom I had deep adoration, equal to or greater than the love that I have for waffles covered in ice cream. After I came to this traffic-halting realization, I decided I would stop pursuing the things I didn’t want and I would start pursuing the weiners that I wanted to be in love with. So I promptly and politely ended all sexting conversations; they were very amicable and understanding (even sex-crazed gays know that sometimes you just want someone to care about you after they jizz all over your eye), and I started pursuing dates.

Tonight I went on a date. The prospect seemed promising. He and I had great chemistry. He’s a Leo; I’m a Cancer. (I get along FAMOUSLY with Leos.) We have similar values: eating too much and having all the feelings. We’re both silly and kind. What could go wrong?! Oh James, you are so naive… because EVERYTHING can go wrong.

We went out to dinner at an Indian restaurant followed by eating waffles at Wafels and Dinges. (Guess which portion of the date was my idea!!?) But at dinner, I slowly realized that all of our conversations seemed vaguely familiar. Then it hit me: he’d asked me all the same questions the last time we hung out. Now, I realize that I have an elephant’s memory but COME ONNNNN, BRO! I felt like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. But I felt way more annoyed…. similar to the way I feel when I WATCH Groundhog Day. Literally ALL the same questions. Then he started telling some of the same stories. I was like, “Am I on a date with a Stepford wife?” I laughed politely to the same jokes while I inconspicuously leaned to the side to check for loose wires sticking out of his ears. I answered all the same questions politely as I would if I was talking to a senile friend of mine: “My favorite restaurant is still Wafels and Dinges. Yes, dessert counts as a meal. My favorite feature on a guy? Yep, it’s still his wallet.”

Eventually dinner ended. Now, for the record, this is the second date in my life where I have prayed for a piece of ceiling to come loose and decapitate me. After dinner, I decided we would go eat Wafels and Dinges. More specifically, I decided that I would eat Wafels and Dinges. I mean, what better way to follow up a spicy meal of too much Indian food than a waffle smothered with whipped cream and ice cream?! I mean, can you ever be too lactose intolerant?? Probably not! But on our sojourn over to my favorite restaurant, I encountered some unusual behavior from my beloved.

First, as we’re crossing a busy street, he stops me in the middle of the crosswalk to kiss me. I try to keep walking because I value my life. But he stops me again for another kiss. After we exit the crosswalk and narrowly escape a speeding taxi he asks me, “Isn’t kissing in the street romantic?” And I said, “I think kissing is more romantic in non-life-threatening situations”. So we keep walking. But apparently he wants to feel closer so he puts his hand on my lower back. But apparently he wants to feel even closer so he puts his hand on my butt. But apparently he wants to feel even more close so he puts his fingers in my crack. But apparently he wants to feel the most close so he tries to weasel his fingers into my butthole. … INTO…..MY BUTTHOLE. And as we’re walking down the street, him the ventriloquist and me his dummy, I think to myself, ‘Well I sure do hate this.” So I start to walk faster towards my heavenly waffles. But he just keeps on putting his fingers into my wow hole. This continues for some time. In fact, when we arrive at Wafels and Dinges I start to order and I realize that he’s still elbow deep in my poop chute. I suddenly realize that he’s just scrounging around in there for extra dinges for his waffle. So I think to myself, ‘Party on,’ and I complete my waffle order.

At some point at Wafels and Dinges, I excuse myself to go to the bathroom to execute several tasks. First, I expel several 20-second long curry-flavored farts. I feel slightly better but something else needs to be done. Second, I search around the bathroom for an effective way to electrocute myself to death but nothing seems fatal enough. So I decide it’s time to call it a night. I return to the table and let out some pretty dramatic yawns. He offers to share a cab, but if he’s gonna finger me on a public street I am absolutely terrified of what he’ll do to me in the dark backseat of a NYC taxicab. #WillIBeDoubleFisted?! I tell him I’m an independent woman, and I can get myself home. Luckily, we walk to the same subway station. Thank God, because I don’t think I could’ve gotten there myself if it wasn’t for him tickling my prostate with his grubby little fingernails. When we got to the subway platform and it was time to say goodbye, he gave me a goodnight kiss. And then a goodnight grope. And then a goodnight fingering. And it lasted for too long. I figured my unenthusiastic kissing would signal that I was not interested. Nope. So as his tongue was foraging through my teeth for lose scraps, I tried to inch us closer to the subway tracks. Although I’m sure if I had been hit by a subway, the biopsy would have discovered at least three of his dismembered fingers lodged in my rectum. But in the real world, our sloppy kisses were coming to a close. He was done rubbing his boner against my knee, and we parted ways.

