When I turned twenty-five, I told myself I would do three things. First, I would learn how to sew a button on a coat because to sew is to be a real woman. Second, I would start watching more Seinfeld reruns in a feeble attempt to “connect” with the pop culture cognoscenti as well as a slightly older crowd, thereby broadening my dating pool. And finally, I would go to Las Vegas “with my girls.” I thought this was a respectable set of goals, and when I failed to get the ball rolling for the first two, I had no choice, really, but to follow through with the third.

It was only after we had already booked the trip when I started to get a vague feeling that, contrary to my personal worldview, maybe not everyone considers Las Vegas the Promised Land. Despite its potpourri of precious assets — Celine Dion, a fake Statue of Liberty, and a store dedicated to the zombie apocalypse, for example — many people reacted to my good news (“I’m going to Vegasssssssss!!!”) with sentiments including but not limited to apathy, concern, disdain, confusion, and a stoic matter-of-factness that made me uneasy: “You’re going to get a bloody nose.” (For the record, this statement was in reference to my hypersensitive blood vessels’ incompatibility with the dry desert air, not the inevitability of a fist fight. But still, it worried me.) And then an article posted on a fairly popular website served as the proverbial icing on the cake. “Things I never want to do before I die,” wrote the author. “1. Go to Vegas ‘with my girls.’”

I became a little self-conscious. Did the concept of female twenty-somethings hitting “the Strip” have implications? Did Las Vegas appeal to a certain genre of women? And did some people presume that such women traveled there for the sole purpose of engaging in the basest cultural pastimes this nation has to offer?  What, exactly, was the author getting at?

Now that I’m thinking about it, she probably just meant that she had minimal interest in watching hundreds of hard-earned dollars flee her bank account and be allocated to $13 beverages, Kardashian merchandise, and a hotel room with mechanical curtains and a mini-bar carrying the disclaimer, You will be charged for anything you move, touch, or look at.  Enjoy your stay.

I get it. Nevertheless, my rapidly approaching Vegas vacation “with my girls” took on a new importance. Now, I was getting on the plane with a mission. Well, actually, three missions, but I can only tell you one of them without shame: I would find the physical, mental, emotional, and intellectual value of Las Vegas, the value that lies quietly beneath the sparkle and the stilettos, the slots and the shots. And in discovering the city’s redemptive qualities, I too would be redeemed.

Well, mission accomplished. The four days we spent in Las Vegas provided us with practical life lessons and filled us with the wisdom of a much older, worldlier sort of woman, perhaps the kind that wears visors and chain-smokes at the craps table at 11 in the morning. So, with that said, I am very pleased to present to you my (and my girls’) Vegas vacation-education. (To maximize this learning experience, I suggest listening to Avicii’s “Levels” as you read.)

1. In Las Vegas, there is always a second wind. Even though your eyelids need kickstands. Even though you are functioning, just barely, on exactly three hours of sleep, one of which was interrupted by snores that you half-consciously kept trying to determine the source of. Even though you ate all the contents of the complimentary bread basket. Even though you are holding on to the velvet ropes outside the (da) club in a desperate effort to stop your calf muscles from shaking. Even though you are silently panicking that you will most definitely Debbie Downer all over everyone and ruin the night. Even though college was many moons ago and you are not as good at this as you used to be, if you ever were at all. Ssh. Stop. Don’t worry. The glory days are here again — you will catch a second wind. (If you’re lucky, you will also catch a third wind. But always go to bed before the fourth wind, because that’s usually when things get weird.)  At its core, Las Vegas is really just an elaborate exercise in physical and mental stamina, and when you finally, triumphantly push through the metaphorical wall that separates your normal tired-by-10 PM self from the self that can do the Party Rock shuffle in heels for three hours, you will be filled with pride and the comforting knowledge that, yes, you and your girls still got it.

2. The most satisfying meals are those consumed between 3 and 5 AM. If you recently began to follow a structured, well-balanced dietary regimen in an attempt to act like a responsible grown-up, plan to have this routine disrupted while you are in Las Vegas. Since nothing kills an appetite like two-hour waits at restaurants and mile-long buffet lines, your intake during the day may be reduced to mainly water, coffee, and Emergen-C. You may start feeling like you are preparing for Survivor or, alternatively, the end of the world. But when the clock strikes 3, or 4, or 5 AM, get ready to have your mind blown. As you dig into a stack of cornflake-crusted French toast or team-huddle around your $30 Pad Thai leftovers like a flock of seagulls (‘80s reference intended), you will think to yourselves that, yes, your actions are arguably unhealthy, yet gluttony has never tasted so good. And that is why they call it Sin City.

3. Thunder from Down Under is not a Disney movie. Or affiliated with Disney in any way. This is a common mistake — one we’ll never make again. Thank you, Las Vegas.

