tome

tome, n.

As an Art History major, you can imagine my awe at the fact that my academic advisor would be the head author of the 7th edition of Janson’s History of Art and the head contributor of Renaissance chapters in all editions since. This massive text first entered my life when I was a sophomore in high school and manages to insert itself in to the life of nearly every student who takes so much as an introduction to visual arts course. When I found out Professor Roberts would be the lead author of this iconic text, my pre-existing fandom of her increased tenfold.

calaboose

calaboose, n.

I’ve only been arrested once. I say that as if most people have been arrested multiple times. I was pretty drunk at the time and don’t remember much about it. I know that I never had to go in to a jail cell or a drunk tank and that taking me to the police station was more of a formality than anything else. Me puking in the back of the cop car probably wasn’t exactly protocol, but I think it was a nice touch.

epithet

epithet, n.

During the five years I lived in Chicago, I dated my fair share of aspiring artists. There was the fashion designer, the performance artist, the painter, the actor, the sculptor… I even dated an artist’s assistant. And as time passed, and a new one would enter my life, their medium was exactly how I would refer to them to my friends. This made it easier on them, especially since I never seemed to repeat an art form.

“So the performance artist and I went to this comedy show last night.”

“Oh, remember how the artist’s assistant drove a Vespa during the summers?”

“The painter really has a thing for doing Lindsay Lohan portraits…”

And even though I truly appreciate the time I spent with each most of them, this is still how I refer to them in my head when I think about them.

headlong

headlong, adv

Like most of my sexual encounters.

See also: double entendre, hey yo!

parochial

parochial, adj

Sometimes, when I’m not sure what to write about, I’ll grab one of my old handwritten journals off of my bookshelf. I’ll flip through it for a few minutes, all in an attempt to find a story worth revisiting in the superior, all-knowing, “I told you so” narrative. Unfortunately, all that usually happens is the opening of a flood gate of embarrassing memories that I’ve worked so hard to not think about on a daily basis. I’m embarrassed to have ever been that young, that confused, that self-victimized, that emotive to the whine-y degree…I’m embarrassed about the word choices, the exaggerated handwriting, and please, don’t remind me about the free-form poetry.

In my journey to be expressive and information-spreading, I reach that “ignorance is bliss” moment. I resolve to write about what feels good, no matter how anorexic the end result, starved of my complete worldview. I tell, nay order, myself, “Be funny.”

For an unnerving moment, I wonder if this is how all of my comedic writing has come to fruition. In that moment, I reach for that last journal. Though, actually, it’s my first. Dated 1992, it’s an illustrative diary from grade school. As a class we would learn basic sentence structure by writing almost anything we wanted. The fun part came in drawing what the statement was expressing. I’m pretty sure it was never graded because mine is full of things like, “During spring vocation I did many things. First I went to the Ymca Second I went to grate amiacka I had a good time.” In addition to the spelling problems and complete reinvention of simple sentence structure, all of the G’s were written backwards. Oddly enough, despite my mother’s appeal to the school board that I be held back a year, I graduated that Spring.

Quite the aspiring scholar, I kept the journal up during summer break. Though, instead of sentences, I asked my grandma to teach me new words to spell that I could then also draw. I learned useful phrases like, “sundae,” “Coors Light,” and “Marlboro Reds.” It was only after those that she spelled out a new word. It was only four letters but I couldn’t figure it out and asked her how I was supposed to draw it if I didn’t know what it was. She told me to think about it some more and, after some more confusion on my part, told me to go look in the toilet.

The quest to be informed and all-encompassing can be depressive and cringe-inducing, but comedy isn’t necessarily always the fog that covers these parts of us. Comedy is organic is life.

rapporteur

rapporteur, n

I remember being 18, living in the northern suburbs of Chicago, and also attempting to survive the sinking ship of a long distance relationship with my boyfriend that I’d left behind in California in order to go to college. I had just left my psychiatrist’s office in Highland Park, whom I, after utilizing a high school AP-level understanding of mental illness, had just gotten to write me a prescription for mood-tranquilizers generally given to people with bipolar disorder. Oh, and I’d also gotten diagnosed as being bipolar.

In retrospect, I’ve never been bipolar, but I think being eighteen, in love, and finding myself in both a foreign geographic region and an isolating social climate lead me to believe I was. And as mental illnesses go, if you believe enough in your self diagnosis, it’s easy enough to make a PhD holding professional believe what you want them to. I guess back then I really couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that someone might be happy one minute and sad the next – even in a situation where I was happy getting to know some new friends of mine and then, seconds later, sad because I’d just received a text message from my boyfriend saying he wouldn’t be calling me that night because he was hanging out with “Andrew.”

Anyways, it was afterwards, at a Walgreens, while I wandered down the aisle, numb, waiting for the pharmacist to fill my prescription. My phone vibrated with a message from this guy I barely knew back in California letting me know he had something to tell me. Dealing with everything I was dealing with at that moment – you know, my newly professionally cemented bipolar disorder label – I brushed him off. I think his name was Steven. I didn’t talk to Steven again until a couple of months later when I’d found out what he had to tell me via other means. I got in touch with him to confirm what he had been trying to warn me about and to apologize for not listening to what he was trying to report.

