1. Planking. It was intriguing for about two YouTube videos and maybe one public sighting. Planking became a way for anyone, anywhere to try to gain Internet notoriety and ultimately feel as if they were a part of something bigger. But we pushed through, even in the face of the subsequent stages of “owling” and the late 2011 move of “Tebowing.”

2. The Absence of Don Draper. Mad Men left us in 2010 with nothing in its place to adequately satiate that era’s drama. Amid the year long departure of our beloved advertising team, shows like Pan Am and Playboy Club tried to fill in the gap, but we just couldn’t let happen. Instead we showed our support through Mad Men themed parties and will be able to tell our kids how we lived through the year that will forever be left blank on the show’s IMDB page.

3. Celebrity Divorce. Although this is something that will never go away, 2011 proved to us that no one is safe. We’ll always remember where we were when we found out about Zooey and Ben. Even @mrskutcher is back on the market. This year, we saw the Hollywood marriage curse live up to its full and shocking potential. Not surprisingly though was that one couple that, like Lord Voldemort, “shall not be named” because we’ve already lived through enough this year to have to hear about them again.

4. Another Social Network. This year, the annual Facebook layout change caused the longest social network hysteria to date (an estimated 83 hours of “I’M OVER THIS” comments). So Google+ cried hello to the world like a newborn baby everyone wanted to hold. Some quickly embraced the idea of “circles” and “hangouts.” However, this circle of social media life didn’t even make it to the annual return of the Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte. It’s still there… for now.

5. End of the World. Remember that time in May when we all really didn’t think the world was going to end? It was a time where we planned “end of the world as we know it” themed parties (which outdid last month’s Mad Men party, right?). Alas, the world stood its ground and we all lived to see another season of Jersey Shore. Harold Camping and friends have since retired from the world ending game but hey, here comes 2012!

6. Kale. This little green stuff sure tried to become a food staple for us this year. Maybe I’m not foodie enough but I thought this was a cousin to seaweed when I first heard of it. Kale in all its dark greenery was the salad to order this year. However, we maneuvered through these leafy waters together and were able to return to our faithful iceberg and spring mix friends in the end.

7. Pitbull. There was a point this year whenever you would turn on the radio that Pitbull’s voice was the only thing you would hear. We were tricked into listening to him many times as he targeted some of our favorite artists for feature spots. We did make it through his mayhem this year, but I shutter to think what’s ahead. So stand your guard and get those fingers ready to turn the radio station at a moment’s notice!

8. Fridays. Our favorite day of the work week was veiled with darkness over one song. One song to destroy them all. It’s even hard to forget about the song, because once you realize you forgot that video existed, it laughed in your face because you then ultimately remembered. Yes, the poor girl did face much ridicule, but no one puts Friday in a corner, ok?

9. Netflix Price Hikes. 2011 proved to further our financial crisis; especially after the announcement of Netflix doubling it’s prices. The company even broke into two separate entities where the consumer was forced to have two separate queues. The new queue, Quickster.com, though, was able to live up to its name and was swiftly eliminated due to public force. So congrats guys! We were able to come together and have one queue, just like Jesus wanted.

10. Coconut Water. This has always been around as a source of ultimate hydration but this year Rihanna had to endorse it and things got pretty serious. We all had to forge a relationship with this drink, and were subjected to many arguments over which brand is the best. However, Vitamin Water isn’t going down without a fight, so we may see the light at the end of this tunnel after all.

11. Pro Sports lockout. The NFL toyed with our emotions until the last second but the NBA didn’t budge when it came time for a season opener. Who cares that they are arguing over salary raises, give me pro sports or give me death! However, the NBA is on its lucrative way of returning just shy of 2012. They might be hoping that since it’s Christmas we can just forgive and forget missing half a season, but we didn’t survive things like the tainting of Fridays and J-Lo marrying a Fiat for nothing!

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Dear Sir/ Madame,

When I read that ChapStick was one of the six things you could never do without, I thought to myself, My gosh, I must write to this person immediately. Besides our mutual love of lip protection, we seem to have many other things in common, and I know that OkCupid is mostly for easy romps, but your profile does say that you’re also looking for friends, so here I am, writing to be your friend.

I find it really endearing when you say that you have a strong attachment to your stuffed animal. When I was little, one of my mother’s friends presented me with a white stuffed cat that I love to this very day. His name is Snowball. Does your stuffed animal have a name as well? Wouldn’t it be crazy if yours was a cat, too? Ha, it’d be double crazy if it had the same name as mine!

