Prompted by allography

@rysimmons Yo, chill with both the Magic: The Gathering AND tryna find a GF. They are contradictory and neither are important. #RealTalk

PS I checked to make sure this was under 140 characters and actually changed it so that it was and I probably have a brain disease.

Prompted by allography

Hello, sexless great grandchild of mine! Thank you for taking time out of your busy deci-chron (back in my time, we used to call them “days!”) to read a note from your great grandpa.

Firstly, I’m glad you were able to find this letter. I originally wrote it on a piece of paper, but I’m sure by your time paper will become either obsolete or a viable currency due to its rarity, so I transferred it to a digital document. Hopefully, if formats have changed between now and your time, someone has transcoded this to a format you can read on your internal brain chip. (Don’t forget to charge yourself before you go to bed! Just make sure you use the right charger, or you will certainly kill yourself from too much voltage. And nobody wants that!)

I wish I could be alive to see you. Unfortunately, processed sugars and cell phone radiation have become for us what cigarettes were for generations before ours, in that people consumed them with complete disregard to their possible health effects and gave us all cancer. Hopefully you learn from the mistakes of generations before you, but you won’t, because humans are stupid and that is a constant that will never change.

Just by reading this on your intra-ocular scanning device, you already know more about me than I knew about my great grandfather. Isn’t technology amazing? Assuming this message hasn’t been wiped out by a Chinese EMP satellite (that probably sounds so quaint to you!), you are receiving a communique that has been perfectly preserved through many decades by technology that was for previous centuries unavailable. All I knew about my great grandfather was that he was a drunk farmer who lied and said he was from Ireland, when really he was German. So I have no idea where you or I came from, just that we’re here.

Think about that; you have tools at your disposal that my generation could only dream of. The shit of it is: we had technology that our great-grandfathers couldn’t fathom, and all we used it for was the easy distribution of free porn and cat videos, or video games about shooting and killing other people, or the ability to look up the lyrics to Seal’s “Kiss From a Rose” from almost anywhere on earth (usually in some shitty karaoke bar). Try to use whatever nanotechnology you have in your time for something better than “Horse E-Books” (if you’re unfamiliar, please ask your teaching robot.)

My final lesson to you, great grandchild, would be to just be good to other people. Culture in my time suggests that by the time you’re born, the world will be a mid- or post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland, brought about by hatred, fear, and ultimately, world war, destroying everything we love and creating a distopian society. So, I mean, that right there is a reason to just be cool, you know?

But I’m not an idiot — I’m not going to base what I know about your time on Minority Report or Escape from LA (both are only OK movies anyway). There is a real possibility that you live in a time where solar energy powers your transport machines, where people of all sexual orientations, beliefs, and colors can socialize in peace while watching Pyramid Ball matches, and nobody wants for Credits. Perhaps, although you may not have world peace, you live in the most exciting, prosperous, and hopeful time in human history. If that is the case, that is even more of a reason to never for one second take advantage of it. Treat people with respect and kindness, always, even when you think it doesn’t matter. Because it always matters.

I’ve kept you far too long. Go, go to your Virtual Reality Tournament or your Fantasy Vacation Machines or whatever you kids do for fun nowadays. And stay away from Swaving (what I assume will become sex brain-waving, our ‘sexting’).

-Your great-grandpa

PS If you get a chance, swing by and reanimate this old man’s corpse!

Prompted by anonymous.

I hope you don’t mind that it took my so long to answer your question; I had to Rumi-nate over it for a bit.

YES YES YES NAILED IT

Anyway, on to your question. I don’t have a “barrier against love!” I think it should be pretty obvious that the massive, all-consuming need to be loved is what informs almost everything I do. I do not apologize for what I recognize is an clinical mental sickness.

See? That is the thing. I am so consumed by being accepted by my peers that I constantly need to be reminded how much they love me. I do relationship maintenance the way some people obsess over their cars. I need to make sure all the parts still work. The parts of the sick, disgusting machine that make me feel better about myself. So that is what I meant when I said I do relationship maintenance. I am not afraid of love, I am afraid you are not going to like me.