As I sat on the subway riding home, I was fuming. I hated everything about my night. I felt totally used, disrespected and objectified. This will not happen to me again. I will not be fingered in public while my stomach fights to digest a frightening amount of Indian food and dessert waffles. I am a god damn princess. And why were his fingers all over my butt? He told me he was a bottom (for the record: I didn’t even ask)! And I wasn’t encouraging him to keep grabbing all of my butthole. I mean, sir, is there a brain in your head or is there just an empty cavity begging to be filled with your handfuls of my curry farts? I don’t want this to happen to me. You like my ass? Cool. You like my body? Cool. But I don’t care. I wish you would spend less energy mapping the geography of my insides and more energy remembering the things I say to you. I don’t want a formal first date to end with excessive public dry humping. It makes me feel like you don’t care about who I am. This is why I can’t do fuck buddies. Because it makes me feel used. I’m more than a dude with a dick and a cavernous asshole. I am super funny and cool and smart and gassy and kind. And I don’t wanna have sex with someone until they realize that there’s more to me than a genetically-created, aesthetically-pleasing exterior.

Sometimes I feel like I’m far too sensitive for this dog-eat-dog world of gay dating. I wish my chest had a million pounds of padding like that bad guy from Ghostbusters so no one could puncture my fragile heart. (Oh my gosh, wait, maybe he was TRYING to get to my heart and THAT was why he was so eager to shove his arm up my ass!!!)
This is me coming to terms with a devastating night. I make things funny to make them tolerable. I’m finding the joy in a night gone awry, and I’m telling myself, “James, at least you tried, god damnit.” This won’t happen again. I promise myself.

“I am see through, baby. So take a look inside. I am see through, baby. And I don’t wanna hide. For the very first time.”
~”See Through” by Pentatonix

#DONTGIVEUP

LOVE,
JAMES

45. James Wants to Make You Cream

I want a 6 pack more than most people want to draw their next breath.

Wait, ok that was a little dramatic. Let me start over:

I would kill 90 endangered whales for a 6 pack.

…There. I think I really hit the nail on the head without using hyperbole. I find it’s really important to be accurate and to never embellish details.

Let me be the most accurate: I want a body that makes dudes cream their panties when they see it. I want men to get a glimpse of my rockin’ bod and I want them to have a cum-splosion in their underoos.

Let us take a photo journey to document my progress from Lanky Twink to… Older Lanky Twink…
(Thankfully I’ve been slutty since the birth of the Facebook so finding shirtless pictures of me wasn’t terribly difficult)

2007. A homemade slutty photoshoot. Oh the joys of being prepubescent.

2008. Rocky Horror. Standing next to someone with a killer bod… Cool.

2009. This summer I earned a nomination for Best Supporting Actor in my breakout role: Greasy Bacon.

2010. The year I started wearing skanky swimsuits. This is also the year my integrity died.

2011. A slut is born.

2012. There’s far too much fabric on my underwear. Can we make this smaller?? I want it to floss my ass so deep that it gets plaque out of my teeth.

2013. We took some steps backwards. I like to call this: The Hungry Years.

And now. DRUMROLL PLEASE….. TODAY:

Today. The left is me not flexing. The right is me flexing.

