I was sitting on the toilet the other day when it struck me.
Like a deer darting in front of a Sunday driver, both trotting along innocently, oblivious to the other until the fatal moment of impact, it crammed its horns into my cranium, and now I cannot escape it. Every time I close my eyes it is there, waiting to confront me:
What if I was mysteriously murdered and the only clues available to investigators regarding a possible motive and my very existence were the contents of my wallet?
I know….
What artifacts am I leaving behind for others to piece together in order to recreate the complex mosaic that is my life? Do I even like or recognize the message I am leaving?
This scenario ever crossed your mind? As I believe the vast majority of people to live unexamined lives, I am guessing not. You probably go throughout your day unmindful of the unexpected, the anonymous sink hole waiting to suck you in or the madman in the bushes, silently stalking before he leaps into the night, restrains you with his rope, and then uses his team of horses to draw and quarter you as your hollow screams escape into the musty air.
Never thought about it, huh?
Well, it could happen. And when it does, what emblem will you be remembered by? An expired condom buried deep in the pockets of your billfold, ribbed for her pleasure? A crusty McDonald’s napkin you licked three weeks ago and then rubbed on your son’s dirty cheek, now cemented to the lining of your purse? Are these the things you want marking your legacy?
As I sat there on the toilet, dumbfounded by my revelation, my hamstrings began to cramp and my feet went numb, but I knew it was no time to flush and flee. Instead, I bent down and reached in my back pocket, pulling out the encyclopedia of my life.
I began with the obvious, my driver’s license. Slipping the card out of its protective sleeve, my hand muscles suddenly revolted, the license crashing onto the tile floor.
We’re all fucked!
In a situation where your face is horribly disfigured by a bursting pipe of boiling water or the crazed attack of a rabid clawing kitten, the mortician would have no choice but to start with your driver’s license. After spending hours in line with the very scrotum of society as some – fill in your favorite ethnic, racial, or all around Republican mindset slur here – tells you to “looks here”, no one can be cute. Now I ask you: who in the hell wants to spend eternity looking like a late night Waffle House employee?
Discouraged by determined, I continued my excavation.
Receipts scrambled for freedom as I thumbed through the section where most would keep cash; I instead prefer to store a variety of worthless shit. Old hotel room card keys, an expired free smoothie coupon, and a promotional flyer for some strip clubbed shoved in my hand by a street urchin on my last trip to New Orleans. Judging from these relics, I look like some type of sexual deviant obsessed with the "Very Berry-Kiwi Quencher."
Digging deeper I find stained business cards of people I don’t even know, offering services that I don’t understand. Buried behind my maxed out credit card and my proof of insurance is the contact info for a psychologist I met at a teaching conference. Fabulous, between my driver’s license picture, the porn advertisement, and the therapist, I will be remembered as a freakish-looking sex crazed lunatic.
Now you might excuse yourself from these worries by labeling my concerns as paranoia, but the threats are very real. Remember back to 5th grade Social Studies and the island of Pompeii? Those poor people were devoured by an erupting volcano with their final actions perfectly preserved by the cooling lava. In middle school they only show you the pictures of the mother serving dinner and the children lying asleep in bed, but you can’t tell me there wasn’t somebody in that city taking a shit or pleasuring themselves in the bathroom. Where are those photos?What if your final contribution to the world was the odd contorted shape your face takes during orgasm? How awkward…
Now that I have opened this intellectual door, I have become obsessed with it. How will future societies judge and understand us? I was pondering this one recent afternoon while waiting to checkout at Walgreens, when I noticed the contents of the basket in front of me. As Lionel Riche’s Dancing on the Ceiling seeped through the poorly wired speakers, I shook my head and sighed: Kotex maxi pads, a Snickers bar, People magazine, and a liter of Mountain Dew. What if in that moment there was a freak volcano eruption or nuclear attack, and Walgreens was petrified in time, only to be awoken thousands of years from now by a group of future archeologists? What would they conclude?
I’ll tell you what they would think: that we were some sick mother fuckers performing strange menstruation rituals! I can see future scholars agonizing over how the People magazine came into play. “Clearly the bottled ‘mountain dew’ represents some kind of connection to the mother earth, and the nugget bar is clearly a phallic symbol, but I do not understand how all of this connects with the sad collapse of this Brittney Spears person or the man with no arms who swam the English Channel? Fascinating savages!”
With this new perspective, I can’t help but rethink my whole understanding of history and past civilizations. Maybe we were wrong about the extravagance of the Egyptians or the barbarity of the Aztecs. Maybe what we thought were mummification rites and human sacrifices were just their Walgreen’s lines.
Think about it…
Regardless, you can never be too careful, so I am going to clean out my wallet. Screw insurance cards and driver’s licenses. I am filling it to the brim with opera tickets and advertisements for charities serving people who cause me to lock my door when they stumble by my car. I am going to be immortalized properly damn it!
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Donnie Darko & Sweater Vests
I love judging other people. Do you?
I know it probably sounds a bit shallow, but we all do it. Even as I sit here writing, sipping over-priced free trade coffee at a tragically eclectic hipster hangout, I am evaluating all my fellow patrons in my head. He’s trying too hard; they’re ugly; he hasn’t had sex in three years; she needs to realize she’s 35 and that skirt is 22.
