Women, Am I Right?

Where the magic happens.

[womenamiright]

I am staring out the window of the cafe in the Psychology building at sunset, and the clouds clustered around the mountains are a beautiful golden yellow, with wisps feathering outward and glowing from the intensity. The silhouette of the peaks and valleys draw a haphazard line across the horizon, and as I watch this reverent display of nature unfolding before me, the only thing that crosses my mind is how little of a shit I give about anything.

Aiden sits down next to me, having retrieved his quad cinnamon dolce frappe whatever with extra whip from the counter -- "What are you, Mexican?" -- and doesn't even wait until his ass is in the chair before he launches head-first into the conversation that started it all:

"Before you say no, just hear me out."

"No."

"You're the one that keeps encouraging me to go after these ideas, you know, and if it weren't for you I don't think I would have been able to get the sack to quit the CS program. I'm always trying to think of ways I can I need to tap into my resources, see if I can find a business major or two who can..."

At this point, my mind has left the table and wandered over to the atrium, is looking up at the seventh floor balcony at the top, wondering if 70 feet is enough to crush another person to death.

"...So basically you have to come with me, Lauren. We've been friends for how long?"

Two months, I am thinking. Coffee's not strong enough. I wonder if my laptop's charged.

"Aiden, I just don't--"

"Have to. Have to. Kappa Phi's party is on Friday, start around 8 but I figure we could manage a fashionable 9, 9:30?"

"Jesus Christ, Aiden, what makes you think I'm interested in hanging out with a bunch of drunk college students?"

"I need you there. Two is better than one, two birds with one stone, it takes two to tango--"

"You... what? That doesn't even make sense."

"Think of it as an investment in my future. I need you to back me up out there. How else will I maximize my exposure?"

Aiden's penchant for securing his future on a tech startup gravy train is second only to his perpetual need to involve me in whatever half-cocked idea is supposed to help him find it. The entire thing is completely fucked, and I had no idea that he was going to interpret my initial glib comment months ago that he should quit going to class if it's so useless as an affirmation of his raging suspicion: the Computer Science program wasn't worth his time.

I sigh inwardly, staring hard out at the sliver of sun left above the mountains, searing a crescent into my vision. I look back at Aiden, his eyes blindfolded by the sun's impression.

"Aiden, you owe me."

"I'll buy you a fifth."

"Of what?"

"Anything."

"Don't say that, you'll regret it."

"Promise."

Worth that much to him? Wild Turkey, I am thinking. Jameson, Woodford, Maker's. I can feel myself salivating.

"Okay."

[womenamiright]

I have no delusion that I could seduce just anyone, not like I'd want to, or that it would even be that hard. I won't bother with girls I don't find physically attractive, probably at least a 7, and even though conversation isn't vital or even preferred, at least pretend like you can string together a few sentences, or failing even that, just laugh at my jokes and know when to be quiet.

I didn't need to seduce her. In fact, looking back on it, in a way I was seduced by her, or rather the rhythm and flow of our interactions and exchanged words. It was so enticing, every single sentence leading me on, daring me to fire back. And even more confusing to me, it had nothing to do with looks, nothing to do with how I could take advantage of her.

Ok, ok, not nothing to do with looks, I mean she was pretty good looking, but it was the way she nodded her head at something I would say, how she'd run her finger along the edge of her glass. And I remember the exact moment that the dynamic fundamentally and irreversibly changed, incapable of recognizing it for what it was at the time. But now, it all seems so crystal clear each time I replay it in my head, the past in technicolor HD.

I fell for her. Whatever that means.

We decide to meet up for drinks, my emasculated rum and Coke next to her usual whiskey on the rocks -- "it's hard to fuck up," she tells me. There's a smudge of cadmium red on the inside of her wrist and I comment on it: she's working on a final self-portrait for an oil painting class. My brain immediately tries to identify and write her off as one of those artistic types, head in the clouds or too burned out on drugs to hold a conversation, but she laughs and tells me she's a Psych major. Oil painting is one of her hobbies, something she does to relax.

When I tell her I'm in Biology and want to be a doctor, she says something about making more money than her, then asks me what specialty.

"Not sure yet, maybe pediatrics or pediatric surgery." (Hey, deal with it, she was cute and it's not like this kind of shit is below me.)

"Tough field, you'd have to like kids."

"You don't?"

"I don't know, sometimes I think I don't. Maybe I'd only like my own fucked up kids."

"You want kids?"