And I am still NOT satisfied. All jokes aside, I literally did an ab workout while listening to Beyonce’s “Pretty Hurts” and crying. CRYING. Just in case you were wondering, crying makes a workout much harder.  I’m already wheezing from the physical exertion, and then you add me choking on my boogers… not fun. It’s about as fun as sticking your weiner between the box spring and the mattress 😉

But I am not satisfied. I am aware that I’ve come a long way. I am aware that some people would KILL to have the body with which I am dissatisfied. But all I can think is: I WANNA LOOK LIKE THIS:

Note: I AM THE CREEPIEST. My friend showed me this picture today and I found it again and I saved it to my phone like a STALKER. But his body is SICCCCCCCCK.

I would literally do anything to look like that. I don’t know why. Maybe I’ve been brainwashed by the media’s definition of beauty. Maybe I’m destined to always want what I don’t have. Maybe I’m convinced that if I had this body that I would get whatever I wanted; I’d never get cheated on; no one would ever leave me, etc. The craziest thing is that I get SO MAD when I’m treated like a sex object but all I want is to look LIKE A SEX OBJECT. I’m nuts. I’m cuckoo for cocoa varts.

I realize my insanity. But I also know lots of people feel this way: I tell myself, “I’ll be satisfied when I look like this” or “I’ll be nicer to myself when I look like this.” But there will ALWAYS be something that I’m punishing myself for. Always. I’m not buff enough. I’m not flexible enough. I’m not a good enough dancer. I’m not a good enough actor. When my friend showed me this model today, I had to stop myself from crying. That’s how badly I want to look like this.

And you know what the CRAZIEST thing is??? I bet this guy pictured above has body issues, too. That BLOWS my mind. Because I think to myself, ‘Man, if I looked like that I would NEVER feel insecure about my body.’ But I’m sure he aspires to be something else. More muscular, more cut, more toned, tanner, taller, etc.

So what the fuck do I do? Do I keep shaming myself by looking at pictures of models with “better” bodies than mine? Do I keep working out 6 days a week, harder and harder, until I look like this guy up above? Do I torture myself until then?

Or do I come to terms with who/what I am today? Do I just tell myself, “Hey, James, you’re beautiful now, and you need to wake up. Because there is surely someone out there who sees you and tells themselves, ‘Man, if I looked like that, I would never be insecure about my body”? Maybe I just start giving myself credit for the work I’ve done. Maybe I admire the hard work it takes for people to get crazy bodies without discrediting all the hard work I’ve done on myself.

Instead of beating myself up for not being able to do the splits like the other dancers in my show, I should look at this picture and remind myself that 6 years ago I couldn’t touch my freakin’ toes:

Yesterday

Maybe instead of beating myself up for not nailing every tap step in the show, I should remember this: I saw 42nd Street at the Overture Center in Madison when I was in high school, and I couldn’t buffalo to save my life-alo! I watched 42nd Street in AWE thinking, ‘Holy fuck, I wish I could tap dance like that…..’

7 years ago. I WORE JEANS TO TAP CLASS. I mean, REALLY James?

AND NOW I’M TAP-DANCING IN 42ND STREET PROFESSIONALLY, GOD DAMNIT.

The Wick Theatre in Boca Raton, FL

So.

Maybe I’m not the greatest tap dancer.
Maybe I’m not the most flexible person.
Maybe I don’t have the most muscular body.

But I’m working my fucking ass off, and I deserve credit for that.

(I’m talking to you, James. Be nice. Be your own best friend. There are plenty of people out there that are gonna be mean to you. Don’t be one of them; be one of the good guys. Ok?)

#dontgiveup

“Pretty hurts, we shine the light on whatever’s worse
Perfection is a disease of a nation, pretty hurts, pretty hurts
Pretty hurts, we shine the light on whatever’s worse
You’re tryin’ to fix something but you can’t fix what you can’t see
It’s the soul that needs the surgery.”
~”Pretty Hurts” by Beyonce

James.

43. James Stops Drinking

I have mastered the art of bamboozling other twenty-somethings living in New York; I gave up alcohol. Just ‘cuz.

“Wait, did something really bad happen? Did someone, like, die?”

