10 steps to saying goodnight to a girl:

Step 1: Sway closer and further away from her with your arms somewhat extended so that you are ready for any hugging that might occur.

Step 2: Keep talking. Talk about anything. Talk about what happened today. Talk about your dreams for the future. Talk about why you don’t believe in John McCain’s tax cuts. Talk about how disgusted you are with gender-norms. Continue on that subject; hoping that she’ll get the hint that you probably won’t make the first move. Talk about other girls you find attractive. Try to stop talking about that, but continue to. Dig yourself a deeper and deeper grave for your slow and painful death by foot-in-mouth disease. Say things like “She’s really cool. I mean she’s alright. She’s doable. I’m just saying she’s a fun person. We’re gonna hang out in LA. Maybe I can get some. Just kidding. Sort of.” Wish you hadn’t started speaking. Wish you hadn’t started living.

Step 3: Start to suggest something that the two of you can do so that your night together won’t end. Don’t think about what you are going to suggest before you start your sentence though. Just start with: “Hey, we should…” and hope that the rest of the sentence will come to you. It won’t, but it will provide an excellent back and forth that involves a lot of “What’s?” and “What do you mean?'s” Remember English isn’t her first language and it’s four in the morning, it is very difficult for her to understand your mumbling ramblings about how you’re sorry for not thinking of something to do before speaking. Think about what would happen if you just made a dash for your room. You are leaving tomorrow, so you probably won’t have to see her again. Decide that you should stick around because if you run, there is no way she Facebook friends you, and then how would you show pictures of her to your friends?

Step 4: Make sure she catches you staring at her breasts. If possible make it look like you are zoning out with your eyes completely focused on her cleavage. Let a pleasant smile creep over your face. While you’re at it, register yourself as a sex-offender.

Step 5: Go in for a hug in the middle of one of her sentences. Nothing says “I am listening” more than interrupting her story with a physical attack. Realize that her breasts are pressing up against your chest. Realize that everything is okay.

Step 6: Ask her to continue her story after you finish hugging. Nothing is less awkward than extending a conversation after both parties say good bye. After she initially refuses, insist that she finishes what she was saying in order to prove you are a decent guy who is interested in the things she has to say, not just the things she has protruding from her chest. Keep trying to convince yourself of this while she is talking so that you don’t hear a word of her story.

Step 7: Tell her all the French you know. This consists of the words, hello, yes, and shit. This does not extend the conversation in any way.

Step 8: Say good bye again and go in for another hug. While holding the hug think about how you could physically maneuver your bodies so that they are kissing. Find no way that this is possible. Hold the hug longer, thinking that there may be a way that you just haven’t thought of yet. Realize she is trying to push away. Apologize and turn in shame.

Step 9: Go to your room only to realize that you have to go to the bathroom. Go back to bathroom - take a long piss. Look in the mirror. Tell yourself that that was the last time that you won’t make a move when you’ve had so many opportunities. You just needed to take one of them. You were in the kitchen cooking together. You even fed her pasta sauce on one of those big wooden spoon. You could have easily took a sip off the other side, and then pulled a lady and the tramp with the wooden spoon. You were in the Sauna together. Just the two of you in a locked wooden room where the purpose is getting sweaty. All the other members of your group had either gone to sleep or started hooking up – hooking up being the only reason they didn’t come to the sauna. When you got to the sauna two people were hooking up in there. When you were walking up the stairs, two people were hooking up in the stairwell. Hooking up was happening all around you, so you just needed to extend the hooking up to yourself. You could have even just made a funny kidding-on-the-square comment about how she should hook up with you so that you two could fit in. The guy walking down the hall who saw us going to the sauna had made one. He had said “Looks like love is in the air.” To you. To you and the hot French Canadian girl in the short booty shorts and skimpy lacey top who had changed specifically to go hang out with you in a sauna. A sauna that was known as the place to hook up. Though, you had been in the sauna five times now and not ever hooked up. Why not make it six? Flip off the mirror and walk out the door resolving that if you see her again in the morning before you leave, or whatever, that you will just take her to a private area and dip her down and start making out with her all romantic-like, and then say “Just thought we should get that over with before I leave. I know we’ve both wanted it.” Then leave. You will be soooo bad-ass.

Step 10: See her coming out of another bathroom at the same time as you get out of yours. She doesn’t see you and turns away to go to her room. Pretend not to see her and walk back to your room. Wish that you weren’t staying in a hostel so that you could have some private time before going to bed.

