"Solve for X"

I was simply terrified to graduate college.  Girls had never liked me except at college, my friends were taking off for various corners of the world, and my outlet for comedy writing, Misadventures in Dentistry, was about to disappear.  Blogs were not yet in vogue and most newspapers were not interested in pointless humor columns by 21 year-olds.  Or at least by me.

Shortly before graduation, a part-time Tufts professor named Peter Stokes approached me to contribute to his forthcoming webzine, The Magnetic Times.  I was delighted and quickly came up with the idea of "Solve for X," essentially an extension of Dentistry, but with a recent-college-graduate spin.  My column lasted barely two months, and the ezine itself didn't kick around much longer.  I became more interested in writing for money (and prestige) and Peter went on to become the executive vice president of something called Eduventures.  We did okay.

I hadn't seen these entries since originally writing them, and I was shocked to find they're not nearly as bad as I expected.  The last one in particular is almost good.  Not quite, but almost.  And when looking at the writing from my early 20's and younger, almost good is as high compliment as I can give. 




Out of the college, into the fryer
A conspiracy in my pants
A day in the lifeless


 Out of the college, into the fryer
June, 1997

The most recent wave of panic hit as my family was picnicking after graduation. Mid-sandwich, my sister says, "You know, when you fill out warranty cards and credit card applications, you can't check off the 'student' box any more. You'll have to check off 'unemployed.'" And she's right. In the eyes of Black & Decker and Citibank, I'm not a student. I'm a grown-up. Regardless of how many grapes I can fit into my mouth at once, how much I value PEZ as a staple of daily life, or how hard I laugh at a good fart joke, these reply cards brand me an adult.

A very addled adult, mind you.

But just like Peter Pan and a bray of whiny tots in Toys 'R Us commercials, I don't wanna grow up. I'd rather stay forever young a la Rod Stewart. And I've even got the bible on my side here: those commandments say something about "Thou shalt not commit the sin of adulthood" and "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's Infiniti," right? Still, this is the path I've chosen; I've made my proverbial bed and now I have to proverbially lie in it. And I'm starting to learn that proverbial beds are not so comfy unless Art Linklater's involved, and I doubt Craftmatic has much of a hand in my job future.

By choosing to get a job instead of adding letters to the end of my name, my formal education is complete, over, done, kaput. September will be the first time I don't return to school since the Carter administration. The next exam I'll take will be to renew an expired driver's license, to audition for Jeopardy!, or to impersonate some poor schlump on his SAT (if the price is right and the #2 pencil is sharp). As my close, personal friend Alice Cooper would say, school's out forever.

I just wish I knew what now. Luckily, most of my peers are equally clueless for direction in life. I'd even call us a lost generation except that every batch of young-uns needs a brand-spankin'-new title for their demographic. Generation X was fine way back when, but it's been around so long that the original Gen X-ers have their own kids who could beat me up. Sure, this says more of acute wussiness on my part than of the term outstaying its welcome, but if X marks the spot, then out out damn spot. If anything, we're Generation X + 1. And until we solve for X, I'll settle for the fine Gertrude Stein line and accept the title of lost.

Wanna go see a bull-fight and drink some pernod?

So the life of the post-grad begins. With my finger on the remote, my resume in the mail, and my head in the microwave, I prepare to face the big bad world so determined to huff and puff and blow my dreams down. But I'm too young to give up just yet. We may be lost, but we ain't gone.

A conspiracy in my pants
June, 1997

My close, personal friend Steven Wright once said that when he buys shirts, he wears an extra medium. I used to chuckle at the riff on lo-fi fashion, but now I'm sensing a deep wisdom in his wise-crack. Labels on clothes are about as useful as the ones on mattresses that threaten with jail-time if you remove them. As the politically ultra-correct might say, labels are for cans, not clothes. Or as I might say, nobody's in the slammer for making their fitted sheets fit on their non-fittable mattress, and "medium" is a figure of Tommy Hilfiger's imagination.

I have the darnedest time shopping for clothes, and I always blamed this on myself. "My body's too weird," I'd say, as a shirt pulled tight across my gut and tighter around the neck. "I'm shaped wrong," I'd say, as pant-legs drooped on the floor while pleats bulged like a battle. "I suck," I'd say, as I got my shoe-laces caught in the zipper and the buttons caught in the shoe-laces. "Could you keep it down in there?" the clerk would say, as angry customers complained of my self-deprecating commentary. Whoops.

Maybe wasn't all my fault, though. Maybe it's somebody else's fault. Maybe it's a conspiracy, and I'm not just saying that because this is the Internet and that's the pseudo-hip joke to make about the Internet for people who don't know any better, people who still use their Apple IIGS or actually have a snazzy Pentium but use the 6000 megs of RAM to shuffle the cards in Solitaire a bit faster, who think the web is something Spiderman deals with and that an URL is what you do after eating too many hot dogs before the Tilt-a-Whirl.

Damn the technologically retarded! A plague on all their coprocessors!