4. It’s okay to participate in the social performance of gender. It’s not always easy being female (wah), and in Las Vegas — where every night is like New Year’s Eve if you’re a girl — it gets a little harder.  If you are a woman who, like me, is no stranger to chin pimple flare-ups, dark under-eye circles, and rating the enjoyment of an activity based on whether or not it can be done in sweatpants, you may be in store for an extensive getting-ready process that feels a little bit like putting on a costume, in turn making you feel a little bit disingenuous. I normally don’t look this put-together, you want to tell the guy who just asked you your name.  I am basically wearing a nude-colored Superman suit underneath this dress. To these ladies like me I say: as much as the Las Vegas nightlife may require you to masquerade as you parade around the Palms, keep in mind how worthwhile it will all seem when the bouncer waves you inside with a wink and without taking your crisp Andrew Jackson out of your newly manicured hands.  And since the internal structure of the Vegas nightclub scene might, just might, have more red tape than the US healthcare system, this is a very convenient thing. By acquiescing to the five-inch heels that cut off circulation in your pinky toes, the dress that requires constant re-adjustment, and your implicit role as a pawn in the profit-making of club promoters, you are actually subverting gender power dynamics. This is something that you can guiltlessly embrace, but maybe not something you should try to explain to your mom.

5. If “your girls” are still “your girls” when you leave Vegas, then your love is true. While, at times, Las Vegas can bring out the best in humanity (a club with a retractable roof? Genius!), it also can reveal the worst — and this puts friendship to the test. After all, it’s a long walk from your hotel room to the nearest Starbucks, and there’s a good chance that at least one of you has all the personality of a mushroom before her morning caffeine fix. (Sorry I’m not sorry.)  There will also be times when you have to talk each other out of making irresponsible decisions or, worse, deal with the real-life consequences of decisions caught too late, such as agreeing — in writing — to attend all three days of the Electric Zoo music festival. (You’re welcome, guys.) You will hear some things that you don’t want to hear (“I’ll do whatever,” “It’s up to you,” and a giggling hamster ringtone), and see some things that you don’t want to see (never mind). Las Vegas tries to see how far it can push you, but it ultimately brings you together on your final night in this wonderfully weird city, as you link arms and skip-strut-stomp through a casino singing along to the 1984 classic, “I Can Dream About You.” Late-night and early-morning gamblers turn to look at you and start to clap, moved not by the melodiousness of your collective voice, but by the genuine camaraderie and closeness that you exude. At that moment in that casino, there is one truth: you found love in a hopeless place.

And there you have it. Real life began again the instant we landed in JFK with heavy hearts and heavier eyelids. Suitcases were unpacked, souvenir magnets were put on refrigerators, and oppressive high heels were thrown into the deepest, darkest recesses of closets and buried under sweaters, hopefully never to be seen again. And since not everything that happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, we are left with tiny pieces of it — crumpled receipts, blisters, head colds, and a collection of printed paper napkins from various establishments. Of course, none of these things capture the significance of our experience, the underlying meaning of those four days. They do not divulge the lessons we learned or the story that we lived. The tale they tell is not one of strength and endurance, female friendship and solidarity, or youthful vigor once lost and then found.

But we remember. We went where many have gone before, but now we know that maybe, just maybe, Vegas “with your girls” means a little bit more.

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1. Provincetown, Massachusetts

Being gay in Provincetown

Provincetown is my gay utopia. A little beach town nestled on the Cape, it’s a place that comes alive during the summer and shuts down completely in the off season. Restaurants close, art galleries become abandoned and the only people left are the locals who are probably relieved to rid their town of the tourists. A cab driver told me what life was like during these solitary months: “You really get to know yourself in the winter. There’s no hiding. You really have to like who you are to survive because it’s just so quiet and lonely.” During the sweltering summer season, the main road becomes inundated with bodies, sometimes making it difficult just to get from point gay to point gayer. Bikers, joggers, and cars share one narrow space, often running into each other and creating a cluster of tan, muscled bodies and drag queens.

Many gay destinations have an explicit sexual vibe to them. The main strip is often littered with sex shops and scantily clad men who are selling seediness to tourists. It’s as if they’re saying, “This is what gay culture is about. There must always be a layer of sex that’s thrust in people’s faces. I’m here, I’m queer, now suck on it.” Provincetown is sexual too—I saw a naked guy walking around in nothing but a thong at three o’clock in the afternoon—but there’s an element of playfulness and charm to it. Gay sexuality is not coated in this darkness, but rather it’s given a tongue-in-cheek makeover. This is what draws me to Provincetown. It represents homosexuality at its most kooky and irreverent. You see a gaggle of old gay men in a restaurant at happy hour who look like they’ve been friends for decades and it fills you with a sense of pride and belonging. It’s a stunning few miles of gay life on display and I suspect I’ll be returning every summer for the rest of my life.

2. West Hollywood, California

I lived in BoysTown (the super gay part of WeHo as opposed to the medium gay part) for two months in the summer of 2008. I’ve since lived in other parts of West Hollywood—the area between Fairfax and La Brea mostly—but I have vowed to never return to that area of WeHo again. It’s the darkest of the #dark over there. To be fair, Los Angeles is an inherently dark city. The ungodly amount of sunshine deceives you into thinking otherwise but trust me when I tell you that people aren’t living right. I moved into a place on La Jolla and Santa Monica Boulevard on a tree-lined street that was adorned with Spanish style homes and manicured gardens. I was removed from the bougie side though, living on the upper level of a small apartment building that had a view of a trashy gay bar. My neighbor was a sad 75-year-old gay man named Gordon who always tried to get me to drink martinis with him. One time I actually did, only to find myself trapped in aimless drunk conversation with him for three hours. He eventually passed out drunk on the couch and I tiptoed my way out.

