First Outta The Hatch

My brother and I had just had dinner this evening and were walking back to my office on Park Ave. A beautiful girl passed us and had her eyes firmly planted on Steve. After she passed, he turned to me and said, "Oh my God, that girl was totally checking me out!"

"Because you're the more attractive of the two of us," I said. "Which is proof of my theory..."

"What's that?" he inquired.

"Well, when people have children, the offspring tend to get better looking the more they have."

"What?"

"The first borns are the beta test. They're like the first batch of cookies you bake. You either leave it in too long or not long enough. The parents' genes are trying to figure out if they work well together or not. Sometimes they get it right, but often there's something that's a little off. So the next run they smooth things out and usually those ones are a little better looking. It's part of natural selection. You're the third-born, so everything's been ironed out by the time you came along. Look at me: I'm the test pattern, you're the final result."

"Hey, I think you're right," he said, listing off friends of his who either had better-looking younger siblings or slightly askew older ones. "Damn! I'm gonna be thinking about this all night..."

Nine Months

My two longest relationships both lasted nine months. I had one relationship in which we "dated" for approximately 16 months, but we only lived in the same town as each other for two of those months, and the other 14 were carried out in letters and phone calls and the occasional weekend trip to see one another. So that one doesn't really count.

The two real ones were nine months long. And I took them to term. When all was said and done, I felt like I'd squeezed a kid out of me. Or, as I had written in a notebook that I recently discovered: "I feel like I've taken the biggest shit of my life and unloaded a couple of organs as well. I am emptied."

So I guess the full gestation period for me is nine months. I am amazed by people who have been in relationships that are longer than that. I have friends who have been together for years and it just seems like something that is so out of my league I can't comprehend it. I can't imagine anyone who could put up with me for longer than nine months. And I certainly haven't met them yet.

Unfortunately, the pain of the delivery, the final moments of those relationships, are what stick out in my memory. And I lost contact with them after the "birth", so I have no idea how the "child" has developed. Whether the time we spent together affected them at all.

Hmm. What to do? Google them? And then what? Ask if they gleaned anything good and worthwhile out of our time together? Find out what good memories they might have of the relationship? And if they do have any, should I demand visitation rights? I want to remember the good times too. They're partially partially mine, right? I should be involved damnit!

I Believe I Can Fly

I believe my most recent sense of malaise is because I have contracted Avian Flu.
This has not been medically diagnosed as of yet, but I fear the worst.

This morning I woke up and looked like this:

Hibernation

I wake up every morning because I have responsibilities, not because I have any desire to do so. I would love to have a reason to bound out of bed and face a new day, but the only thing that propels me from my slumber is that I have a job that I must go to every day. And I said I'd be there. That's the contract we enter into when we take a job. They expect you to show up.

I am involved in various extra-curricular activities, but nothing really gives me much pleasure. I do these things because it seems like something I should do, but I'm not passionate about anything. And, in becoming involved in these various activities, I have added new responsibilities to my life. New reasons to wake up every day.

Distractions, I guess you could call them. They distract me from sleeping.

Which is something I feel like doing. For a very long time.

I'd like to take a nap for a few months and wake up refreshed and ready to see life from a new vantage point. Because I've lost the feeling. I have memories, but none of them arouse any true feelings. They are merely stories that could've happened to anyone. I don't know how they relate to me anymore.

I have new experiences, but I don't FEEL anything. I'm dead inside. And that's no way to be. I might as well be asleep.

So why can't I hibernate?