Self-Inflicted Wounds: Heartwarming Tales of Epic Humiliation (31 page)

1
But seriously, who loves more wildly than teenagers? Every crush is the end of the
fucking world. I once spent three months in the same pair of overalls after a breakup
with a boy I was particularly into. I do not miss those times. Or those overalls.
They were so disgusting at the end they refused to even burn properly.

2
I
really
hope none of them reads this book.

3
How would my cool street friends understand my love of classical dancing? And how
would my formally trained ballet dancing partner understand that occasionally a sista
just needs to get her crump on?

4
I was a whitewater rafting guide for deaf underprivileged teens. Seriously. A black
whitewater rafting guide for people who cannot hear but want to experience extreme
sports. I was not fucking around on this college application stuff.

5
Massive bullshit.

6
Hold your moralizing horses. There’ll be more on high school drinking and poor decision
making later. Wait for it.

1
Ugh. Just . . . ugh.

2
I still snerk when I laugh. This is neither here nor there.

3
Unless you are a lesbian. And then you are powerless against girls who look and act
slightly like boys. Either way, boyishness is girl kryptonite.

4
To mutilate Tyler Perry, I can eat ice cream all by myself, thank you very much.

5
And shortly after that, I am sure, everyone in the greater Bay Area.

6
And by “sick,” I mean people would look at me and go, “That poor girl. There is something
seriously wrong with her,” right before they rolled their eyes in disgust and walked
away, cackling hysterically.

7
We girls have a way of turning a sidelong and totally casual glance into a romantic
gaze loaded with emotional portent. Chicks can parse some shit out.

8
I don’t care what you saw in movies or on
The Big Bang Theory
. This is
never
a good idea. And also, spare me your moralizing about kids drinking in high school.
High school kids drink. It is a bad idea, but it happens. We are not here to judge
my sordid past. We are here to dissect, exploit, and mock it. Stay on track.

9
I honestly can’t tell you what it was like. It was a long time ago, and the whole
time I was like, “I can’t believe we’re hooking up!” which I’m sure ruined the vibe
a bit. I’m assuming it was pretty boring and punctuated by a lot of high-pitched teenage
girl squeals from me and eye rolls of annoyance from him.

10
Teenagers get
stoked
. This is just what they do.

1
Although the Asians do love their Spam. The Hawaiian ones, anyway. And the Filipinos.
You haven’t lived until you’ve had Spam sushi. Well, maybe you have, but it’s still
delicious.

2
Good lord. When would I learn? Nothing good ever comes after the phrase “and then
I met a boy.”

3
Of course, it was all very pedestrian sushi. Thinking back, I can hear the waitress’s
eyes rolling in their sockets as she wrote down my California roll order.

4
Both of which are probably about the rudest behavior you can engage in in a sushi
restaurant and should have gotten me flung into the street like an unruly hooker.

1
Is this pun intended? I haven’t decided yet.

2
You mock, but everyone had one of these. We do not choose the era we are born into.
We assimilate or we die.

3
There was an incident on campus the year before I attended, where students protesting
against apartheid (I mean, who purposely comes down on the wrong side of that issue?)
had their makeshift shantytown destroyed by sledgehammer-wielding conservative kids—
while they were still inside.
No one was hurt, but this was mainly luck. The only explanation I can imagine was
that everyone was so drunk that the sledgehammer wielders were swinging wide and the
kids inside were in that limp physical twilight where blows don’t cause damage because
the body is so malleable and floppy. This is why it is a good idea to always get very,
very drunk on a plane. That way if it crashes, your limp body will be least likely
to take damage. I read this on the Internet.

4
Who were no doubt profoundly sexually frustrated and so had to pour all that energy
into
something
, and that something became standing around twirling their waxed mustaches while singing
in mildly effete four-part harmony.

5
This is pre-
Glee
, way before teenagers singing pop songs without instruments and dancing around with
no sense of irony was even
remotely
cool.

6
As I had been systematically going through my father’s pockets since grade school,
I had a pretty clear grasp of his net worth.

7
Yes, even in winter. I wore wool socks when it got cold, which had the effect of
making me look like a Women’s Studies professor, or a vegan bean sprout farmer who
lived in a yurt.

8
I think we also hoped, much like the people behind artists like Justin Bieber or
KISS, that a distinctive look would distract listeners from the fact that we were
a bit flimsy in the art department.

9
Much like Steve Jobs, we recognized early on the functionality and versatility of
the mock turtle. Unlike Steve Jobs, we got off that shit quickly. However, if I had
known that wearing them might have led to founding a multibillion-dollar technology
company, I’d still be rocking that shit now.

10
There were other maudlin and forgettable New Wave songs we performed. Norwegian pop
supergroup A-ha, anyone?

11
Or a fraternity basement drenched in beer and urine, which was our usual milieu.

12
I am Mr. Smirking Self-Satisfaction.

13
Nothing particularly complex, however, as I am utterly uncoordinated. Add singing
to dancing and you’ve got a quick way for me to poke myself in the eye. Which I have
done, unprovoked, on more than one occasion. Ta-dah!

1
It is definitely
not
getting hot in herre.

2
I can do an excellent Wop, and under pressure I can deliver a serviceable Running
Man. Honestly, that’s about it. I’m more of an ideas person.