I don’t drive so I relied on the convenience of Santa Monica Boulevard to take me to most places. On my walk to the grocery store or a restaurant, I would often see the same 50-year-old muscle queens over and over. Some would walk up and down Santa Monica Boulevard all day long shirtless and in tiny running shorts with no destination in sight. There was a uniformness to Boystown that could only be described as older gym bunny/twentysomething in True Religions and entertainment streaks. Gay men would often take up shop in the Starbucks and Coffee Bean with their dog and just sit there for hours, looking at the young boys who walked past them. There was no community, only smatterings of friends. In fact, it felt extremely isolated and creepy—a veritable gay ghost town. Living there without transportation and feeling trapped in my own neighborhood allowed to me see every facet of the neighborhood, every awful thing that lurked underneath the bedazzled surface. I left that apartment feeling somehow objectified and undesirable at the same time. I was held under their male gaze but I also didn’t fit the WeHo ideal. The times I’ve returned to the neighborhood, I often think of it as some warped gay Disneyland. I don’t regard it as the happiest place on Earth, although I’m sure many WeHo gays would disagree with me.

3. Palm Springs, California

Being gay in Palm Spring

Palm Springs is the most homophobic gay destination in my mind because it’s a city that’s populated by rich elderly Republicans and gay men. Like Provincetown, it’s a gay destination that’s typically seasonal, which means that it houses some kooky locals. My gay uncle is one of them, in fact. He moved to the desert years ago with his husband to escape the Valley and is quick to concede that it’s a strange place. Everything is oversized and Americana. In many ways, its like Las Vegas but richer, gayer, and not as disgusting. You can stay here for weeks and be content in your fantasy world. The gays seem to be mostly of the fortysomething bear variety but The Ace Hotel has helped bring in some fresh meat.  Meanwhile, the gay bars are amazing and lack any pretension. If I felt like I was anyone’s type in Palm Springs, I would be in homosexual heaven.

Las Vegas loves an unnatural wonder—there’s a a faux-New York skyline along Las Vegas Boulevard, a replication of the Eiffel Tower, and a giant Sphinx outside of the Luxor Hotel modeled after Egypt’s original. People take photos in front of them, though it’s hard to know what, exactly, they’re trying to remember through photographs of phony statues. Or are they phony? These monuments actually do exist, some as large as the original. If all anyone ever wants is a photo in front of something famous, a visual representation that they were in front of an icon, perhaps a cardboard relic is perfect. Does it even matter anymore where in the world you are? If not, anyone who stays at Ceasar’s Palace has no need to go see the Greek sculptures in the Metropolitan Museum. That could be a beautiful thing, depending upon how you look at it.

Just 20 miles or so outside of Vegas, west down Charleston Avenue, is one of the most impressive, and quite authentic, natural wonders in the United States. At the border of the North American tectonic plate where it crashed into the Pacific plate around 180 million years ago are dunes of red sandstone called the Red Rocks Canyons. No one in Las Vegas at the hotels seemed to know how to veer too far off of Dean Martin Boulevard, so, stopping for shrimp cocktail at a nouveau bistro, we asked a waitress for directions. She didn’t know the exact way, but she pointed us in the right direction: you drive down a desolate highway, past communities of Spanish-style housing developments and unfinished condominium projects. By the time you reach the canyons, you’re far enough away that you can no longer see the enormous fake Seattle Space Needle that sits at the Stratosphere Hotel on the Strip. We listened to pop music from an iPod in our rented Mazda the whole way out—Kylie Minogue’s Fever album and New Order.

It’s $7 to enter the conservation area, which is about half the price of a cocktail at any Las Vegas hotel. Spread across almost 200,000 acres, walls and walls of mountainous ranges reach out of barren tundra covered in grey shrubs. You can drive on a 13-mile road called a “scenic drive” through the hills, stopping along the way at various designated parking spots they’ve built. We stopped at a marker called “Calico II” and once you’re out of your car, you have free range to walk anywhere you’d like. We climbed down a dusty trail towards one of the redder hills and around a shadowed bend out of range from any cars. There weren’t many people in the park as it was one of the hottest days of the summer, clocking in, at various times, at 112 degrees. We sat in the shade, hands clasped around our knees while horse flies bit us on our arms. All you could hear were birds crowing and some of the westerly winds hitting the rocks with a slap. You aren’t supposed to smoke cigarettes because the ground is so dry it’s like tinder, and we were told by an official brochure to watch out for rattle snakes and drink at least a half of gallon of water during our stay at the park.