No. Nopey nopes. Nobody died. I just don’t really like drinking. Don’t get me wrong, I think some of it is DELICIOUS: Jack & Ginger, Pinot Noir, Captain & Coke, ANYTHING WITH MALIBU. But I hate everything else that comes with it.

I don’t like feeling altered. When I drink, I don’t feel completely myself anymore. I understand that some people really enjoy that feeling of escapism, but I don’t. I want to be me. I don’t want to drink to make myself more tolerable to other or myself, and I don’t want to drink to escape my life. I’d rather deal with it head-on, because all my bullshit will still be here when I come down. People used to tell me, “You’re so funny when you’re drunk.” And I would think, ‘Bitch, I’m a spitfire when I’m sober, too! But when I’m sober, I’m making intentional humor with my wit and my story-telling instead of when I’m drunk and you’re just laughing at my googly-eye.’ Drinking makes me feel slightly less aware, and I don’t want that. I want to feel my life. I don’t even like taking medicine when I have a cold or ibuprofen when I have a headache. All of that weirds me out and makes me feel like I’m not getting the full experience of every day. I want to be here.

I also felt like I was drinking to satisfy other people my age. Because twenty-somethings LOVE to drink. What do twenty-somethings do for fun: DRAAAAAAANK. What do twenty-somethings do after work: get a cocktail. What do twenty-somethings do on the weekend: go out drinking, go to bed, wake up for brunch and then DRINK SOME MORE. I realize that this is a generalization, but this is what I’m finding to be true for a majority of the people I see in NYC. But when I would go out with my friends, I ended up drinking to make them feel less self-conscious. You know how if you and a friend go to a diner but only they are hungry, they won’t want to eat because they’ll feel self-conscious? Drinking is like that but times a MILLION. I would go out with friends, and I wouldn’t intend on drinking. But if I’m sitting there not drinking while they are, they feel judged. As if I’m judging them. Then they start questioning themselves, which is NOT my intention; I just came out so I don’t have to be alone; I did not want to make all these people second-guess their life choices. So then they’ll say, “Come on, James. Just have one drink.” And being the people-pleaser that I am, I’ll have a drink. And then on the train ride home I’ll feel something similar to self-loathing as I realize that once again I’ve done something I didn’t want to do to please the people around me. So I realized my solution: don’t go to bars. Now, as a 24-year old gay actor living in New York City who doesn’t drink, smoke or do drugs, I have significantly decreased the amount of social gatherings I am likely to be invited to and, ultimately, attend. In layman’s terms, I am fucked when it comes to making friends.

(As a sidenote: I do not judge people who like drinking or smoking or do drugs. It’s just not for me.)

This is an example of a conversation I’ve had:

Potential Friend: Hey, do you want to go out for drinks later?
Me: I don’t drink.
PF: …Why?
Me: I don’t like it.
PF: Oh, but you, like, smoke, right?
Me: Nope. I don’t really do anything.
PF: Oh, but, if you were at a club you would do Molly, right?
Me: Nah.
PF: So what do you do when you go to bars then?
Me: I don’t really go to bars.
PF: Oh, that’s…cool…

But a typical day-to-day conversation goes like this:

Potential Friend: Hey.
Me: Hey, what’s up?
PF: Damn, you’re tall.
Me: I know.
PF: Wanna get a drink?
Me: I don’t drink.
PF:………why?!!??!

As if I’ve just told them that I like to chew the gum from under the seats in the movie theater. I realize that I’ve added limits to my social life. And when I talk about how it’s difficult for me to make friends, people say, “Well, can’t you go out to a bar and not drink?” And I say, “Is it fun to go out to dinner with your friends and watch them eat?” But having this conversation on the daily makes me feel like an aberration. And maybe I am.

After writing my last blog about saying goodbye to some of my besties, the loneliness really started to settle in. Not only do I have fewer friends in the city, but I also am struggling with how to make friends with people my age. So I really hunkered down on furthering myself in my career. I started going to ballet class about three times a week. I’m practicing songs in my book, and I’m adding new songs to my book. I’m auditioning. I’m looking into getting into modeling. But even though my career won’t wake up one morning and tell me it doesn’t love me anymore, it won’t hang out with me at the end of a long day, make me giggle, pick stray boogers out of my nose and tell me it loves me. And I’ve found the fundamental source of my suffering: I don’t respect myself.

