Will. Just, Will. I don’t have any way to start this aside from...just...Will.
Will is the crazy friend. Everybody has one. The one who gets drunk and sets things on fire or decides to move to Amsterdam to sell vacuum cleaners or something. Will is that. He hasn’t done any of that, to be fair. Although it wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine him doing either. He’s fascinating, brilliant, charming, and weird as balls.
So one morning he and my best friend show up at my house. After sitting around for a few minutes, I decided to be a good friend and offer them food, despite the fact that my refrigerator is largely stocked with things you put on other things. Without the benefit of the things you put on them. We have whipped cream with no cake, ketchup with no hamburgers, caramel sauce with no ice cream. Which causes a problem when my hostess instincts set in.
“Do you want something to eat?” I ask, hopping up from my chair in a flurry of fifties housewife. “We have... a lot of condiments.”
Best friend giggles. Will giggles.
“What?” It’s never good when they’re giggling.
“Go get it,” my best friend says. Will scrambles out of the chair and leaves the kitchen. I asked my best friend what was going on a few times, but, as usual, I got no real answer. And then Will shows back up in the kitchen with a suitcase, which he opens in the middle of the floor.
Condoms. Infinite condoms. Single packs of Trojan Ultra-Thin condoms spilling all over my kitchen.
“What’s this?” I ask.
“One thousand condoms!” Will exclaimed.
“Why do you have one thousand condoms in a suitcase?”
“They won’t fit in anything else!”
“Right. But why do you have them?”
Apparently, Will signed up to be a distributor for Trojan, handing out free samples to college students. Like a condom angel. A strange condom angel. But he failed in his condom angel duties by keeping all of the condoms, and, somehow, Trojan never checked up on him. So now he had huge quantities of condoms hanging out in his car. So he spread the wealth.
But it’s hard to tell if a suitcase full of ultra-thin condoms kept in the back of a car in the middle of summer are structurally sound. And that’s hardly something a bunch of college kids want to take chances on. So we devised a test.
Let me tell you, it is not until one has been chased around one’s dining room by a tiny woman brandishing an inflated condom with a smiley face on it that one has truly lived. And I, my friends, have truly lived.
Friday, December 3, 2010
Friday, November 26, 2010
The Introductions.
Tonight, I introduced my boyfriend of about a month to my parents. Some people get nervous about introducing their boyfriends or girlfriends to their parents. I am not that kind of person. My parents are chill as hell. I've managed to set their expectations for my boyfriends so low that really basic things make them happy beyond belief. Basically, as long as a guy is a normal, functioning human, my parents will like him just fine. This one showed up with flowers for me and shook my parents' hands when he met them. Passed with flying colors.
The part I was nervous about was the bit right after that: Friendsgiving. For the past few years, the day after Thanksgiving has been devoted to Friendsgiving, for which all of my friends gather to consume horrendous amounts of junk food and catch up. This year, the Boy came with, which meant he got the privilege of meeting all of my friends at once.
And I had reason to worry. Almost immediately, one of my friends cornered him, decided he was a bro, and informed him of this for the next ten or so minutes. My best friend attached herself to my back and proceeded to lick me, against my will, as I squirmed, yelped, and protested. Someone shoved a roll down the front of my shirt. The hostess tried to slap his ass. There were bacon-cocktail weiner-meatball-Dorito sandwiches. A good hour was spent discussing my chest (the gag boobs of the group, commonly described as "communal"), which got grabbed, squeezed, and fondled. Dinosaur noises were made. We acted like retarded kindergarteners who had been force fed sugar and caffeine all day.
But, see, I always forget that we act that way until I'm introducing someone new to the group. Ordinarily, the weird, ass-slapping dino orgy that is my life doesn't even faze me. But then I bring someone new into the group, and I instantly start to worry. What if he thinks I'm crazy? What if he thinks I'm a skank? What if he hears me make a weird dino noise when someone tickles me and decides "Shit, my girlfriend is actually a dinosaur and I don't like dinosaurs, so I'm totally out of here"? It would be easy to think my friends and I were just a bunch of strange, immature freaks and discard the whole group.
My boyfriend made a pterodactyl noise in my ear, licked my cheek, and laughed his ass off.
Score.
The part I was nervous about was the bit right after that: Friendsgiving. For the past few years, the day after Thanksgiving has been devoted to Friendsgiving, for which all of my friends gather to consume horrendous amounts of junk food and catch up. This year, the Boy came with, which meant he got the privilege of meeting all of my friends at once.
