The Atheist Alcoholic
I’ve written a little here about how I was an atheist when I came to AA and how that was obviously the biggest hurdle for me to overcome in committing to the program and getting through the steps. Not only because the program is based on the idea that a relationship with a Higher Power is the only thing that will keep someone sober, but because of my deep prejudice against people who did believe in God. I began to open up to people as a filthy garbage person alcoholic with chronic anxiety, but cringed at the thought of them thinking I loved Jesus. I thought they would label me the same way me and my friends did whenever we found out someone was spiritual or religious- as either a crazy person or a person incapable of rational thought.
My first month of sobriety I spent in Austin, working, living with friends, and (despite being an anxious basket case smoking a pack a day and drinking a 2 liter bottle of Diet Coke every day) having a lot of fun being a part of the world again. I discovered there are trees and people and mornings and all kinds of cool stuff! I read the AA book and did the steps with my Dallas sponsor through email and occasionally went to one very cool meeting on South Congress. Everyone was beautiful and brilliant and young and cooler than me, stuff I superficially aspired to. Then when they shared, they’d talk about how every day they try to think less about themselves and more about what they can do to help other people and make the world a better place, stuff I emotionally aspired to. But I grew more and more discouraged as each one shared that it was only through their relationship with God and getting to know Him better that they achieved any happiness or manageability in their life.
One of the last people to speak was a bearded dude who took a long pause then said “I’m three years sober, and I still don’t really know what any of you guys are talking about when you talk about God. It doesn’t make sense to me. All I know is that when I do the next right thing, things go a lot better for me and I start to feel better. That’s my Higher Power.” Those words helped me sit through hundreds of AA meetings when I felt like a hopeless dunce when it came to faith.
After a month I relapsed and got drunk and drunk again. The friends I was staying with were understanding but still angry, disappointed and disgusted. I was incredibly ashamed at what I had done, but more than that I was devastated at how unsatisfying the drunks had been. The magic didn’t work anymore, I couldn’t get even a few minutes of elated freedom. I just got more and more tired and heavy until I blacked out then fell asleep. Looking back, it hadn’t worked for a long time, and no amount of time off or lowered tolerance would bring it back. It was over.
I went to a meeting the next night and shared for the first time. I said that even though I really believed there was no God and the universe was chaos and we’re alone here, if the only way for me to get sober and live a happy life was to believe in God, or Jesus or even Scientology I would do it. I would rather be happy than right.
This is the key of any spiritual work, of what I believe life is ultimately about- the surrender of the ego. The ego would rather be right than happy. For a long time I made that my only goal, to create harmony in the universe, to make people happy, to help people. The problem that I approached in singlemindedly pursuing this work is that I still hated myself. I had no idea how to take care of myself emotionally and had just been cut off from the only way I knew how to deal with my feelings. I drank not only to feel normal, but to hurt and punish myself- I was being my own shitty parent. And so whenever anyone needed help, I said yes, I did whatever my sponsor and my parents told me to do, I tried to be perfect. And when I was confronted with the fact I wasn’t, when I screwed up, I found new ways to punish myself. Finally I started to realize that my goal shouldn’t be to karmically repair all the damage I had wrought in my drinking, but to accept myself for who I am and stop giving a shit about what everyone thinks- really hard to do in a program based on the idea that I am an innately selfish person who must strive every day to be better and have to account to someone else.
Maybe it’s because creativity has always been my emotional salvation as a maladjusted weirdo, but I really believe the world would be a better place if everyone just knew how to read better. The literal interpretation of sacred texts is what makes us think we’re so different. If people could just open their minds and grasp symbolism, realize themes, and not focus on certain quotes from certain pages, maybe we could get closer to what I believe is the truth- that faith is simply choosing to believe that we are not alone here. Whether an omnipotent being created me or a cosmic bang or an omnipotent being that created that cosmic bang, whether love is a true bond that connects two beings or just an evolutionary imperative of brain chemicals (I choose to believe the former, which is why I no longer consider myself an atheist and in fact a deeply spiritual person (ugh)), whether any magic is real or isn’t, whether you believe this body and existence are it or you’ll go somewhere when you leave them, if you believe other people exist as you do then you aren’t alone. You aren’t the world, you’re a part of it.