My lack of self-respect has consequences that have really hurt me. I did things to appease other people who I realized wouldn’t do the same for me. I’ve engaged in emotionally abusive relationships, and I’ve let myself be used physically. And I let those things permeate my being. And I’ve said, “ENOUGH, GOD DAMNIT. I WANT MY LIFE BACK.”

I’m starting therapy tomorrow. I was nervous I wasn’t going to be fucked up enough to qualify for sliding-scale therapy. She asked me if I started fires and I thought to myself, ‘If I say yes, am I more likely to receive care?’ But I told the truth, and she accepted me and called me “high-functioning”. I blushed and took her evaluation of my mental health as a compliment.

This is my life, god damnit, and I’m done living it for other people.

Seize this day, Jesus,
James

(As a sidenote: I am trying to strengthen my relationships with the friends that I do have in the city, so please don’t feel marginalized if you are one of those lovely people.)

41. James’ll Do Anything for a Laugh

I am an awful procrastinator. Maybe the worst.

So I failed a test this morning. I’m taking the test again next week. But what should I do so I don’t fail again? Study!

So I sat on a chair in the park for a while pretending to study. No one was fooled. I heard passerby’s whisper, “Hey, look at that weirdo fake-studying. Also, why is he wearing so many colors?” So I had to get out of there. I walked to the train. On the way to the train, I got behind the two slowest women in the whole world. They were walking so slow that one of them might as well have just been rolling the other down the sidewalk. They were also those people who just take up the whole sidewalk. Not because of their size, but because of the way they mosey down the way. So instead of doing anything about it (like walking around them) I decided to just walk behind them at the snail’s pace to see if I was missing anything. (Note: I wasn’t missing anything.)

I finally got to the train. I pretended to study for a little bit but this little baby knew I was faking it. She looked right through me. And she kept staring. So I stared back. That happened for like 25 minutes. Then I got arrested for looking at a baby with cannibal eyes.

Just kidding. But I was super hungry.

Then I started to walk to the library. But this man spilled his cart full of bottles. So I started helping him collect the bottles. Then my headphones fell and wrapped themselves around my ankle. So I started dragging that leg behind me. I think the man thought I was mocking him. So he knocked me unconscious with a plastic bottle and walked away. I woke up with my pants around my ankles and all of my credit cards in my mouth. At first, I was sad that I had been unconscious for the whole thing, and then I was enlightened because I think the man was trying to make a statement about capitalism when he shoved my two credits cards, my debit card and my countless gift cards in my mouth. So I stood up, put my shorts in my backpack and walked home with my natty jiblets glistening in the sun.

(Ok. The last part was true until the point where he did NOT hit me in the head with a bottle.)

So I walked to the library where I picked up a lot of CDs and prayed that the librarian wouldn’t ask me to pay my fine. She didn’t, but I was nervous there were coins in my pocket so I decided to walk out of the library without bending my knees. I looked like a penguin. Or Charlie Chaplin. (Who really came first? It’s like the chicken and the egg, really.)

Then I went to the post office. There was just one attendant and this man at the window was taking the longest time. I got so hungry that I started to eat scratch paper from my backpack. A long line started to form behind me. One of the people behind me suddenly exclaimed, “There’s only one person working!”… Eureka! That must be it! I finally got to buy stamps, and then I went home.

Then I talked to my friend Sasha on the phone for a long time while I ate too much dairy and started to feel ill.

Then I spent about an hour to two hours creating a video of me acting a god damn fool. Here’s a link to it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuosZbX5j9Q

So after I swiveled my head around so violently, I really didn’t feel well. So I drank the rest of my water and I took of my shoes. Then I got a whiff of my feet and I felt even worse! So I tried to pretend to study some more. I was using my phone to study but then I saw that my battery was dying and I realized I had a killer headache. I’m secretly convinced that when my phone is dying, it starts to give me brain cancer. The logical solution to this illogical problem would be to plug in my phone. Instead, I decide to just not look at it. Yeah… That’ll work!