Like you, I also love spending some of my Friday nights at home with a nice cup of tea. I’m quite partial to Earl Grey with milk and sugar.

I read that you love bad reality TV. Me too! I was really into the Jersey Shore’s first season and now I’m watching Lifetime’s Russian Dolls. If you haven’t seen it yet, you really should. It mostly concerns itself with the uncertainty that mushrooms into effect when the cultivation of Soviet traditions such as vodka consumption are mixed into American ideals, like bologna on white bread. I’m a Russian Jew. You seem to have a little Eastern European in you, but that might just be the lighting in your photos.

Speaking of your photos, I wanted to let you know that I think that they’re really nice, like your profile pic in that black satin mask. Very mysterious and alluring. And the one with you rowing a boat in that sweet black dress while your face is slightly turned to the side and the evidence of a smirk’s beginning can be gently traced along the curve of your lips. Simply breathtaking. Looks like that was in Central Park, yes? Oh, I also like that one of you with your guy friend. Funny, my boyfriend’s bandmate looks just like him! I like how you two are ironically comparing muscles.

How is being a recently graduated illustrator working out for you? I like to write. Maybe we can collaborate sometime? I think it’s really great that you’re good at “drawing/ painting, laughing and wine-ing.” My friend created this drink he likes to call “Hood Rich,” just a splash of Dr. Pepper into a glass of red wine. You should try it! Also, I’ve been meaning to tell you, you really shouldn’t be so modest. You wrote that you “guess” your eyes are the first thing people notice about you. I think your eyes are beautiful and they’re definitely the first thing people notice about you.

Not to sound like a creep or anything, but I think of you during the cold breaks of an autumn night, when my slumber is insolvent, when my eyes are droopy yet kicking because of the sirens crying out in my apartment building’s parking lot. I think of you when I begin to stare too strongly at my MacBook Pro’s blinking sleep light, and when I read smart quotes aimed at soft women, like Homer’s “You will never be lovelier than you are now.”

I hope you’re doing well. I look forward to hearing back from you.

Best wishes,
Angela

P.S. You really remind me of someone.

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Wow. I was a bit nervous for him at first, but “The Situation” really stepped up the alpha to muscle man Ronnie, especially with the whole complete loss of control freak out thing. Notice that the dude actually half-drools half projectile-froths at one point.

I wonder how they feel, really. It must be out in the open between cast and crew: they’re circus acts. Much like The Real Housewives, the only reason the show exists is for us to gawk and feel reassured about our own lives, because, hey, we know we’re definitely not as idiotic as them.

Or is it left unsaid? Perhaps the knowledge is merely an undercurrent none of them are able to articulate – only feel, at times, as a nagging, vague sense of discomfort that something’s not right. This is doubtful, though.

Maybe the most reasonable guess is that they heavily fortify their own idiocy with repeated self and group affirmation. The millions of dollars MTV and other sponsors are giving them most likely provide much needed justification for being extreme douchebags and douchebaguettes as well.

Whatever’s the case, they’re still getting paid, and they’re still on air, so enjoy the freak show.

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You never say things like “down the shore” or actually call it the Jersey shore unless you’re in a moment of desperation and the list of clues you use to indicate your origin has struck out. You dig up what is probably your first memory and it’s an image of you and your dad clinging to burlap sacks throwing yourselves down a bumpy plastic slide with a thunderstorm brewing overhead and the ocean churning angrily under the Point Pleasant boardwalk.

Your dad tells you about things you don’t really remember but will cite later in life when describing the real Jersey coastline to inlanders: the heydays of Asbury Park before its only claim to glory was dancing with the ghosts of young Springsteen, back when the merry go round had real brass rings you were supposed to grab even though you were too scared to ride anything more than the stationary horse, before the fire leveled the amusement pier and snuffed out the whole economy, before the Stone Pony closed then reopened, then closed again. Be saddled with the responsibility of telling people later in life that people around there are not really “like that” because the characters they’ve seen on MTV don’t actually live there, that people around there are actually mostly like your dad, a hard-working guy who spent his days managing a men’s clothing store, spent his nights watching HBO and took his kids to the beach on the weekends, always leaving the house early enough to beat the tourists, who thought the boardwalk spectacle was about as interesting as the Burger King at the mall.