Much of our previous time in Vegas had been spent in intricately climate-controlled buildings, structures so big you forget there is even a real world with real weather outside of the air conditioned confines, so we enjoyed our time at Red Rocks, putting our hands in the Pueblo-style holes in the sandstone walls, getting our shoes dirty in the mud and sand and spending a long stretch breathing in fresh air even if it was stiflingly hot. Throughout our time in Nevada, we kept getting asked, rhetorically, if we’d been outside and noticed how hot it was, as if it were possible that we had not, in fact, even stepped into Earth’s atmosphere that day. As if Earth’s atmosphere could not even be believed. It is hot, sure, but it felt practically political to stroke, instead of the smooth marble of our hotel room’s his-and-hers sink, the grit of crumbling red sandstone that eroded at even our most delicate touch.

In these hills lived the Anasazi Indians, a group extinct hundreds of year before Europeans had even come to the New World. An exonym meaning ‘ancestral enemies,’ the Anasazi are a mysterious bunch. Although many modern Pueblo people claim ancestry with the Anasazi, little is known about them and much of the facts of their existence are disputed, especially the claim that they were cannibals, a theory put forth after teeth marks were found on bones in the area. And if, in fact, they were cannibals, it is unknown whether it was done for religious reasons or because the harsh circumstances of desert life meant food was so scarce that humans had to be eaten. Many archaeologists believe that the Anasazi might have practiced intra-tribal cannibalism, meaning they ate members of their own communal group. They lived in the hills, life was hard and they were probably migratory, roaming around looking for food. The only thing wholly known about them is that they vanished, largely without a trace. Mere miles from the Las Vegas strip of air-conditioned hotels and artificially constructed Little Italys complete with Venetian canals, where bottled water is practically mandatory and it’s impossible to tell where “fresh” food comes from because advertising protraits of Emeril Lagasse and Mario Battali promise authentic artisinal cuisine, there is a place so harsh that it didn’t even need the white man to kill its indigineous inhabitants—they just left or died.

And so it’s just ghosts. Though the Red Rocks’ brochure claimed that over 1,000,000 people visit the canyons every year, that day it was just us and a few others walking around in the thick quiet right outside of America’s entertainment capitol. Hundreds of years after the Anasazi indians abandoned Red Rock Canyons, people still don’t seem to come out here much.

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Batman! …And now that we’ve gotten your attention, it seems to have been a very bad week for the Dark Knight Defender, the Caped Crusader, etc. First, “Batman” was arrested in Michigan. And now, here’s video footage of a different “Batman” getting his ass kicked in Las Vegas.

As we can see, this particular Batman in question is a street-performer of some kind, who encounters a possibly almost definitely drunk heckler on the sidewalk in Vegas. The fight starts out slowly, in the boring way that so many dude-on-dude fights start, with lots of pointless taunting. But then “Batman” makes the mistake of defiantly fluffing out his cape. And then a traffic cone is brought into play. And then Batman gets his ass kicked.

Though the fight ends quickly, the one thing that we will always recall is the plaintive lonely plea of a child, crying out the following word — “Batman?” — as her innocence is shattered forever upon seeing a fake Batman getting a beat-down from some random dude. …But don’t worry, Virginia — there truly is a Batman. As long as you believe in him in your heart, then he is real.

Anyway, the fight ends, the little girl yells out in fear, the police show up, blah blah. Of course, the police only arrive because they must chase Batman — they’re forced to, because he’s the hero that we deserve, but not the one we need right now; he’s our lonely defender, our Dark Knight, and anyway okay we made these same jokes already today. 

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LAS VEGAS, NEVADA – Las Vegas Man Carlos Barron has been accused by the North Las Vegas police of opening fire on the crew of Spike’s reality TV show Repo Games.

Carlos Barron

Apparently, the Repo Games crew – a production that goes around filming people’s lives on the brink of disaster, but offering them salvation from their debt (and us ‘mericans the suspense of impending failure) if they can just answer three out of five of the questions in the repo “game” – had one of their vans parked outside of Barron’s house on Monday night. Barron, not very happy with the situation, confronted one of the crew aggressively, and eventually struck him.

When the rest of the crew noticed the altercation and ran to their colleague’s rescue, Barron is reported to have fired multiple shots at them from a handgun procured from his waistband.

The crew fled and called the police, and by the time officers arrived, the shooter had barricaded himself in his house. A chase later ensued and Barron eventually was apprehended with the help of a police dog.

All of the crew members escaped unharmed, and it is as yet unknown if the incident was recorded on camera. Barron is now imprisoned and awaits a court appearance, where he’ll face – among others – charges of attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon.

Interestingly, the Repo Games series premiere airs tonight.

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Quitting drinking nine months ago continues to prove to be the best decision I ever made in my life. However, every once in a while I can’t help but feel a little wistful at the few opportunities I missed to get trashed in style. These feelings are mostly provoked by the better posts on textsfromlastnight.com and lurking the social lives of my peers via Facebook, but they are there nonetheless, so let me indulge my fantasies, damn it!