So now I can’t study anymore. Darn it. So I decide to run my hands through my hair for a little bit. I became alarmed by how much hair was falling out. I held a funeral for the collected lost hair from my head. Then I started thinking about what color wigs I should wear when I go bald.

Then I decided to write a blog. And here’s the reason why:

While most of this blog was SUPER funny, I was actually mad frustrated today. Bitchlets be walking slow on the sidewalk in front of me. I disappointed myself by failing that test HARD. I’m mad at myself for not studying right now. And then I started making a list of all the things I’m mad at myself for. And girls, that list gets LONG. I could scribble the reasons on every inch of my skin and all over these painted walls and I could write the reasons all the way down to the damned skreet. And then I realized why I come back to this blog:

I’m sad. I don’t know where She comes from or who let the Twat in. I’m feeling kind of ill from the milk. I’m feeling kind of sleepy; maybe I didn’t sleep enough. I started crying hard a few moments ago. Perhaps there’s something deep inside me needing mending. Perhaps I have a lack of self-confidence. But this blog always brings me back. And I associate my blog with happy times, because I was the most successful at practicing joy when I was writing my Project Happiness 365. I don’t know what it is about blogging. Maybe I look for validation. Maybe I think, ‘If I can make someone laugh today, I will be worthwhile.’ Or, ‘If someone says my blog is good, then today I will hate myself just a little bit less.’ I always know when I’m looking for validation. I think that’s the curse that comes with being self-aware. Like when I turn on my OkCupid just “to see pretty people”. James. Let’s be real. You just want someone to tell you you’re pretty so then you can feel worthwhile for a few more seconds. That makes me turn off my OkCupid REAL queck.

Mental health is a real problem that I struggle with. Daily. Some days are better than others. You can probably guess what kind of day this one is. But the one thing that is constant is I feel like there’s a boxing match going on in my head.

And I better win, god damnit.

Postgraduate Center for Mental Health
http://www.pgcmh.org/index.html

Metropolitan Center for Mental Health
http://www.metropolitancenter.com/about/

The Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy
http://www.icpnyc.org/

All have sliding scales for people without health insurance. Just in case you’re in NYC and looking for some mental health counseling but you’re too ashamed to google it.

I’m calling tomorrow.

My friends are awesome. They can make me laugh. They can make me feel pretty. They can distract me. But at the end of the day, it’s me, my pillow and that sinking feeling of my chest. And I’m sick of letting it run my life. In the altered words of Beyonce, “Who run this mother?! [JAMES!!!!!]”

It’s OK to be selfish sometimes. Especially if you’re feeling unhinged. Do the things you need to do to get back to you. People might get mad but they’ll understand.

Don’tgiveup Don’tgiveup Don’tgiveup Don’tgiveup

James.

(Know how to accept help, please.)

40. James Meets the Meanest Miss

Well yesterday I served the MEANEST lady of my entire life, and it really shook me to my core. Would you like a story, bitches? Well get a snack and some napkins cuz this shit is juicy.

I wait tables. At a restaurant. We have a very popular weekend brunch. People come in and get SHITTTTTY. So shitty. So cross-eyed. Ok? Unfortunately, due to our high influx of hungry, drunken buffoons, our kitchen tends to get backed up. Like. WAY backed up. Like a table can be waiting 30 minutes for their first round of food. Alright let’s just get to the story, shall we?

I have a pretty large section for brunch, but I’m holding it down cuz I got it like that. I get seated a three top. The manager tells me he knows them somehow, so I should take good care of them. I start them off with a FREE round of champagne. This is NOT included in the brunch. Then I explain to them the rules of brunch just so they understand how it works. One of the rules is that you can only order plates every 15 minutes. (But I’m supposed to only fire an order 15 minutes after the first plate hits the table; NOT 15 minutes after they give me their first order.) So I bring them all their drinks. I bring them waters. I bring her her random glass of ice. I bring them a pitcher of liquor just to be nice. I’m workin’ it, Jesus.