Learn to body surf with your dad and get hooked on the rush that would force you to pick up a surfboard by high school. Be the only Boy Scout in your whole troop to volunteer to plant dune grass on weekends to prevent erosion. Years later at midnight, rip up the dune grass and some of the adjacent fence for good measure to build a bonfire with friends on the beach because you’ve run out of stuff to do in this town and need somewhere to talk about how you can’t wait to leave.

You watch MTV make its slow, nefarious invasion that starts innocuously enough with a few interstitial video show intros shot at Water Works or on the boardwalk in the early ‘90s. You read the news your junior year that MTV’s vaunted beach house that symbolized the carefree, school-free days of youth would be setting up in Seaside that year instead of more exotic locations. You walk by the house but never catch any celebrities better than Jim Breuer, Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, and Jesse Camp. You finger bang a girl on your bed one day and it’s so boring she tells you about being forced to totally request an ‘N Sync song so she could get on TV. You get the sudden feeling that your time being influenced by MTV has passed.

You never really realize you live in a resort town until you wake up one day sometime around Memorial Day and your plans to skip school and go to the beach are ruined by a clusterfuck of New York and Pennsylvania plates, cars stuffed to the windows with cheap Walmart body boards, shiny club shirts and spiky hair gel, each acting like it’s trying to fast-forward through the boring commercials of your every day life.

You decide to grow you hair out so no one confuses you for the spiked hair crowd. Discover that, gradually, every Jersey-born desire is being burned out of you by constant exposure to this crowd and suddenly you no longer yearn to own a muscle car, your love of modern rock radio is fading fast and, most of all, your defense of New Jersey as the Best Beaches in the World can’t possible still be valid, especially since the cost of a daily beach badge just went up.

Take out your rage with local elitism, which you have yet to be convinced is not justified. Liberally use a derogatory term to describe the worst of the visitors but never betray your local trust by sharing the term with them. When you want peace, drive down to the far south beach well beyond the boardwalk where you have to forge your way through thick, muggy foliage infested with flies just to get to the beach but once you do it’s worth it because you see no one but anglers and surfers. Sit on your board and don’t make a noise as a pod of dolphins passes not five feet in front of you, popping above a wave with a frightening fin and then sinking back into the water with a beautiful ease.

Get a job at a chain of boardwalk stands through a guy who sold your dad weed a few times. Spend the summers being accused of ripping off tourists and drunk guidos, come up with an endless stream of smart-ass reasons why you can’t “just give me one” of your prizes, which depending on where you’re stationed could mean CDs, sports plaques, Phantom Menace merchandise or half-cartons of cigarettes. Keep your legs in shape and your wits smart because a few times you’ll have to chase down a would-be thief who tried to jump over your stand and grab the latest Eminem album. Break up fights; keep an eye out for your female coworkers when the bar across the boardwalk lets out at 3 AM; time your break just right on Wednesdays to climb the roof and watch the weekly fireworks with the cute girls from the surf shop, all of you barefoot.

Watch the tide of Seaside obsession continue on MTV and spread like a strange fungus to the rest of the nation as the beach house returns again a few summers later. Then there’s a True Life episode called “I Have a Summer Share,” an hour-long embodiment of everything you’ve fought against for 18 years of being a boardwalk kid; the rampant, testosterone-fueled rage that makes people from far away act like they own the place, demand cheeseballs out of turn and cause all those fights you tried to break up. Then another episode shows the female version of the same thing. You watch MTV debut a show called Made that films at your cross-town rival high school over and over and over again.

You spend your last summer as a boardie at Seaside Heights working straight through Labor Day and watch the crowds die from overwhelming, intense intruders to a trickle of nonplussed locals, holding hands and passing shuttered gates. Your boss takes you out to the Beachcomber after you pull your gate down and gets you a drunk for the first time in your life at 19. You spend your first night drunk talking up a similarly disenchanted girl from Lucky Leo’s who has dark brown hair that shimmers off the neon lit Budweiser sign and promises she’ll escape Jersey and run away to California with you one day (she won’t).

You get up early to watch the sun rise on the beach. Eight days later you prepare to escape town to move down South and figure things out but it’s 9/11 and your mom makes you wait another day in the drag of post-summer New Jersey, and your anxiousness to leave it all behind momentarily overwhelms the tragedy. Drive south on the turnpike the next day and see kids in South Jersey standing on a highway overpass waving American flags and “United We Stand” signs. Choke up and vow to never live in New Jersey again.