The book of AA says that only a growing relationship with God keeps us sober, and I believe that- not necessarily talking to God, praying for his will, or believing in him, although building a relationship in humany, understandable ways is a great way to do it that makes sense to a lot of people. I believe that continuing to be able to stay in the moment and be ok with playing your teeny tiny walk on role in the vastness of life is the only way to not want to numb out and hide and do whatever you can to pretend to be ok with that for a little while. The more you live the more you learn, and there are so many colors of the sadness of being a brain trapped in a dumb human body, so many daily confrontations with the fact that it could end at any moment. Every time I have come close to taking a drink because my anxiety becomes too great, my selfish attachment to my little life seeming so much stronger and more important than the entire rest of the planet, it is my belief that I am not alone and you are with me (whoever is reading this). Even if nothing is predestined and not everything happens for a reason, I can choose to make the best out of what has happened, learn, and adapt, as life before me has done for billions of years. Atheism is a luxury of the naturally apathetic. I believe I choose not to drink today, and that my choice to believe in something, wrong or right, is why I can make that choice.
“But you must believe in something…
we all try, the boys try, the girls try, we all try”
-Frank Ocean
Distinguishing Between the Addict and the Abuser
So this is definitely the question I get asked the most as a young person in recovery, and lately I’ve been thinking that clarifying/informing people about this aspect of alcoholism, which is to say the definition of an alcoholic, will help people know if they are an alcoholic or not since its pretty much the only disease that’s self-diagnosed (although I’ve been diagnosed by angry ex-boyfriends and a shitty psychologist).
SCIENCE OF ADDICTION:
“Addiction” is caused by a pleasure deafness in the Ventromedial Pleasure Center of the brain, meaning when the receptors are sent a message like “We just booked a vacation in Hawaii!”, instead of going “Yahhoooo! Anticipation, excitement, a reward for all our hard work! This feels great!” they kind of shrug and are like “What else you got?” When first introduced to the drug of choice, the receptors are like “Oh shit, yahooo! THIS is what we’ve been missing, THIS makes us happy” while other peoples receptors are like “This is a joy of life along with many others”.
When someone is in a stressful situation- when a person feels hungry, angry, lonely, tired, or scared- their midbrain goes nuts, sending in adrenaline, staying vigilant because until recent history, when we were stressed out it was because we were in mortal danger and we needed all the help our brain could give us. Normal people can chill out, talk themselves down, eat something if theyre hungry, take a nap, find some healthy way to blow off steam. In an addict’s brain, the drug of choice has not only been linked in the VPMC as the sole source of pleasure; it is now the first thing the brain goes to when it is in survival mode. It is the only thing that can quiet the stressed midbrain- the brain believes it is survival itself. The frontal cortex, the source of morality and belief systems, shuts down- and thoughts of family, career, loved ones can’t compete with the thundering obsession with the drug.
I haven’t done any research on the brain of a heavy drug/alcohol abuser who is not an addict, but if I had to guess the difference would be in the VMPC- the heavy abuser can still feel pleasure from things other than their drug of choice and therefore their brain doesn’t believe the drug is as essential to them as air. Their brains tell them the same thing, though- “Just one more time. It’ll be ok. This time it’s different” and later “Fuck it, we both know you were just going to go back eventually”.
Is one person a piece of shit and the other person a sick person who can’t help it? Personally, I don’t think so. Drugs and alcohol are very powerful and even if your brain chemistry isn’t altered in the extreme way that addicts brains are. There’s also a huge emotional component that is the same for the addict and the abuser- the shame of drug and alcohol abuse is isolating and debilitating and keeps the cycle of using in motion.