Yes, I am horrible.

Prompted by anonymous.

This one was so hard, because I couldn’t think of any bad things I’ve done because I am perfect because like everyone else I block out things I’ve done to people and are ashamed of!

But I came up with a few, so let’s see.

There’s the time in the 8th grade I told a girl in school that my best friend John had a crush on her, because I knew she didn’t like him back and because I also had a crush on her. He was mortified.

There’s the time I embarrassed a dude in college by applauding him while was about to bang a girl, then apologized and explicitly promised not to tell the other girl he actually had feelings for, then went and told that girl.

And there’s the time I went snooping through an ex-girlfriend’s cell phone because I thought she was cheating on me (she wasn’t, I think).

But for some reason I settled on the time I got a kid kicked out of the high school musical.

I think because it’s just so fucking catty.

My high school choral teacher was wildly unprofessional. She was the type of teacher who had favorites in class and made almost no attempt to hide it. She had her little circle of musical kids that would hang out with her outside of class and feed her gossip about other kids. It was a lot like the Slug Club in Harry Potter. I was in it and I loved it.

By the time I was a senior in high school I was kind of a shit head. Most of this I attribute to the fact that I started my freshman year as a total loser, but was able to weasel my way into some key parts of the spring high school musical which was a big deal in our town every year, second only to football games. So by the time I hit senior year, I finally had a group of friends and was sort of the “leader” of a group, in so far as a smug, petty asshole can be the leader of a group other mostly smug, petty assholes.

(I should take a moment here as an aside and recognize that my best friends, both inside and out of the musicals, were not smug, petty assholes, and how they put up with me, I’ll never know.)

My senior year, we produced “Big: The Musical,” which you’ll be shocked to find was a complete flop the year it debuted on Broadway, in part because it premiered the same weekend as RENT, and in part because it is not a very good musical. I played Mac, the old man toy store owner.

But in that not very good musical, the Zoltar machine that grants Josh his wish to be a grown up was also a part, and that part belong to this kid named Breakfast Steve. He was named Breakfast Steve because he went out of his way to bring breakfast to everyone in his first period music class.

Now, it’s hard to say now if Breakfast Steve was actually being genuine with this act of kindness or if it was a desperate and dishonest attempt to get people to like him. All I know is that at the time, I fucking hated him. There were a few other reasons, but I know now that they weren’t very good.

One day I, along with another girl in the cast, was hanging out with the choral teacher/musical director in her office. That is what we did in our spare time. We hung out with this lady in her office. I am hating myself just writing this.

Eventually the conversation turned to Breakfast Steve, and his blog. My senior year of high school was when over-sharing on the Internet was a trendy new fad, rather than the part of everyday life it has become. On his blog, Steve spent a solid post and a half ragging on the musical, the process, how hard it was, and how much he didn’t like it.

I think. I remember being really incensed about it, but looking back, again, I could have been way off.

Whatever it was that he said, I definitely know now that it was a frustrated rant from a kid that probably still loved being in the musical, and didn’t warrant bringing to the teacher’s attention — which was exactly what we did. She asked us to bring it up on her computer, then she read it, then asked us politely to leave.

That day after school, the bulletin board outside the auditorium that had our rehearsal schedule and other resources had this note tacked to it:

Steve,

Your experience in this production has been terminated. Please hand in your materials as soon as possible.

-A

Whelp! We had gone and gotten Steve kicked out of the show.

It was a strange mix of feelings. I really, really didn’t like the guy. And he had named our teacher personally in that blog post (I think). But as someone who had a history of ridicule and embarrassment under his belt, I should have known first hand that such a public dismissal must have been mortifying for anybody. Basically, he didn’t deserve that. Crowds of other kids stood around and gave their unsolicited opinions. Later, Steve was told why he had been terminated — but not how she found the blog post. He accepted this with the maturity that an embarrassed 17 year old rarely possesses, kicking himself for posting something he shouldn’t have, not realizing that I was more responsible than he was, really.