You hear about a show called Jersey Shore coming soon. It makes you cringe and you know you won’t watch it, not that you have a blanket hatred of reality TV, but you’re sure that the people on it are not anything special, just the latest iteration of the same nonsense that clogged roads and sloshed too many Bud Lights at the Bamboo Club since you were riding the kiddie slide, thinking it would be about as interesting as if MTV made a show about people that walk four abreast on the sidewalk in New York City.

Years later, you’ll find yourself standing in a Party City in Brooklyn, stunned to see the same boardwalk on the packaging of a pre-made Halloween costume that everyone in America can buy to dress up like an asshole visiting South Jersey.

You head back to New Jersey for the longest stretch since that summer for the last days as your dad and cancer are negotiating the terms of his surrender. You step away from the hospital bed for a few hours to clear your head and you stand alone on the boardwalk when your mom calls saying it’s all over. In the distance on the pier, lights still twinkle as the freefall slams to the ground, rushing air up through the boardwalk, into the planks of your memory, the burlap sack you and dad rode suddenly ruffled by a new blast of air. Your boardwalk bosses are some of the only people you recognize at the funeral service.

Two years later, Jersey Shore premieres, with promos promising to treat your delicate last memories of Seaside Heights as kindly as a frat boy during pledge week. You don’t watch it.

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When Abercrombie & Fitch issued a press release offering money to The Situation and the rest of the cast of the Jersey Shore to stop wearing its clothing, they probably never imagined the joke would be on them.

After yesterday’s brouhaha, stock shares in the company fell nearly 9% and prompted a backlash from stars of the reality show. The Situation tweeted: ”Looks like Abercrombie got themself into a Situation!” (Where does he come up with these zingers?) and Pauly D noted the company’s hypocrisy when he tweeted, “Hmmm if They Don’t Want Us To Wear Those Clothes Why Make GTL Shirts” Very Good Point, Pauly D! Why, oh why, would they do such a thing? Oh, for publicity.

MTV has released a statement calling it “a clever PR stunt” and Abercrombie & Fitch’s CEO Mike Jeffries has admitted, “We’re having a lot of fun with it.” Well, you know what they say! There’s no such thing as bad publicity….unless that publicity is causing your shares to plummet. In which case, maybe it is very bad publicity. Maybe the publicity is actually no good at all! Maybe the publicity will cause The Situation to get richer and Abercrombie & Fitch to get poorer and then we all lose, don’t you see?! Ashes to ashes, we all fall down.

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Typically when a celebrity wears a designer’s clothing it’s seen as being mutually beneficial. It’s an exchange that’s as old as time— designers lend their clothing to an influential name so that their frocks can be photographed by the press, seen by millions of people, and hopefully bought up by their fans. It’s the best promotion someone can get!

In the case of Michael “The Situation” Sorrentino and clothing label Abercrombie & Fitch, however, the opposite is true. Releasing a hilarious press release last week, a spokesperson for A & F urged the Jersey Shore star to actually stop donning its clothing on episodes of the reality show, explaining that it causes “distress” to fans of the brand. They said:

We are deeply concerned that Mr. Sorrentino’s association with our brand could cause significant damage to our image. We understand that the show is for entertainment purposes, but believe this association is contrary to the aspirational nature of our brand, and may be distressing to many of our fans. We have therefore offered a substantial payment to Michael ‘The Situation’ Sorrentino and the producers of MTV’s The Jersey Shore to have the character wear an alternate brand. We have also extended this offer to other members of the cast, and are urgently waiting a response.”

Abercrombie & Fitch
Brand Senses Department

You know things are bad when clothes that are sold at a mall don’t want to be associated with you. They’re like, “Naw, dawg, Can you not? Try Anchor Blue.” Question to A & F though: If you don’t want someone like The Situation to wear your clothes, who do you want? Michelle Obama? Actually, you know what? I don’t care. As long as you keep on producing those homoerotic Quarterly’s, we’re good.