Four Loko

I would have torn. This. Shit. Up. The gaudy cans, “flavors” that are actually colors, and an appalling combination of booze and caffeine? Sign me up! I’ve sampled similar brews such as Tilt and Sparks, but they just don’t have the pizzazz of the already-legendary Four Loko. Never mind the fact that those sugar-laden craptails used to make me hurl my guts at least 56% of the time (note: aforementioned hurling may not have been the drink’s fault so much as potentially caused by chugging four warm ones in the parking lot behind the movie theater before seeing Eagle Eye in IMAX, riding the Scrambler at a Mexican carnival set up in a dirt lot next to a gas station, or equivalent). In my mind, I envision my Four Loko night to be a wild but ultimately harmless Hangover-esque caper involving minor vandalism, an unlikely happening (i.e. finding a stack of money, ending up at a party at Gucci Mane’s house, etc.), and a police chase that ends with me triumphantly escaping into the night only to wake up at a friend’s house the next morning and recount the story over waffles. In reality, my Four Loko drunk would consist of wild mood swings, public indecency, and almost certainly a real and very humiliating arrest (which has not happened yet, knock on wood).

Las Vegas

How a former party girl with a lust for buffets, sequins, and boozing has never been to Vegas by 24 years old is beyond me. I’ve been obsessed with Vegas since I turned 20 and all my friends have been multiple times, but my broke ass has never been able to swing it when the opportunity presents itself. I mean, did you know you can drink in public in Las Vegas? Even though I am sober now, I still know a good time when I see one. Hell, if I could figure out how to drink/get drunk without being a complete terror, I would be the queen of Vegas. The Yardstick is quite possibly my favorite alcoholic accessory, and I’ve never even had one. Despite the fact that they are expensive as hell (I’ve heard) and impractical as all get-out (a friend recently told me the end of a Yardstick basically amounts to “warm alcohol slush”), I’ve always thought they were fucking rad. Some gold hoop earrings, a bikini, and one of those and I’m set. I wonder if they make them virgin?

Whiskey in a Can

Ok, so they haven’t put this on the market yet, but I heard from a reputable source (um, The Huffington Post-have you heard of it?) that it is on its way. Despite being more or less of a trash can drinker, whiskey was always my favorite. And the only time I like kitsch is when it’s an ironic way to drink, so really it’s a perfect combination. Hmm. Maybe “kitsch” isn’t exactly the right word, but I used to have a thing for drinking in ironic or unique ways. Maybe to take attention off how much I was actually drinking, or to use it as an excuse to drink more. It doesn’t matter, either way I would have been totally into it.

As I sit here and try to come up with more things I wish I had tried before quitting drinking, it occurs to me that I honestly can’t think of any more. I’ve been drunk a thousand times – a lot of them were really fun and great, but more of them were dark and scary, and I regret that more than anything on this list. If the only things I missed out on were Four Loko, Vegas, and Whiskey in a Can, then I think I made the right decision. Besides, I’m doing Vegas this year, and now that I’m not pissing my money away on booze, I can afford to just light it up and smoke it at the Blackjack table and I don’t even have to get my dick out.

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I have been standing in love for eleven years now. I met her in algebra class and we hit it off immediately and then one night she came over to my house and we drank whiskey from a water bottle and fucked for hours and hours. She was perfect and fourteen; I was built and fifteen. She was my second but she was still a virgin and bled all over. The sex was so great and my cock was so hard that even after I came it would not soften. I wiggled it around her face and she humbly sucked on it for a bit.  We dated for the rest of high school and did a lot of drugs together while still managing to make honor roll every year. I played baseball and was just naturally good at school. She did amphetamines and studied a lot because she hated being around people and wasn’t good at faking it. My pet name for her was “thing.”

Time passed and we graduated from high school. She went to college in Florida and I went to school in California. The physical distance was nothing. We talked everyday by phone or Skype or Gmail and she was my best friend. I was into my coursework at college though and she became increasingly more detached from school and more and more into hard drugs and partying. Still she did not cheat on me all that much; I know this because almost every night she would call me outside some party and say how much she needed me and loved me and missed me and how we had to get married when we graduated. I would often oblige, mostly out of boredom and horniness.  Sometimes I would chastise her for being a dumb bitch and then when she got back to her dorm make her spread her pussy open over Skype. She would oblige, reluctantly.

She dropped out of college junior year. She said something about being too pretty for college. She got into some ‘high society’ call girl circle in New York City and I think at first I was fazed and then I just got over it because it seemed inevitable and out of my control. She still loved me. I know this because she would be off traveling in Paris or the Caribbean and Skype me and we’d got at it digitally; she normally did it in the bathroom while the john was in the bedroom. This communicated something special to me.

The drugs, the prostitution (the mental illness really) finally wore on me and it forced our relationship into remission. There was something just too sad about what was happening to her. She was gone and I could not bring her back and who was I anyway to say being gone was a bad thing? I started dating another girl. She was nice, kind, and attractive in a commonplace way. It was a beautiful and calm couple of months. I had forgot feelings that could even exist and it was all so tender and compassionate. But we soon broke up because it got boring and I reentered a long-distance relationship with my ‘high school sweetheart.’