I remember thinking all of this even more intensely a few weeks later when, in addition to Mac, I also played Zoltar; the part that Steve lost was given to me.

Prompted by anonymous.

I sort of resisted this one for a while, because I feel like ruminating about regrets over a certain period of your life makes you The Guy That Never Left. We all know a Guy That Never Left. Maybe it was The Guy Who Never Left High School, or The Guy Who Never Left The Office (looking your way, David Brent). Spending time poring over regrets rings somewhat pathetic to me.

But then I realized, we all have regrets, and that is a perfectly naturally thing to experience and nobody cares what I think about them.

So, regrets!

This is going to sound kind of gross, so I suggest you just kinda stick with me on this one and read all the way to the end and then you can be like “Yeah that was gross,” or “Okay I kind of see what he was going for there.” So here it is: I regret not sleeping around more.

Here’s the thing. I am a serial monogamist. I love being in relationships! I am in one right now and it is very very good (hello, Ali)! I love the comfort and security it brings me and I don’t like being alone because when I am, I am emotionally, what they call, “not good.” That is a clinical term used by absolutely nobody.

The thing is, I’ve seemed to develop this fixation very early on in my life, compared to other people. The attitude culturally seems to be that one should “play the field” when they’re younger and reserve long-term relationships for when you’re older. I think this is bullshit.

But I do also feel like college is not only the most appropriate time for one to explore their carnal urges. It just happens to be the easiest. There is literally no other place or time in the world where you can participate in near guilt-free sex with multiple partners.

It’s really not just about the sex, though. In fact, I would rather somebody have no relationships than have one serious, long-term relationship in college. Sex aside, college is just not conducive to a caring, deep relationship, in my opinion. There’s too much going on! You are being assaulted by hormones and feelings and activities and people at all times! ALL TIMES! You are literally figuring out how to work your body now that you are finished growing physically and starting to grow mentally. That is pretty much the most toxic environment for a relationship I’ve ever heard of. Having a serious relationship in college is like trying to have a serious conversation about your taxes during a show by the Blue Man Group.

I spent way, WAY too much time pursuing long-term relationships with several people before I realized that college is just not the place for that, and I embarrassed myself in the process. So I regret that; I guess the random sex is secondary.

***

Also, to be more specific to my Penn State experience, I wouldn’t say I regret NOT doing a particular thing, but I DO regret participating in THON. Fucking hated it, in fact.

For the uninitiated, THON is basically this year long charity that raises money for pediatric cancer patients and their families and culminates in this huge 46-hour Dance Marathon around March times and it sucks and I hate it.

I hate all of the righteous bullshit and entitlement that hides behind the fact that it’s a massive philanthropic organization. And it’s hard to hate something that raises millions of dollars every year that goes directly to kids with cancer and their families. The money does go to a good place — last year alone they raised over $9 million. And there are a lot of people who believe in it and contribute for all the wrong reasons.

But I would say that a strong majority can’t say that about themselves. The entire thing is run by the campus’ Greek system — the frats and the sororities — which aren’t exactly bastions of good behavior and morals, on the whole. I was involved as an “officer,” which means I helped organize the event. Everyone else that participates is part of an “org,” your frat/sorority or your club or whatever. And some of those people act like the brattiest motherfuckers you’ve ever seen in your life, and feel justified about acting that way because they asked their parents or their aunts and uncles to donate like 10 bucks to this thing. I once saw, from behind the scenes, a sorority threaten to pull all of their donations because their dancers didn’t receive numbers 1 through 4 to wear for the marathon. Ugh.

It was one of those sobering experiences that kind of makes you realize, “Huh, even people that raise money for kids with cancer are kind of assholes sometimes.”

Prompted by allography.