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I went to an all-girls’ Catholic school in Westchester County for four years, sixth through ninth grades. You may not know this, but there’s a whole network of boys’ and girls’ Catholic schools in Westchester, and they are Guido Ground Zero. If you’ve ever seen an episode of Jersey Shore, you’re pretty close to the kinds of kids we were dealing with. Everyone in my school was either super-Irish or super-Italian (you displayed your allegiance by pasting or drawing a flag on your backpack), and the latter far outweighed the former. Everyone wore those huge platform Sketchers, carried the bleeping Nextels and got a white BMW from their parents senior year. The dads all worked in waste management or were mysteriously missing in action (aka, in jail).

I loved it.

Here are the bad and the good things about going to a Catholic, single sex school in those delicate years before and during puberty:

Cons

1. Uniforms

There were totally mysterious, unspoken rules about how best to wear your regulation plaid skirt, opaque tights, polo shirt and sweater that were set by the popular girls that everyone else tried their best to follow.  I had no idea how they knew, but some girls showed up on the first day of sixth grade looking perfect in a way that took me years to identify: skirts just covering the ass, black tights, platform shoes, crisp white collared shirt, crew-necked cotton sweater (not too baggy!!), fake nails, long straight hair. “Everyone” wore boys’ boxer shorts under their uniform skirts, and the really cool girls wore their skirts so short the boxers peeked out underneath. Why? I couldn’t tell you. No one ever went commando under their skirts, and what’s really so offensive about seeing another girls’ panties by accident? Anyway, in sixth grade, I didn’t know about this custom. I was over at a friend’s house one day when I climbed a tree in her backyard and, thinking I was cool, swung down, exposing my boxer-less, panty-clad butt. My friend burst out laughing and told everyone the next day, so after that I was firmly in the hopeless nerd column of our class, even though I diligently made my mom buy me a few pairs of boys’ boxers and wore them every day after that.

2. Boys

They were a non-factor, except for when they were. They weren’t around at all except for at the weekly dances, which from sixth grade onward were hyper-sexualized. So the only time we learned how to interact with them is when we wanted them to think we were hot enough to grind into their little boners. As you can imagine, this caused problems later on when boys were around all the time. What, we’re supposed to actually be friends with them? Why would you talk to guys except to get them to want you? What’s the point of even interacting with them at all if not to just hook up?  When you only see guys in environments where the unspoken imperative is hook up, you’re going to do things faster and more often.

3. Catholicism

Mass many, many times a year, held in the gym and presided over by a condescending monsignor with a comically heavy Bronx accent. Mandatory religion classes taught by crusty old nuns. The embarrassment of being the Protestant girl in the row and murmuring the rest of the Lord’s Prayer under your breath at Mass (wtf, Catholics? Why do you cut off the last sentence?) or, worse, one of the few Jews, Muslims or Hindus and not knowing what to say at all. Dealing with the supreme irony of being educated by people with a historically low opinion of women’s intelligence and ability to run their own lives.

Pros

1. Uniforms

We had to wear the same thing every day, the only variation being which color polo shirt and sweater you paired, so getting ready in the morning took thirty seconds tops. I would keep my uniform at the foot of my bed, get entirely dressed under the covers, and go back to sleep until the last possible second. And because the Catholic schoolgirl’s uniform is one of the more universally flattering outfits (it forces you to cover up your problem areas and tights can obscure even the doughiest thigh), unspoken rules about coolness aside, it doesn’t much matter if you were “cool” and wore the crew neck cotton sweater or a “dork” who wore the V-neck wool sweater. Everyone looked more or less the same, and everyone looked more or less good, day in, day out, on your period or not.

2. Boys

Because we only saw them at dances, we only saw them when we felt we looked our best. So during your awkward phase, you never had to worry about that guy who looked like Nick Carter seeing you with frizzy hair or a huge zit on your nose, unless you were bad at straightening your hair and applying makeup before dances (and even if you were [I was], it was always dark in the school gym). When we were growing up and filling out, we never had to worry about anyone snapping our bra snaps. I didn’t even know that was a thing until I went off to co-ed school sophomore year, and then I was horrified. You could speak up in class and not worry about turning guys off by seeming smart—girls were always the smartest ones in the room in math class, even if it was just by default. You could do tragic things to your appearance in the name of experimentation, knowing you’d never have to worry about your crush seeing you growing out the bangs you impulsively decided to cut yourself or when your hair was two different colors from permanent hair dye. Plus: less weird competition over guys. Everyone lived in different places and people commuted to school from all over the county and even from Connecticut (one girl’s drive to school was two hours), so the chances of having guy friends in common outside of school were slim to none.

