All my words

There are two types of people: people who have experienced teenage love and those who are perpetually sad.   If you were a nervous, acne-ridden, unconfident, docile, sensitive, rule-following teenage boy, chances are: you did not experience teenage love. And so you are, despite your achievement in other areas of life, perpetually sad.

The kind that humbles you, regresses you to that state of childlike enthusiasm you were worried you’d never feel again The kind you think about all day, where you can’t stop touching each other, you’re blind to their flaws, you trust each other implicitly, you have no past The kind you have to keep a secret, for some reason. The kind that stops you from studying for the SAT. The kind you get to feel once, briefly, and then never again.  

It’s easy to love when you’re young and full of possibility and you’ve never been burned. You love the first person who happens to fill your criteria out of convenience. And then it doesn't work out, it never does, and for the rest of your adult life you're stuck chasing that cheap effortless teenage love. The kind that humbles you, regresses you, reignites that childlike enthusiasm you were worried you’d never feel again. The kind you think about all day, you can’t stop touching him, blind to his flaws, trusting implicitly, nothing else matters. The kind you have to keep a secret. The kind that derails your entire life. The kind you get to feel once, briefly, and then never again.  

When I was 16, I ghosted one of my best friends. Her name was Hailey. I had spent the last three years of my life pretending not to be in love with her. Yes, this is cliche, but it’s probably relatable to somebody. And there’s a little pay off at the end, so keep reading.   She was one year ahead of me. By the time she graduated and was ready to leave for college, I had been not-so-secretly avoiding her for almost 8 months with no explanation. It was kind of dramatic. The night before she would leave, I stayed up in my room and wrote the most compelling, epic, 9 page front and back, hand-written confession of love ever conceived. In 3 hours, I unloaded 3 years of romantic frustration onto 9 loose leaf sheets of physical paper. Just as she’s leaving campus on her last day in Hawaii, I find her and put 9 pages of raw truth, enclosed in an envelope, in her hand. She’s relieved that I bothered to say goodbye. I look her dead in the eyes and instruct her to wait to open it until she’s o...

I need verbal confirmation before I proceed. I need to know that I’m not my father, and i’m not just babbling on with narcissistic nonsense in a tone so grating it makes you want to cut your ears off, each sentence more cliche and pointless and out of place than the last. I listen to him speak and think that there is no way I’m a good writer. The apple would have to fall so far from that tree.

  I used to be nice. Too nice to pursue what I wanted if it meant inconveniencing anyone in any way at all because I needed everyone to like me because I was insecure. I was miserable.   I think I eventually realized, roughly, that nobody’s keeping score in this world and there’s probably no prize at the end for being the nicest, most likable guy who has ever lived.   And that it’s okay to make people feel uncomfortable. We’re not supposed to be comfortable all the time. A lot of people, especially female people, actually like it when you make them kind of uncomfortable: it makes them feel alive.  

Can’t stop saying she’s sorry and I can’t stop telling her to stop saying she’s sorry,   which she apologizes for.  

Laura was a small girl with small girl energy. A shrew. Painfully nice. Being so unrelentingly nice and pleasant and accommodating can seem endearing at first until you turn that stone over and uncover the complete lack of self-esteem that affords someone these qualities. I used to be nice. Too nice to pursue what I wanted if it meant inconveniencing anyone in any way at all because I needed everyone to like me because I was insecure. I was absolutely miserable.   I think I eventually realized that nobody’s keeping score in this world and there’s probably no prize at the end for being the nicest, most like-able guy who has ever lived.   And that it’s okay to make people feel uncomfortable. We’re not supposed to be comfortable all the time. A lot of people, especially female people, actually like it when you make them kind of uncomfortable -- it makes them feel alive.   Anyways, Laura was not near realizing this. She always agreed with me when I spoke of things like this, ...

It’s 2 AM in September. We sit beside each other, as intimately and comfortably as we ever have, on a mutual friend’s couch, watching a horror film in the company of 4 somewhat close friends. We have never “hooked up.” We just met last week. I've wanted you for longer than that. The host unwittingly drapes a thick white comforter over our tired laps and legs.   Possessed by desire, my left hand creeps slowly and deliberately outward until it reaches its target on your mid-thigh. Your breath catches. You’re frozen, prey animal, intoxicated by excitement and fear. Do your best not to react.   My left hand, having the time of its life, continues to excavate your smooth thigh for the next entire hour, in the presence of four other people, who, at all costs, can not know that this is happening.   I can’t go on like this. I rise from the couch, apparently going to use the restroom in the usual way, but actually using it as shelter to send the dizzy girl this message: “Wait at l...