Well, let’s see here.

I am going to tackle “boff” first, because that’s just the way my brain works. I am a pervert.

Because I’m so tall (I stand at 6’5”), one would think I have a natural attraction to tall ladies and would therefore go for the 50 Foot Woman. Not true! First of all, I am actually quite attracted to shorter women. In fact, my current girlfriend is a 3-foot tall genetically deformed dwarf I like to keep in a dog carrier. Kidding! Am I? Yes.

Not only that, but if we’re talking about scale here, the 50 Foot Woman’s vagina is probably HUGE and I would therefore be unable to satisfy her in any meaningful way (SURPRISE SURPRISE). Unless I scaled to the top of it and used her… you know… as a trampoline. Graphic, and unnecessary. So she’s out.

Thumbelina, on the flip side of that coin, I would tear in half with one thrust. So she’s out, too.

But Cruela de Vile… now you’re talking my language. There is probably so much pent-up sexual repression there that it is practically boiling over. Everyone loves a good hate-screw, and with Cruela, you’re probably talking the TOPS. She practically invented it.

Plus, there is nothing in the unwritten rules of Marry Boff Kill that says I have to hang out with Cruela de Vile any time before or after the act in question. So it’s not like I’m taking her out to dinner or anything.

And lastly, I am totally okay sleeping with emotionally cold or distant women; BEEN THERE, DONE THAT.

I would request a younger version of Cruela, but would be totally fine with the Glenn Close version, if it came to that. I’m not picky.

BOFF: CRUELA DE VILE

And after that, the rest of it comes quite easily, doesn’t it? Thumbelina is actually kind of a sweetheart, isn’t she? I think maybe that’s a short woman thing. Most of them tend to be very caring and sensitive, so she might make a good wife. Of course, I say this knowing really nothing more about her, but isn’t that like marriage?

MARRY: THUMBELINA

And then we’re left to kill the 50 Foot Woman. Sorry, 50 Foot Woman, but we can’t have you traipsing around crushing people’s families and pulling airplanes out of the air and shit. Not only are you romantically not viable, but you’re a nuisance to health and welfare of society. Boy, I am really laying this on thick. Let’s just kill her and get it over with.

KILL: THE 50 FOOT WOMAN

Well that was weird.

Prompted by sarahjburton.

This was a tough one because the truth is that I find a bit of genuine pride in all of the embarrassing things that I do. If you don’t do that, falling flat on your face and looking like an asshole is only the fun for the people around you. You can make bad decisions and awful circumstances fun for you, too; MY ENTIRE LIFE IS ONLY FILLED WITH THOSE THINGS. (That should be the title of my self-help book, which itself would probably be an embarrassing disappointment.)

I actually have a recent event that would qualify well for this prompt, but unfortunately, it has to do with work and I’d probably lose my job. BUMMER

The only other one that I thought about for this prompt has been the inspiration for another piece already wrote, so I’m going to cheat a little bit today and share that article instead, which originally appeared on Thought Catalog. Enjoy!

***

How I Insulted A Blogger, Then Asked Him For A Job

Aug. 19, 2011

I hate networking emails. I despise everything about them. I hate getting them, and I hate sending them. I know that for some people there’s value in reaching out to people in your field, establishing connections and nurturing relationships. To me, they usually just read as really candy-coated attempts at saying “Hey, I kind of need a job, whatchu got?” especially if it’s to someone you’ve never met before. Blech. I’d rather get a beer.

I have had a few former colleagues and friends who have been kind enough to hook me up with people they know that have jobs I admire, and I’m always grateful for the kind gesture. But the actual correspondence with these people always gives me the heebie-jeebies. It’s no fault of the person on the other end; I just have this weird guilt thing about networking. I’m told “it’s just a part of the working world.” I guess.

A few months ago, my girlfriend, her friend and I were sharing a drink when I expressed my interest in finding a better job. My girlfriend’s buddy told me about her cousin, a guy who works for a comedy website that I love, and who, coincidentally, used to work for my current employer. And the name (which I’m changing for this story) sounded familiar: Rob A.