Best Friends

Who has been my best friend on this trip? Is it the British blonde who I went to a Maceo Parker concert with? Is it the bickering couple that is not going out that I got lost in the outskirts of Seattle with? Is it the two guys who I went around San Francisco with at night while they played guitar and harmonica and drums on street corners? One of whose name was Starshine, but I kept calling either Moonburst, Sunstroke, Applesauce, or Slave-driver. The two guys that helped me convince some guy in a suit going into a bar to rap over our beat. The beat was similar to that song “I steal all my kisses from you,” but he changed the lyrics to “I get all my bitches from you” and changed the song into one about talking to pimps. Is my best friend the guy who took mushrooms as we were going to the science museum? The same guy I later almost convinced to attempt to eat a woman’s hair because it resembled cotton candy. Are my best friends the bearded woman I met in the park and her friend who she was filming who was eating bananas? Maybe it’s the two college students who I went hunting for Nutria – giant semi-aquatic rats – with. Maybe it’s Emma’s mom. Is my best friend the dude who, when I got up at 7 am to go to the bathroom and accidentally locked myself out of my room, grabbed me, screamed “MINNESOTA!!” and proceed to attempt to pluck out my chest hairs? Is it the dude from Atlanta who looks just like Nash Cummins who went for a 3 am donut run with me and shared a dozen donuts? Is it the guy who told me his concept for a reality show about philanthropy, and then took me to pinball bar where we played pinball for 3 hours? Is it the guy who was at my side as a bald 45 year old hit on us at a bar and then started an argument with us about gun control? Is it the older guy who told me that he likes to pretend he’s OCD at grocery stores and make the cashiers face all the labels the same way? Maybe it's the Australian punk who helped me come up with the lyrics to our new B-52s song: "Welcome to the Sauna!" while in the sauna. Is it the guy who is living with an ex-girlfriend who put up all of their old emails on her door? Emails that said things like “I love you.” And “I want to be with you always. Maybe it’s the other people that lived there, who I felt bad for. It could be the adorable Swede who I convinced his pool cue was called his rod, so that he said “How do I aim my rod to get my balls into the hole?” Or is it the guy who pointed out to me the old Chinese man trying to make a salad out of the baked potato toppings we had prepped by piling handfuls and handfuls of pepperoncini peppers on to his plate, onto which he dumped mushroom gravy. The same old man later taste-tested the salsa by taking a sip from the bowl it was sitting in. Maybe it’s the guy in the Golden Gate Park who was screaming “I represent the lollipop guild, the lollipop guild, the lollipop guild, and I want to welcome you to fucking munchkin land.”

Maybe it's me. I'm the only one who has been there the entire time.

Maybe I just really like myself. I do. I love me. I'm pretty awesome. I do cool things. I'm a cool guy.

But what I realize about all of these stories is that I'm more excited to tell these stories in full to all the people back in Minnesota, Maine, or wherever than I am to experience them in the first place. So maybe those are my best friends. The people who can help me realize my future-past.

The Truth

Introductions for me are always awkward. I don’t know what interests I might share with the person I’m talking to - I don’t know what issues I might disagree with them on. Most of the time, I don’t even remember their name. So a series of questions that have been determined by the gods of our culture to be just vague and bland enough to be socially acceptable and inoffensive by all are bounced back and forth between me and … whomever I’m talking to.

My most hated of these predetermined vanilla queries is “What do you do?”

What do I “do?” Well, I play fantasy football. I go to the movies. I take public transportation. I dress myself. I watch TV shows on the internet the day after they appear on television. I read lists of quotes from my favorite people. I sit around. I try to find free hors devours at art galleries for dinner. What do I “do?”

Fuck you. You just want me to ask you what you “do” so that you can tell me the amazing way you’ve managed to make this world a better place and make money.

I know my real problem with the question is that I have no good answer. I used to be a student. I could say that’s what I “do.” That was a noble “doing.”

I’m no longer a student. I’m very glad I am no longer a student because I no longer want to go to school, but, man, it was easier to say I was a student than saying; “uhh. Y’know. Nothing really. I worked. Previously. That job is done. I’m traveling.” Then they give the condescending; “ohhh”. They might as well say; “Oh, you’re lazy. You were born into decent wealth and are using it as an excuse to not have to be a productive member of society.” So I started saying that I was an actor/comedian.

That was a dumb decision. Every time I say something funny (which is all the time), I now get told; “You should use that as a ‘bit.’” Or worse, they decide that’s the time when they should give me something funny they once said so that I can use it in my next "bit." I’m so glad I have such a helpful, supportive world surrounding me that they can tell me how to do what I “do” better.

Next time I ask somebody what they “do” and they say something shitty and mundane like social work, I’m going to say; “Hey, you should try helping the kids with their drug problems by telling the kids that drugs give them hemorrhoids, and hay fever. Then they wouldn’t do drugs. Nobody likes hay fever. It’s so icky.” Then they’d laugh and say I should use that in my next “bit.”

That’s why I started lying.

What do I “do?” Well, I plan recreational parks in impoverished neighborhoods. I’m an extreme athlete - mostly I do the sky stuff. I write for New Republic. I’m a photo journalist for the brail institute of Mississippi. Right now I’m just trying to stay on the wagon (or is it off the wagon). I bootleg DVDs. I impregnate young women. I’m a financial analyst for a non-profit. Heroin. I do Heroin. I work in accounting. I play lead guitar for a Canadian rock band called the IronDukes. I’m running the Ron Paul ’08 campaign in Eastern Oregon’s urban areas. I’m a poet. I took over my parents’ collectible items business. I scent candles. What do I “do?”

Fuck you. You don’t deserve to know. Now we’re talking about me, and me is anything I want me to be.

Peace out,

Humphrey Irving Walshowitz