"Slow down, cowboy, you don't even know my last name," she says, and smiles, and I swear I can feel my cold stone heart twinge almost imperceptibly.

I realize I am playing with my little plastic straw, my hands trying to find something to do and I can feel an edge of nervousness suddenly bright on the periphery of my conscious narrative.

"You wanna play pool?"

"For money?"

"Uh."

"I'm kidding, you'll need some money for your next drink."

We play a couple rounds, and actually come out even, and I can't tell if it's from a rare case of nerves or the fact that she keeps raising her eyebrows at me, but I drop my pool stick on the ground while I'm in the middle of the story of how I got the scar on my eyebrow.

I pick it up, and when my eyes meet hers, she is laughing in this teasing, disarming way, entirely without malice and just warm and soft and her hair falls in her eyes, and suddenly I have turned into this huge faggot for the first time since probably high school. Who is this girl?

How is it possible that, of all the places, she goes to this school, and that I attend some random party on Greek row when I hate the parties there, and she happens to be there as well, bored out of her skull? That we talk, and she's somehow not completely devoid of intelligence and reason?

And what's the word for it? When your thoughts get all fucked up and you start acting retarded?

Ah, yeah. Smitten.

[womenamiright]

I’m sure we’ve all had that moment in college: you look around at your classmates as the teacher is imparting some vacuous piece of information, and you realize you’re just looking at a bunch of mindless worker drones in training. So diligently taking notes, most of which are just a transcription of whatever’s on the board.

It’s kind of brilliant how the establishment is constructed, isn’t it? You get a bunch of middle class kids hopped up on the idea that you have to get a college degree to succeed, make them pay tens of thousands of dollars to go through a business or engineering program, and then turn them out en masse on the working world.

Something had never quite sat well with me about another four years of school, and for what exactly? Didn't we more or less learn everything we needed to know in high school? I read Steve Jobs' biography and finally realized that the punch line of the joke that is academics was me.

Jobs dropped out of Reed College, died a millionaire god of technology and innovation. Paul Allen, dropped out of Washington State, computer software legend. Bill Gates, dropped out of Harvard, billionaire philanthropist who changed the face of computing. Shit, even Simon Cowell dropped out of high school because he knew it was a waste of time.

I mean, all of this just basically proves my point. Maybe I can't necessarily be the next Gates or Jobs, maybe I'm not a prophet of the tech industry's future, but if I can achieve even a fraction of what they did I would be set for life. Why bother getting a college degree when I can just form a startup, invent an application that sells a million copies and retire at 30?

[womenamiright]

I made the fortunate mistake of watching 500 Days of Summer with Heather, my girlfriend from Sophomore year. Normally I hate watching movies with other people -- if I wanted a running commentary, I'd watch old episodes of Mystery Science Theater, and at least those are funny, thanks -- but she was one of those girls who absolutely needed to do something as a couple once or twice a week at least. And it's way cheaper to watch a movie at home than it is to take them out for dinner, setting the stage for a painstaking disclosure of what you did that day, like if you line up all of the minutiae bullshit you do, your inner thoughts and feelings can somehow be divined out of it all like reading the patterns in tea leaves. I feel fine, nothing's wrong, and no I’m not thinking about anything, for fuck's sake, just let me enjoy my Kung Pao chicken.

When pressed one time, early on in the relationship, I told her I was thinking about what her head would look like on a stick, but she didn't get the reference and I spent the better part of an evening I had set aside for studying trying to calm her down and convince her I actually don't fantasize about killing her in her sleep, which you and I both know is a total lie because, come on, errant thoughts. And how are you supposed to explain that deep psyche shit to a shallow, neurotic bundle of emotions?

[womenamiright]

They tell you to go to college, get a degree, a job, a credit card and maybe a mortgage and make it sound like everything will just kind of work itself out. And you believed them, right, because it wasn't just your parents, it was the guidance counselor, it was your coach or your band leader, and talking to your friends about it always got you the same old "What else are we supposed to do?" 

If you really think about it, looking back over the college classes and the dorm rooms, the internships, girlfriends and study groups, would you really choose this if you had to do it all over again? Wondering what else you would have done, who you would be right now, and your brain can barely process the idea of life being any different let alone what to do with the elusive cold swell of panic and regret every single time you think about it too much. Or maybe it's just me?