No, there's a subtle conspiracy afoot in the fashion world. In fact, there's a major conspiracy in my pants. Rather, in all pants. See, men's pants only come in even sizes and I've found I'm an odd. Somehow that distinction seems appropriate, my identifying with that term. But pants-wise, I'm doubly odd -- wicked odd to New Englanders -- since I sport odd-numbered waist and length measurements. And I refuse to believe I'm the only person in America with such a problem, but still we're rail-roaded into society's pre-determined sizing system. I'm just another number, another slab of meat to be objectified like a two-bit whore. I like to think I'm worth at least three, maybe a bit more.

So the saving grace in pants shopping is that sizes are far from universal. They're also far from paramount, new line, and 20th century fox. Alas, a 34 by any other brand- name would not fit as sweet. This is how us odd-balls find clothes -- someone's even is really an odd. Get it? Of course not. That's why they have fitting rooms.
Calvin's 36 may really be a 35 while Pierre's 36 may be at real 36 and Ralph's 36 is actually tractor trailer heading west on 83.

I think this partly explains the appeal of baseball hats. If your hat doesn't fit, all you have to do is change the notches on the back and suddenly there was a farmer who had a dog and BINGO was his name-o. Your hat fits. No questions asked, no pep talk in the fitting room, no disgruntled sales clerk. If we installing mechanisms like this in all clothes -- tuxedo pants already have them -- we can have a society of extra-medium clothes that would satisfy all the people all the time. Labels would become obsolete, racial barriers would collapse, and the world would sing in perfect harmony.

And I'd have more pants. Woohoo!

A Day In the Lifeless
July, 1997

9:30 a.m.: I wake up for no reason. That sentence is cleverer than you might think because a) there's no reason for my happening to wake up at this exact moment, and b) there's reason to bother getting out of bed. Why cease to be a hibernating lump of carbon-based matter? Although, if I could become a hibernating lump of helium-based matter, I would have a reason to wake up -- namely, the chance to talk like David Seville's rodent pals.

9:32 a.m.: I fall asleep again for a good reason: I'm tired. I need more rapid eye movements because I was up late last night, busily doing nothing.

11:20 a.m.: Up again. I look at the clock.

11:20 a.m.: The clock does not have time to change before I am out like a proverbial light.

12:45 p.m.: I wake up and feel guilty for wasting so much of the day. Of course, then I realize that what I have to do today doesn't exist and I change my plea to not guilty. Please disregard the prior testimony and have that first sentence stricken from the record. Fortunately, vinyl is extremely strickenable -- follow the 33 1/3 elements of logic in that?

So here's my goal for the day: Avoid death. Maintain vital signs. If life is preserved by bedtime: mission accomplished without assistance from Tom Cruise. Trying not to die is all I have to do to keep me occupied, really. As a recent college grad living at home, I have no friends, no job, and no hope of escaping the parental units. Like a pre-Simpsons Matt Groening, this would be life in hell, but I'm too lifeless to earn the distinction. Well, at least I have a girlfriend. (This is known as "foreshadowing of imminent doom," like when somebody on a sitcom says "Well, it can't get any worse!" and you suddenly hear a thunder-clap and the US declares martial law, not to be confused with Jan Brady's hottie of a sister.)

1 p.m.-4 p.m.: Afternoon. I try to jam-pack the time with activities to stave off the insanity that arises from sitting around in my underwear with a glass of cranberry juice in one hand and a remote control in the other as I watch horse-racing and the Power Rangers and try not to contemplate the fact that other people my age are getting drafted by the NBA or blabbing between videos on MTV or fronting successful bands or working in rewarding or high-paying jobs or just acting a whole hell of a lot more motivated and responsible than I am although I'm starting to see the appeal of horse-racing and am still totally clueless about the Power Rangers although the girl isn't half bad although she's probably 11 with my luck and since I'm sprung from the loins of a liberal Irish legislating clan I'll pass.

So I kill. Time, that is. I do some. I watch some TV. Write some letters. Read some books. Clear some branches. Play some guitar. Choke some chickens. Et some cetera. And all my problems are gone-a-rooney! I'm not fooling anyone with this routine, of course, except for the Ukrainian judge who gave me a 9.9 for technical merit and suggested I train with Bela Karyoli.

4:30 p.m.: Remember the foreshadowing? Well, it becomes ironic like a Canadian pop wench. Do I need to recount the phone conversation where a new person decided to change her name to a funny-looking symbol known to the masses as the Artist Formerly Known As My Girlfriend? I think not.

4:32 p.m.: Moping. Feeling sorry for myself. Boo-freakin'-hoo.

5:00 p.m.: The parents come home. Strangely, my spirits are not lifted. Strangely, my buttocks are and I flee to my room to rearrange the cluttered piles on my floor into different, equally cluttered piles. I remain there until I stop remaining there.

?:?? p.m.-sleep: The events of the night bleeds into themselves. The early news becomes the evening news which becomes the syndicated reruns which becomes prime time which becomes late night viewing which becomes a calculated and not unsuccessful effort to watch the scrambled version of the porno channel which my family doesn't subscribe to but comes in fuzzy enough that you can see random appendages hear all the good noises. I continue to avoid death by burying myself in similar activities as in the afternoon, with a similar level of success. Eventually, the desire to stay awake fades and I move onto the hibernating lump of carbon-based matter stage.

Rinse and repeat for the summer. Yield: one damned bitter casserole.