The Sunny Side

If someone tells you that you are smart during the interview, it is a sure sign that you are not getting the job. This is because either a) they are mocking you for being pretentious or b) they are letting you down easy so that you don’t feel horrible about it later. I mean otherwise, if they really thought you were smart, they’d just reward you with the job and not compliments to your intellect. 

The dissatisfaction of my 20s stings like an attack from a dull porcupine because it feels more like an ache and less like an open wound. The youth of my life is spent pondering and worrying, because I ponder about life and worry about its meaning.I’m so stuck on where I want to go and where I want to be that I sometimes forget where I am. AM, at this moment. In the City of angels where the sun shines like a perpetual blissful beacon, a halo commending me, bestowing me with with a sense of effervescent joy. On this little strip by the 405, because this city is defined by the interstates, circumscribed by traffic, cultured by what streets you use to get to work. AM, a woman, with affinity to casual sweaters and casual everydays, bred on Starbucks iced coffees, and thinks that if every food group could be in cupcakes, my life would be complete. AM, 23 being dragged to 24 like I’m being dragged to hell. No matter how hard I cling to the concrete, lampposts, dandelions strong enough to hold my weight, no matter how hard I grasp and claw, Time is a stubborn bitch that always gets her way. She knocks you out cold, and you wake up from the blackness, stumbling, looking around, and find that you are at twenty-fucking-five.

Then its all just tumbling from there, isn’t it? Rolling down that hill like Jill, and under the best circumstances, I find Jack on the way, because it’s just so much more pleasant having someone there tumbling down life with you. The 30s, 40s, 50s, pass by in a blur of green—marriage, a house, kids, work, retirement maybe—it’s an Allstate commercial ready to sell you a sense of security. See? I’m 90 already when I’m 23. How did I get to thinking about the future when all I wanted to do was think about now? How did I get to the end when I’ve barely begun?

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I think I’m gonna go do some laundry now.

It’s times like these that I can’t get enough—

Nights beginning at the stroke of midnight, driving with the top down on a silver mercedes benz—Cinderella couldn’t have asked for a better pumpkin

People glance at you through their window, thinking, damn, I wish I were that lucky, as lucky as a movie, and then roll their eyes before they bitterly remark that you must be a douchebag for driving such a flashy car, where we are a streak of silver against the gray ribbon of the I-10, playing music that echoes and ebbs with the energy of the evening

But the truth is, we’re just smoking a clove, with the wind whipping so hard at our face we feel relief and solace when we look at the same white indented moon, the same stars we decipher as a first grade constellation, the obvious big dipper, the secret markings of the timeless sky as the secrets of our hearts when we smile and say good night with smoky breath.

The sun disappears, and the rim of the world is almost lime that deepens into a dark cerulean the shade of a whale as if its massive body had suddenly swam across my vision. Sometimes I look at the sky and think how beautiful the blue is, how I just want to capture that color and save it on my desktop. But I suppose it’s a rather selfish thing to hold a color prisoner forever. Tina and I walk through the impending night stuffed with rice congee and juicy garlic stir-fryed eggplant. The meal lazily coagulating on the couch of our stomachs as I pull my jacket closer feeling the crisp wind on my face. Satisfaction is in this singular moment and I grasp at it with all the earnestness I have. 

Person A: Also, I peed next to him today…and I was GONE IN SIXTY SECONDS

Person B: hahahaha, that’s awesome. Did you guys FACE OFF?

—On peeing next to Nicholas Cage