I Made a YouTube!

Fight or Flight

During my most recent improv class, we did a warm-up exercise called "stretch and share." The premise: the group stands in a circle, stretching. Each person, in succession, begins a stretch and then shares a few personal facts about themselves.

While holding one's foot and stretching their quadriceps muscle: "I'm a violinist and I've ridden every roller coaster at Cedar Rapids ten times."

While touching one's toes: "I'm a black belt in Tae Kwan Do, I'm vegan, and my dad coaches football at Boise State."

Greeting the dawn, arms extended high to the ceiling: "I'm a priest." You get the idea.

The share comes to me, and I'm not sure what to say. Anyone who reads this blog, or hangs out with me, or is my therapist knows that I'm tiresomely inward-looking. I could have said any number of things about myself, things that a lot of people in my improv class would already have known. But for some reason, I was at a loss.

I played The Baker in Into the Woods...in high school. No, simultaneously wanking and pitiful.

I play the ukulele. Careful, Joe, they might ask to hear you play one day. That never works out.

I can eat shrimp until someone else pukes. Gross. Gross and obscure.

"I'm the oldest of five kids," Good, excellent Joe, say something else nice and interesting, "and, and I've been to at least six sci-fi conventions."

Wait, what? You're given an opportunity to identify half of your being, and you choose sci-fi conventions? Why, yes, internal monologue. Sci-fi conventions are awesome. And the greatest of them all is Dragon*Con.

I'm sure you have your preconceptions about conventions. You think of them and you imagine glandular cases with Muppets t-shirts pulled over their Starfleet academy uniforms, squealing to pay $40 for an autograph from Gareth Thomas, star of Blake's 7. You imagine a group of people doing Renaissance dance to They Might Be Giants. And you imagine the smell, like a hundred sweatsocks and nine turkey sandwiches, cooked together inside of an X-Box. And you're partially right, but mostly wrong.

Dragon*Con is one of America's largest science fiction conventions. Every Labor Day weekend, upwards of 50,000 people descend on Atlanta to hang out, see celebrities, talk about cartoons, and compare costumes. And what costumes! Dragon*Con sits at a natural intersection of engineering and graphic design, and thus the costumes are triumphs of mechanics and beauty. We're talking fully-functional Gundam suits, complete with weaponry. Home-made Wolverine claws, that retract into a wristwatch.

Over half of any Dragon*Con attendee's time is spent taking pictures of these awesome costumes, drunk. And Jesus, do we drink. Dragon*Con is essentially a party for people who don't get invited to parties. And everyone there is someone a nerd will want to talk to, and it's socially acceptable to have a conversation about "Settlers of Catan!" And you can get laid! There are orgies at Dragon*Con. There are people who never leave their hotel room except to get ice to cool off their genitals.

Some of you will cringe at that image, but I only include it to illustrate the fact that Dragon*Con is awesome. I have met--and touched!--the famous, the semi-famous, and the not-famous. I've made friends. I've seen some of the most amazing works of human craftsmanship...ever. It's the only vacation I take, and I plan to go every year until I die (2042, beaten to death by members of the Glenn Beck Youth Brigade).

And yet, sometimes it's not fun. Getting fed at Dragon*Con can be an ordeal. If you go to the Peachtree Center Mall, close to the con hotels, you are essentially diving into a roiling pit of humanity, all in a rush to stuff themselves with Chik Fil A before the Patrick Stewart panel. If you bring your food, you have to carry it around, and that means you have less room for booze.

On Saturday (this is mid-con, we're basically just getting started at this point), my friends and I decide to walk up the street to go to McDonald's, to get away from the Peachtree Center Crowds. As soon as we get inside, we know something is wrong.

Oh, that's right! Atlanta is actually overscheduled on Labor Day weekend. So not only are there tens of thousands of my people in the middle of the city, there are Alabama and Clemson fans here for a football game at the Georgiadome. And it's Black Gay College Student Weekend (this is a real thing, but I don't know it's name).

We get in line, and all of the beautiful black gays and football rednecks are looking with horror...at me? No, it can't be. I'm not even in costume. And I'm only medium-sweaty, which for me means that the stains are only going halfway down my torso.

"I've seen some great ones. I saw a Vegeta today. He had the power reader, and the armor, and the blue boots. The only problem was that the guy in the costume was like six feet even, and Vegeta is supposed to be like, five-three."