More time passed. Whatever happened. I moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles for a new job. She was living out of a suitcase (and her parent’s house) and traveling a lot, mainly to Vegas. She was hospitalized a couple times for alcohol poisoning, a drug overdose, and a suicide attempt. Each time she was released she said she wanted to be better and each time she would fail and any past commitments to change would be scoffed off and washed down with a vodka. It was also always my fault she failed. I would concur, apathetically. Or spill a Mel Gibbon-like Mel Gibson-like rant about her lack of integrity and willpower.

We talked on Skype the other night, a bit of the transcript is excerpted below. It is hyperbolic, but representative of our whole relationship.

Her – i see you for what you really are, i don’t deserve to be treated with disrespect
Me – that’s all you deserve
Me – and I love that, I really love that
Me – I need that
Me – I need someone who only deserves disrespect. And I don’t want you to change I want you to continue to be the piece of trash you are
Me — I don’t want a healthy relationship. That’s what I realized.
Her – im done dont im me
Her – im fucking crying
Her – i hate you
Her – don’t talk to me
Me — Wake up!
Her – you are horrible
Her – you are disgustingly evil
Me – You are horrible.
Me – DON’T YOU GET IT.
Me – WE ARE BOTH HORRIBLE. THAT IS WHY WE HAVE STUCK TOGETHER FOR SO LONG.
Her – im crying and im blocking you and this is exactly what u wanted
Her – don’t talk to me

She blocked me. Then an hour later came back online. We talked about Jersey Shore and I said I have never seen that show but that I just watched the British version of Skins.   She made me apologize for the mean things I said. I apologized. She was high on Oxycodone. I could tell because her voice was all raspy and she was relaxed and happy.

This has been the pattern of my life. I have been doing this for eleven years now.

She wanted me to come visit her for Valentine’s Day. I love her. But the trip to New York is too far. She offered to come out to LA and I said no and that it wouldn’t feel right. There is that Vanessa Carlton song – “Cause you know I’d walk a thousand miles / If I could just see you tonight.” I saw the lyrics to another song the other day on someone’s Tumblr and they express a similar sentiment but are a lot more romantic because they are more realistic:I love you enough to drive like an hour from wherever I am to be with you. And it is always the simplest shit that means the most.

Yeah, the simple shit.

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There are people that I have a hard time comprehending. By that I don’t mean that I can’t understand what they do, but that I don’t have enough perspective to understand by what justification their actions occur or what personal or cultural histories could provide a precedent for such behaviors. In other words, when I’m witness to the following behaviors, I think things like “What the fuck?” with serious feelings of confusion and when I think about them later the thought remains “What the fuck?”

People that have ten-minute cell phone conversations about ‘nothing’ while in your exclusive presence in a situation where the overarching theme is that you two are ‘hanging out’

This happens without the offending person telling you “Excuse me” or “I have to take this phone call.” He or she gets a phone call from a friend and they proceed to have an extremely long and detailed conversation about someone’s cat or the date one of them just went on or what he or she got shopping that day while you sit there and mock interest in some old text messages on your cell phone.

The conversation goes on for well over ten agonizing minutes covering such a variety of asinine could-definitely-be-talked-about-another-time topics while your feigned interest moves on from your cell phone to things like corners and exposed plumbing in the ceiling, the whole time at pains to avoid looking at your friend’s face, wondering why they would choose a time such as this to ‘catch up’ with someone they see on a weekly basis.

Concepts related to such situations include bars, coffee shops, ‘hanging out,’ ‘feeling lame,’ ‘feeling awkward,’ ‘being inconsiderate’ and ‘being out-of-control.’

People that live in societies with significant access to higher education that are devout

Religion and the concept of ‘worship’ seems so abstract and arbitrary once one recognizes what seems like extremely obvious contradictions and logical impossibilities (that the religious person is asked to accept by ‘faith,’ or in other words the demand that one “just believe in it”) are understood.

I often have a hard time understanding how people can remain religious in a society where fundamental ‘flaws’ in religions or myriad philosophical disconnects that run between many religious peoples’ behavior (reality) and what they profess to believe have been identified by a broad spectrum of the population (i.e. from YouTube users to academia). Or how people can have the belief, for example, that all non-believers are going to literally burn in hell for eternity while at the same time working an office job, taking out a mortgage, eating solely from franchised “restaurants,” living in a suburban neighborhood their entire existence and going to church service one hour per week (in effect doing their ‘duty’ to God) – rather than spend every waking hour trying to stop the billions of non-believers from literally burning in hell for eternity and converting them. Seems uncanny.

Concepts related to this stereotype are fundamentalism, ‘Rural America,’ suburbs, minivans circa mid 1990s, Starbucks, McDonalds, Chipotle, Kentucky Friend Chicken, Taco Bell, Wal-Mart, Super Target and xenophobia.

People that talk shit under anonymous pseudonyms on the Internet

I am and have been administrator to forums and online magazines in which people can comment, and as one of these people I have been privy to commenters’ IP addresses. When there have been particularly vicious instances of internet shit talking I have looked at the IP addresses of the offending commenters and found that they were the same IP addresses of certain people who conduct their internet-selves with a certain haughtiness or stance of intellectual purity.