3. Catholicism

If you got hungry during one of those interminable Masses, you could always go up to get some of Christ’s Body just as a snack to tide you over, and because All Souls’ Day is a holy day of obligation, we always got the day after Halloween off school—score. And besides, what’s the fun in rebelling if there’s nothing to rebel against?

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Dreams

Some naïve Facebookers might take this section literally. You’ll see profiles that read: End world hunger or Start my own film production company. Awesome. Pat on the back. That’s great, but really, I don’t care. What I’m looking for here are collaborative dreams, dreams that actually might get accomplished because someone else will read your profile and want to partner up with you. Dreams that make social networking worthwhile. For instance, if this were my profile, my dream would be to have someone write a hip-hop, baby-making R&B song about me, along the lines of something Baby Bash, Chingy, or Maxwell would write if they knew me. Obviously this is not something I can achieve on my own, so advertising it on Facebook would definitely help.

Gifts

Great idea, right? No more shitty (or non-existent) presents on your birthday! Now all of your friends, parents, and grandparents on Facebook can check in with your profile and see what you actually want for your birthday this year. Facebook has already achieved the impossible by turning normally self-centered, thoughtless, and forgetful young adults into regular (and timely) birthday wishers, so why not add the gifts section to it as well? Yes, digital birthday wishes are great, but tangible presents are way better.

Things I Hate

I know, I know—this category seems a bit negative. But what better way to get to know a person than through what they don’t like? There’s a lot of Facebook “fakers” out there—people who list The Great Gatsby or Life of Pi as their favorite book because it makes them seem smart (even though they only read it because Mrs. Polep, their sophomore year English teacher put it on the required reading list), or those who put Arrested Development as their favorite TV show because apparently it’s hip to be a fan of shows that were prematurely dropped by their network.

Listing what one hates gives a person individuality and freedom. Granted, many people will probably add Justin Beiber, Lady Gaga, and Jersey Shore to this category, but even that can be a good thing. I’d far rather be “friends” with someone who publicly asserts their vehement disapproval of prepubescent pop icons and gender-ambiguous, routinely pantless divas than I would with someone who keeps mum on the topic as a whole. In other words, the “like” and “favorite” categories on Facebook are great in that they help you get to know a person, but that doesn’t mean that said person has listed all of the things that they like or favor. Thus, you may think you have a lot in common with one person based on what their profile says, but who knows? They could secretly be die-hard Dancing With The Stars or Maroon 5 fans that just didn’t feel like listing those interests on their profile page.

Alternatively, if the “hate” category were added to Facebook, chances are you’d have a better picture of the person. Maybe said-person secretly loves Dancing With The Stars or dreamy lead singer Adam, but they also hate (as per their profile page) American Idol, the entire Twilight series, and Eat, Pray, Love, and that’s something I can definitely deal with.

When I’m Home Alone I Like To…

This can get raunchy pretty quickly, but basically it’s just an attempt to deviate from the quotidian, boring categories that are listed on every social networking website. Many Facebookers won’t have to work hard to make this one interesting, but this category serves a dual purpose other than giving your friends a behind the scenes look into your life. Namely by helping the literal (sub “little”) people out: those people who think we actually care what people inspire them or that their favorite quote is a verse from the Bible or an over-used bon mot from Mark Twain.

When I’m home alone I like to… Come on, be daring. Say something funny and original. For once.

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Dirty and sad. That’s all there is to say about last night.

Dirty sad sex.

The kind of sex where the next morning you go home and cry in the shower. You scrub with a bar of soap and try to wash off that dirty feeling like they do in Lifetime movies after they get raped. Except you don’t have a bar of soap, just a loofah and an empty bottle of Suave body soap, so you use your roommate’s ex-roommate’s shampoo. And you sit and you cry till the shower water crashing over your head becomes unbearable because you can’t lay your head against your rug-burned knees without it spraying in your face and interrupting the steady rhythm of cinema-worthy sobs you worked so hard to get going.

So you get out.

You get out, but don’t get dressed because pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that was last night are reappearing like the loathsome little units of cardboard that would fall off the bottom of your grandfather’s glass of Passport scotch. The units you needed while attempting to put together a massive photo of a BNSF train engine that had to be finished before you could ride your bike, with your sister, to the general store to waste money on things like lavender stationary and sunflower seeds that tasted like pickles. These pieces appear just when you thought you had moved on, just when you thought that you’d remembered the worst, just when you’d started to feel free. One piece appears and wedges it way into the corner of the puzzle, like a forgotten tampon, smashed and pressed into the furthest recess of your fleshy cavity.