Oh. Oh god. The attractive black gays and the football rednecks were looking at the group of horror nerds standing directly in front of me. These guys were the kind of nerds that give nerds a bad name. They argued over the minutiae of their fiction. They probably only read comics that double as pornography. They weren't even smart. There was a lanky kid, a fat kid in a silk shirt with a ninja printed on it, and a goblinesque man with acne scars. They had been playing tabletop RPGs for the entire con. I could tell because 1) they smelled like they hadn't moved or changed clothes for several days and 2) Goblin Boy was regaling his companions with tales of his mad biznezz skillz.

"So, cheeseburgers here are like a dollar. So I bought ten cheeseburgers and took them down to the game room and sold them for TWO dollars a piece. Made ten bucks!"

"I-I-I-I dunno about that. Seems like a lot of work." Ninja Shirt was skeptical, and inarticulate.

"No, you can ask around! Ask anybody!"

"That's crazy! Do you think that's possible?" Lanks was addressing me.

My fight or flight instincts were activated. I could not get into a conversation with these guys. I would have to shake their grimy hands. I'd have to quarantine myself for the rest of the con. My friends were in the other line, laughing at me with a group of attractive black gays. I decided to route all auxiliary power to my shields.

"I...don't know." I put on my most impassive face. Lanks went back to his conversation. Success!

Goblin Boy ordered a chicken sandwich and a large sweet tea. It took him a minute to order. His order came first, so he stood drinking his sweet tea while Fat Shirt and Lanks waited for their food.

Sip. "Huh. This don't seem sweet enough. Does this seem sweet enough to you?" He handed his tea to Lanks.

Louder this time: "Man, this tea just isn't sweet enough!"

Was he really passive aggressively complaining about his tea? I stepped up to place my order.

"I'll have a Quarter Pounder meal with a--"

"Sorry." He stepped in front of me. My fist clenched. Shields up to like, a billion percent.

"This tea really isn't sweet enough. Do you have another, sweeter batch?"

The cashier looked at him, her jaw set.

"This is the only batch we have made right now."

"Well could you make another?"

The cashier looked at Goblin Boy as if to say "This isn't your mother's house. Also, you have acne scars."

"No, sorry, but I can put some sugar into your tea."

"Thanks."

I had to wait to order my damn Quarter Pounder meal with a Diet Coke so this poor cashier could put sugar in a retard's iced tea. She finally got around to taking my order.

"That'll be $5.62."

I wanted to give her a tip, to tell her to "keep the change, and here's a dollar for your trouble with my fellow nerd." But I knew it would only humiliate her more. I hope she got a raise later that day, or that an attractive black gay bought her a drink at the bar across the street.

I got my food, and brushed past the goblin crew so quickly that I accidentally brushed Fat Shirt, getting some of his sweat on my elbow. I didn't say "excuse me."

We walked back to the con, back to relative normalcy, relative good smells, and a bottle of Maker's Mark. Later that weekend, I touched the hand of Jewel Staite, the most beautiful woman in the 'Verse. I was drunk, and her touch irradiated Fat Shirt's diseased sweat and Goblin Boy's diseased memory.

Stop Putting Your Laundry in Me

by an IKEA Bag

Okay, I get it. I'm convenient. You don't want to lug a hamper around, and you have me, just taking up space. I have handles. I'm big. It's almost as though the Swede who designed me thought "Oh, after this thing gets done carrying a "BILLY" bookshelf home, you can put your laundry in it! I am so clever! I deserve a treat. Lingonberries!"

But just because something is convenient doesn't mean it's right.

Say a race of aliens game to Earth. And they had laundry that would somehow fit conveniently into the body cavity of a living adult human. And willy-nilly, they start snatching up people and stuffing them full of alien thongs, alien shirts, and alien scarves. You'd immediately decry the aliens, say what they were doing was inhuman and wrong. Hell, you'd probably start a non-profit based around the misuse of human bodies!

I'm sorry, that example was...over the top. I'm just so tired of having laundry inside of me all the time.

I'm not saying don't use me. I was made to be used. The happiest day of my life was when you took home a modular storage unit in me. I felt...complete. And I don't expect you to take me back to IKEA, to use me again. That place is horrible. It's like a college dorm that's been retrofitted to be a dildo factory. So don't put furniture in me.

Put puppies in me.

Put an old set of encyclopedias in me.

Put a baby in me, because you can't afford the "HENSVIK" crib that you want until you get paid in a week. I promise I'll be gentle, with your baby.

Do you know how much of your body hair sticks to your clothes when you take them off? A lot, that's how much. There are times when I feel like there's a pube jungle inside of me. Sometimes your clothes have...fluids...on them. Do you know how it feels? To hold someone else's fluids? I hope not, for your sake.

