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Eavesdropping

Mid 30s tinder first date to my immediate left. I want to kill them both. So what do you do for work? They investigate each other: are you good enough for me. She speaks like a Kardashian but looks like a Jenner. Patronizing vocal fry. Male human: You need to be making her laugh. I want to turn and say: “i want to kill you both” just to give them something more interesting to talk about. To make the guy look normal by contrast. Wake them up. Telling stories they’ve told before to different people on different tinder dates. She’s in “Real estate development” he’s in “business management” for a Start Up in the… “crepe space?” Did i hear that right? Nothing surprises me now.   Pretending to be excited about AI, Machine Learning, I can hear that she doesn’t give a shit. “I feel good that the AI is only as smart as the person coding it.” LOL NO! Your boyfriend will be AI in 5 years. He says the word “conceptually.” This date is doomed. It’s time to intervene. I can’t take it any more. I...
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Birthday's coming up!

i’m turning 25 in a couple weeks. i won’t stop getting older. less innocent. less beautiful. less new. less prodigious. less mature for my age. less promising. less fun. less valuable.   i won’t stop getting older. creepier. milder. sadder. more jaded. more alone. more like everyone else. more the same. further from the beginning. closer to the end.  
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Trust

i sold this guy my car for $800. hood smashed open. i didn’t take the plates off. i trusted him because he looked like my dad. and because his facebook was full of pictures of him holding his newborn son.   there’s a lot of trust involved in buying or selling a used car. i bought the car 14 months ago from a guy named Juan, who was also a father, which is why I trusted him when he said the 99 accord was very well maintained throughout its life and should not give me any trouble. he was right — it didn’t. he had pictures of his kids in his wallet. he talked about how his daughter was in college. not to make me trust him, because he couldn’t not do it.   you’ve got to have some criteria for trusting people. being a parent is pretty decent criteria. it’s harder to get away with shitty things when you’re a parent. i can just tell your kids if you scam me. i’ll find them on facebook. parents are more afraid of their kids than of anyone else.  
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Real Estate

How did that simpleton get so rich? Real Estate. Buy a place where people can live. Rent it out. Free money forever. Pay other people to manage the property for you. You pay a few people 60k a year. you pocket a few million. Rinse and repeat. Just sit on your ass and profit. The law protects you. Unless a great big asteroid comes down and destroys your property, you’re set for life.   You walk among the common folk, laughably wealthier, no one can tell the difference. They have no idea you make so much doing so little. You get to travel the world. You vlog with your family. You raise your kids — well. You’re a good dad. Your wife is beautiful and she loves you too.   You thank God for your inheritance and that you invested it in Real Estate like your old man told you to. That you never had to sit in a cubicle. That you never had to have a “career path.” That the city you chose to buy in remained attractive and the market just kept going up like everybody said it would. In the ...
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trader joes potato salad

just awful. look, i’m an adult. my life sucks. i only have three things to look forward to every day. lunch, dinner, and sex. those are the three times i experience joy. everything else is terrible. so, trader joes, you’ve taken one of my three moments of joy for the day and completely destroyed it.   this potato salad is so bad i need to eat another meal to get the taste out of my mouth. how could you sell me this garbage? i thought you were one of the good guys. who on the trader joes product development team is responsible for this culinary disaster? who is to blame for this?
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About Me

baby i’m sorry i’m like this. i’m sorry i don’t want to spend every day together like i used to. i’m sorry we’re not doing anything on thanksgiving. i’m sorry for making you so frustrated. i’m sorry that you hate your job. i’m sorry for laying it all out like this. i’m sorry i make you feel bad for texting me. i’m sorry you’re with someone so cold. i’m sorry your parents didn’t build you up like mine did for me. i’m sorry for chipping away at your innocence every time we talk, for making you just like me.   when i say i’m sorry, i mean only that. i feel sorry. i don’t mean that i apologize. i don’t mean that i see the fault in my actions or intent and will change in the future. i mean that i understand that you feel pain and i acknowledge that you are sad. the most i can do is to simply acknowledge it. i try to help you improve your condition but i’m learning more all the time that the only one who can improve somebody’s condition is themself.   i don’t just “hang out” with pe...
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bossman says he wants me to talk more

