Ramblings 3/28

I finally read Steve Elliott’s Adderall Diaries. It was the best memoir I’ve read in a long time, if not ever. It was honest in a way most every other book isn’t, which I found to be the most beautiful kind of heartbreaking.

I told myself that I’d only do one fantasy baseball team this year, but I ended up drafting four. Most of them are no good, heavy on outfielders who were good in 2003.

There’s a girl at Starbucks right now who looks just like Emily Valentine. I had such a crush on her, even after she went all psycho-killer qu’est-ce que c’est.

I defended my thesis and it was a bit of a Peter Stenson jerk-session, which made me feel good. Then I drove back to Denver and went to a party for a girl I know who’s moving and it was weird because half the group was writers and the other half investment bankers and I drank an NA beer and felt a little like a loser. We’re maybe too old to sit around and complain, but that’s what we did. It was like Freaky Friday, all of us wanting to switch places for a while. A guy who made a hundred K a year told me he was jealous of my beard, which was really him saying he was jealous of me not having to go to work everyday and being able to hang out and maybe even my ability to tie a few sentences together. I thought about the shit I’d be able to do with a hundred K and I’d be able to get the lump in my ribs checked out with insurance. This guy was tall and confident. I really liked Freaky Friday, the one with Lindsay Lohan. My wife and I watched it with my father and he cried at the party scene at the end. Maybe it makes us feel good to complain. Maybe it’s a game of self-pity and victimization or maybe it’s a common denominator for my generation—one or two past X, one brought up on Yo MTV Raps and the explosion of the Internet and the crystallization of amphetamines—all of us sitting around talking about how bleak shit is, how we’re miserable. I don’t know. Maybe it’s just conversation. Maybe it’s easier for me to talk about making $9.75 an hour instead of the fact I sold a book to a Big Six. Maybe it’s modesty. Maybe it’s false modesty. Maybe it’s the thought that everybody has something better and is happier and has more sex with bigger dicks and nicer clothes and skinnier waistlines. Maybe it’s nothing.

Reading Steve’s memoir, I thought I would like to switch lives with him for a day or two. To feel the deep hurt he puts into words.

Every fantasy baseball team is me playing GM.

Poor old Emily Valentine, that bitch just wanted to be part of the group, would have given anything to be Brenda.

I don’t know. The girl who looks like Emily keeps giving me eyes and I have to go to work and fold clothes and it’s sunny and I feel skinny and the third round of edits for the novel are done and I just sold a story and things are pretty good. That’s my Freaky Friday moment, the one where I’m grateful for those around me, for the life I have.