Please stop debasi--NNF. URRN. HURK!

Great. A jock strap.

SUBWAY STORRRRYYYY

Before I lived in New York, I thought everyone on the subway was beautiful. Many of the people I rode with were conventionally beautiful: models, actors, Greek guys with good hair. And the people who weren't conventionally beautiful were interesting looking. I could see their journeys on their faces--they were like less-famous Frank McCourts and S. Epatha Murchersaii.

I loved them. I thought, "God, I can't wait to live in this city, to be around these amazing looking people every day."

I don't know where those people have gone.

Since I've moved here, every trip has been like spending 30 minutes in a Bruegel painting. People on the subway bleed and cry, and shout at each other. And they don't have stories, they're just insane and dumb. Today I saw a woman set her Capri Sun on the floor of the N train. As the train moved, the container fell over, the juice spilled slowly out. She righted the container. It fell over again, more juice. She folded the corners of the bottle over, as though that would do something. It fell over one fucking more time, and I jumped out at the next stop. The next train I got onto had a woman slowly eating yogurt out of one of those big jugs. But instead of bringing the spoon to her face, she held the spoon, full of yogurt, down near her knees, and slowly licked the yogurt off of it. Her husband was on his cell phone, shouting at a friend.

New York, as the cliche-meisters will tell you, is a tough town. I don't have a job, I don't have an easily-accessed social network, I don't even have a bed. I have a mattress, on the floor. And riding the subway can compound these indignities into one oily hate-ball.

A few weeks ago, I was riding to an improv class. I was tired, I'd just shamefully deposited a loan check from my parents, and my feet hurt from not working all day.

This train had eclipsed Bruegel and had descended straight into Bosch. Not only was there an odd ranch dressing smell wafting in from somewhere, but someone was playing grating Czech pop music very loudly on their headphones. And the train was running slowly.

At Queensboro Plaza a man and a woman got on the train and stood near me. She was very pretty, and seemed really nice. He was wearing the stupidest shirt I had ever seen, and I have three (3!) Venture Bros. t-shirts. I have a friend who only wears t-shirts with jokes like "Beware of the monster behind my zipper" on them. I know from stupid shirts. And yet, this one was the Platonic ideal of stupid shirts. It was tight and apple green, and had three strips of denim hot-glued to it. I'm sure it cost him $79. Because I'm a bigot, I assumed he was gay.

Wrong, bigot! He was touching that very pretty girl on the ass, and they were discussing their weekend plans. He wasn't touching in a sexual way, just that boring, non-squeezing possessive way that people in committed relationships settle for. They had been together for months! My closest female companion is my roommate's Yorkie.

The unlikely couple got off the train. They were replaced by a young man reading a book of Cervantes works. He had sad eyes.

"Kudos to you, young man." I thought. "I couldn't handle Cervantes, ever."

Then I saw his head. He had the strangest male-pattern baldness ever. It was thinning irregularly all over the top of his head. The front was thin, but the back was...less thin. And the sections of hair weren't delineated straight across the head. His hair was thinning diagonally. He had scars on the top of his head. He had had surgery. He had had brain surgery to make him intelligent enough to read Cervantes. Was he some sort of government experiment? Would government experiments wear JNCOs?

"Stop looking at me, young man." I thought. "And, um, get off the train so I don't have to look at your head. Also please don't explode my brain using your new Firestarter powers."

I had to avert my eyes. That guy genuinely scared me. I realized that I was on a train ride to Hell. I started to have a panic attack. I knew that if that train didn't get ot 34th Street in the next two minutes, someone was going die (probably me). And then, I looked at the floor...

And saw a toenail. A human toenail. Someone had been clipping their toes on the subway. Or somehow, they had come in trailing human detritus and had decided to leave some on the train. Was I sitting on a pube? Was I sitting in a puddle of blood? Did I have Hepatitis? Would it matter, or was the brain-prober across the car going to pop my skull like a grape before I could even get tested? Would my hep-blood infect the other passengers?

Then the door opened and I walked onto the subway platform. It still smelled like ranch dressing but I knew I wouldn't live anywhere else in the world.

Than on that subway platform.

To the Retiree Working at the Barnes and Noble Cafe on 86th Street:

First off, I'm not sure why I'm even here. The coffee shops in my neighborhood are legion, and don't play Michael Buble' more than seven hours a day. But Parisi Bros. Bakery in Astoria doesn't have free wi-fi, or comic books or copies of “Art Forum Magazine” to read if I get bored from writing (which I'm only doing at 11AM because I have no real job).

