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The 674th Thing To Keep Me Up At Night

My suspicions have been confirmed by other Americans who have spent time in the UK: the British don't date. Instead, they pull, they snog, they slide into each other and hook up.

Is this a positive atmosphere for someone already riddled with self-esteem complexes? I can't seal a deal here: can I expect to there? Or will it be easier there, since that's what people do?

My ability to connect with people (emotionally, intellectually, spiritually) has always been my most fragile. Should I then cast myself into a culture where—from an American standpoint—I should expect to be used?

Granted I haven't been even remotely successful dating in this country, but at least I know the rules, I know how things works, and I'm learning to read the signs. And I won't break some social taboo by asking someone on a date.

Or is this precisely the culture I should embrace, because only there will I learn the (tired, old, boring, easy) lesson that I will only connect once I learn to connect with myself?

Life's hardest lessons are always such clichés.

So here's my question:

If moving to Scotland is so exciting as all my other graduating friends tell me it is, why aren't they doing likewise?

We are all in essentially the same boat: poor economy, lousy job market, meaningless liberal arts degree, and time to kill—so why are they all settling in Los Angeles with heavy sighs of resignation?

This feels, so truly, to be the more exciting thing to do, so that must mean one thing: I'm missing something. Everyone else did the same cost-benefit analysis I did, so why is mine heavier on the other side? What am I missing?

Someone please tell me before I give out my three hundred-plus books, because once I realize what an awful mistake I've made, I'll miss them. I really will.

Slang in dire need of a comeback:

NOT!

Senior Autobiography Profile

Completed Major: Creative Writing
Hobbies, avocations, obsessions: writing, reading, alcohol, coffee, iced tea, three-ingredient cooking, postmodernism, restaurants, publishing, theater, Europe, Joseph Mazello (no, not really—okay, yes), a certain someone else who shall remain nameless, communication
Favorite Books: Giovanni's Room, Running With Scissors, Me Talk Pretty One Day, Naked, One Hundred Years of Solitude, White Noise, Them
Favorite Movies: Elephant, L.I.E., Northfork, The Cure, Capturing the Friedmans, Peter Pan, As Good As It Gets, Fargo, Parenthood
Favorite Singers/Groups: Belle & Sebastian, the Shins, The Hidden Cameras, Radiohead, Guster
Most Exciting Thing I've Ever Done: Approached the most beautiful boy in the world
My Hero: David Sedaris and Peter Pan
My Secret Desire: money. Deep down inside, I want to be orgiastically rich.
People don't this about me, but: I'm extremely sexually inexperienced and come from a conservative, religious background
Easiest thing to leave behind: smog and traffic
Hardest thing to leave behind: driving (I know, I hate traffic but love driving), L.A.'s restaurants, and my collection of three hundred books
Ten years from now I hope to have: a boyfriend and published my first novel (either as writer or editor)
Any message for your fellow classmates? Good luck, kids. And if you're one of a select few, stay in touch (otherwise, you're probably insane and no longer in school).

Ten years from now I hope to have:

Jen: an amazing art collection
Jenn: been in the Peace Corps, lived in a cave, and gotten my doctorate
Wes: diplomatic immunity
Sarah: a home on the coast, a cushy job that I love, happiness
Derek: the respect of those people whom I respect
Robin: a wonderful family (two kids and a great husband), a job I enjoy
Genevieve: independence
Michael: More than one line per question? Seriously, money and happiness: one will cause the other eventually, I'm sure. Oh, and a degree...
Brad: a car, a reputation
Danny: respect and responsibility and trust above all else
Lesley: been involved in motion pictures, either acting or directing
Cooney: a girlfriend
Jared: happiness
Rod: made a few highly successful major motion pictures
Dave: money, a Jeep Wrangler, and a couple of TV shows
Craig: a career as a respected writer and social commentator

Some things never change. You've only got six more years, kids!