Then another person joins them. Their first order of food hasn’t come yet, but this newcomer would like to order. I told her she can’t order because they already ordered without her, and their first round hasn’t come yet. Yes, it’s been a while, but I can’t make the kitchen move any faster. (Even though I tried! I went back to the kitchen and begged for ONE plate for my table just to calm them down, cuz I knew they were getting hungry.)

So this makes them a little mad:
Me: I’m sorry, miss, but you have to wait fifteen minutes.
She: Well, it’s BEEN fifteen minutes. It’s been 30 or 45 minutes and we haven’t seen any food yet.
Me: Let me go steal some food for you. (It’s only been 20 minutes. I just checked the computer.)
She: Thank you.

I talk to my manager. He tells me to put in her second order. I do.

She gets mad again, cuz after her whole first order arrives, it’s missing her french fries. I tell her I’m gonna find them.

I go back and check the computer to make sure I sent them. I’m thinking, “fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck”. But I check the computer and I see that I sent the order. Phew. So I go back to the food line to find my ticket. It’s a hot mess, cuz there are SO. MANY. ORDERS. I see that they don’t have my order of french fries so I just write them a note telling them I’m missing some fries.

…

I write the note a second time.

This is not going well for me. But I do everything in MY power to keep them satisfied. The next table over is a little crabby, too, but they’re my gays so I’m just getting them as drunk as possible so they stop being mad and start being pukey. But this woman will NOT be assuaged with liquor. Her temper just grows.

She: Excuse me. Where is our food?
Me: I’m sorry, the kitchen is so backed up. I mean, look at this restaurant! It’s full! But let me go check on your food.
She: Yeah, it’s been an HOUR since we put in that order!!!
Me: *walking away while shaking my head*

Now. I probably shouldn’t have shaken my head. But lady. Miss Lady. An hour? Surely, you jest. It’s been 30 minutes. Yes, that’s a super long time, and I’m more frustrated than you are cuz I’ve been dealing with YOU’s all day. But I shook my head. She’s being ricockulous. But I go check on her food anyway cuz that’s all I can do. There are so many runners at the food line that it’s hard to see. But I can see that her ticket is slowly working its way to the expo dudes.

So there’s nothing I can do, so I’m talking to a drag queen telling her how I’m avoiding my table. Well. Then I hear someone say indignantly, “Um, excuse me!” I turn. She is standing there. And oooo girl, she be MAD!

(Pretend I’m typing this whole next part in CAPS. I can’t actually do it cuz it would stress me out too much. So just imagine a self-righteous mad hungry lady)

She: Excuse me, but this is the WORST service I’ve ever had! I’ve been here several times before and I’ve NEVER had service this awful before. We are here for my friend’s birthday and you have done nothing but treat us like SHIT! We have watched plate after plate after plate pass by us! And our food is nowhere to be found! And you’re just standing over here chatting! I am friends with the manager! I am friends with the bar manager! Oh, and I am a foodie, a blogger, and a lawyer! So take your pick. But you need to figure it out and find our food instead of standing over here doing NOTHING!

Now. I would like to insert this interlude called, “All The Things I Wish I Would’ve Said”:
Listen. I’ve broken the rules for you several times. I brought you free champagne. I brought a you a pitcher of liquor when I shouldn’t have. I put it too many food orders for you even though it’s against the rules. And I am a good server. I kept your glasses full of water and liquor. I’ve begged the kitchen to bring you food. I asked my manager to come calm you down. And you’ve done nothing but treat me unkindly. Oh, and you know the manager? And the bar manager?? Oooooh, what are you gonna do; get me fired?! Please! Do me a favor so I don’t have to serve entitled assholes like you anymore. Oh, poor me, I lost my serving job in NYC. Wherever will I find another?! And don’t come screaming at me like you’re the Princess of Manhattan. Who are you? You’re a nobody. You want to be treated like you are a queen, get the fuck out and go somewhere that doesn’t have unlimited liquor. Open your eyes; no classy establishment has freeflowing drinks. People are here to get googly-eyed and that’s it. Oh and you’re a foodie? Why, cuz you eat food? Well then bitch, I am THE foodie cuz I eat like a cow! And you’re a blogger? Congratulations, you know how to use the internet. Welcome to 2013, hoe. You’re a lawyer? Cool. Sue me cuz you’re food took forever….? Get out of here and go write about it in your stupid no-one blog where you complain about food online to make yourself feel better about being an empty bag of shit. But if you’d like to know what scrambled eggs and angry spit taste like, sit down and gobble up, bitch. Bon apetit, motherfucker. *ended with a passionate bitch slap*