And I had reason to worry. Almost immediately, one of my friends cornered him, decided he was a bro, and informed him of this for the next ten or so minutes. My best friend attached herself to my back and proceeded to lick me, against my will, as I squirmed, yelped, and protested. Someone shoved a roll down the front of my shirt. The hostess tried to slap his ass. There were bacon-cocktail weiner-meatball-Dorito sandwiches. A good hour was spent discussing my chest (the gag boobs of the group, commonly described as "communal"), which got grabbed, squeezed, and fondled. Dinosaur noises were made. We acted like retarded kindergarteners who had been force fed sugar and caffeine all day.
But, see, I always forget that we act that way until I'm introducing someone new to the group. Ordinarily, the weird, ass-slapping dino orgy that is my life doesn't even faze me. But then I bring someone new into the group, and I instantly start to worry. What if he thinks I'm crazy? What if he thinks I'm a skank? What if he hears me make a weird dino noise when someone tickles me and decides "Shit, my girlfriend is actually a dinosaur and I don't like dinosaurs, so I'm totally out of here"? It would be easy to think my friends and I were just a bunch of strange, immature freaks and discard the whole group.
My boyfriend made a pterodactyl noise in my ear, licked my cheek, and laughed his ass off.
Score.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Sleeping is Terrifying.
Basically, everything makes me nervous. I know being neurotic is trendy or whatever right now, which I don't really get, but whatever. I'm not talking cool neurosis. I'm not even sure what that is. I'm talking the kind of nervous that makes you so reluctant to go make a reservation in the school's editing lab that you seriously consider just not editing your project cause what if you call the equipment the wrong thing and the people working there think you're really dumb and then you look stupid?
That's me. All the goddamn time. I wake up in the middle of the night worried that I've forgotten homework, overdrawn my bank account without noticing, contracted some disease, gotten pregnant (which I was worrying about way before I ever had sex, or even before I had a boyfriend--what if some stranger had sneaked into my room and inseminated me without me knowing? I AM NOT MAKING THAT UP I ACTUALLY WORRIED ABOUT THAT). There is almost nothing in the world that cannot cause me concern.
But, despite all this worrying, nothing makes me more nervous than sleeping at home. To clarify one thing before I go into any of this: my home is the best, safest, and most wonderful place there is. My parents are great people, I live in a good area, there's basically no crime in my immediate area, and I trust my neighbors.
At school, I live in a big building of strangers in the middle of Boston. Any given night, I can hear homeless people yelling at each other, the T making horrible squawking noises as it goes by, garbage trucks, cop cars, drunk people, loud music, construction, and all kinds of weird noises I can only assume are monsters coming to take over the world. In addition to this, my neighbor controls my heat, and, as far as I can tell, she's from either Hell or the Sahara, and keeps the temperature absurdly hot, and I share a twin bed with my 6'2" boyfriend. I sleep like a rock at school.
At home, however, I have been plagued with sleepless nights for years. I can trace this back to a specific point in my childhood, and it is all the fault of my horrible sadistic ballet teacher. This woman, given the responsibility of a herd of fourth grade girls, decided to celebrate Halloween by sharing impossibly terrifying urban legends about sleepovers interrupted by brutal serial killers. In one story, the killer makes himself known by breathing down the neck of the sleeping heroine, who assumes he is her dog. I'm pretty sure that makes him the most retarded, least sneaky serial killer ever, but that's not something ten-year-old me was concerned with. The basic lesson I got from the story was that serial killers can get into your room and will breath on your neck before violently slaughtering everyone you love and writing messages on mirrors in your friends' blood.
So, for about five years after that, I couldn't sleep unless my closet door was closed (so I couldn't see the serial killer) and my sheets were totally covering my neck (so I couldn't feel his murderous breath). Apparently, as long as I was completely unaware of the presence of a serial killer, I was set. He could kill me in my sleep as long as he didn't scare me first.
But all these means of hiding didn't prevent me from being able to hear. And houses make noise. I also live in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by trees, which means there are animals. Every single creak, every bird chirping, every rustling tree was some horrible drug addicted man sneaking into my house with a GIANT knife covered in rust and tetanus, which he would use to perforate me like a safety seal on a bottle of ketchup. Maybe if I kept still and just didn't make any noise, he wouldn't hear me and he'd think the room was empty.
Then in occurred to me that if he didn't notice and kill me, he'd still probably find my parents and murder them, and then I'd wake up and find them all bloody and dead in their bedroom, and then I'd be alone and traumatized.
Most of the time I'd end up squeezing my eyes shut and praying to God to let me not die that night until I fell asleep.
Then we got raccoons.