Rob A? Rob A. Where had I heard that name before?

She offered to introduce us via email; I immediately declined. “I could never,” I explained. “I don’t want to come off as desperate.”

“You wouldn’t!” she replied. “He’s super nice and I’m sure he’d love to talk shop with you.” I told her I’d think about it.

After a few weeks of being pestered by my girlfriend for passing up a good opportunity, I pulled the trigger and told the friend I’d really appreciate the connection. She emailed both me and her cousin by way of introduction, and I responded with a short (and, I thought, charming) note about how I really dug the site he works for, and if he had any advice for navigating the place he left, that’d be great too, since that’s where I was working now.

A few days went by with no response, and I figured he was either too busy or not interested enough to respond. Then he did respond, and I realized I would never send another networking email again for the rest of my life.

The letter started off pleasant enough, but about half-way through I noticed something was awry. The tone was off; it was succinct and pleasant, but almost unnervingly so. Then came the grand finale:

“Best, Rob. P.S. Good thing I never saw that blog you wrote in which you called me a vagina and a girl crying on her period. Boy would that have been awkward.”

It all came back to me in a sickening flash.

Rob, while working for my current employer, had written an article 18 months prior in which he expressed his relief that a popular television show was coming to an end, and he hoped that the constant fan chatter surrounding the show would also cease. I flexed my weak Internet Snark muscle on my personal bullshit Tumblr blog and wrote a completely unnecessary, heavy-handed, profanity laced hit piece of a response to this “Rob,” who I had never met. “Who the fuck does this ‘Rob’ think he is, anyway?” I thought. I was livid, personally offended, and this was my opportunity to hit some Internet big wig right where it hurt — right on my blog with a total audience of about 12. It was less a defense of fanboys like me, and more an opportunity to be “funny” at this guy’s expense. I went back and read the post; it was awful. In addition to calling him a “vagina” and “a girl crying on her period,” I also told him to “shut his goddamn mouth,” and that he probably looks great in his “Shirley Temple dress.” You know, really funny stuff.

Well, fuck.

So there I sat, staring at his perfect email. And it was perfect; the saccharine-sweet body was the prime set-up for the gut-punching postscript. I thought about how to respond. Not only did I insult this guy for absolutely no reason, but I also forgot his name and then proceeded to try and networkwith him! UGH.

I went with: “Oh, THAT Rob A. Boy, I am an asshole,” and hit send.

I figured, after everything I’d said, few words were best.

Prompted by Anonymous.

Here is the deal with this one. This might be one of the worst things I’ve ever written. I’ll cop to that. It’s fucking terrible actually. And I’m not one to apologize for my product before you even get to see it. But ho man, I almost didn’t publish this.

But the point of this project is to just write. Just, you know, poop out that poop. Get it out and on to the screen when prompted by simple prompts, like this one.

So what follows is the first thing that popped into my head, traveled down into my fingers and got pooped out on to the keyboard. What?

I’m sorry.

***

Justin wiped his greasy hands on a rag and looked up at the clock that hung in the corner of the garage. 5:30. The Mercedes wasn’t quite finished yet, but hey, it was time to split. He wouldn’t be spending one extra second at work — not on his birthday, at least.

He tensed as he passed Mr. Shickadance’s office window, waiting for the bellowing voice to follow him, as it always did. There was always something Justin was doing wrong, and he always expected to hear about it.

Today was no different.

“Hey, Mickey Mouse!” Mr. Shickadance called from inside his office when he spotted Justin pass by. He never passed up an opportunity to lob that nickname at him. It was a worn tire that needed changing.

Shickadance bounded out of his office door, calling again. “Hey, Timberlake!”

Justin stopped, took a deep breath, and turned. “Yes, Mr. Shickadance?”