Eventually, brain science will catch up and we will be able to differentiate the addict from the abuser- what it means for criminal justice, for the children of addicts, for preventative vaccines, for current AAers I can only speculate. Right now, the best test we have to separate the addict from the abuser is to take a year off- for young people whose social lives revolve around drinking, I would suggest taking a month off (and if you’re on anything harder than pot get off that shit now because its very addictive and progressive and can make an addict out of anyone). I’ve had plenty of heavy-drinking friends successfully do between 20-40 days without drinking. Its hard for anyone, but you’ll lose weight, plus it takes 30 days to make a habit so you’ll be in “the habit” of spending nights sober and have broken “the habit” of binge drinking, feel healthier and most importantly you’ll have a newfound confidence that comes with feeling like you are in control and making choices rather than depending on something to change you into a normal person.
If you can’t go a month- I don’t know. Maybe you just don’t have a good enough reason to quit right now. My last year of drinking, I tried to quit for a month 5 times- to prove to a guy I really liked that I wasn’t a mess (lasted 5 days), to lose the 10 pounds I constantly obsessed about (2 days, 3 days, 2 days respectively), to get my life together and get a job (5 days), to prove I wasn’t an alcoholic (6 days), to not be hospitalized when I took pills to help me quit that prevented my liver from metabolizing alcohol (1 day. luckily just barfed a lot). That’s only a few. Now it’s very possible that I wasn’t addicted and was just fucked up and self-destructive, that my prefrontal cortex wasn’t shutting down and skewing my values, and that I really just loved alcohol so much that I never wanted to quit, a decision I made comparatively sound of mind- that doesn’t really matter to me. The idea that anything could have that powerful of a hold on me is something I never want to happen again, whether I’ve given it that symbolic power or my brain has actually linked it with my survival.
“Coming Out” to my bosses as alcoholic
I am fortunate enough to work for a really great new hedge fund that’s performing really well. We all work from home and it’s awesome and it’s a dream job and I love it. I’ve known my boss for more than half my life and he’s such a fucking mensch. He was my mom’s old boss at a different hedge fund and in high school I would come in (sullenly) to help out with marketing on the weekends back in the days when we killed millions of rainforests in vain manually sending out folders filled with prospectuses in giant letters, 97% of which would be immediately tossed in the garbage. My boss and I always had a connection because we both love my mom and are hilarious, and it got even stronger when I started having seizures because he had had one before too (around 4% of people will have one by the age of 80) and knew how fucking terrifying they are. When their old company was sold and he set up a different fund a couple years later, he needed a quick typist to market it and my mom was taking a well deserved year-long sabbatical from full time work, he hired me since I’ve been able to do like 80 wpm since my 7th grade year long romance with Sam Wyman which unfolded entirely through AIM (+silent makeouts in the back row of movies). I worked from the office and then moved to Austin and worked from home, and it was the perfect job for an alcoholic because I could do it while super hungover or sucking down 12 packs of Miller High Life.
Toward the end of my spiral into booze and depression my (Very easy, menial) work inevitably began to suffer and my boss noticed. This was around the time that we began to work with the ETF that we now both belong to. He didn’t know what was going on but levelled with me that even though he cared a lot about me and my mom, he couldn’t just pay me to fuck off and support me like some kind of benefactor/rich Uncle in a Jane Austen novel because I would be monitored by this company and he would be held responsible for my poor job performance. Luckily, luckily luckily I got sober and was able to start taking my work more seriously.
Not only was this a great job to have in addiction, it was a GREAT job to have in recovery. My hours were flexible and I was able to devote almost all of my time to going to meetings, volunteering, helping other alcoholics and addicts and working with my sponsor. I was also living with my parents which relieved any financial anxiety and I could focus entirely on getting well.