If you have never done this you really should try. It’s quite fun! Whenever I feel self-conscious or existentially unsatisfied, I just go into public and put down other people. It almost always makes me feel better, even if the sensation of superiority is only ephemeral.
I would like to believe I love this hobby so much because I am just a bad person, but unfortunately, that’s not true. Contrastingly, I am afraid I’m just horribly self-conscious and feel compelled to mentally assault other people to make up for that fact that they would never have sex with me or because I am so jealous of their obvious contentment.
Screw happy, balanced people! Why can’t they be more like me?
Crippled by a sense of inferiority, I find myself constantly going out of my way to seem intellectually chic, purposely pretentious. This need manifests itself in all areas of my life, from my carefully orchestrated wardrobe to my special request at Chili’s to add water chestnuts to my side salad.
A great example is my recent subscription to the New York Times. On weekend mornings there is nothing I love more than pouring a roasting hot cup of coffee, slipping on my leather-soled slippers, and nonchalantly strutting down my drive way to pick-up the paper. (I have learned that if you really want to sell this image you have to refer to it as just “the paper”; a newspaper is for whores and gypsies.) Stretching before I reach down, I take a moment to appreciate the contrast between my blue bag and my neighbor’s orange ones; they only read the local paper, plebeians.
Slipping the Sunday edition out of its case, I flip open the front page as I was wander back to the door, hoeing and humming over the news from the world of the liberal, rich, and mostly Jewish. Don’t let the fact that its 1:30 in the afternoon and my hung over ass just now crawled out of bed smelling of urine and tasting like a Denny’s ashtray fool you. I have a blue bag; I am a somebody.
This need for self-importance has also led to a number of interesting purchases on my part. For instance, I own a $100 pair of hiking sandals known as Chaco’s. Do I hike? No. Do I enjoy the outdoors? Not really. Does it bother me that when I wear them my feet get dirty and the strap cuts off circulation to my big toe? A little. But all the indulgence and discomfort is worth it when I wear them to my favorite coffee house and fantasize about what other people must be thinking. “Hey, look at that guy. He is wearing those expensive trendy sandals; I bet he shops at Whole Foods.”
You see, I really can’t help myself. Just the other night, for instance, I found myself accompanying my fiancé to a cocktail party populated by her “old friends.” Intimidated by the inside jokes and story punch lines recited in unison, I knew I needed to bring my “A” game. Walking around sipping the ostentatious Eastern European beer I had brought, I floated from group to group commenting on everything from Barack Obama’s “Neo-Liberal Politics” – I find that if you insert “neo” in front of any subject you seem much more versed in the topic – to the best golf courses in Memphis. My old standby, however, has always been the film Donnie Darko.
If you have never seen the movie, I could not even begin to tell you what it’s about, despite having watched it many times. My own confusion is a mute point, however. I don’t know why, but this film is a rallying cry for 20-something, liberal, white, want-to-be intellectuals. If you are ever searching for your own kind, just bring up “Granny Death” or “the film’s portrayal of the complexity of time” and watch the pale, skinny, sexually frustrated come bulldozing over to you. I have spent countless nights explicating the film’s subtle suggestions with strangers as we sip micro-brewery beer and puff on our clove cigarettes.
Shit, I don’t even know what the damn move is about! I don’t think anyone actually does, but its New Wave soundtrack, explicit dialogue, and Gram Greene references make it the perfect cloak for us, the pseudo cool.
My obsession with social over-compensation dates back to as long as I can remember. I still clearly recall that very special day in the 2nd grade, as I sat uprightly in my navy blue plastic chair, scoffing at the poor posture of my counterparts, when Mrs. Perkins announced the destination of our holiday field trip: the Nutcracker Ballet. Well, as the miscreants surrounding me groaned and moaned about tights and tutus, I saw opportunity. Now was my chance to make up for that glue eating incident back in October; I was going to be a theatre patron.
Leaping off the school bus at the end of the day, I burst through the kitchen doors, insisting my mother immediately drop whatever she is doing and take me to JC Penny’s, the mall anchor store of the sophisticate. If I was going to appreciate the dance and impress the knuckle draggers who made up my class, I had to do it with style.
After many weeks of whining, begging, and negotiating, my mother finally caved and took me along on her annual shopping spree for panty hose and shoulder pads. The torture of the ladies intimate apparel department was worth it once I saw my prize. A black cable-knit sweater vest, complete with over-sized buttons and fashion pockets. This was the statement I had been waiting to make.
Apparently, my idea of unexpected cool, of casual elegance, was just seen as “faggy” to everyone else. My emblem of distinction was shoved far up my ass long before the show ever started, and I realized my plan to impress was ruined when my shiny black loafers were ripped from my feet and used to pummel my head as soon as the house lights went down.
Bleeding but not broken, I knew my day would come. Somehow, someway I would be appreciated and understood for the person I was not but wanted people to think I was.