Justin couldn’t stand Shickadance’s fat, sweaty rolls that bulged out of his greasy wife-beater. He couldn’t stand his smokey voice or his back hair. But most of all, Justin couldn’t stand how Mr. Shickadance seemed to hang Justin’s past over his head in every conversation.

“Where you off to so fast, Timberlake?” he sneered. “Off to rehearsal?” He gave a throaty laugh.

Justin didn’t answer, and never had to.

“Is the Mercedes done?” he croaked.

“No, Mr. Shickadance, almost, but it’s already 5:30 and—”

“Almost ain’t gonna put that Mercedes on the street,” said Shickadance. Justin already knew he was in for a late night. “I don’t want you leaving until it’s finished. Unless you got somewhere better to be? The clubhouse, perhaps?”

Shickadance gave another ugly, throaty laugh, went into his smoky office, and closed the door.

And so it was, Justin Timberlake spent his 30th birthday fixing cars at Shickadance Motors.

***

When he finally walked in the door, Justin was about ready to collapse. It was 9:30 already, and he hadn’t eaten already. He probably wouldn’t. Sleep seemed like a sweeter release.

He walked into the living room to see his roommate, Ryan, sprawled on the couch and halfway through a six-pack. Justin thought something might be wrong, but only because Ryan should have been more than halfway through that thing by now.

“What up, Goz?” Justin asked as he slumped in the arm chair.

Ryan grunted in response. His eyes fixated on some singing competition show on television.

“You mind if I crack in on these?” asked Justin.

Ryan shot him a look. “Tough day with Shickadance?”

“You could say that,” replied Justin. He cracked a beer and heard the sweet hiss of the stuff coming out of the can. He took a long pull.

“Happy birthday, by the way,” Ryan said. He wasn’t a very emotional guy.

“Thanks, man.” A moment of shared silence. Then: “Anything good at the restaurant today? You make decent tips?”

“You’re looking at it, brother,” Ryan said, gesturing to his six pack.

That night, Justin Timberlake and his roommate, Ryan Gosling, watched X-Factor and drank beer, in silence.

***

The next morning, Justin woke up and looked at the clock. It was 9 am, but he had the day off. He had tried to get Mr. Shickadance to switch this day off with yesterday so he wouldn’t have to work on his birthday. In traditional Shickadance fashion, he refused.

Justin laid in bed for another hour, depressed, before deciding to get up and shuffle down the hall for some breakfast. A look in the fridge confirmed what Justin had feared: no milk, no cheese, just one egg and some condiments. Things were tight around the apartment. His mechanic’s wages were okay but no great, and Ryan’s tips seemed to be dwindling over the past few months. The rent had gone up. Voice and dance lessons had become more expensive.

Justin cracked the egg, threw it onto a pan, and waited for it to cook. He contemplated giving up his stupid dream of becoming a star. He and Ryan had said they’d be in it together, until the very end, ever since they had met on the set of The Mickey Mouse Club in 1993. They had roomed together during their time on the show and had been friends ever since, sharing dreams of one day making it big; Ryan a big-time actor, and Justin a singer-dancer like Michael Jackson.

But after the show was over, work dried up, and so did their dreams.

Justin looked down from his daydream to realize his egg was burning. He was about to throw it away when Ryan flung open the front door of the apartment and burst inside. Justin jumped, because he had thought Ryan was still in his bedroom sleeping off a hangover. When he realized it was Ryan, he was momentarily relieved, until he took a good look at him. Ryan was breathing heavily; he had also obviously been crying.

He wasn’t sure why, but he knew that whatever Ryan had just encountered would change their lives forever.

***

It took Justin close to thirty minutes to get Goz to settle down, take a seat, drink a glass of water, catch his breath, and get him to start talking in coherent sentences.

Finally, he got his friend of 20-plus years to explain what it was that put him in such a state. Suddenly, Justin wished he hadn’t asked to begin with.

He sat down across from the table and simply stared at Ryan. A long moment of tense silence passed as they sized each other up.