(Sidenote: if you are an addict or alcoholic who has not completely burned the bridge with your family and if your parents are decent people who are willing to let you stay with them for awhile, I definitely recommend staying with them, getting therapy and starting an intensive AA program with a dedicated sponsor of meetings and step work OR even an SOP program or regular CBT with an addiction specialist over expensive treatment/rehab. Plus it gives you a chance to heal the relationship, regain trust, new insight on your relationships and the way that they shaped you. Sometimes its annoying and stressful and hard and you don’t have much privacy but not like living with strangers for 6 months constantly monitored by doctors and techs. Of course, depending on the level of your physical dependency you might first need a hospital assisted/monitored detox, or have mental and emotional issues that need to be monitored as you experiment with finding the right medication, and if you’ve been a heroin junkie for like 30 years you probably need to be locked up somewhere with no possessions or money. Plus I’ve never been to rehab so I really have no right to shit on it. But I’ve seen a lot of success stories with this approach, even my friend who was a crack addict for 35 years is almost one year clean without rehab from just living with her mom and workin’ AA like a full-time job. Case by case basis for sure, I just think rehab and treatment are really pricey and there is so much FREE information, support and help in recovery. Especially in Dallas. More on that later)
So things are great with the company, occasionally we get together for dinner and drinks where my two bosses drink to celebrate our success and I smile and abstain and they are totally cool with it. We have just such a celebratory dinner tomorrow night, the details of which my newer boss told me as I was doing some bookkeeping work at his apartment (shut up, grow up, what would that even be a euphemism for?) He said, “We’re meeting an hour early for drinks,” then remembered “oooh that’s right, you don’t drink.” Then he finally asked, “Why don’t you drink?” He wasn’t trying to pry, just curious.
I was caught off guard and shrugged a little, and he began to joke, worried that he had put me on the spot , “I mean, is it a religious thing? Are you an alcoholic?”
I was too defensive at the possibility of being mistaken for a Mormon to clearly weigh the pros and cons of answering honestly, and I just said “Yes.”
He was a little taken aback. “Wow, I was actually joking! How did you know you’re an alcoholic?”
“I’ve never been able to have just one beer, ever, in my whole life. Maybe once or twice but I really hated it. Once I have one, I just…”
“Go on and on and on until you’re drunk? Yeah, that’s an alcoholic.”
I started to get a little worried so I boasted, “Yeah, I’m almost one year sober.”
“Oh wow, that’s cool. Does [name of my other boss that for some reason I really don’t want to share] know?”
“No, it’s just never really come up. Like if someone asks, I’ll tell them, like you just now, but I don’t really want it to define who I am or make people uncomfortable around me.”
He changed the subject and as I left told me that I was welcome to come early anyway if I wanted to hang out with them at the bar and just have a soda. Hopefully future employers will be as cool if they do a background check on me and know that “Obstruction of a Highway” is just code for “DUI I paid thousands of dollars to have shuffled around court til a judge was willing to let me plead down” or even if they find this blog. The subject will probably come up again on Friday unless John thinks I’ve been consciously avoiding telling Parker so he doesn’t feel disappointed or betrayed that I was drinking heavily while under his employ, in which case he’ll avoid bringing it up as well. If it does, I’ll probably keep it simple, will avoid talking about it in any detail- consequences, amount I drank, etc. unless I am asked explicitly. Will not use it as an excuse or an answer to what is to my bosses, the riddle of my personality- why a cute, smart 24 year old girl hasn’t finished college, doesn’t date or have much of a social life, and is content living with her parents and working at a job with no guarantee of upward mobility. Because even though my alcoholism provides insight into who I am and definitely makes my current lifestyle a little less puzzling, it doesn’t define who I am. The reason I live this way is because it makes me happy and I’m still figuring stuff out- the same conclusion I’m sure my boss came to before learning this new information. The way I drink no longer defines me, a gift of recovery too often forgotten or ignored.