For someone who is already mortally terrified of burglars, the worst thing that could ever happen is to have a bunch of nocturnal creatures skittering around on the gravel outside one's house, making footstep noises and knocking things over. Until my parents explained that a bunch of masked rodents were vandalizing our trash cans every night, I spent every evening completely positive I was going to die, right there, that very night. For clarification, this was just last year. This is still how my mind works. In fact, after I publish this, I'm going to go upstairs to bed and probably lie there for an hour or so waiting for someone to slowly open the door and stab me to death.
If I remembered that ballet teacher's name, I would track her down and punch her right in the mouth.
That's me. All the goddamn time. I wake up in the middle of the night worried that I've forgotten homework, overdrawn my bank account without noticing, contracted some disease, gotten pregnant (which I was worrying about way before I ever had sex, or even before I had a boyfriend--what if some stranger had sneaked into my room and inseminated me without me knowing? I AM NOT MAKING THAT UP I ACTUALLY WORRIED ABOUT THAT). There is almost nothing in the world that cannot cause me concern.
But, despite all this worrying, nothing makes me more nervous than sleeping at home. To clarify one thing before I go into any of this: my home is the best, safest, and most wonderful place there is. My parents are great people, I live in a good area, there's basically no crime in my immediate area, and I trust my neighbors.
At school, I live in a big building of strangers in the middle of Boston. Any given night, I can hear homeless people yelling at each other, the T making horrible squawking noises as it goes by, garbage trucks, cop cars, drunk people, loud music, construction, and all kinds of weird noises I can only assume are monsters coming to take over the world. In addition to this, my neighbor controls my heat, and, as far as I can tell, she's from either Hell or the Sahara, and keeps the temperature absurdly hot, and I share a twin bed with my 6'2" boyfriend. I sleep like a rock at school.
At home, however, I have been plagued with sleepless nights for years. I can trace this back to a specific point in my childhood, and it is all the fault of my horrible sadistic ballet teacher. This woman, given the responsibility of a herd of fourth grade girls, decided to celebrate Halloween by sharing impossibly terrifying urban legends about sleepovers interrupted by brutal serial killers. In one story, the killer makes himself known by breathing down the neck of the sleeping heroine, who assumes he is her dog. I'm pretty sure that makes him the most retarded, least sneaky serial killer ever, but that's not something ten-year-old me was concerned with. The basic lesson I got from the story was that serial killers can get into your room and will breath on your neck before violently slaughtering everyone you love and writing messages on mirrors in your friends' blood.
So, for about five years after that, I couldn't sleep unless my closet door was closed (so I couldn't see the serial killer) and my sheets were totally covering my neck (so I couldn't feel his murderous breath). Apparently, as long as I was completely unaware of the presence of a serial killer, I was set. He could kill me in my sleep as long as he didn't scare me first.
But all these means of hiding didn't prevent me from being able to hear. And houses make noise. I also live in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by trees, which means there are animals. Every single creak, every bird chirping, every rustling tree was some horrible drug addicted man sneaking into my house with a GIANT knife covered in rust and tetanus, which he would use to perforate me like a safety seal on a bottle of ketchup. Maybe if I kept still and just didn't make any noise, he wouldn't hear me and he'd think the room was empty.
Then in occurred to me that if he didn't notice and kill me, he'd still probably find my parents and murder them, and then I'd wake up and find them all bloody and dead in their bedroom, and then I'd be alone and traumatized.
Most of the time I'd end up squeezing my eyes shut and praying to God to let me not die that night until I fell asleep.
Then we got raccoons.
For someone who is already mortally terrified of burglars, the worst thing that could ever happen is to have a bunch of nocturnal creatures skittering around on the gravel outside one's house, making footstep noises and knocking things over. Until my parents explained that a bunch of masked rodents were vandalizing our trash cans every night, I spent every evening completely positive I was going to die, right there, that very night. For clarification, this was just last year. This is still how my mind works. In fact, after I publish this, I'm going to go upstairs to bed and probably lie there for an hour or so waiting for someone to slowly open the door and stab me to death.
If I remembered that ballet teacher's name, I would track her down and punch her right in the mouth.
College is Making Me Stupid.
Last week, I filled an elevator with red balloons. Roughly ninety-three red balloons, if you want to get specific.
The goal of this endeavor was to send the balloons down to the lobby of my dorm building, where they would spill out everywhere causing chaos and general hilarity. Think the elevator of blood from The Shining, only with balloons.