but when he pauses for my input i can only speak for about 8 seconds until he cuts me off. this may just be how men of business communicate.   i want to say: i will listen to you because you give me money, but my retention rate goes down dramatically after about 4 minutes of staring at your face listening to you monologue. ask me questions. i get what you’re trying to teach me but i hate to cut you off. but we might be able to save a lot of time if you just assume i’m really really smart.  
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dear everyone

dear everyone from college  dear every online friend dear every single girl dear everyone i never called back dear everyone who was nothing but good to me dear every relative i never got to know dear everyone i’ve ever flaked on dear everyone i’ve ever lied to dear everyone i’ve ever used dear everyone i’ve ever mislead dear everyone i’ve ever pitied dear every teacher who gave me an extension dear every recruiter who has ever viewed my resume dear every person who has ever seen me on stage dear every person at my high school graduation dear every other text book narcissist raised by screens dear every person i’ve ever known. dear everyone who thinks they’ve ever known me. dear everyone: Your experience of ‘Thomas Johnston’ has been part of a social experiment conducted by Harvard University. We are sorry for the confusion and thank you for your participation in the fight against adult-onset Superautism. Do not reply. This is an automated message.  
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the case against friendship

mom, i’ve already promised like 6 people i’d call them. i think about it every day. i hate calling people. even if i like the person. i have nothing to say. feels like the more i give the less i am. the less i am a person who is anything or makes anything or goes anywhere and the more i am just somebody’s Good Friend.  dad’s the same way. everybody loves him. and i mean everybody. but he’s empty. he spent his whole life giving himself away to whoever happened to be around or near him and now he has nothing and is nowhere. perpetually drunk. accumulated nothing and feels the crushing shame of American Poverty and numbs it with booze and drugs. he may have set the world record for most “Good Friends” Made, most Drinking Buddies, but at the end of it all he has nothing and no one. and i look in the mirror and see more of him every day. i catch an awful glimpse of him in the black of my screen when i’ve been typing for too long and it gets hard to see the words. the reason it hurts so ...
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Seeing Many 'Friends' Ads Lately

Some guy in Advertising: Guys. Matthew Perry just died. Condolences to his family of course, but is this not a perfect opportunity to increase the budget on our FRIENDS campaign??   Promote all our ‘Friends’ reels, stick their stupid white faces on the front page of peacock netflix whatever the fuck - is it okay to start showing white people in ads again? just this once? you can’t miss out on the “celebrity just died” market. think of all the web traffic! think of the key performance indicators! we’re almost through Q4 guys lets finish strong! It’s what Chandler would've done!
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The Way that I Look

I ’ve had it too good for too long. i’ve been able to think of myself as more or less physically attractive for the past several months now. having a girl helps. but yesterday i was watching myself on a tournament stream (sadly i tend to watch them more to see what people have to say about me rather than to analyze the gameplay) and came across a comment from one “epic bishly” who was confused for a moment thinking i was BC Top Player Lemmon and then commenting: “damn i was gonna say Taylor looks fucked up what happened XD” implying that i look like a “fucked up” version of Taylor Lemmon which hurts a little because sadly it’s true, and that’s the only time an insults really hits — when the target perceives it as accurate.   But yeah, bishly, I did look pretty fucked up that day. I failed to sleep all night on somebody’s terrible couch after eating several pounds of burger sludge and that combined with my general dark sickly look resulted in that. you got me. good job.   I lik...
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hey man hows it going

whats up? how are you? how are things? give me a call when you’ve got a second. my dad: hey buddy, give your mother a call my mom: ya gotta call ya sista my sister: are you talking to mom and dad?   friend from college: hey man, whats been up with you? how you doing?   my girlfriend: hello? sorry if i’m annoying… my boss: im concerned you’re not very engaged at work. not part of the team i feel.     susan: hey thomas, hows your weekend? do anything fun? sales are really strong lately, good job! System Notification: To confirm using iCloud, confirm your iPhone passcode.
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The Before Times