I would love to be able to go to a meeting today or tomorrow to talk about this, to ask older people what it was like when they first “came out” to their boss or coworkers as recovered, but the downside of the structure and militance of most Dallas AA groups is that meetings are for sharing on a topic from the “Big Book”. Most of my friends in the program are so devout that they would probably tell me to read the passage in the book called “To Employers”, a chapter written 80 years ago before alcoholism was recognized as a disease, before HR, before there were laws and rules to protect sick people genuinely trying to get well, before rehab was included in many health insurance policies. To be fair, these friends are all so smart, devoted and well versed in all matters alcohol (other than brain science) that if I thought my job was in jeopardy I’d call them before a friend who is a lawyer. I already know in my heart how to handle it since I love and trust my boss, but I guess I’m just jealous and wish I had a group of likeminded people where I felt comfortable discussing this stuff like my friends in recovery have. Maybe if I live in a different city some day I can find AA where I have more in common with people and can speak freely without feeling like I’m judged by not giving a literally textbook answer or discussing the non-spiritual aspects of addiction or not working with a sponsor and doing everything “right.” Have any recovered people read this long into my meandering? Does that exist?
I got a piiiiiig
I got a pig today and she is 1.4 pounds and she is really anxious because she is a runt and needs constant attention just like me and has diarrhea all the time and is on a steady diet of electrolyte water and pepto bismol just like me and loves to shit on me just like me. I love her. I hope she gets less scared soon. Also I hope the police don’t get mad in 2 years when she’s a grown up 15 pound pig, so keep this on the DL ya’ll.
Also her name is going to be either Nelly because she’s a nervous Nelly or Blue Ivy Carter. She came when I called her Nelly but mostly I just call her Leetle Peeg.
I think that feeling that you’re feeling is what some people call “a feeling”
I chair an AA meeting once a week, a commitment I made a few months ago while I was reworking the steps. A few weeks later, I realized that answering to a sponsor was stunting my ability to learn how to parent myself and that I disagreed with many of the fundamentals of the program, chiefly the idea that I have no control over whether I drink again or not, and decided to stop working the program of AA.
Even though I felt a lot of resentment at the institutionalized thinking of AA and some of the weird stuff I’d seen people do in the name of “The Big Book” (I’m not going to talk about that stuff here because it only pertains to very small sects of certain groups and is not a reflection on the program as a whole, there are zealots in every group and faith), I am really glad I kept this commitment and get to deal with these feelings every week- my deep gratitude for the people and way of living that first got me sober and my frustration with the narrow mindedness about other kinds of recovery that seems to infest this world.
When I first got sober, I intentionally didn’t do any research about alcoholism or addiction and the brain, other than finding doctors endorsements of the A.A. program. Jung’s prescription for the alcoholic was a psychic change brought on by a religious awakening, and that was enough for me. I diligently submitted to the 12 steps and absorbed the foundations of the program,
stifling the inner critic who called “bullshit” on all this stuff. I’d watch other smart kids would come into the program but scoff at
its inconsistencies, unable to get past the mathematically impossible idea that the program itself is perfect or the antiquated text.
They rolled their eyes through meetings and went through sponsors like water and relapsed over and over. Over time I came to many of the same conclusions as they did, but am still sober. Why?
Letting go of the attachment to the ego is one of the most crucial parts of the 12 steps. My family confronted me about my drinking,
a family friend picked me up and took me to a meeting, and I met my sponsor and agreed to do whatever she said to get sober.
It was a huge leap of faith, one I was only capable of taking when I felt I was truly out of options. Although I was living
in a place of deep shame, my one point of pride had been my lifelong atheism. I thought it a testament to what a freethinking badass I was, that I had managed to stay atheist in a tiny super Christian town despite my friends attempts to save my soul all through middle school. What’s more, it was something I deeply believed. Having to let go of that and open myself up to the possibility of a higher power was incredibly hard and scary work.