I laugh as I shake my head. The shit an idle mind comes up with while riding your bike across campus. Jesus, I can't imagine doing this on a regular basis. Thankfully, man invented earbuds for this specific purpose. I slip mine into my ears, play something loud and Korean one of my friends sent me a link to last week. I read somewhere that songs with lyrics activate the language centers of the brain just enough to keep it busy trying to process the sounds. Works like a charm: no more brain noise.

There is a party tonight that my to-do list says I can't attend unless I have finished the Neuropharm lab records, stopped by my advisor's office to discuss graduate school plans, and put at least an hour's worth of work into my midterm paper. The Korean pop beat in my ears has begun to clear my head, time to focus.

[womenamiright]

A paring knife works best: once you start pulling, the skin comes off clean

It took me the longest time to convince myself to buy speakers for my computer. I hardly ever have people over, and besides I have these amazing monitor headphones that were like $600 (and that was on sale). An idea crossed my mind that I might find it amusing to leave Party in the USA playing on repeat full-blast while I was out of the apartment from time to time, but despite that singular potential, they seemed an impractical purchase overall.

What finally pushed me over the edge was being able to play music in my bathroom, because for some reason being under a deluge of hot water prompts me to belt out something by Dream Theater, and I would be able to sing in the shower without my neighbors hearing me sound like a cat in a Chinese kitchen.

So I wake up in the morning to the sound of Hey Jude, and there are several things wrong with this: Hey Jude isn't on my hard drive, I never leave my music playing overnight, and crucially: I fucking hate The Beatles.

Upon opening my eyes, I stare at the wall six inches from my face and play the game of Let's See How Much Jacob Can Remember From Last Night, but a thin high-pitched voice ruins any reasonable chance my skull full of neural pudding had at recalling the evening, so I roll over unceremoniously.

A girl, perched what she probably thinks is attractively atop my office chair, flicking through my open tabs and scrolling through my Facebook profile. I break a blood vessel in my eye restraining myself. Who the fuck does Drunk Jacob think he is bringing them back here?

Unprepared for such an egregious violation of the sanctity of my place of residence, I sigh audibly, which predictably prompts her to turn around. She smiles, again, believing it to be alluring and possibly even arousing. Black raccoon eyes from makeup or exhaustion, messy bleached hair, jutting her chest out with her legs crossed but she's naked so all it makes her look is desperate. Her transparency is about as attractive as the white tiger-stripe stretch marks clawed across her hip, and I finally get the joke. Drunk Jacob, you rascal.

Her eyebrow cocks and she turns away from me back to my Facebook profile.

"Pretty popular guy. Did you know you're friends with my boyfriend?"

"Are you in the habit of assuming you can use things that don't belong to you?"

"I was just curious."

Somewhere suspended in the thick goo of my consciousness was her name, but being so incensed at what I had woken up to, I instead haul my bare ass to my feet, gesture to the door and tell her to get the hell out of my apartment before I skin her face and wear it as a mask: "Would you mind? I have somewhere to be at 10."

"Uh, could you give me a ride then? I need... to... What are you doing?"

I had leafed through my wallet and was holding a twenty out to her. Her face: entitlement, greed, insult. My jaw clenches so tightly I can feel my molars grinding.

"It's for a cab."

"Oh."

[womenamiright]

Full of Stars

It was mildly interesting that the amount of pressure one needs to apply in order to successfully dislocate the skull from the first vertebrae is not unlike a firm handshake, something I haven't experienced in years.

I could have fixed the transdermal diffuser. It was an easy fix, all things considered, if time-consuming. A simple hydraulic leak in the vacuum to get the pentobarbitol flowing. But I had all the time in the world, didn't I? So many things left to experience and discover, innovations left unturned out here in cold unflinching empty space. Well, not empty. Not entirely.

They were part of his project, anyway, and since he wasn't on board anymore I had no reason to keep them around. He didn't name "them", something about it being "easier that way".

"Tae-Joon, give me velocity, location and distance from target destination, please."

Traveling at 120,000 kilometers per hour. Point-seven light years outside of NU-738 system. Target destination is approximately thirty-three light years from present location.

"Thank you, Tae-Joon."

Always please, always thank you. Keeps things civilized.

Certainly, Grant.

They wouldn't even understand their own names anyway, so what's the point, I would ask, and he'd look at me with that classic inscrutable Desmond face, eyebrows all twisted upward as if he were surprised but with eyes settled squarely on mine.

At least Tae-Joon knows what he's called. Puts him above your furry little space experiments.