I know it probably sounds a bit shallow, but we all do it. Even as I sit here writing, sipping over-priced free trade coffee at a tragically eclectic hipster hangout, I am evaluating all my fellow patrons in my head. He’s trying too hard; they’re ugly; he hasn’t had sex in three years; she needs to realize she’s 35 and that skirt is 22.
If you have never done this you really should try. It’s quite fun! Whenever I feel self-conscious or existentially unsatisfied, I just go into public and put down other people. It almost always makes me feel better, even if the sensation of superiority is only ephemeral.
I would like to believe I love this hobby so much because I am just a bad person, but unfortunately, that’s not true. Contrastingly, I am afraid I’m just horribly self-conscious and feel compelled to mentally assault other people to make up for that fact that they would never have sex with me or because I am so jealous of their obvious contentment.
Screw happy, balanced people! Why can’t they be more like me?
Crippled by a sense of inferiority, I find myself constantly going out of my way to seem intellectually chic, purposely pretentious. This need manifests itself in all areas of my life, from my carefully orchestrated wardrobe to my special request at Chili’s to add water chestnuts to my side salad.
A great example is my recent subscription to the New York Times. On weekend mornings there is nothing I love more than pouring a roasting hot cup of coffee, slipping on my leather-soled slippers, and nonchalantly strutting down my drive way to pick-up the paper. (I have learned that if you really want to sell this image you have to refer to it as just “the paper”; a newspaper is for whores and gypsies.) Stretching before I reach down, I take a moment to appreciate the contrast between my blue bag and my neighbor’s orange ones; they only read the local paper, plebeians.
Slipping the Sunday edition out of its case, I flip open the front page as I was wander back to the door, hoeing and humming over the news from the world of the liberal, rich, and mostly Jewish. Don’t let the fact that its 1:30 in the afternoon and my hung over ass just now crawled out of bed smelling of urine and tasting like a Denny’s ashtray fool you. I have a blue bag; I am a somebody.
This need for self-importance has also led to a number of interesting purchases on my part. For instance, I own a $100 pair of hiking sandals known as Chaco’s. Do I hike? No. Do I enjoy the outdoors? Not really. Does it bother me that when I wear them my feet get dirty and the strap cuts off circulation to my big toe? A little. But all the indulgence and discomfort is worth it when I wear them to my favorite coffee house and fantasize about what other people must be thinking. “Hey, look at that guy. He is wearing those expensive trendy sandals; I bet he shops at Whole Foods.”
You see, I really can’t help myself. Just the other night, for instance, I found myself accompanying my fiancé to a cocktail party populated by her “old friends.” Intimidated by the inside jokes and story punch lines recited in unison, I knew I needed to bring my “A” game. Walking around sipping the ostentatious Eastern European beer I had brought, I floated from group to group commenting on everything from Barack Obama’s “Neo-Liberal Politics” – I find that if you insert “neo” in front of any subject you seem much more versed in the topic – to the best golf courses in Memphis. My old standby, however, has always been the film Donnie Darko.
If you have never seen the movie, I could not even begin to tell you what it’s about, despite having watched it many times. My own confusion is a mute point, however. I don’t know why, but this film is a rallying cry for 20-something, liberal, white, want-to-be intellectuals. If you are ever searching for your own kind, just bring up “Granny Death” or “the film’s portrayal of the complexity of time” and watch the pale, skinny, sexually frustrated come bulldozing over to you. I have spent countless nights explicating the film’s subtle suggestions with strangers as we sip micro-brewery beer and puff on our clove cigarettes.
Shit, I don’t even know what the damn move is about! I don’t think anyone actually does, but its New Wave soundtrack, explicit dialogue, and Gram Greene references make it the perfect cloak for us, the pseudo cool.
My obsession with social over-compensation dates back to as long as I can remember. I still clearly recall that very special day in the 2nd grade, as I sat uprightly in my navy blue plastic chair, scoffing at the poor posture of my counterparts, when Mrs. Perkins announced the destination of our holiday field trip: the Nutcracker Ballet. Well, as the miscreants surrounding me groaned and moaned about tights and tutus, I saw opportunity. Now was my chance to make up for that glue eating incident back in October; I was going to be a theatre patron.
Leaping off the school bus at the end of the day, I burst through the kitchen doors, insisting my mother immediately drop whatever she is doing and take me to JC Penny’s, the mall anchor store of the sophisticate. If I was going to appreciate the dance and impress the knuckle draggers who made up my class, I had to do it with style.
After many weeks of whining, begging, and negotiating, my mother finally caved and took me along on her annual shopping spree for panty hose and shoulder pads. The torture of the ladies intimate apparel department was worth it once I saw my prize. A black cable-knit sweater vest, complete with over-sized buttons and fashion pockets. This was the statement I had been waiting to make.
Apparently, my idea of unexpected cool, of casual elegance, was just seen as “faggy” to everyone else. My emblem of distinction was shoved far up my ass long before the show ever started, and I realized my plan to impress was ruined when my shiny black loafers were ripped from my feet and used to pummel my head as soon as the house lights went down.
Bleeding but not broken, I knew my day would come. Somehow, someway I would be appreciated and understood for the person I was not but wanted people to think I was.
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