Ryan broke the silence. “So, what do you think?”

Justin shot him a look like he had just been slapped in the face but this ludicrous question. “What do I think?!” he exploded. “I think you’ve lost your fucking mind.”

“It’s true, I swear it. Just let me show you-” Ryan started, but it was too late. Justin was up on his feet and in Ryan’s face.

“Look. I get that things are tough around here. I get that things didn’t work out for us the way we wanted them to.” He started to raise his voice. “But I think it’s really sad, and really hurtful to me personally, that you would use that as an excuse to start using drugs.” He headed for the front door.

“I wasn’t high! I swear-“

“Fuck you, Goz.” He slammed the door behind him as he stormed out.

***

Justin spent the day walking around the city, dealing with what he had just heard. With the fact that his friend had lost his mind. And with the fact that, deep down… he believed Goz. And that was the hardest part to reconcile.

Because it’s not every day that your best friend and roommate breathlessly tries to explain to you that he saw a glimpse of an alternate universe. That in that alternate universe, you’re both mega-stars, and actor and a pop star, just like you dreamed you would be. That in that alternate universe, all of your dreams come true.

Ryan explained that, after Justin went to bed the night before, he had left the apartment, headed for the 7-11 to get more beer. It was outside that 7-11 that an old man he had never met before approached him and addressed him by name. Goz tried to brush him off a few times, but the old man kept telling Ryan things about his life that only Ryan knew (he didn’t go into details, but Justin got the point).

Then the old man started talking about fame and fortune, but in a way that made it convincing. Everything he told Ryan had a ring of truth to it. Or rather, it felt real, because none of the things he was talking about — movie deals, major awards, money and women — had actually happened. But it was almost as if he was conjuring memories in Ryan’s head that he didn’t know where there, he told Justin.

Then, just as Ryan began to come to his senses and walk away, the old man held up a mirror. It was a regular-sized hand mirror at first, but as Ryan looked into it, it seemed to grow several sizes larger. And inside that mirror, Ryan told Justin, was an entire other world. He had a hard time explaining this part, but because what he saw was beyond words. He was able to see, in one instant in a 7-11 parking lot, an entire other lifetime that belonged to him. Whole memories, people, relationships, careers came flooding back to him as if he were an amnesiac just waking up and recalling his life previous.

What felt like 30 years to Ryan in that parking lot ended up being mere seconds. Then the old man whispered into his ear, telling Ryan how to achieve all he saw in this world. What he heard shocked him to his core. He walked around the neighborhood all night before finally rushing back to the apartment, where he saw Justin.

Justin continued wandering into the night. Eventually he found himself rounding the corner near the 7-11, and began slowing up his pace, just to be sure.

As he came to the outskirts of the 7-11’s sickly orange light, he looked up to see an old man with long, dirty gray hair and deep, sullen eyes that looked directly into his. In his hand, he held a small mirror. He smiled. He beckoned. And he called out a phrase that Justin had never heard before, yet reverberated inside his body like the name of an old lover. “IN SYNC!” the man shouted at him. Justin ran.

***

It would be several long weeks before Ryan and Justin worked up the courage to return to the old man. In those weeks, they discussed the awful truth of what they knew, weighed the pros and cons of their decisions against the consequences that the old man laid out to Ryan in that parking lot. Justin knew them to be true. He knew from the moment he saw that old man that all of this was real — the other world proved to be too palpable to be just in their heads.

They made the walk to the 7-11 that night in silence, trying to internalize, or maybe justify, what they were going to do. Trying to take in the world around them — or what was left it.

When they finally arrived, they saw the old man waiting for them, in his spot. It was then they both realized that any time they ever saw the old man, it seemed like nobody was around. No customers at the counter, no cars at the pump. Better that nobody be around anyway, to see what would happen.

They approached the old man. It was Ryan who spoke first.

“We accept your offer,” Ryan said.

