Confession: Party Times

I drank too much on Saturday. (This is going to be one of those stories.) It was like I was in my senior year of college, again, on a Tuesday.

K-bag on her average Tuesday

We had a beach party. It was cold out, and there was Dry Fly Gin. (Way to go, Spokane!) And Maria was pouring shots, and those are my excuses. We eventually got too cold and carted all the stuff the three blocks back to the apartment. Mikey was carrying our card table and allegedly said, "I'm glad I'm always drunk when I do this kind of thing. Otherwise, people might judge me, like: what's that guy doing carrying a table!"

I remember telling Julie about my new favorite thing with ending sentences in "so". It allows the listener to fill in their choice of suggestion or sass or doubt. E.g. We were, like, going out for hamburgers, so. I was telling people all sorts of things. I told John that I was, in my estimation, 30% gay. 15% for Julie (understandable, if paltry), 10% for somebody we couldn't later recall, and 5% for the rest of the women on Earth. So ladies, I am 5% gay for YOU. (Or I could be 10% gay for you if you happen to be the woman we can't remember. It's possible.)

I'm kind of a hunk, so...

Then my birthday present from Mitch arrived in the mail - it was an e-cigarette just like I wanted! They come in no-nicotine, so don't worry. Except that Mitch accidentally got the high nicotine ones, so. (Mom, don't tell Dad.) I was getting everybody to try it with me.

We turned out the lights and were dancing in the living room. Jess (bus-accident Jess) was leading us in some salsa. (I was really good at it, so.) Then we started other dancing. Apparently at one point I jumped on Mitch's back - he might have prompted it, I'm not sure - and then he flipped me head-first over his back and onto the ground. It was later described as a body slam.

That's not the worst of it. That's not what made me feel really ashamed the next day as I nursed the bruise on my left hip bone. I called Emily Palmer to give my confession and get some sympathy. I told her, in a voice that had started sounding like an 80-year-old smoker's, that what made me look really bad was the fact that when I hit the ground, party-goers standing around me, looking down, I didn't feel pain at all.

She said that that was nothing. One time, the day after she got drunk, she found her sock drawer was soaking wet. The first thing she did was to smell it to make sure it wasn't pee. It wasn't. It wasn't pee.

I still felt a bit out of control. (Mom, really, don't tell Dad.) But that did make me feel better. She's a good friend.

We're All From Fucking Earth

There’s an ongoing thread of conversation in various media about the differences between men and women. Men think this way; women think that way. Men are from Mars; women are from Venus. 10 Things Your Boyfriend Wished You Knew About Sex. Etc.

I bring it up, now, because I’ve bumped into that conversation a couple times, lately:

Here, in this cracked article.

Louis C.K.’s standup: Oh My God

This episode of the Nerdist Writer’s Panel.

An article in the Atlantic that is satirized here.

A caveat I often see in these arguments is the “I’ve never been that other gender” statement. In the cracked article, David Wong says, “I don't know what it's like to be a woman. I haven't been one in a long time. So as a result, it's not easy for me to describe what it's like to be a man, because I don't know what you're using for context.”

The thing that’s most often left out of this conversation is something that I think is major part of the human experience. I have never been and never will be any other person. I will never be outside my skin. I will never know what it is like to think and live as another person. Wong says he doesn’t know what women are using for contex? David Wong doesn’t know what any other man uses for context.

The fallacy that I see most often in the men v. women conversation is not that men and women are different – they might inherently be. The fallacy is that whoever’s talking knows what it’s like to be anybody else, much less half the world’s population.

Because I never get to be outside of my own head is my single greatest motivation to be moral, and it’s the number one reason I seek out complex communication and expression like art. It’s part of the reason that other people are so valuable to me. And the fact that the men v. women conversation gets that wrong makes it almost always a waste of my time.

Why I'm Not a Mom

I got my hair cut today, and while trying to look like Carey Mulligan from Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby, I'm afraid I got more of a mom haircut. In case anyone's worried like me, I made a list in order to soothe you. Here's how I know I'm not a mom:

• I'm 25 
• I allow the words "butt", "butthole", and "Harry Potter"
• I do not make spaghetti
• I like pointy things
• I have job
• Was never pregnant for, like, year
• Did not live in shoe
• Am not nice
• Am not named "Theresa"
• Have not confused uterus with belly
• Mom and Dad are not grand
• YAHTZEE