big white families. two of them. italians. endless backyards. cookouts. fireworks. those big inflatable pools. every holiday we got together. every summer we were outside.   no one on either side of the family was better off than middle class. early 2000s, rhode island, it didn’t matter. you could have a back yard back then. you could have a nice life.   best of all: no phones. they just let us “go play.” i have no idea what we did but i’m sure it was better than what kids do now. i got a look at my cousin’s playstation in 2007 and begged my mom to get me one. i wish she hadn’t. i wish she made me learn guitar instead. i wish she sent me to some kind of sports-oriented summer camp. i wish that this kind of technology was never unleashed on my child brain.  
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Jordan Peterson Weighs In on STEVE

"Okay, so, people are saying we should BAN STEVE. WHY? Well, have you ever fought Steve? He’s a bloody menace! He’s no joke. He’s clearly the most powerful character, top of the so-called TIER LIST, which is just a dominance hierarchy, by the way, and God knows the radical left hates dominance hierarchies, so they say, let’s just BAN HIM!   And that’s just their solution to everything, isn’t it? Take the most successful individual and just banish him from society? That’s what they did to Socrates! That’s what they did to Jesus for Christ’s sake— it’s an archetypal story as old as time!   But they’re wrong . You can’t just ban everything that upsets you. Why don’t you look in the mirror eh? How about you clean your damn room? Maybe STEVE’S not the real issue here! Maybe it’s you! Maybe your entire life is an unending nightmare of CHAOS and you’re just using Steve as a scapegoat for your own personal inadequacies? Ever thought of THAT?   So what if Steve’s building a hou...
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Sleeping In the Trunk

Tired. In office. Cant sleep on desk. Coworkers will be concerned. Drink some coffee. Ingest more stimulants, they will say. No. It’s 2 pm.   The 2009 Toyota Camry I just purchased has a rather roomy trunk. The car is good as new, too. I think it would actually be quite comfortable to sleep in there.   Forget to take the keys in with me and be the most embarrassed man of all time stuck inside the trunk of his own sedan. I text my girlfriend with the remaining 34% battery left on my phone. She doesn’t see it. Her phone is locked inside a cubby at work.  I start calling people. Leave several harrowing texts. Hey man this is going to sound ludicrous but I am trapped in the trunk of my car. My phone is dying. I am located at 9215 151st St, Redmond, Washington. My coworkers can’t know. They’ll never let it go.  Friends now know instead. It’s getting around. Thomas is trapped in his trunk. LOL. My phone dies. I just lay there wasting away hoping someone decides this proble...
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Clone Boyfriend

I want to be a good boyfriend. But it takes so much time. You can’t optimize it for efficiency. You just have to be there with her. Hour after empty hour, laying together in silence, healing her with your affection and love.   I don’t hate it. But it’s like eating candy. I know that if this is all I do then I will degenerate into nothing.   But you hate to make her feel like she’s a waste of your time. And she’s not. But you know you could be doing more.   What I need is a clone of myself who can be a real good boyfriend and reap the mental benefits of physical connection while the part of me with a brain works to make something significant of my (our) life.   Is that so wrong to want.
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How To Be Remembered

if you want people to remember you, give them something they will use often wearing my striped blue h&m t shirt i’ve had for like 6 years. i got it from noah brown in the second semester of my freshman year of college. the guys were giving their clothes away and i was everybody’s little brother so i happily took his shirt and i wear it today thinking of him.   i’m typing on a $500 electric standing desk i got from my friend poda. he suddenly had to leave the united states and with no time to sell his things so he pretty much gave everything away to my girlfriend and I. we couldn’t believe it. His yearly salary as a software engineer was probably more than both of ours combined. i type on it now thinking of him.  
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I have Sunken Eyes