Time to wake up and smell the scotch, you remember an assortment of grown-ups saying. It gets worse from this point, as you remember the way his dick was so small it felt like a finger, the rank stench of his hot breath, the way he held his mouth open and little bit of his tainted saliva dripped onto your forehead. You figure that it was probably because he was missing some teeth. He has meth mouth, you’ve heard it said. You shudder and lay down on your bed, no, on your couch, in just your towel, and turn on the television. You know this will make your hair look like hell, but that doesn’t matter right now. You don’t plan on going anywhere else ever again.

For about 4 to 5 hours you watch back-to-back episodes of Jersey Shore or The Real World. You don’t sleep off the hangover, but live through it. The shows subdue you. You are comforted by the madness of the pseudo-reality. There are a couple things which make you sick — a commercial for Long John Silvers, as it brings back an insult from High School you’ve never gotten over. The cell phone you thought you lost begins to vibrate across the room. Whoever it is, they probably know what you did last night. You find the phone and turn it off, at least the vibration anyways, without looking to see who it is. This is how you know you’ve really hit a low point.

Everyone on the shows is having sex, or is upset about sex in some way or another, and you come to notice that the issues always run so much deeper. Daddy, race, sexual identity, socio-economic. You realize this is how it is for you too, in a nebulous sort of way. You start to feel a little better as you cry, convinced that you have been through so much, in such a little space of time. Your life has been so unsteady, and you’ve been done wrong so many times; it’s no wonder last night happened. You are really fucked up and alone. This is actually very comforting, and makes it really easy to identify with the characters on the flashing screen. The commonality of individual suffering.

You say a small prayer, just a little one. It’s more of an abstract apology and a very tentative request for help. Your mind starts to race a bit, and some pretty inappropriate thoughts intrude on the prayer, not to mention the dialogue from the show dribbling out the speakers. Before you know it you’ve abandoned your prayer without even saying Amen. You close your eyes briefly and say Amen.

At this point you feel much better. Not that you’ll tell anyone about it or anything, but you feel good about yourself because you are keeping your relationship with God going. You watch one more episode of Jersey Shore or The Real World. And during the commercials you think about how you are really a very spiritual person. This is superior to being religious in a lot of ways. You figure that there isn’t a single building, a single teaching, or prophet, or book that can hold everything you believe in. You are universal. You care about the earth.

The whole reason you even bought Sara Jessica Parker’s perfume was because you read in People magazine that it had a slight scent of patchouli in it and you liked that it would have something earthy about it. You realize you have been worrying about last night too much. You are easy-going, fun, and friendly. You don’t care what other people think about you. You don’t buy into that snobby stuff. So what if you slum it sometimes? So what if you had some sad dirty sex? You also didn’t shave your legs for one entire summer, and you smoke camel wide lights because you like things rougher than most. You have been too hard on yourself. Free love. That’s right. You just like to party. You start to wonder who that was that called you.

Your gay roommate comes out of the back room and says he’s ordering pizza, do you want some? You do. You are starved. You had planned on eating healthier. You have switched to drinking that Budweiser beer that has ginseng in it. You were thinking of quitting smoking, and you always make sure to dance when you go out to burn calories. But one piece won’t hurt. You go to your room to get dressed because your roommate says seeing girls half-dressed ruins his appetite. He doesn’t mind seeing boobs, but even thinking about pussy makes him dry heave.

You stand on top of clothes in front of your closet. There isn’t much hanging in there, as most of it is on the floor. You figure you should clean this place up in case there is after hours at your place sometime soon. You realize you haven’t worn your denim dress yet this summer. The one that fits like a glove. The one that looks like what Jessica Simpson was wearing in US Magazine five summers ago.
It probably wouldn’t be that good of an idea to stay home tonight. If you did, what would happen anyways? You would just sit around and worry about last night and the sad dirty sex. Wouldn’t it make more sense to go out there and look really hot and own it? It’s not like you have to go to the same place. It is early though, only around 4 o’clock. None of your friends will want to go out until later. You wouldn’t want to put on the dress too soon. Plus it is so tight that sitting down and eating in it just wouldn’t be practical, so you think that you might just throw something on.

