My baby served me love on a plate (paper)
An injured leg on the Lady Trainer (sic) at the gym is causing me to limp around all day. What did you do to your leg? People want to know. Oh, you know, I stammer: I fell down the stairs. One time in high school, I broke my leg during a rad sleigh-riding trick and the questions which subsequently followed were answered in all manner of creative ways. But the truth, as is the lesson of US foreign policy, was avoided at all costs. And here I find myself slipping up. But sometimes you just can’t help yourself, as is the case with most social boners (a sentence which, even as I write it, seems problematic and so terribly rife with sordid sub-textual ribaldry that I probably won’t sleep tonight. Which also—actually, never mind).

The root of my entire problem today acutely broils down to the fact that somebody brought in sticky bun pastries, which has me bouncing off the walls of my cubicle. There’s something so delectably sweet about them that when your coworker who brought them eyes you suspiciously on your third trip for more, you cannot help but ice that same person out, with the tacit suggestion of, get-the-fuck-out-of-my-face. But now that I think of it, the whole messy equation really probably will relate back to obsessively riding the lady trainer tonight, for an endless succession of pulled muscles and second rate excuses and social boners. Or however you say.

You've got your big cheese/ I've got my hash pipe
The day seems impossibly long after only a few hours. I called in late to work today, after a late night out. “Joy,” I say into the phone before she shouts back my name. “Ryy!” she says into the receiver, “HOW ARE YOU DOING??” And then, before I have time to answer, she’s off about how nobody’s on time today, and can I come in quickly? It’s not there’s a lot of work to do, or anything that actually necessitates my being there. No, the root of the problem is that she’s just really lonely. “I’ll do my best,” I tell her, before hanging up the phone and hastily falling back asleep.

H.’s wedding turned out not to be a total fiasco, although we did manage to alienate ourselves right off by admitting that we’re not fans of the rock group Phish. This was, strangely, one of the first questions posed to us, which, once unsatisfactorily answered, excluded us from the more illicit proceedings taking place out back all night. The moral being, if you want to smoke weed with the ex-hippies seated at your table, you have got to read between the lines and at least pretend that their musical predilections are not startlingly inferior to your own.

On the way out, I am practically sprinting to the car, when KD tells me to slow down. And it’s true, I think: why am I walking so fast? My whole life, I’ve recently conjectured, is a series of events that I’m ploughing through joylessly. Somebody else recently asked me if I was in a hurry to get going, and I realized, no sooner did I arrive at the bar the other night then I immediately began worrying about how I was going to get home again, the logistics involved, and sundry other concerns. What the hell is wrong with me, I don’t know. There’s so much getting through the things I need to get through, to get to the all of the other things which need getting through. And rarely is anything ever accomplished, when the work is never done. I am stressing out over the details in the car ride on the way home, when I realize: I really probably should check in on some of those jam bands.

Let's drink a toast to all those who arrived alive
Mario S. walking through the shoppers’ mall, like an anchor of familiarity in a sea of the terrible unknown. “Oh, hey what’s up,” he greets me, recognizing my face. It’s always funny seeing Mario, because he’s fairly ubiquitous within the greater upstate area, and I always do end up seeing him in the most bizarre places imaginable, while doing nothing particular at all. The whole anchor-of-familiarity paradigm is probably lost on Mario, however, given that he seems to know everybody, and it’s probably more of a testament to his imagined magnetism which always tricks you into thinking you’re the anchor. We talk things over a bit and I tell him that I’m going to a wedding this weekend, and how I need something to wear. “Wedding’s are the worst,” he says, “I always tell my friends: ‘listen, motherfuckers: you know where I work, I can’t afford no present.’” We have a laugh at that, and then he continues to explain to me that weddings are akin to receiving a speeding ticket, an expense which you can’t afford. I misconstrue the original statement by adding that it would be more like a speeding ticket that comes with dinner and dancing, but Mario insists that it’s a speeding ticket all the same. And it’s weird how one of the most important days in two people’s lives becomes little more than an overwhelming chink in your well-constructed plans for the weekend. My formalwear situation is little less than happening, and the whole fact that two people younger than me are getting married elicits in me some kind of existential panic which just won't go. But ah, well: what can you do? Some people have to have lives which suggest that things are OK, and that it’s not all horrible and grim. And the food will be really good, probably. So that’s something, at least.

I walk out of the mall with Mario, past the pesky miscreant factions which seems to assemble by the entryways, which is somehow very logical hanging out corridors for 15-year-olds nationwide. I point out my car to Mario, which resides in a very choice spot, close to the entryway. He has no idea where his own car is in the interminable sea of similar-looking cars and then tries to remember if it’s even in this lot at all. We both shrug, and then say goodbye, until the next time. On the service road out, I see that Mario has found his own car, as he whips by me at impossible speeds, with his inimitable afro poking up above the driver’s seat, in full view of passersby.