But I changed most of my beliefs. That’s what the 5th step is about- getting to the root of your false
beliefs and how they were created and choosing what you want to believe in now. What I feel, and what I wish more people
in Dallas AA felt, is that breaking down the belief system that caused you to fuck up so badly in the first place is the really important part, not the minutiae of the new one. Because if you are being totally honest with yourself in creating a way you want to live that will make you happy, it might not look exactly like everyone else’s in the program.
In AA, we’re taught that the root of our suffering is selfishness, which I think extends to all humans. When we feel overcome with anger or sadness or fear, we’re taught to call our sponsor or turn to God and ask him to remove that feeling lest we get drunk over it. I guess because I’m selfish, I like being a hoarder of feelings. I like feeling angry at someone when they violate my boundaries or hurt me instead of just turning it inward on myself and feeling alone. I HATE feeling scared but I like that now even when I have a dissociative episode or a panic attack (both of which I had for the first time in a LONG time on Friday) I can talk myself down and manage without picking up a drink. And most of all, I like using these feelings to create stories and essays and words and jokes. I’ve spent too long hiding from them to want to wish them away.
A monologue if I start auditioning again, maybe
They came to our school, this program.
The show was basically just a wrecked car they dragged from school to school.
Teachers would pick out kids from various social groups, one of them laid under the car while the rest staggered around
in cheap tuxes and tulle dresses covered in red corn syrup and twisting up their faces like little kids fake crying
and we all had to watch.
It was the weirdest pep rally ever.
Afterwards, a man was introduced as the father of a 15 year old girl killed by a drunk driver
And he spent an hour telling us everything that happened on the day she died
What she had for breakfast that day, what the score of the football game was
And he wasn’t like, this sad husk of a man
He was excited, really selling it, the way he was talking- it was like a tall tale.
That she had kissed him on the cheek and said “I love you forever, Daddy”- I just didn’t think it really happened like that.
I don’t know, maybe I was just impatient because I really needed to pee
Everyone else was into it, crying, texting their parents “I love you”, even my friend Veronika who hated everything was watching
But I just wondered how many times he’d talked about that day
before it didn’t make him cry and it just became a story.
Did know he wasn’t really telling the truth,
just a picture of a picture of a picture, did he write it out
changing little details to making it sadder to save kids lives?
I know its terrible, but I wondered if he got paid.
He started revving up for the big finish and for the first time since I was a kid I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to hold it in any longer
so I just ran toward a hidden exit on the side of the gym.
but when I started walking down the stairs
everything started to feel not quite right,
like when you realize you’re in a dream
and then it started happening to me again
and i just slowly lowered my body to the floor
i probably should’ve screamed for help or something
but I woke up, and the gym was empty
and I just kind of walked around the halls for awhile trying to remember everything
until i saw veronika and she laughed at me because “I should’ve just waited 5 more minutes”
and I told her I had another seizure and i needed her to call my parents
and also I was sorry but I peed myself wearing her skirt
She teared up a little and told me I could keep it
Rob! Delaney!
About a year and a half ago I read an article Rob Delaney wrote for Vice magazine about his life in comedy. It was what first gave me the hope that I maybe I could get sober and still be my nerdy dirtbag self rather than becoming a scary Born Again or a lebotomized husk (how I viewed sober people at the time). It also made me realize that I would never be able to do anything I wanted to do until I quit drinking. I tried to stop over and over again for the next 6 months but kept finding myself drunk and hating myself all the more for it. Finally, I asked for the help I needed and am happy and sober today.
http://www.vice.com/read/comedy-545-v17n10
Here’s his recent interview with the A.V. club that Twitter sent you this morning. His describes his daily maintenance for his addict’s brain- devoting himself to the things he loves that won’t destroy him- and giving his body what it needs- exercise, sleep, also I’m guessing from his Twitter probably weird sex stuff. He knows as an addict he tends to get totally mired in his misery so his life is structured to ensure he never get to that place where he’ll make terrible decisions because he can’t see his way out of the deep, dark hole.
http://www.avclub.com/articles/rob-delaney%2C76956/
I was at a bar the other night and a group of about 20 people in their early 30s were there for a wake. One of their friends, a diabetic, had died because he stopped taking his insulin for 2 weeks. He felt really sick for a long time but kept putting off his doctors appointment. An alcoholic or addict who doesn’t do what they need to to take care of THEIR disease is being no less careless.
