Monthly Archives: August 2011

NOTE: this is NOT about you, Nick.

Okay.  Now that we have that out of the way…

* * *

My roommate has his girlfriend over constantly and they’ve been crazy sexual in front of me.  Like, he’s taken out her tits and bounced them around in the living room whilst I’m having breakfast. A friend told me I should talk to him about it, but I have no idea how to broach the topic.  Plus, I’m afraid it’ll progressively become more and more honest, like –

Josh: “Listen, man, I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t, you know, use the common areas to finger your girlfriend.”
Roommate: “Why?”
Josh: “Don’t really feel like I need to say why.”
Roommate: “Does it bother you ‘cause you’re so sexually inexperienced?”
Josh: “Well that’s not – I mean, yes, but it just seems a little…like, it’s a private thing?  So, I don’t know, just…less of it, please.”
Roommate: “If you had a girlfriend, I’d let you do crazy shit while I was here.”
Josh: “Well that’s an entirely different — never mind.  Can we just focus on the present right now?”
Roommate: “Dude, why is this bothering you?”
Josh: “Because I deserve to date someone like your girlfriend and I’m not, which makes me kind of angry when I have to see it all the time.”
Roommate: “You wanna date my girlfriend?”
Josh: “I said someone like her…although, frankly, I do think she’d go for me.”
Roommate: “Is there something else going on here, bro?”
Josh: “Okay, yes, so I masturbate to the sounds coming from your bedroom, imagining I’m part of a threesome with one too many guys, but that’s not the issue.”
Roommate: “What’s the issue?”
Josh: “I think you’re a goddamn douchebag who doesn’t deserve a girlfriend at all, and the more you treat her like a piece of meat, the more it reminds me that idiots like you get all of the good girls while I get rejection after rejection for being some clearly anachronistic gentleman.  SO FUCKING STOP IT!!!” {OFF of his roommate’s horrified look, calmly} “…please.”

I’ve always been attracted to darker-skinned women.

Luckily, I didn’t grow up in one of those neighborhoods with only one black kid.  No.  There were…at least six.

In particular, I had a big crush on this girl named Leticia.  The teachers would always call on her when we were studying civil rights, like –

Teacher: “Leticia, what do you think about these issues?”
Leticia: “Um…I don’t know…I’m nine?” {then} “When’s recess?”

People were always embarrassingly ignorant around her.  They’d be like –

White girl: “What part of Africa are you from?”
Leticia: “Atlanta.”

I remember a group of our friends watched some “black” movie together (see: any terrible film with Martin Lawrence or Mike Epps), and they asked her –

Friend: {re: black people} “Are you all that poor and loud?”

When we watched Friends on TV, she fired back –

Leticia: {re: white people} “Are you all that rich and shallow?”

I never had a relationship with Leticia.  Despite my attraction to black women, there’s always something that causes our relationships to…never actually start.

* * *

I took a bunch of black history classes in college, probably thinking that’d get me into the group.  I fantasized about being invited to black parties, all of us playing some ethnic game like “Pin the Tail on the Honky.”

There was this one girl in particular who sat in the back of the classroom — always spoke her mind, walked with pride, wore an angry-looking Malcolm X t-shirt.

I was determined to date her by any means necessary.

But she hated me — because I didn’t articulate.  As her friends beat me up, I’d yell –

Josh: “No, I said, ‘Enigma!”  There’s an ‘m.’”

If that wasn’t bad enough, I had moments in the class where I displayed textbook behavior of the “racist liberal,” the individual who tries so hard to seem accepting and hip that s/he ends up saying things like –

Josh: “What’s your favorite Spike Lee joint?”

- or -

Josh: “I have framed pictures of MLK in my apartment.”

- or -

Josh: “Wanna come over and listen to jazz?”

* * *

To this day, I haven’t had the honor to date a black girl.  Growing up with the hip-hop music videos that I did, though, there’s always a part of me that feared that if I ever wronged a black girl, she’d start chastising me with song and choreographed dance.  I’d be like –

Josh: “How did you suddenly get all of your friends into the living room?  And where did you find the time to learn all of these dance moves?!”

* * *

Still, most black people I know think white people will never get it.  And if by “get it,” they mean, “give a black woman an orgasm,” they’re probably right.

Yearbooks were the worst.

First of all, no one wrote anything memorable in them.  It was always –

Everyone: “Never change!”

I was like –

Josh: “Yeah?  You want me to remain fourteen, with one friend, pimples, and a small dick?”

Everyone else was like –

Everyone else: “Have a good summer, Jew Lehmon.”

I looked at the page, like –

Josh: “Seriously, David?  You’ve been my best friend for over ten years and that’s all you got?  You didn’t even spell my name correctly.”
David: “Cram it, Jew.”

I took the reverse approach.  I wrote messages like –

Dear Chris,

Please spend this summer working on your anger problem.  And let’s just avoid the awkwardness now: don’t keep in touch.  Just because my mom has a pool and our moms get along does NOT mean you can be my friend.

Love,
Josh

P.S. You should really do something about that acne.

* * *

Even if someone wrote something nice in my yearbook, I just assumed it was negative.

“K.I.T.”

Josh: “What is that?  ‘Keep it tight?’  Is that an anal threat?”

* * *

…and the captions never matched the photos.  That always bothered me. A snapshot of three kids in a gang fight would be accompanied by the caption –

Caption: “Boy, I sure love the school pizza!”

They’d have a shot of the cheerleaders saying –

Caption: “School spirit is fun!”

