Sunday, December 21, 2008

To All the People I've Wronged (or righted depending on your point of view)

Dear Schmeat -

It has come to my attention that, in some circles, I am considered quite argumentative, abrasive, and a bit of a know-it-all. This isn't exactly news to me, but I wasn't aware of the severity of the situation.

You may not know this, Schmeat, but, apparently, most people don't like to be corrected for minor and/or inconsequential mistakes, even when they are actually wrong. Let me give you an example to better illustrate what I mean.

Let's say I was walking down the street with my friend Andrew, and let's say a homeless gentleman asked us "hey guys, can you spare a quarter?"

A simple request, or so it would seem. so let's say I gave the man A quarter, as he had requested. Then, let's say, he went on to ask Andrew for an additional quarter. Andrew and I simply kept walking.

I found the homeless man's actions curious. I commented to Andrew, as I often do, that the man had no right to ask for the second quarter. You see, the man had said
"hey GUYS, can you spare A QUARTER?" and that is exactly what he got from us. If he wanted two quarters he should have either asked "hey GUYS, can you spare TWO QUARTERS (or 50 cents)?" or asked us each individually for a quarter in the first place.

Andrew promptly pointed out that normal people don't over think things like that and even if they did they have to good sense not to tell people. Thus Andrew hit the nail on the head.

I over think how and why people use certain language and then, using logic that is dubious at best, I discover some flaw in their thinking and proceed to explain their error to them.

This generally leads to people immediately not liking me. I don't see why. Don't people want to be correct? I think all of this anger stems from another flaw in most people's thinking. When someone is corrected they assume the person doing the correcting is trying to prove them wrong. This just isn't so.

My corrections come from a sense of altruism and benevolence. I don't feel the need to be right all the time. I just am. Furthermore, I don't wake up every morning with the burning desire to prove everyone wrong. Quite to the contrary, I'm not trying to prove people wrong now, I am trying to improve people's chances of being MORE RIGHT in the future.

When viewed in this light I think my overly analytical criticisms seem much more helpful. I'm just doing my part to make sure people don't embarrass themselves again.

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Loneliness and Celibacy might soon be my only friends

Dear Schmeat -

I'm sorry I had to leave Chad's party so early. I know it was a special night for Chad and I really do like the Richardson, despite it's insurmountable distance from other Williamsburg hot-spots, making it a near herculean feat to even reach the place, and then there's all the glasses.

You probably stayed longer than I did, so you can fill me in on what I missed. Though, it was probably for the best that I bailed when I did, thus avoiding that moment when I would take my obligatory shit on the conversation, sabotaging not only my own hopes of getting laid, but also those of anyone else in the vicinity. Did everybody have a good time? Did Andrew and Jerod get digits from the only two single women there?

That was one of the brighter spots of the night, but sadly it made me think of all the reasons that I'm not much of a friend, and even less of a human being.

First of all, Schmeat, and you may not know this about me, but there tends to come a point in most social situations when I take the aforementioned shit on the converstation. I only mention it because it is so indicative of my low quality friendship/humanity, in that the resulting alienation affects my friends as much, if not more, than it does me.

When interacting with new people, namely women, I should probably learn to filter my thoughts, not only because it might help me socially, but because it might hurt my friends less than my current policy of capsizing most intimate moments, commonly known in the vernacular as "cockblocking".

My friendship in this capacity is doubly a burden, because my "eccentricities" are not only detrimental to most social interactions, but it effectively puts to bed any chance that my friends stood of actually persuing anthing in the way of meaningful with whomever they were speaking at the time of my social hiccup.

Then again, Schmeat, if my friends really thought hard about the dynamics of our relationship they'd realize that I am seriously holding them back. But since after nearly 10 years of knowing many of them, they haven't come to that determination. So I must be imagining all of this. I should probably still change, but I probably won't, and so long as my mom keeps sending those monthly checks to my nearest and dearest friends, I won't have to.

The second (and far from last) blackmark on my friendship resume has to deal more with who brought the single ladies to the party than it has to do with the single ladies themselves.

You see, Schmeat, it's just so rare that a gay man manages to come through for his Hetero brethren. That's really the one and only beef I've got with the gays. Don't they realize that some of us actually find sex with women tolerable? Is it asking too much of any and every gay man that I may happen to know, even in the most nebulous, cursory fashion, to help me accidentally propogate the human race with some anonymous woman friend of their's, whilst in a drunken stuper? Is it?


