When There are No Words

Thank God I was warned about this before, because if the first time I saw this was in the break room at work, I would have just embarrassed myself.

Nobody Likes You When You're 23

Nobody Likes You When You're 23

I hate birthdays.

I love other people's birthdays -- the parties, the drinks, the mingling, the celebration -- but I hate my birthday. Maybe it's because it's in the summer, so I never had the joy of celebrating it with classmates. Maybe because I'm a twin, so it never felt like my own. Maybe it's because ever since I was 20 I was convinced that I was too damn old to go after my goals, even when I didn't always know what they were.

23 is not old, of course, and I don't look a day over 17, but it reminds me that time is measured. At 20, I was in between my Wisconsin years, and I remember being unsure about life but I still had a zest for it -- the depressive episode didn't start until the following August. By 21 I was ready to move to New York, but I had been depressed for a good 11 months at that point and I didn't feel [i]anything[/i] by that point. By 22 I had fucked up the New York thing and had recently moved back home, peeing in a cup so I could get rehired at Walgreens. Now I am 23, and I am still at home, because instead of saving money for an apartment I blew it all on a year-long gym membership for Operation Get that Shit Tight.

I haven't decided how I feel about 23. 21 is your first year of legal drinking age in America, and you spend the whole year bar-hopping and feeling young, and the bartenders give you free tokens because you are cute and a good tipper. 22 still feels young and it's a fun number with the matching digits. 23 is weird. It's a prime number, but I don't feel like I'm in my prime. By my next prime number I will be 29, and if I am still living at home it will be in an urn.

I am hoping that 23 will be when my life makes sense, when I stop having fear and regret and instead have courage and gusto, even if I found a wrinkle under my left eye yesterday.

On Crushing on Personal Trainers

Remember three months ago when I started at the gym, and I worked out with Doug, who was all muscles and dimples and was like "Jake Jake Jake c'mon c'mon c'mon UGGGGGHHHH" but then he left after I signed my life away for a year of personal training? Lately I have been working out with Douche Trainer, who is younger than me and calls me Cagefighter and I have grown to like him as a person but I still don't think I'm attracted to him, unless we were ever in a college bar in Dinkytown.

Anyway, I worked out with a DIFFERENT trainer today, named Southie. Southie has blonde hair and a very nice smile and is also a certified nutritonist. Even though I was not a fan of the exercises Southie would make me do, I was getting the trainer to laugh at my jokes.

"You're so funny," Southie says. When I mention that 3 P.M. is early, Southie asks if I drink a lot.

While we are in the aerobics gym, Douche Trainer walks in with his current client, a fortysomething housewife-type! "Keep it goin', Cagefighter," Douche Trainer says.
"Shut UP," I say, because I don't think I like him which means I do, but I am not in love with him the way I am now in love with SOUTHIE.
"Jake's my new favorite client," Southie laughs, and Southie has a really tight body.
"Thanks for laughing me so much," Southie says when I leave the gym.

I suppose I should stop delaying the point, which is that SOUTHIE IS A GIRL. I'm confused.

On Life

I made this new blog so I would write in it, and now I never do. I suck at life.

I am learning there is more to life than talking to porn stars on Twitter. I do not know why I do it. In my defense, I only talk to straight porn stars, as if somehow this makes me less of a loser. Truth be told I do not enjoy a lot of gay porn because I either obsess about how the performers got into the business, or about how they got those eight-pack stomachs when I am still working on mine. And really, it does not mean shit that James Deen builds jokes upon my jokes or that Mick Blue told me I am two years old, but it makes the day go by.

I turn 23 in two weeks. I still feel 13. I work at the mall. I live at home (I didn't ALWAYS live at home, shit just happens). Cute boys piss me off. I still say "boys" and not "men". I don't want to do R-rated things with these boys, it is just that when they come into my work and flirt with me but they know I am this way and they are that way, it confuses the hell out of me and makes me want to eat a lot of mozarella sticks. For the past week I feel as if I have been on this roller coaster and my emotions and feelings go up-down up-down up-down and I think I just want to get off for a little bit.

On Tanning

I'm having an identity crisis. For the past week or so, I have been obsessed with the idea of tanning.

And most people would decide, instincitvely, to go to the tanning booth or not. But I am Jakey, and therefore I have to internalize all of this into something much greater.

I have always been pale. I knew this as a child, when I was fixated on the olive skin of a Black Irish classmate named Danny (I would call him "Tanny" as a nickname), and when I was at a pool party for a friend's birthday and he, at age nine, told me "Go in the sun, Jacob! You're white as a sheet!"



I signed up for a gym recently (I am paying way too much for personal training services, which means I won't move out of my parents' house until I'm 30, but I will get that shit tight). I am enjoying the results I am getting, but maybe I will never be satisfied. Everytime I see my arms in the giant mirrors I cringe at how pasty I am compared to everyone else.



Alas, here is where a moral dilemma comes into play. I was friends with a douchebag once. He was in the famousphere of Hollywood, where apperance is everything, and I understand that. He was also a gay man living in a world of masculine ideals and, in this world, you had to be a certain way to be happy. "If you want to ever make it to California," he once told me, "You have to be tan and buff."




"KISS MY SKINNY WHITE ASS!", I wanted to say. "I WILL NEVER BE TAN AND BUFF AND I AM FINE WITH THAT!"

And I'm not fine with that, but if I do go tanning, then am I making him right, by subscribing to this beauty myth? And what if I do it wrong and show up at work looking like an oompa-loompa? It all greatly confuses me.