3
Guitar Hero does. Not. Count.

4
Even using the phrase “funky beat” disqualifies me from ever being able to recognize
one. I sound like a character from
Yo Gabba Gabba
.

5
Using a visibly unwashed hand to stir vodka into fruit juice is not exercise.

6
In retrospect, no one could help us. We were a lost cause.

7
He didn’t believe in us at all. We offered him tears, then booze, and finally money.

8
Although in Michael’s latter days, he resembled her far more than he resembled me.

9
Where did this person grow up, a Russian gulag?

1
Yes, it does get out of hand. No one can organize and structure shit, even binge
drinking, like the kids of the Ivy League.

2
Our country is lousy with drunken dummies. We have elevated it to an art form. Witness
the popularity of
The Hangover
.

3
If cold is a problem for you, I suggest the University of Hawaii. You could pass
out on a street corner every night at UH and the worse that would happen is someone
would tuck a hibiscus bloom behind your ear while you snoozed.

4
By way of context, the man who wrote
Animal House
attended Dartmouth and was a member of the Alpha Delta fraternity. He based that
script on his experiences as an undergraduate. And from what I can tell, he toned
them down considerably.

5
No, fraternities and sororities were not invented just to give you someone to hate
in movies like
Revenge of the Nerds
and
Van Wilder
.

1
Snap.

2
Yes, we call it THE City. Suck on it like a lozenge, New York.

3
I have no idea if this is true. It just really seems like it is.

4
Typical Saturday.

5
Let’s just get one thing out of the way right now. There is no such thing as “spare
change.” Spare change is just small pieces of money that you haven’t assembled into
bigger pieces of money and spent yet. That being said, if you can spare a quarter,
you can probably spare a dollar, so stop being such a selfish prick.

6
I once had a friend tell me that if I gave a homeless guy money he would just spend
it on booze. To which I replied, “If I gave YOU money you would just spend it on booze.”
He had no retort for that.

7
For the record, I do give to charitable organizations now. But I also still give
money to homeless people. It’s nice to see what you give end up in the fingers of
the person who will actually get to spend it. On booze, or hamburgers, or whatever.
His dollar, his choice.

8
This is pre-Internet, so this was a real feat.

9
I’m spitballing here—buy a giant bottle of Mad Dog, fourteen Filet-O-Fish sandwiches,
and a pack of cigarettes, and bury the rest in a hole of undetermined location to
be retrieved by their executors when they die and are discovered to have left thousands
of dollars to a neighborhood school or local YMCA.

1
Dartmouth was punishingly expensive—my college loans were like a mortgage—and that
was a zillion years ago. Nowadays, you’d have to form your own SuperPAC to raise enough
money to send a child there.

2
So
unflattering. Walking into a corporate office is like stumbling across a team of
reanimated cadavers tapping listlessly at keyboards, trying very hard not to seem
dead.

3
Who am I hurting,
really
?

4
To this day, I do not believe in panty hose. I’m not saying I don’t wear them (although
I don’t; a few visible scars on a lady’s shins show she’s lived a full life and fears
nothing), I’m saying I don’t
believe
in them. To me they do not exist, much like Santa, unicorns or black water polo players.

5
This philosophy persists to this day. If you aren’t going to put everything you have
into something, dude, don’t bother. You can always kill it at sitting on the couch
fucking up some Hot Pockets. For guaranteed success, aim for the middle.

6
This is why they always say: “Find something you love, then find a way to make money
at it.” That way, the excellence of your own work will be its own reward. Of course,
if what you’re good at is smoking pot in the morning in front of your Xbox, it’s gonna
be pretty hard to translate that into gainful employment. Put down the bong. What
are you, twelve?

7
They talked about science on that show, right?

8
Comedy, even comedy done poorly, is like candy. Even butterscotch has a bland yet
sticky appeal. If you laugh just once during a show, even if it is
at
the comedian rather than
with
them, you have laughed. That is all that matters.

9
Man, if you have to
pay
to let other people see you naked, you need to reexamine your entire life approach
and make some serious changes. Having to make it rain on yourself is a Moebius Strip
of sadness.

10
Late
and
lazy. I’m a keeper.

11
My boyfriend laughed but that didn’t count because he was trying to get laid.

12
Sweet, sweet
char siu
, how did people ever live without you?

13
He laughed at my jokes,
and
he bought me dumplings? Come on. Double score.

1
Good luck with that, buddy. You’re a braver man than me. And much more willing to
be utterly and completely alone.

2
Metaphorically most of the time, but yes, occasionally, literally.

3
You might think you’d be looking for someone who keeps bombing over and over again,
but it’s not as easy as you think. Some baby comedians
are
preternaturally talented, and are hilarious right from the get-go. Of course, we’ll
never tell
them
that, but it does happen.

4
I am speaking, of course, of the royal you. And by royal you, I mean royal
me
.

5
Also:
I Don’t Use Birth Control and so Deserve My Own Show
,
I Am Using My Child to Fulfill My Failed Dreams of Being a Beauty Queen
,
I Am a Self-Involved Asshole Using Television to Find Myself a Date with a Similarly
Self-Involved Asshole
, and
The Apprentice
.

6
Just ask the lady with the eight kids. Or that other guy who contributed the sperm.
I forgot their names.