Thing is— who knows who might show up? Your roommate, he has people over— a lot. Since you live right across from the restaurant where he works people come over after their shifts, before their shifts, during their shifts, and you definitely have to think about this. You don’t really want to work out a whole outfit to wear just to go back to your roommate’s room, and then change into the dress after because what about the make-up? Will it match both outfits?

You don’t want to change.

You put on the denim dress, because you can just have a little slice of pizza. Besides, someone might want to go have an early drink at the tavern downstairs, or maybe you’ll just go down there yourself. If anyone asks, you’ll just pull your face back showing a smile as shiny as the sparkles in the glistening glass of your gin and tonic double and say you’re meeting someone later. It won’t be a lie because you are always meeting someone later. You pour half a bottle of Malibu rum into a jumbo-sized plastic cup that was stolen from Pizza Hut and add a splash of pineapple juice. This you take into the bathroom and sip from it while you do your hair, which actually doesn’t look that bad considering that you didn’t blow dry after washing. There aren’t really any funny bends in it. It’s flat to be sure, but there are worse things than flat hair. There are worse things to deal with than gray circles under your eyes.

You remind yourself things are going to be okay. You like to party. There are worse things than having burning lesions all up your nose, your second bout of syphilis this year, court on Monday morning, an over-drafted bank account, and a chicken bone clogging the drain in your bathroom sink. Think of the year you had to get an abortion on your birthday. That was so much worse than anything you’ve got going on now.
Dirty and sad. That was last night. You chug rum till your stomach turns, set down the cup, and resentfully brush your teeth. You slip a tube of lemony lip gloss into a tiny pocket on the breast of your dress, and snap it shut. No point in applying any till you are done drinking.

Till you are done.

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1. The Idiot Muscle Jock

I started to hook up with boys right around the same time male anorexia became super popular. So instead of getting to mack on some Mario Lopez dreamboat, I was resigned to grabbing some guy’s ass that felt like it was made out of thin air. Excuse me, but this is not what I signed up for when I agreed to be a homosexual. I wanted men, not some waify guy who had the body of a 12-year-old girl. If a big stupid Jersey Shore clone wanted to get physical with me, I would be like “Yes please. And pull my hair and beat me up a little bit too!” At some point, I think everyone should be with a person who has a different body type because it’s like getting an all-access pass to a foreign land. And if you ever start missing a body that looks like yours, you can just go have sex with yourself. There. Problem solved.

2. The Guy Who Hooks Up With Everyone

Hooking up with a ho might seem like a gross idea at first but it’s actually highly recommended. The reason is simple: they know what they’re doing because they’ve perfected their craft through years of practice. It’s kind of a cruel joke actually. The guy who’s going to take cues from Say Anything and write you letters and make you mix tapes is probably going to attack your mouth, kill it, and leave it for dead while the one who treats you like a piece of garbage will give you the best sex of your life. Just call this Life is unfair: Part 2455888.

3. The Ugly Guy

Hot people are overrated. Even they will admit it and say, “Yeah. I’m not that great but my face is awesome. Wanna look at it a little bit more?” Ugly guys, however, know what they’re working with. They know they have a face and/or body only a mother could love so they make the best of it by being great sexual partners. I know this might sound like some crap fed to you by Sex and the City, but it’s kind of true. Ugly guys know it’s their job to be amazing in bed. If they can actually make it that far with someone, they know they have to pull out all the stops and give you the Nirvana Nevermind of sex. So the next time an ugly guy is trying to smooch with you, give him a chance. He just might blow the Patrick Bateman rich banker out of the water.

4. The Guy You Hate

Getting with someone you can’t stand can actually be a great idea. They’re like a little Chihuahua who won’t stop barking in your ear. Everything they say is so annoying and the only way to get them to shut up is to just kiss them. Hard and rough. Almost violent. Bite their lip, push them down, and go to town. In between kisses, you can be like, “I. Hate you. So. Much. Kiss me. Screw you. Screw me!” Hate sex can sometimes be better than loving sex, which is disturbing but real.

5. Your Cousin

Just kidding! Can you believe that people used to do that though? Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt were fifth cousins once removed and even that seems like it was pushing it. Like collecting pogs and beanie babies, I’m glad that smooshing your cousin has become socially unacceptable.

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