Sunken like you haven’t slept in weeks. Sunken like your wife just left and took the kids. Sunken like you are no one and have nothing left.   I feel for people with sunken eyes. I can see the tragedy of their life in one quick facial scan. Because they’re me. Sleep has never been natural for me. Sleeping at the same time every night, getting up at the same time every morning. It doesn’t feel possible in the world of blinking shining screens. But some people do it somehow. Some people do it. And some people don’t have terribly ugly dark sunken eyes all day every day of their life.   In college I bought some concealer that matched my skin tone (barely) and often smeared it carefully under my eyes before going out to a socially demanding event. I probably looked better. In certain lighting you could tell though. Or at least I could. Nobody ever told me. And I can’t tell if it’s because I hid it well or because they just didn’t want to hurt my feelings. I think I would tell my fr...
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competitive smash tournament gamer

in my head, some smash gamers can have it all. they can be great at smash, best in their region, winning tournaments, physically fit, mentally stable, maintain connections with non-smash-playing humans (or at least their family), have gf, have a decently fulfilling job and make decent money so they can feed themselves decent food driving a decent car and living in a decent place with other decent folks living decent lives.   i used to think i was just stupid for not being able to progress from regional to national-level threat but i’m starting to see that i’m just unwilling to pay the price of it: pretty much all your time. it’s not just an hour a day. try six. and six hours of every single day is gargantuan for an adult who wants to maintain the rest of their decent life.  
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just make more money

just make more money just earn more riches just secure more funds just increase your income just get more dollars just stack more paper just collect more dough just convince more people to give you more currency tokens   just take more money from others just end up with it somehow this will solve everything!
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Mechanics

everyone who works on cars professionally looks like they want to kill me like for christ sake this stupid dumbass urbanite posh faggot white kid can’t tell the rear engine transmission valve from the automatic flux capacitator. smh
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the elephant

yesterday at zoo with friends. struggle to repress dark thoughts. we get to the elephant. it’s in jail. dark dirt room with big roman pillars. we view it from behind huge glass screen. it stands there sadly. most humanoids are unphased. they comment on its funny trunk.   i’m staring at this big sad creature. staring directly into the void. my friends are ready to move on. i’m silently communicating with the elephant via ESP. i tell him that i feel the same way, all day inside. staring at a screen. wanting to thrash around and break free but knowing it’s pointless. enduring those vacuous stares all day. always under surveillance. moving like you’re underwater. that slight grip in your chest — drowning all the time. i want to touch him. i can’t tell why i think he’s sentient in a way the other animals aren’t. some look in his eyes. we’ve been locked for several minutes now.   friend comes over and says hey lets move on. i’m like okay. but i could stare at this thing all day. for...
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Apartment Management

It’s impossible to reach the people who manage my apartment complex. After about a month of texting calling emailing google review bitching screaming into the open air I got into contact with one of the leasing company managers. Please let me tour another place. I like the neighborhood but the loud terrible bitches across the hall and their dogs keep me up every night screaming at each other because they’re poor. I get no sun light in my apartment. Please let me see something else, I beg of you.   I finally meet with one of these people. Dark rainy Wednesday morning. Classic Seattle. She’s maybe younger than me. Overweight. Nose ring. Pink hair. What the fuck. You’re in charge here? Hundreds of tenants. They’re all waiting on a reply from this creature. It all makes sense now.   She takes me up to a 200 square foot closet with a view of several dumpsters. In three seconds: Oh I was hoping to look at the bigger ones. I saw there was one available now on the site. The one I ment...
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face to face

i’ve written this a thousand times — i don’t understand how people can sit across from each other at a table and look into each others’ eyes and talk. i don’t understand how it doesn’t just become an insane face scanning self conscious nightmare. i don’t understand how it’s not too intimate.   if i’m eating with someone, we’re sitting diagonal or side by side. it’s not because i don’t like you, it’s because i’m a freak. i can’t have a human’s face be the default thing i see when i look up from my food. there’s this interview quality that’s so easy to recognize in first dates but that’s how i feel sitting across from anyone ever. everything is a first date for a sensitive guy like me.  
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All My Friends Are Dead, Tom

I’m like Dad you must know some people back on the East Coast. He’s like I know a lot of people. If I went back they’d have to schedule to see me. Like I was the Pope. But all my friends are dead, Tom. Acquaintances, sure, but all my friends are dead.   I couldn’t stop laughing. Not at him. At the truth of it. It was a joker laugh. I never considered that he had people he really loved: brothers, drinking buddies, classmates. Apparently all of them dead.
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