Not about drinking- short story.
Her?
She has weird elbows
Ok, what about her?
Ew, no way! One of her thumbs is clearly shorter than the other
What about her?
Her nose is kind of small, and she’s tall, and has really wide set eyes.
Those all sound like positive things.
She’s missing a molar
How do you know that?
Saw her yawning earlier. Something missing.
What about the girl who ordered next to you at the bar, she’s hot?
She’s left-handed.
I’m left handed.
(Shrugs)
How can you tell?
Slightly greater musculature in her left forearm, wears her watch on the right wrist. Plus there’s something satanic about her, which is usually the mark of a lefty.
Wow, you’re like bitchy Sherlock Holmes. I bet you were a great gay friend in high school.
Hey, only the guys in high school thought I was gay.
The girls knew you were a loser who was dying to sleep with them?
Worse, they thought of me as a little brother.
Ugh. At least you got really good at finding people’s weaknesses.
Not really. I actually just saw her sign her tab with her left hand.
Me too, but I wanted you to you feel like you tricked me. OK, I have the perfect exercise for you.
Swimming?
No.
People call that perfect exercise.
No they don’t. Its an exercise I made up to help you get over your hangups.
O.K.
So close your eyes. Imagine the girl that you want to be with more than anything in the world, do you see her?
Yes.
Is she beautiful?
Yes.
Is it me?
Shut up.
Ok ok. So you’re looking at her, and she undresses slowly, and she looks straight into your eyes and says “Take me, David”
Now open your eyes.
(he opens eyes)
No, really open your eyes.
(rubs eyes, opens them wide)
No, like open your eyes and realize that it’s never going to happen.
That was very clever.
Thanks. Do you want to continue, there’s a second part of it.
Dare I?
Yeah it’s easier. So you see that hideous, lefthanded freak? The one who is a really nice girl who seemed interested in you?
I see her.
So now that you’ve located her, bring your palm to your face.
Please don’t smack my hand against my head and tell me to get over it
I really wanted to, the smacking part, but I knew you were bracing for it and I wouldn’t be quick enough. Anyway, um, spit on your palm and-
Seriously?
It’s all very scientific. You’ll need a little more spit than that.
Is that enough or should I hock up a loogey?
Yes thats enough. Now extend your arm, keeping your hand facing you, so your hand is directly to the left of the girl in your eyeline. Are they aligned?
Yes.
Which one’s prettier?
Left
Wait, really?
I meant the right, the right. I got confused since she’s lefthanded. The girl is prettier than my disgusting spitty hand.
Ok. Then why does it seem like you would you rather fuck it tonight instead of her?
Heh. Very funny. Give me your little drink napkin coaster. Well, on the other hand…..
No.
This guy (waves) is a sure thing and a cheap date.
Yeah, but it doesn’t have legs or a face.
Not yet. Someday technology will catch up with the emotional as well as masturbatory needs of young men.
It has! Those pillow girlfriends! You are one step away from having a pillow girlfriend!
I don’t know, maybe if I found the right pillow. Her face would have to have been drawn symmetrically, and of course no fatties.
I’m kind of serious, I worry about you.
Do you? You shouldn’t.
I know, I just wish you could always get everything you want whenever you want so I’d never have to see you sad.
That sounds so much more depressing.
Yeah. Hey, go talk to that girl.
What’s the point?
I don’t know. Does everything have to have a point?
She’s leaving, anyway.
Then say goodbye.