In retrospect though, maybe I’m more thankful for the extra weeks of ignorance. And for those weeks in which my filled prescription finally went to work and left me completely guarded and unfeeling towards what I was about to endure.

the dignified and fair break up episode

I like to keep things cinematic. Finding the right lighting, the right music, the right setting for as many aspects of my life as I can, or, at least for the one’s I’m in direct control of. My bedroom is perfect. Anyone who disagrees is misguided. The lighting, the art work, the presentation of said art work, the furniture, the piles of clothing ‘casually’ tossed over chairs and lamps… and especially the imperfections of the room. Note my queen sized bed with a king sized fitted sheet that manages to come undone and tangle itself with my body as the night progresses. Everything is part of the equation and they’re all ultimately perfect in creating a setting that is one-hundred percent chateau du thome mercedes. The ideal place to contemplate myself, my friends, the drama, what’s been before, what’s next, and the musical score to set it all to.

And if this blog were a TV adaptation, and this really were season two… this is the part where we’d need to hire the actor who played V back for a cameo appearance in the crucial break up flashback episode.

V and I broke up. I don’t consciously remember it being one thing in particular that caused it. Just that sudden, inexplicable change in feelings that happens after a time period and makes me nervous to get involved with any one person again anytime soon. If two people can both choose to invest seven months in one another and then one day, one of them just isn’t feeling it anymore… is that really the gamble we want to repeatedly take? Or when we finally let the right one in, is this not at all a problem? Or is this the point where two people decide to work at love? And if so, can I just hire habitat for humanity the next time I’m in a relationship? Because I’m fucking lazy.

single and the city

I stumble out of The Stud in to the chilly San Francisco night. It’s 2 a.m. on a Saturday morning, I’ve consumed an entire flask of whiskey by myself, not to mention the 4Loko I had before leaving my apartment. Fortunately, on occasion, I actually know when it’s time to call it a night, scrounge together whatever dignity I have left, and go pass out in my own bed with a half-eaten burrito from Chavo’s resting on my exposed stomach. Naturally, a miscellaneous episode from The Golden Girls season two box set lights up my room until the disc runs out of episodes.

The decision to end the night wasn’t brought on by California’s 2 AM liquor licenses and thus any sort of last call. The Stud stays open until 3 or 4 to let the queer hipsters and drag queens that flood it on a Friday night dance their way in to as many bad decisions as possible. My resolve to leave was brought about by one of these bad decisions – though, for once, it was somebody else’s and not my own. I was stumbling around the bar, waving and smiling at people I know when I decided to head to the dance floor. I walked past the curtain barrier that separates the front bar area from the back stage/dance area and saw JJ kissing Andy fucking Dick.

Teaser

DROWN THE CHILDREN:
SEASON TWO
COMING SOON

step one: admit you have a problem

Sorry I’ve been AWOL lately (whatever that means!). I’ve been working on a treatment to convert some of the beloved classics in this blog in to a collection of comedic short stories. Obviously, my life and the experiences that fill the blog haven’t stopped, I’ve just had less time and motivation to write about them. The ‘Dear Diary‘ truth is that a lot has changed. I have a really crappy job now and my relationship with V ended recently after seven months. With those two (intentionally lack of detail driven) updates in mind, I present to you an e-mail I recently wrote to my friend WryLab.

—-

So I’m working retail again. Apparel. What a terrible thing. Women are slobs and I’m finding out the hard way that metal hangers give me a rash.

Anyways, I had yesterday off and it was pretty nice here. Sunny without being too hot. A light breeze if you will. So I went to Mission Delores Park – this awesome park in San Francisco that hipsters, gays, and stoners flock to when it’s not raining. It overlooks downtown and the view makes you feel as if you’re more removed from the city than you are. It’s kind of a great place to just appreciate the city – something I’ve needed since the break up on Monday. I realized that part of what made Chicago so great was that I felt like I was in a relationship with it and now that I’m single for the first time since living here, I can hopefully pursue that kind of thing with SF. I was also determined to get very, very, very drunk – and that’s something I’m usually pretty good at succeeding at.

So a water bottle full of vodka-cran (my drink of choice this past month) and multiple happy hours later I basically black out. Or, at least, I thought I did.

I come to, I’m in my bed, and my shoulders hurt. Sun burn central. And the events of the previous evening (I didn’t make it to night) start to come back to me in reverse order. I remember falling asleep while SOBBING over the clip from ‘the other sister’ I posted on my wall – the Garry Marshall film about a mentally handicapped woman in love.

My stomach rumbles and my first feeling is of pride – I may have drank all those empty calories but I didn’t eat a thing! This break up was /not/ going to make me fat. Unfortunately, at this point I also realized that I was covered in shredded lettuce and salt and then remembered my trip to McDonald’s and the Big Mac I ate in bed.

I roll over and decide to accept the fact that my second happy hour and third bloody mary (after like four vodka-crans) would be my last recallable memory. But then I realize that there might be more… My brain is fuzzy but certain things start to come in to focus. I remember being in a courtyard… and there being a room… full of folding chairs and people… I remember looking for a bar… not finding one… and thinking that it might be like a time share seminar where you have to sit through a meeting before you get to drink for free… so I sit down and remember being shocked at how early it was… and then people started talking… and one guy was really in to his story about sucking dick for meth… but I really wanted to interrupt him to talk about myself… and finally just being bored and leaving early.

And I didn’t realize it then, but I realize it now. I had gone to my first AA meeting – something I hadn’t planned on doing until my 40s! I don’t remember how I got there but the only reasonable thing I can come up with is that I got invited off the street, which is both embarrassing /and/ insulting. When I pulled my pants in to bed to see if I had any cash left, my pockets were full of raffle tickets. I can only assume that I assumed that they were drink tickets for the “party” I was at. Some party. And now I’m getting texts from some girl named Krisha whom I can only assume is my sponsor. Well, from one relationship to the next, I suppose.