I’m thinking, As much as I want to believe they’re dumb, they don’t talk that unintelligently.

In fact, the only appropriate caption I can remember accompanied a photo of my friends and I.  Under a sad picture of us trying to figure out our math homework, it read –

Caption: “Check out these ‘tards!”

Everything about my grandmother is paradoxical.  She is inspiring and annoying in the same sentence, whimsical in thought but (mostly) pragmatic in action, a highly literate bookworm and philosopher who spends her free time gambling.

At 82 years old, she will complain of “heart skips,” then immediately jump into an energetic tap dance routine that she remembers from her youth.

She’ll stare at a butterfly, asking, “With things this beautiful, how could you not believe in God?” then shrug, and admit, “Well, I guess the Holocaust.”

She’ll tell me that she hopes I find my soul mate one day.  Then, when I am lonely, says, “You’re too critical, Josh.  What’s wrong with dating girls who are stupid?”

She becomes sentimental, tearing up as she tells me, “I love you to the moon and back.”  Then, after learning the word “jism,” has to be told by her daughter to stop saying it in public (to which my grandmother defiantly responds, “Oh, I’m 82 years old!  Jism, jism, jism!”)

There are times when she waxes philosophical, doling out aphorisms like, “Money is the great deodorant,” and there are times when she is simply an angry, protective grandmother, asking who has been mean to me so that she can “kick them in the parts.”

A great woman, a flawed woman, and one of my favorites.  What follows are ten of her choice quotes — some humorous, some sad, and some strangely profound…

* * *

10. Grandmother: “My pants are uncomfortable.  They’re going into my bum and my crotch.” {whispering} “And it’s not even fun!”
Josh: “I think you whispered the wrong part.”

9. Grandmother: “How are you, Josh?”
Josh: “I feel okay right now.  Give it a week or two before I start complaining about not knowing what I’m doing with my life.”
Grandmother: “Shake hands with the rest of the world.  No one does.”

8. Grandmother: “The only difference between a breakthrough and a breakdown is a sense of direction.”

7. Grandmother: “Are you getting scared?”
Josh: “That’s a good way to start a phone call.”
Grandmother: “Are you?”
Josh: “Scared about what?”
Grandmother: “Not having a job.”
Josh: “Uh…I mean, not really.”
Grandmother: “You’re not worried that you’ll be out of work for so long that you’ll be unemployable by the time you finally find a good position?  That they’ll see such a large gap between jobs and think something must be terribly wrong?”
Josh: “Well, now.”

6. Grandmother: {re: her sister with Alzheimer’s} “That’s not living; that’s existing.”

5. Grandmother: {reading a quote from a newspaper article} “To those who can hear the great voices of nature in the silence and feel the thrill of kinship with every living thing, the oneness with everything that is: To those who listen into life more than sound transmits, who can see more than the eye perceives, reads more than is written and feels more than the senses record…” {placing it in Josh’s hand, wrapping his fingers around it} “I want you to read that at my funeral…which will probably be tomorrow.”

4. Josh: “I’m afraid I’ll be bad in bed.”
Grandmother: “Even if you are, I’m sure you’ll be creative.”

3. Grandmother: “It’s impossible to be my age and not think, ‘Gee, that was a bad decision’ or ‘Oh, I shouldn’t have done this and this and that…’  Whatever.  Do what you want to do, don’t hurt anyone, and try not to get run over by a bus.  The end.”

2. Josh: “You know how Mom says that some people will have to have another go-around at life because they haven’t figured certain things out in this one?
Grandmother: “Yeah.”
Josh: “Well, you’re gonna have to work on this whole ‘status’ thing in your next life.”
Grandmother: “No I won’t, because in my next life I’ll be queen.”

1. Josh: {picks up his cell phone} “Hey Grammy, I’m about to walk into a movie.  Can I call you back?”
Grandmother: “Sure.  No guarantee I’ll still be around, though.”
Josh: “You going out?”
Grandmother: “No — but I might die.”
{Pause}
Josh: “Well that was guilt-inducing.”
Grandmother: “I hope so.”

– Happiness is just an indication that you’re not very self-aware…according to my therapist.

– Therapists, by the way, are some of the most unhappy, screwed-up people alive.  After all, nobody wants to help people unless they can help themselves through other people.

(My therapist told me that, too.)

– The happiest I ever see people, they’re like –

People: “Whoo!  I’m on vacation.  Whoo!  I’m high on drugs.  Whoo!  I’m a Mormon.”

I’m not suggesting that removing your mind from reality is a requirement of happiness…although, at the moment, I can’t think of anyone happier than Gary Busey.

– And I won’t say that there are no genuinely happy people, because obviously I can’t live in a dream world.

– Not that I want to make people miserable.  No.  I want them to find it on their own.

– But clearly we’re an unhappy culture.  I mean, think about it: at some point in history, there was a need to call a banana a “banana.”  Enough people needed to grow it, trade it, and eat it; so, a word was created.  We also have the word ‘desperation.’”

– Remember when news broke that the economy was the worst it’s been since the Great Depression?  That really affected me.  I was like –

Josh: {celebrating} “Whoo-hoo!  I’m not the only one suffering!!”

– Because misery loves company.  Well, it loves Prozac more, but it appreciates company.

– At the same time, though, I get jealous of people who have more reasons to be unhappy — ‘cause they have a right to complain.  I mean, my life is bad, but on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, people with no legs always win out over some guy with existential dilemmas.

– Relax, everyone.  This is just a character.  In real life, I’m happy, well adjusted, and muscular.