Professional Smiles Matching Uniforms Name Tags Indefinite Servitude Chip Card Readers Self Check Out Customer Service Representatives Automatic Gratuity The Bathroom Key Twelve Hour Shifts Shitty Managers Shitty Customers Shitty Hours Shitty Life Cleaning Up Some Homeless Guy’s Shit in the Bathroom

The writer is the savior The writer is the god The writer is the player The writer is the fraud The writer is the psychic The writer is the pain The writer has no side kick The writer has the rain The writer has oneself to blame When stories go asunder The writer swims or sinks and drowns a slave to roaring thunder The writer hates these kinds of poems So grossly self-indulgent But any moment spent at work Is such a healthy moment

there’s no way you really exist. it’s like the writers of my life dropped you here just so i could get a taste of raw, visceral, reciprocated love: the kind that hurts and makes all your previous loves feel suddenly empty in comparison it’s scary to feel this way because I know what can happen: you make yourself vulnerable to being hurt badly when the scales suddenly tip the other way and their feelings for you dry up. to put the shield away entirely is not an option. people can only hurt you to the extent that you love them.

now i am no longer stumbling over words and filtering myself and feeling anxiety, because we are alone together in a room where no one else exists. the room is my tight little studio apartment. weeks or months of tension have lead to this moment. i’ve made a series of big bets this weekend that have now finally paid off. it’s 4 AM and it’s been a long day but I am wide awake and so are you.   “i’m so tired of pretending I don’t want to just grab you…” 

to tell her how much you want her, love her, how much you NEED her… but you can’t, because she doesn’t want to know.   it might make her happy, in the moment, but she doesn’t want to know. she can’t help it. she doesn’t want you to need her or anybody or anything.   she wants you to be invincible. an immovable object, unbothered, completely secure. she needs you to be better than her.   so you’re left with this ambivalence about what to say. the more you say, the less it means. so you just hope she understands that you’re frugal with your affection for good reason, and if it was possible for her to feel like the only girl in the world all the time then you would make that happen, but it’s not, so you don’t.  

I’m having a hard time not saying I Love You and calling you Baby because for me, this started months ago. It helps to know that you’ve liked me for a bit too, but I’m still so cautious to move too quickly too fast because I know how these things work.   You can only be vaguely in love with each other and fucking for so long before it becomes weird that you’re not dating. I have no desire to see any other girl and I don’t think I will for as long as you love me, but I don’t know. I have thought that before.  

and feeling it in the way people saw you and being unable to shake that feeling despite all present-day signs pointing to the opposite   now that you’ve matured and become fit and smart and smooth and are conventionally physically attractive in the prime of your life by almost all measures but you just can’t believe it when they compliment you. you dig for any reason why you’re not. even when your 20-year old boyfriend thomas johnston tries desperately to communicate this to you every single day, you just can’t believe him and you spend all your free time thinking of reasons why he might be lying to you about this impossible fact

to be called beautiful all the time? Does it lose its meaning? Do you cringe a little because you don’t believe them? Because they’re not the one you want to hear it from? What does this do to you, over time? Is it exhausting to be the object of so much affection? I can’t even take people saying I’m good at smash.  

When an actor assumes a difficult role, I assume they do some form of self-hypnosis to, for the time necessary, really convince themselves that the things that have happened to that character have happened to them, so they really “feel” the emotions they’re trying to convey. The best way to appear sad about your grandpa dying is to convince yourself that you really did have a grandpa and he really did just die and if you sell it well you’re going to take some emotional damage in the process because the most believable emotion is real emotion. When Leo is “sad” in a movie, he’s “sad” in real life too.   And when you pretend to have had an imminent family emergency to get out of work and you have to face your coworkers on Zoom the following week, the emotional toll of your fake-family emergency weighs on you to the extent that you really believe it. And you can only sell it to the extent that you really believe it.    

  Have you ever been slapped by someone you love? It’s like, ow, but please do it again. and that’s not kinky, that’s just human.   Every bone in my body is telling me to pick you up just married-style and take you somewhere warm and lay you down and kiss every inch of your face neck and skin. But I can’t do that because we live in a society, so I have to sit here cross-legged less than inches away pretending not to notice how beautiful you are, stealing glances every few minutes like i’m going back to the muffin table at a party pretending I haven’t already poached from this table three times in the past half hour.  

I can’t wait to get septum surgery so i can breathe. i know that i shouldn’t think this way, that this one little fix will solve all my problems and that i’ll finally be Happy, but it’s hard not to envision the potential cascade of effects that improved breathing could have on my life. poor nasal breathing is the reason i sound like this, look like this, think like this, live like this. people complain about others’ smell at events and i have no idea what they’re talking about. it’s because i can’t smell anything because i cannot breathe through my nose.  

Girls don’t know what they like. It’s undefinable, by the time you realize you’re having a good time it’s already enveloped you, swallowed you whole and now you can’t imagine life without it. And it all happened so fast, so suddenly, so magically. But it wasn’t fast, or sudden, or magic, it was the effort of man properly executed.