That's right, I have no real job. But you sure do! You trot around purposelessly behind the counter, your rhythm broken only by collision after inevitable collision with your teenaged co-workers. When there's a lull in service you look past me through your glasses: “MAY I TAKE AN ORDER FOR THE NEXT CUSTOMER ON LINE.”

One: that is an extremely stilted way to say “Who's next?” or “What can I get you?”

Two: I am the only person in line, so I surmise that you are parroting the Barnes and Noble Cafe orientation video. Chill out, lady. I think even the most hidebound Barnes and Noble Cafe Customer Service Wallah would be okay with you adjusting your tactics for a more intimate situation.

But no matter. I'll order, in spite of your obvious strangeness and autistic devotion to "the script."

“I'll have a decaf and a bagel with cream cheese.”

This is my lunch.

Now you look at me, in the eye, and I feel my scrotum shrivel. Your smile reminds me of those sculptures people make with fruit peels. It's small, too small, and you seem to have trained yourself to peel your lips just to the edge of your teeth.

“YOU GOT IT. BAGEL WITH CREAM CHEESE. AND A DECAF.”

Why so strident, obviously crazy old lady? Again, I am the only person in line. The cashier can hear me order. And besides, I'm going to tell her my order when I pay, which will be in one second.

“Linda, can you run the register for one minute? I need to do something,” the cashier asks, quite nicely.

I'm going to assume that she's been holding it for the morning nanny rush and really needs to hit the head. Awesome, because this means that you'll be able to ring me up, and you just took my order. Everything works out!

“SURE JUST A SECOND. I AM MAKING A BAGEL.”

“Well, I just need a minute.”

The cashier gives me a look that says "I wonder if they'll mail my MFA to prison."

Poor urine-filled cashier. She just wants to pee, but you're to busy to help her because you're manically holding your two serrated slicing knives in hand, trying to figure out which one to use. Knives still in hand, you rush over to the register, knocking poor urine girl off of her post, but not to take her place.

“ALL I HAVE ARE PLAIN BAGELS IS THAT OKAY.”

“Fine.”

"EXCELLENT CHOICE SIR. ONE PLAIN BAGEL--WITH CREAM CHEESE--COMING RIGHT UP."

You are so proud of your customer service that you barely resist flinging one of your slicing knives at the toaster in triumph.

“I just need a min--”

“SURE. LET ME JUST MAKE THE BAGEL.”

Urine Girl rings me up. You bound over, and hand me my “BAGEL WITH CREAM CHEESE. HAVE A NICE DAY SIR.”

I return hours later. You are still working. Is this your last day on the job? Your first?

THANK YOU,
JOE

Uzo Unmanned

I'm "non-confrontational." I quote because the term has been co-opted by the inarticulate to mean "shy" or "quiet." I'm neither of those things. If anything, I'm brash and loud. But I don't like to get into confrontations, thus, non-confrontational.

When I was 12, a sociopath named Jeffrey pretended to stumble and pushed me, face first, into a row of lockers. At the time I had a rather fearsome set of braces, all wires, and yellow rubber bands, and an apparatus to keep me from sucking my thumb (seriously). Needless to say, these got tangled in the flesh of my lips, sending what seemed like pints of my blood down my shirt and onto the band room floor. My lips began swelling immediately. None of the kids laughed.

Mr. O'Neal, the music teacher, approached.

"Do you want to go to the nurse?"

"No. I'b gobba be fibe."

I think I spattered blood in Mr. O'Neal's glasses.

In the lunchroom, children looked at me like I had blood all over my face and incredibly swollen lips, some of which were still caught in my braces.

"Are you sure you don't want some ice?"

The only sounds I could muster were "Pbbsst!" and "Murrrrrnnng!" Eventually someone convinced me to put some ice on my former face.

Naturally, I sat down with Jeffrey and the principal. When Jeffrey gave his "just stumblin'" excuse, I was skeptical, but rather than making a big fight out of it I just said "It's okay. Whatever."

The principal let us go our separate ways. The next day, my dad, a high-powered teacher in our tiny school district, threatened Jeffrey with physical violence. The day after that, Jeffrey had transferred to another school.