So we loaded the disturbing quantity of red balloons we had chilling in our suite into the shopping cart that was living in our bathroom at the time (where it had been hanging out for a month or so since we'd rescued it from the Common), and shoved the rest of the balloons into a weird hammock we fashioned out of a blanket. With a little difficulty and a lot of static electricity, we managed to get the balloons down the hallway to the elevators. We summoned an elevator, made sure that there was no one in it, and promptly dumped the balloons inside.
Now, this is where the plot fell apart a little bit. Half of the fun of the plan was imagining the looks on people's faces when almost a hundred balloons drifted out of the elevator. However, we still had to return the shopping cart and the blanket to the room, which meant that, in order to make it down the stairs in time to observe the effects of our prank, we would have to run like hell to the room, put everything back, haul ass down the hallway to the stairs and run down to the second floor, all before the elevator made the trip from the fourth floor to the second floor.
I'll admit that I'm not particularly athletic, but I think that's a bit of a stretch for anyone.
So we all resigned ourselves to the fact that we wouldn't get to reap the benefits of our brilliance. But the point was the same. Someone would enjoy it. So we still would sort of win. Still somewhat satisfied, we stepped back and let the elevator close, taking our balloons on a journey through time and space (but mostly space).
Which is when we realized the second flaw with our brilliant plan. In our excitement, we had totally forgotten to hit the button for the second floor. So, instead of bombarding the lobby, our balloons would simply float purposelessly around the building for a bit before someone discovered them.
Eventually, they apparently moseyed up to the fifth floor, where a bunch of seriously pissed-off RAs had to pop them with pins.
The point of this story?
College is making me dumb.
Seriously. I mean, I don't go to a school known for its academic nature, but still. In high school, I wrote twenty page long papers about fairy tales or Oscar Wilde or stuff like that. I was an All-State flutist. I took tons of AP classes, could speak damn good German, and vaguely understood physics.
Now I can't even figure out how to properly operate an elevator. The other day I fumbled through a page long paper about The Simpsons. Most of my deep conversations center around zombies.
I would like to know what adulthood has done with my brain, why there is a smallish model of an A-Wing from Star Wars hanging from my ceiling, and why I dressed up like a superhero to go trick-or-treating this year.
I'm pretty sure I'm nine again. Must be something in the water.
The goal of this endeavor was to send the balloons down to the lobby of my dorm building, where they would spill out everywhere causing chaos and general hilarity. Think the elevator of blood from The Shining, only with balloons.
Like this, but REALLY HAPPY.
So we loaded the disturbing quantity of red balloons we had chilling in our suite into the shopping cart that was living in our bathroom at the time (where it had been hanging out for a month or so since we'd rescued it from the Common), and shoved the rest of the balloons into a weird hammock we fashioned out of a blanket. With a little difficulty and a lot of static electricity, we managed to get the balloons down the hallway to the elevators. We summoned an elevator, made sure that there was no one in it, and promptly dumped the balloons inside.
Now, this is where the plot fell apart a little bit. Half of the fun of the plan was imagining the looks on people's faces when almost a hundred balloons drifted out of the elevator. However, we still had to return the shopping cart and the blanket to the room, which meant that, in order to make it down the stairs in time to observe the effects of our prank, we would have to run like hell to the room, put everything back, haul ass down the hallway to the stairs and run down to the second floor, all before the elevator made the trip from the fourth floor to the second floor.
I'll admit that I'm not particularly athletic, but I think that's a bit of a stretch for anyone.
So we all resigned ourselves to the fact that we wouldn't get to reap the benefits of our brilliance. But the point was the same. Someone would enjoy it. So we still would sort of win. Still somewhat satisfied, we stepped back and let the elevator close, taking our balloons on a journey through time and space (but mostly space).
Which is when we realized the second flaw with our brilliant plan. In our excitement, we had totally forgotten to hit the button for the second floor. So, instead of bombarding the lobby, our balloons would simply float purposelessly around the building for a bit before someone discovered them.
Eventually, they apparently moseyed up to the fifth floor, where a bunch of seriously pissed-off RAs had to pop them with pins.
The point of this story?
College is making me dumb.
Seriously. I mean, I don't go to a school known for its academic nature, but still. In high school, I wrote twenty page long papers about fairy tales or Oscar Wilde or stuff like that. I was an All-State flutist. I took tons of AP classes, could speak damn good German, and vaguely understood physics.
Now I can't even figure out how to properly operate an elevator. The other day I fumbled through a page long paper about The Simpsons. Most of my deep conversations center around zombies.
I would like to know what adulthood has done with my brain, why there is a smallish model of an A-Wing from Star Wars hanging from my ceiling, and why I dressed up like a superhero to go trick-or-treating this year.
I'm pretty sure I'm nine again. Must be something in the water.
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