Ah, yes. If only I had the bravery and stupidity and lack of temper to talk to a customer like that. Instead…

She walked away. My manager looked over at me, saw my face and cocked her head. I started shaking my head. She said, “What’s wrong?”

Then I started sobbing uncontrollably on the floor. A look of fright washed over her face, she grabbed my by the wrist and pulled me into the kitchen followed by a hostess who saw the whole thing. I told her everything. She tried to calm me down but I was doing that loud sobbing thing that you do when you’ve been holding back tears for a couple of months. It was bad. The bussers in the kitchen were scrambling to gather timber to construct an ark because I was crying so hard. My manager walked away to get the main manager. He came in and pulled me aside. He told me I didn’t have to deal with her anymore. He grabbed someone else to take care of her. He said he was gonna go talk to her, because he would rather that she leave than I cry. He told me not to worry about it.

Everyone had a slew of bad things to say about her. All I could say was, “She was so mean!” And everyone said, “Don’t let it get to you, James! Don’t take it personal!”

Listen, I don’t think I’m a bad server. I actually think I’ve very, very good at my job. That isn’t what got to me. What really hurt me was her capacity for unkindness! I could NEVER bitch someone out like that!! Never! And it’s impossible for me to not let it bother me. That’s like telling someone walking outside in the rain without an umbrella, “Hey, don’t get wet!” I’m sensitive. I’m a cancer. I cry. It’s fine. And if someone is mean to me, I’m gonna cry. And when someone is like that to me, I’m gonna sob.

It took me awhile to recover. I tried to go back on the floor, but I started crying and I couldn’t see the computer through my tears. One of the servers told me to go chill in the back, and she would take care of my tables. I still went and tried to talk to another table but I started crying again. I accidentally broke their hearts. They all looked at me with the saddest sympathy faces, and one of them said, “Oh my god, I will never be happy again!” They were sweet. The host was sweet, too. He said, “What happened? You need me to kick someone out?! Cuz I will!” The staff was all really nice to me afterwards.

Anyway I sat in the back and I cried for a little bit. I tried to cry in the bathroom but someone needed to pee, and since the bathroom is meant for pee and not tears, I let them use it.

I’m still really shaken up by this lady. I couldn’t sleep. Her words keep running through my head. And I realize the absurdity of it all. I told Kelley and she said, “You are a good waiter and a good person all her yelling proved was that she doesn’t have good character. And she was yelling about what? French toast? Yeah that’s what I thought. You are a star, James. Act like it.”

Well alright then.

Onward and upward.

(Also I submitted an application for counseling through the graduate program at Columbia. They have sliding scale sessions with their students. If anyone knows of anywhere else, please let me know.)

I end this on a joyful note cuz I choose to. Here are the cool things happening in my world:

My best shaky-face to date 

 

Edward’s attempt at shaky-face

 

One of my nieces being adorable

 

My nephew sleeping and LOVING his blanket

 

My friend looking SICKENING. DAT. ASS.

 

A still from the new music video I’m gonna be in: “Animal Love II”. Song by Charlene Kaye. Directed by Liann Kaye.

 

Liann Kaye’s tumblr: http://liannkaye.tumblr.com/
Charlene Kaye’s website: http://charlenekaye.com/

#DONTGIVEUP

James.