The old man gave a toothy grin. “Goooood,” he croaked.

He brandished his hand mirror and they all watched as it grew several sizes again. Large enough to be roughly the size of a grown man. It was both real and unreal.

The glass in the mirror shimmered, and then gave way to another world. Justin saw — no, felt — an entire world, another life, waiting for him to claim it. He knew everything about that world, that life, as though he had already lived it.

They looked at the old man.

“We’re scared,” said Justin. “Of what will happen here.”

“That we’ll somehow be held responsible,” Ryan added.

The old man regarded them for a moment.

“Worry not,” he replied. “There are other worlds than these, and none are your concern.”

And with that, they stepped into the mirror, into a world where they were loved by millions and made millions more. Away from the world of misery and near-poverty, of their crushed hearts and broken dreams.

The old man watched as they walked into the silvery mist and disappear. The mirror shrunk to its original size. He picked it up, and began walking, deciding what it was in this world he was going to destroy first.

Because now that their decision was made, there was work to be done.

***

FIN

If you made it this far, you’re free to punch me in the balls the next time you see me. Just give me a fair warning.

Oops! It seems I didn’t get to publish anything today, because I was busy putting together back-to-back episodes of my podcast, Movie ManDates. If you’re not familiar, GET familiar, here.

Tomorrow I get more to the writey-write, and less to the talky-talk.

Thanks!

Prompted by Anonymous

I’ll be honest with you, it was terrifying.

Which is so, so silly in retrospect, because my first improv show was with a team of twelve (TWELVE!) other people who had been doing it for not much longer than I had, in a Penn State campus lecture hall to about 40 people who had also probably never seen an improvised comedy show before.

I WAS TERRIFIED.

This is mostly because I had put a HUGE importance on doing comedy before I had gotten to Penn State. I was starving for a creative outlet that my high school couldn’t provide. I just wanted to do it, you know? Comedy. Performing, I guess. Anything, really, I didn’t care. And I got to Penn State and didn’t have any friends because I was a real sad-sack so I found this group in a database search of groups on campus. And I just sorta showed up.

It’s also so silly because college improv teams are the absolute worst. They are worse than going to the dentist. They are worse than “Whitney” on NBC. They are a bunch of kids who are starved for a creative outlet that their high schools didn’t provide and had been told that they were very funny for a very long time, but are too lazy to write or prepare a show and think improv is easy and everybody wants to watch them do it.

But, you know what? It’s fucking fun, too. To do it. Not always to watch. But to be fair, before I graduated, we tried to make the shows less masturbatory and tried to make them as fun as possible for the people who were good enough to come out at watch us every other Sunday night. I think we did a pretty good job.

That first show, though… whoo boy. That was atrocious.

For as dumb and stupid as college improv was (and is), I was really, really nervous to put myself out there like that. I don’t care if you’re in front of 40 or 40,000, if you’re the best comedian in the world or the sad-sack old man who is trying stand-up for the first time in the back of a shitty dive bar in Brooklyn, putting yourself out there like that, for the first time, when you have absolutely no idea how it’s going to go, is brave. Not, like, go off to war and lay down your life for your country brave. But still.

I remember entering, not to any sort of music or fanfare, but with a pre-scripted bit where we were all on one of the famed Penn State campus tours (it was the beginning of the fall semester), a half-hearted bit that just sort of petered out until one of us, probably Jeff, said, “Welcome to Full Ammo Improv!” and prompted the audience to clap for us.

Then we stumbled through like two dozen short-form improv games, the type you might see on Whose Line Is It Anyway? (“You’re a doctor, and he is your patient, and you have to say each line with the next letter of the alphabet, and then you go home and question your lives and maybe kill yourself.”)

Then the show ended and everyone came up and told us what a great job we did and we went to an all-night diner and had fries and it was the most fun I’d ever had.

College improv shows suck but without them I wouldn’t be who I am today: an unfunny hack with just enough of a sense of superiority to shit on college improv shows.