Upon discovery of such facts I have sometimes felt very surprised (or even a little bit of fear, the fear one feels when he sees something unexplainable yet terrible) that the same people that purported the values of reason and clear, irrefutable strings of logic would talk shit in what seems to be such a misguided or blatantly hurt/defensive/masturbatory form and proceed to do it anonymously.

To comment in this way seems like a ‘gravely’ contradictory behavior because to shit talk anonymously is to provide a blanket-level opinion that one has no responsibility to back up with any sort of logic. Shit talking anonymously is often done in a black/white sort of way, where one is accused of simply being ‘bad,’ yet at the same time the fact that the commenter chose for the comment to be anonymous is a very clear admittance – to everyone that reads the comment – that they’re choosing not to stand behind that comment. I find anonymous shit talking uncanny because choosing to talk shit anonymously seems almost like an admittance that the comment itself is ‘wrong’ or ‘incorrect,’ a conscious and deliberate recognition that whatever’s being said is so far removed from logical argument that the commenter is actually choosing to distance him or herself from it in order to avoid the ‘shaming’ that comes along with confused logic that often occurs in internet forums and in the comments sections of blogs. There’s a big gap for your cognitive dissonance to cross there.

Concepts related to anonymous shit talking are hypocrisy, unseemliness and ‘being out-of-control.’

I have only kissed twelve guys in my entire life. That’s either a lot or a little, considering that I’m seventeen years old and a senior in high school. I’m not sexually suppressed, I just have a hard time finding guys who are as attracted to me as I am to them.

I started kissing boys in eighth grade when I was thirteen years old. I was in a ‘committed relationship’ with a nice Jewish boy I met at temple one year prior. We had been dating for around four months when one night at a Bat Mitzvah he decided to peck me on the lips behind his mother’s minivan. We kissed casually for about two weeks, then moved on to ‘making out,’ which was messier than it was romantic.

After we broke up, I dove into an adolescent abyss of insecurity. I kissed two more boys – twice in the same weekend, neither of which I had any romantic feelings toward. One of them had made me listen to the Red Hot Chili Peppers with him while sharing a pair of headphones. I vividly remember him letting me take his iPod home for a night so that I could watch Borat while it was still relevant. I was desperate to be in on the hype. I made out with the second boy in a ravine at Red Rock Canyon. Don’t worry, Mom – he was Jewish and will grow up to be an established attorney one day.

The fourth boy I kissed was younger than me. He was head of the ‘popular crowd’ in seventh grade – fairly impressive for someone like me, who heavily valued middle school social structure. He honed in on me in the back of an arcade during the summer of 2007. I guess I was still a pretty terrible kisser then, because he later accused me of “eating his face.”

After my fourth kissing encounter, the chronological order of my mouth-to-mouth escapades becomes more difficult to decipher. That isn’t to say I grew more reckless and indiscriminate – I still chose only to kiss Jewish boys, most of which I met in my regional youth group. I don’t exercise a preference toward any race or religion, it just ends up that Jewish boys seem most willing and most convenient.

On Halloween night of freshman year in high school, I dressed up as a very corrupted kitten and locked lips with one of my ex-boyfriend’s best friends. It was on a secluded sidewalk in the middle of a suburban neighborhood. If I remember correctly, he touched my butt, which the too-short cheetah print dress I was wearing made way too accessible.

Later that year, I engaged in a very traumatic make out session with a Jewish boy from Canada. He name-dropped a few Degrassi actors and I swooned despite his non-descript apparel, angsty personality, and total lack of sexual experience. As we were hiking to the top of a hill, he tripped on a rock and rolled down a dirt path until he gained his footing and got back up again. I tried to make it so that he wouldn’t sense my embarrassment, but secretly I was totally turned off by his…effeminate tendencies. We sat on a stone wall and made out, but it was really just him gnawing on my bottom lip and dripping saliva down my chin. I confidently wiped it away when we were finished and acted as if nothing was wrong. Upon meeting back up with our friends at the bottom of the hill, he proudly announced that “Americans taste good.” I fled the scene.

I kissed my first hipster at a debate tournament when I was fourteen years old. I had been crushing on him for years and nearly choked on my own ecstasy when he started showing interest in my then-lame persona. We walked along the school grounds until we found a stairwell with a good view of the night sky. The hipster had an open pack of Starburst in the pocket of his cardigan. We put pieces in our mouths and tried to unwrap them with our tongues, laughing giddily, as if we were living a romantic scene from some independent film. Eventually, the hipster leaned into my ‘kissing zone’ and the hat I was wearing fell off my head. It was a brown billed military cap with fifteen buttons pinned to the front, most of which promoted the anarcho-communist political agenda. The hipster and I kissed for thirty minutes, probably. I went home that night and cried in a closet because I felt so vulnerable.