So I'm non-confrontational. It's worked out so far. After Jeffrey left, I wasn't bullied anymore, and sort of fell into my niche by the time high school rolled around. And being non-confrontational has kept me in relationships, in jobs, and in apartments. For example, if a lady wants to get into a fight with me, I just pretend not to hear her, or walk away, or ask her politely to leave me alone, then continue reading my novel about elves fighting dragons. It's been a good strategy for the past 25 years.

But recently I was tested, and failed. And perversely, succeeded.

One of the challenges of living in New York is finding a place to play soccer, a game I love. In Chapel Hill, where I used to live, you could join a seasonal a league for $80 dollars. For a few months, you'd get to practice twice a week, and play a real game on Saturdays. It was casual, fun, and easy. Here, playing a fun game of soccer is as easy and as cheap as getting Arnold Schwarzenegger pregnant, not with science like in Junior, but by fucking him in the ass. I joined a league for young professionals, thinking "I am one of those things," but our games are played in a gym, and I get about 10 minutes of playing time per ugly, boring match.

Lucky for me, there's a pretty active Queens pickup league. And it's run through the useful, if trying-too-hard, Meetup.com! It's only $5 a session (as opposed to the $150 I paid for a season of "young professionals" soccer) and you get to play for two hours. I signed up, showed up on a beautiful Sunday morning in Long Island City, and got put on a team with Hoon, a stoned Korean guy in a Kaka jersey, some other dudes, and three people who were, sigh, actually good at soccer.
I suppose now is as good a time as any to say that I am bad at soccer. On the “good at soccer" continuum, Leo Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo are at one end, while I am down at the other end with that Down's syndrome baby I saw on the train today.

One of the good players, Uche, seemed really nice. He came with another good player, Uzo, who also seemed very nice. And maybe it's deep-seated Orientalism, but I really dug on their Nigerian dialects. Not in a gay way, mind, just in a slightly racist way. The other good player, Chris, seemed okay. He was bragging about his hangover, which made me think that it wasn't that good of a hangover.

We played our first 30 minute game, and it quickly became clear that our team was bad. We lost 3-0, didn't hang on to possession, barely got a shot on goal. And it also became clear that Uzo was a competitive loudmouth.

"Why are you making that run, Hoon?" He liked to pick on Hoon. Hoon was a good sport, and I'm not sure he really noticed, anyway. Because he was stoned, you see.

"Pass the ball!"

"AAAAH!"

The last one is the sound he'd make when the last pass before the shot was off target, ruining his chances for glory. Often, this pass was from me, so I'd get the scream.

I'm competitive, and, just like Uzo, I get pissed off about stupid things. If I don't win bar trivia, I turn into one of those sad, angry, drunks. I curse when I don't make a saving throw against goblin poison. And Trivial Pursuit? More like Very Important Pursuit. So I understood where he was coming from.

But he was still being a cockhole. And I was getting angry. I started noticing his weird acne (which was all over his face, and big, like bigger than normal pimples), coming this close to saying something about it, then thinking better of it. I also almost said "I may suck at soccer, but at least my country has a lower HIV rate than yours."

What the hell, me? Why did I even think that? It might not even be true! I'm from rural South Carolina, which has an astonishingly high HIV rate.

I was holding in my rage, like I always do. I was being non-confrontational. And it was killing my fun. And apparently making me a racist.

Our second game we played well, probably because the team was even worse than us, and we got to slow down and have fun. Uzo was relatively quiet then.

We felt confident going into our third game. We'd made an improvement, and this team had not one, but two, pudgy middle-aged ladies on it. We were gonna win this shit!

Nope. We were sloppy, we were making bad runs, we were tired. And Uzo was letting us know. About halfway through the game, I mishit a pass into the middle. Uzo was making a blistering (for a grad student) run, gearing up to shoot. But he didn't get the ball, because, as you recall, I am bad at soccer.

"What the hell, man? AAAAAH!"

I looked at him for a second. And then I snapped.

"Jesus Christ! Fucking relax!"

Yes, this is snapping for me. I didn't look him in the eye when I shouted, I just walked away.

"You're right. It's a pickup game."

He didn't complain for the rest of the game. We still lost. We had fun. Even Hoon got a reprieve, not that he needed it.

There we go. Easy as that. All Uzo needed was to be shouted at. I had been confrontational, and it had worked out for me. I never realized I had this power. I think I'm going to do it more.

So if you see me on a subway platform berating a homeless man for singing, or on the street screaming at a cabbie because he turned in front of me in the crosswalk, or in a movie theater just mercilessly insulting a child for smelling bad, assume that they are repeat offenders, and that they deserve it. Especially the child, even if she has Down's syndrome.