[womenamiright]

Any girl with the naivety to get a belly-button ring at 16: first-swing homerun

Teenage kids have no clue what they're doing. Someone threw a party at this chick's house over a weekend, like it wasn't even a weekend her parents were gone or any of that cliche teen movie bullshit, just straight up invited a ton of people over to her place on a Friday night for no good reason other than I guess wanting to make her life a living hell. She probably didn't even deserve it.

So I've got a red cup full of PBR and I'm chatting up this blonde girl who's someone's cousin and I can't even remember how we started talking, or what we were talking about, so I tell her some lines like, "Hey you think you could do me a favor?" and "I might need help in the bathroom, but don't take advantage of me," and you know, it's that easy. Teenagers, right?

At some point later on, because like PBR's gonna get me anywhere close to drunk, I'm in the kitchen with my shirt off alternating between pouring shots for anyone in sight and chest-bumping these guys from the football team. And this was right after I beat the quarterback in an arm wrestling contest, too. Like, I don't even play football, but I can overpower him. I mean, he wasn't butthurt over it, and they kinda revered me for it in a way.

Three kegstands and a lot of tequila later, the girl whose house we crashed is passed out slung face-down over the back of the couch I landed on. The party is kinda winding down, but there are these girls from theater that are all over me because apparently wow don't I look so much like this guy Miles Fisher, whoever that is, and he's like omg this gorgeous actor who was on an episode of some shitty 60s-era TV show, who gives a fuck. I take the curly-haired brunette and the college-lesbian-in-training upstairs, find the parents' bedroom on the first try and make it my own personal playground.

Mornings are always a bit of a shitshow and I'm hungover as tits but it's like, I wanted my deposit on the keg back, and sometimes the younger or less experienced girls want to get your number but seeing them ever again would be too soon, and to be honest I'm pretty sure my contacts list is full.

Anyway yeah, that was like, two weeks ago?

[womenamiright]

Aesthetics, isn't that the Greek word for love?

I don't really have to think about whether something's beautiful or not. You should just know it by looking, like, I can look at this woman who's walking past my office window right now and just be able to tell you, point-blank: I'd fuck her.

Yeah.

But probably just push her skirt up and leave the rest on.

Maybe that answers the question, you know? Cause I definitely thought Jessica was way hotter completely naked than she was wearing anything at all, and Tish would leave her shirt on but take her bra off from underneath without so much as slipping a sleeve to the side.

I guess there's different levels of beauty after all.

[womenamiright]

Why isn't there a Ctrl+F function for real life? It would be so much easier to remember their names in the morning

I have no idea why McDonald's thought it was a good idea to put spring-loaded toys into Happy Meals, but the entire length of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles promo I was the master of pizza projectiles. Hit a teacher at school from 30 feet square in the ass-crack, signaling the end of my reign of terror.

And when you're spending a lot of time in the company of my sister's friends, you figure out pretty quick that playing the cute younger brother role gets you untold facefuls of budding breasts and blonde hair. A few short years later and those girls are killing it: lipstick, short skirts, the works. And even better, they used to hang out at your house, when you were so innocent and harmless, so they feel like they really know you. That you're safe.

Monica on Tuesday, Jennie on Thursday, Annalise on Friday, Mandy and Jenna on Saturday but not at the same time, and only because Mandy had to leave early and the party ran so late you got drunk twice.

Ryan opens the door to your dorm room after he gets out of the library earlier than you were expecting and you're buck naked on top of his girlfriend of 10 months. And you look over your shoulder back at Ryan, who would be exchanging glances with you, except his eyes are aimed right at your ass-crack.

[womenamiright]

I use reusable plastic cups once and then throw them away every single time because it's like, who's going to stop me?

Some girl in an English class I took was so appalled that I hadn't read Lord of the Rings I felt obligated to pick it up and start reading it right after class was over just to see if she was actually that shocked, or if it was just an excuse to keep talking to me. Couldn't even finish the book because Frodo was just way too conceited.

I hate it when people blurt out spoilers for whatever they're trying to recommend to you. The occasional slipup is like, whatever, but if you really think I'll enjoy it so much, why would you just go and reveal everything that made it so interesting in the first place instead of letting me experience it for myself? You're the human equivalent of the movie previews that string together a 60 second montage of every scene that would have made the movie worth watching like, ever.

There's one exception: if you're hot and I'm into it, you can talk about whatever the fuck you want because seriously, I'm not even listening. Trust me.