I don't think I've ever actually been sexually satisfied by a woman as a consequense of my gay friendships. And yet, Schmeat, I still continue to slowly accumulate gay friends and aquaintances at an alarming rate. And what's more, I don't discontinue my subscription to the gay friendships I already have. Even those that have proven unviable, with regard to supplying women for future awkward good mornings and free clinic visits.

Is it fair to say that my gay friends aren't trying hard enough? Or perhaps its me?


Why can't I just befriend a gay without the expectation that he will provide me with single women, preferably with loose morals and low self-esteem, to canoodle with? Maybe the gays I know, and the potential gays of the future, just want to be platonic man friends without the undue pressure of turning their female friends, aquaintances, and sisters into a cafeteria style sex banquet for me, their socially inept heterosexual friend?

It's not as if I hold my hetero friends to the same standard. So why should the gay men in my life be forced to pay some sort of friendship tythe to me by way of intercourse with their female friends?

It probably has something to do with the unrealistic media images of gay men with impossibly large groups of straight female friends. How is someone who believes everything TV tells them supposed to know that these Hollywood gays are not the same hard working, everyday, gay men you might find on Main Street in small towns all over America?

It seems like the real crime isn't that I have self-centered, vaguely homophopic expections for the gay members of my social circle, it's that the media developed, promotes, and reinforces my
self-centered, vaguely homophopic expections for the gay members of my social circle.

Whatever the true cause of all of my social shortcomings, I think its only fair to say that it is probably somebody else's fault. When next we speak you'll have to fill me in on all the details from the rest of the night.


Monday, December 15, 2008

Dear John for Schmeat

Dear Schmeat -

We've known each other for awhile now, and I think its safe to say we've really bonded.

I mean, sure, at first you didn't mean that much to me. In fact, you were little more than an arguably clever mnemonic device, meant to amuse and disgust. But even in that limited capacity, our relationship brought me untold satisfaction.

Since then, our mutual love for crude, adolescent dick humor has blossomed into so much more. In the near decade since fate (and Chad Colby) forced us together, what began as a begrudgingly civil union has become something very special and dear to me.

Though, I may never have truly accepted you as my own, I think its fair to say that I've come to love you, nonetheless, in a different, perhaps even more special, way. A love that one can only have for their unsolicited nickname.

It's a desperate and beautiful passion rooted deeply in the insecurity of friendship. The kind that develops when those crazy insecure thoughts creep in late at night when you are alone and you think to yourself "What if my friends don't really like me? What if they are just waiting for an opportunity to abandon me? Now probably isn't the best time to make a stink about that whole 'Schmeat' thing."

Yes, Schmeat, that is how we came to be as we are. Two peas forcibly occupying a pod. I have really cherished our time together, and that is what makes this so hard.

I think its time that we took a break. I know this may come as a shock. You're probably saying to yourself "What did I do? Wasn't I affectionate enough? Was I too distant? What more could I have done?"

But don't blame yourself. This isn't about you. Its about me. Since moving to New York five and some odd years ago, I've seen you go from a small town college cock joke whose usage was limited to a small cadre of revirgined animation dorks, to a full fledged multi-purpose word on par with such multi-taskers as "fuck".

Let's face it you're so much more than a crude nickname. You're an adjective now, a verb, a noun.....before long you'll be a cognate in other Indo-European languages.

People know you before they ever know me, and some people are even lucky enough to either never meet me or forget me soon after, but you know what they don't forget? You, Schmeat. They never forget you.

You've made me so proud. When I was a wide eyed 20 year old, I never dreamed I'd have a nickname as infectious as you, but here we are. It's funny how things work out. The thing you think you want least becomes the thing you need most. You were that for me Schmeat.

That's why I have to do this. You're bigger than me now, and I have to let you go. I have to let you spread your wings and fly. Go little bird, fly.

I know it'll be hard at first, but if you don't go now, you'll regret it for the rest of your life, and though you'll never say it out loud, you'll always hold it against me. And I just couldn't live with that. So, go now. Go and be all that I always knew you could be and more. Go and always remember....I love you.