I somehow scored another hipster kissing session in the summer of 2008. I was wearing a pair of skinny jeans with a white cut-off t-shirt and tons of necklaces. I sported a magenta scarf around my forehead, tied horizontally, of course. I was a free spirit. And the hottest, curly-haired Italian hipster in my high school pursued me for all I was worth. One night we sat in a suburban playground and picked blades of grass out of the earth. He taught me how to hold them between my forefinger and thumb so that if I blew on the right place, it would whistle. We excitedly made music with the grass blades for an hour. I complained that I needed chap stick and he seized the opportunity to moisturize my mouth with his own supple lips. He was a great kisser. He flirtatiously bit my lip and I giggled in approval. After that night, we never hooked up again. I fell into major depression within the first few months of sophomore year.

In February of 2009, I made out with an extremely attractive Jewish boy in the empty kitchen of a suburban pool hall. He was by far the worst kisser I had ever made physical contact with, which greatly disappointed me. I quickly escaped the slobbery wrath of his reckless chompers and confronted my friends for advice. They said he’d get the hint that I wasn’t interested and that would be the end of it. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of it. Two weeks later, on a party bus my friend had rented out for her birthday, the extremely attractive Jewish boy pounced on me as soon as we were alone. He practically sucked my oral cavity dry as I attempted to break free from his lustful grasp. A friend witnessed the tragic encounter and proceeded to explicitly tell him that I wasn’t interested. He got up from his seat next to me, took four strides to the other end of the bus, and immediately began making out with another Jewish girl. C’est la vie.

Once March rolled around, I was desperate to pursue a romantic union with an “authentic alt bro.” I saw pictures of them all the time on Hipster Runoff, but I had never interacted with one in real life. And, as if by fate, the first one I ever met was the one who developed feelings for me. He won me over with an impressive iPod playlist – a Top 25 Most Played topped with tracks by Death Cab for Cutie – and stories of his experience seeing Justice live in concert. He promised to take me on a road trip to Bonaroo, the most relevant indie music festival of 2009, and texted me every time he listened to “Sleepyhead” by Passion Pit. We made out once in a Californian bowling alley and again two months later, in a deserted hotel ballroom. Authentic alt bro was a vaguely good kisser.

I didn’t kiss a boy for another eight months. I was a little bored with menial make outs and wanted to focus on more important things, like finding a boyfriend and improving my personal brand. But I couldn’t give up on my teenage fixation that easily. One cold day in January, my best male friend and I drove to a local debate tournament and sat in his SUV. We listened to my iPod in a parking lot of the high school – the one I had traded in for a year of virtual instruction instead. We rocked our heads back and forth to Carles and Tao Lin’s sound project, “Jesus Christ.” (the indie band), and drummed rhythmically on the dashboard to progressive rock musicians I pretended to thoroughly enjoy. It just so happened that I had upwards of fifty jolly ranchers in my purse at the time. My friend suggested a game in which we ate them out of each other’s mouths. I recognized his sexual frustration and agreed. It wasn’t long before we were full on making out to the tune of “Evil” by Interpol.

At some later point in 2010, I laid down in a huge expanse of grass with a boy my sister and I knew from another high school’s debate team. I was wearing a blue floral mini-dress, brown booties, and two extra coats of mascara on my eyelashes. I looked like the free-spirited reincarnation of Twiggy’s youthful guise. The boy and I sat underneath a blanket of constellations and pointed out every star we recognized. In my head, I laughed at our saccharine predictability. It was something out of a Nicholas Sparks novel. As soon as he pulled away from my face, he revealed that this was his very first time he had ever kissed a girl. I laughed cutely and said something reassuring. To this day, I hope that the boy documented his experience on Reddit.com.

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“So I read this really interesting article today…”

That’s how I have started almost every sentence since I started working at AOL.  Sitting at a desk with unrestricted and unsupervised internet access all day long means that I have read almost every interesting article on the web.

Out of all these fascinating and thought provoking pieces, the best so far was an NY Times piece on chili peppers.  The basic points were that these plants taste like poison, they activate the exact same neuronal pathways that would be activated if we put our tongues on a burning stove top, no creature in the animal kingdom would ever go near one… and yet we humans just can’t get enough “spicy.”

The article went on to offer the hypothesis that there is an inherent thrill in participating in something that feels like it will kill us when we are intelligent enough to understand rationally that it won’t.  This might explain our love of chilies as well as explain S&M as the most popular and well known fetish out there.

When you really think about it, Freud’s pleasure principle (stating that all human action is in pursuit of pleasure and in avoidance of pain) rarely applies.  For example, I just had what I would consider a great weekend.  On Friday night I went to synagogue and on Saturday I did activities that one can do while observing Shabbat, which basically means just walking.  Some friends and I walked the Brooklyn Bridge and then went to the park.  At night I drank 2 Four Lokos (also known as Eight Loko) and woke up the next morning with no memories, a healthy dose of shame, as well as a missing phone, water bottle, and metro card.  Sunday I stayed in, ate spicy indian food, and watched Glee.

These are the things I like to do, but none of them make sense in relation to the pleasure principle.  Synagogue is kind of boring, walking around all day in the hot sun is exhausting, alcohol is poison and feels like it and made me sick all day, Indian food makes my tongue burn and gives me the shits for five hours after I eat it, and I am emotionally incapable of watching a single episode of Glee without crying.