Freshman Autobiography Profile

Intended Major: Print Journalism
Hobbies, avocations, obsessions: acting, writing, reading, sailing, diving, Joseph Mazello, improv
Favorite Books: Youth in Revolt, Giovanni's Room, Lord of the Flies
Favorite Movies: The Cure, American Beauty, Dogma, Life is Beautiful
Favorite Singers/Groups: Alanis, the cranberries
Most Exciting Thing I've Ever Done: Visited the Tokelau Islands
My Hero: David Sedaris, Oscar Wilde, Peter Pan
My Secret Desire: I have this strange and unrealized desire to yell profanities at persons on stage, but I have too much respect for performers to do so.
People don't this about me, but: I'm a pathological liar
Easiest thing to leave behind: the closet and small-town life
Hardest thing to leave behind: the weather (*sob*) and my friends and family, of course
Ten years from now I hope to have: finished this questionaire, and a job at Time magazine or on Broadway
Any message for your fellow classmates? Write me!

Crush of the Day

Think rubbing vaginal blood all over a boy's face is arousing in an artsty French film?

This boy

plays classical music and violent video games. He gives his boyfriend hot, wet kisses in the shower and tells him to "have fun" on their shooting spree. Then, he cares enough about him to blow him away once they've picked off nearly everyone left in the school.

Violent and tragic—now, that's a love story. Why can't I have a boyfriend like that?

Is it healthy

to listen to "Are You Feeling Sinister?" on repeat all day long.

Perhaps.

But what if I picture Andrew (the most beautiful boy in the world, whom I met in Edinburgh way back when) singing each of these songs to me personally? And what if this absurd fantasy is exactly what I expect to come true upon stepping off the plane in Edinburgh? Would this make me crazy?

Boys on my short list (you know who you are), consider yourselves put on notice.

Memo:

To all of you who went to Coachella this weekend, I have only this to say:

Yeah, Coachella was cool, but the Glasgow Botanic Gardens are FREE!

Belle and Sebastian rocks my world.

Party

So I wandered into some guy who's on the water polo club team at USC. At one of the Olympics recently, they had sought the perfect body for the opening ceremonies, and who did they choose? A water polo player.

The story flattered him, because, after all, he said, they do work both their upper and lower body.

I told him I hadn't played a sport a day in my life; I had done theater in high school. And he told me that was fuckin cool, that it took more balls to do theater than sports.

And I lapped it up. I told him about my part in Museum when I played a femme, gay guy. "It's great you could make light of your sexuality like that," he said.

Our conversation reached its peak and denouement, then he wandered away. Water polo players can't fucking do that! Tease me with your "upper and lower body," only to wander away once you've caught my attention??

You owe me, kiddo.

Whenever someone asks

"So what are you going to do in Edinburgh?"

I answer, "Drink heavily and fuck Scottish boys."

That is perhaps the most ambitious and honest answer I can give.

Fun Times

Know what's really fun? Coming home drunk and lonely to look at porn and feel sorry for myself. This practice is improved ten-fold when one whines about it publicly (i.e. blogging).

How to survive an internship:

1. Check email.
2. Surreptitiously sign on to AIM.
3. Surf the web.
4. Check email.
5. Play with office supplies.
6. Write letters on letterhead.
7. Make photocopies.
8. Check email.
9. Fax things.
10. Call people and ask them to fax you things.
11. Staple.
12. Surreptitiously chat with people on AIM.
13. Send your buddies letters on letterhead (using free postage).
14. Check email.
15. Blog.

In less than a month-and-a-half

I am leaving the country. In less than a month-and-a-half, I am leaving the country. In less than a month-and-a-half, I am leaving this country. In less than a month-and-a-half, I am leaving this country behind. In less than a month-and-a-half, I am leaving this country behind for good.

I don't go to parties

so much as I haunt them. I serve as this sadistic reminder of what happens when their values are taken too seriously, stories told and secrets kept. I ball into their corners and linger in the shadows, and you fear me, not because I am imposing, but because you project upon me exactly what you might become. And you might be right.

Good-Bye Lenin!

made me nostalgic for East German Communism and I never even lived it.

I'm money, baby

Dispatch to the Universe:

I am no longer the guy in the PG-13 movie everyone's really hoping will make it happen. From now on, I am the guy in the R-rated movie—no one is sure they like me yet. No one knows where I'm coming from.

I'm a bad man, a very bad, bad man.

Culled from Jessi's Away Message

I think that a friend who's a British citizen and knows that the one thing you want from life is to live in Britain, but won't marry you, isn't really your friend.

Fifteen Weeks Later...

The Doc told me today, "I think you might be depressed."

No shit. What the fuck have we been talking about for the past fifteen weeks?