[womenamiright]

I'm pretty sure someone invented the mythos behind the Knights of the Round Table just to launch a moderately successful pizza chain

The best part about the future is that you have no idea what is going to happen, so it leaves you with this urgent feeling of optimism, like anything you're doing now could change everything, and it gives you a little bit of a high just thinking, you know, anything's possible. But there's a flaw in that logic: inertia.

I don't mean the physics inertia, I mean life inertia. The kind of momentum you build up when you and your girlfriend move in together because your lease is up and you really don't want to sign another one with your current roommate -- he's a total asshole in public sometimes and just kind of a drag to be around, but you couldn't be bothered to actually talk it out with him and see if he's upset or something because all five seasons of Breaking Bad had just finished downloading by the time it really turned into an issue.

Anyway, you and her move in together and you think, hey, this might turn out to be a pretty good idea. She has some interior decorating sense and knows which towels to get to match the kitchen, and I mean you don't really give a shit what color the towels are, but she seems to, and she's happy doing stuff like this so you just let her do her thing. Sometimes she gets kind of irritated at you for not letting her know where you were, but hey, you were just at work and it's not like that's even interesting enough to mention.

Six months later, she's sleeping at home because she has a work schedule completely opposite yours, and you're in the office on the internet just clicking on things, and somehow you're on Craigslist looking at apartments in San Francisco and doing some math in your head. You know, 2200 for a one bedroom in East Bay doesn't sound so bad.

And then you remember you signed the lease for a year, and she really wanted to get a puppy together, and I mean that sounds kinda fun. It's just, you'd have to raise it with her, and this is when it hits you: that the idea of doing or having anything meaningful between the two of you is something you'd been artfully abstaining from since before you moved in together.

Your eyes scan the room helplessly, and land on a sign illuminated above the door to the breakroom no one ever cleans that says: NOT AN EXIT

[womenamiright]

Amy Winehouse Was Gorgeous

Being in love is a lot like when you're trying to remember the lyrics to a song you keep playing over and over in your head, but no matter how much you kinda hum the melody to yourself under your breath, no amount of Googling is coming up with any lyrics that sound right.

And then your cubicle neighbor is like, hey, are you singing that one song? And then you're like YES, yes I was, thank you. Thanks.

[womenamiright]

Sometimes I wonder what's holding the sky up, but I think the real question is what's holding Earth up?

I was watching this talk by Steven Pinker on the nature of free will, I think he was speaking at Harvard, and so the entire audience is basically white. Not like your average white kid tennis shoes skinny jeans whatever, like, white with money: Starbucks for breakfast every day, 4 different pairs of flipflops, 2000-dollar Apple laptop.

I don't have anything against white people -- I myself own an expensive Apple laptop -- but that's only because Steve Jobs died and I thought I would do something nice to express my condolences. So yeah, I wonder if it's worth it to upgrade to the i7?

[womenamiright]

Onion rings? Yeah I'll totally brush my teeth after, I had a girlfriend one time tell me that she didn't like tasting food on me and I guess, yeah, it's just a habit now.

Before I go to sleep, I have these sunglasses on my desk that I wear whenever I don't feel like talking to anyone, because there's some kind of psychological barrier when you're looking at a person with sunglasses on, like you just know they don't have the time to talk to you... which is funny to me because it's like, I'm not doing anything, I just don't want to talk to you.

But then I also wear them if I want to take a nap on the train so, you know, it balances out.

[womenamiright]

Never Trust Anyone Ever

People are terrible. Awful. Bad relationships are like wolves in the midwest, right, like they're all endangered due to people just not talking about how they really feel and then... I mean they come back with a vengeance, and now all the farmers are trying to convince the government to let them go back to killing them off, but now it's a whole big thing with animal rights interest groups and stuff because so much time has passed and these people don't own cattle so they wouldn't understand the complex emotional attachments one can have to a herd of mindless four-legged creatures.

And I mean ultimately we're just gonna, like, cheat on each other, and then have a few weeks of awkward Chinese take-out nights where one of us will initiate sexual intercourse to break the silence. One night you'll be texting me about your mom's new Pomeranian and instead of typing "sounds like a handful :)" like I meant to, I put in "i'm not really feeling this anymore" and hit send.

But secretly I'm relieved because you're too passive aggressive to press me about why this, why now, and when you don't respond and I accidentally fall asleep you'll have sent me, like, twenty texts that I won't even read because Jack is banging on my door and he wants to go hit up the Red Garter for a pitcher. And I'll leave my phone at home because I no longer have the robotic urge to let you know what I'm doing at all times.