New Things #133-135; plus 71 random things

1. I am so dirty right now.

2. This evening, I was watching TV and when it came time to choose between Fear Factor and Conan O’Brian, I chose Fear Factor and I feel kind of dirty about that.

3. But that’s not what I was talking about when I said “I am so dirty right now.”
4. I really am dirty.

5. Like, I was at this street fair tonight and people kept spilling bear on my feet and they are filthy.

6. Like, if I don’t shower before I go to bed, I’m afraid my feet might stain my sheets.

7. But don’t worry, I’m going to shower.

8. According to a commercial I just saw, “stress raises belly fat.”

9. Is that true?

10. Because my belly’s fucking preggers with fat.

11. And I’ve been really stressed lately.

12. I can’t really say why I’ve been stressed, just some family stuff (drama), that’s been going on for awhile and is shifting and changing and getting worse and getting better, depending on the moment, but let’s suffice it to say that every day feels new.

13. Like, whether or not I’m writing about New Things, every day feels distinctly like a New Day.

14. Sorry to be so vague.

15. I hate being vague.

16. But I’m writing everything down in my journal, so you’ll just have to wait until I turn it into a movie.

17. Anyway.

18. My second (and last) girlfriend (ever) is getting married tomorrow.

19. We never got past first base.

20. (What is first base, anyway?)

21. I’m really looking forward to the wedding.

22. THAT’S A NEW THING! I’ll claim it right now:

23. New Thing #133: I went to an ex-girlfriend’s wedding.

24. My other ex-girlfriend, the first one—she’s going to be at the wedding too.

25. So that should be weird.

26. I’m really looking forward to the wedding, but the fact that both of my ex-girlfriends are going to be there kind of makes me feel like Hugh Grant in Four Weddings and a Funeral—you know, in that one scene where he’s seated at the table with all of his exes—except I don’t think I’m as cute as Hugh Grant, and one of my exes is the bride, so it’s really quite different, but whatever.

27. I really want to ask my first ex-girlfriend if she still has all of the love letters I wrote to her.

28. I wrote A LOT of love letters to her.

29. I want to know if she still has them because, come on: I really want to read them, and I still have all of the letters that she wrote to me, but maybe that’s because I’m a neurotic packrat who never throws anything away.

30. I mean, ANYTHING.

31. I throw NOTHING away.

32. But especially things like high school love letters.

33. I mean, high school love letters are classic.

34. Like, terrible and amazing at the same time; definitely on the Never Throw Away list.

35. So I want to ask her if she still has the letters, and if she DOES still have them, if she wouldn’t mind giving them back to me (or at least giving me photocopies) because I want to read them to see if they’re bad enough to submit to that Mortified show. (Have you ever heard of Mortified? It’s awesome—it’s people reading terrible, awful, amazing, embarrassing poems, letters, stories, whatever—just as long as it’s something they wrote in high school. It’s kind of a brilliant show.)

36. Is it psycho that I want to ask her if she still has the letters?

37. Would it be psycho of her to actually still have them?

38. Is it psycho that I still have all of the letters that she wrote to me?

39. I asked my second ex-girlfriend—the one who’s getting married tomorrow—if she still had the letters I wrote to HER, and she said that one of her other ex-boyfriends (I’m not sure who this was, only that he came after me and before the man she’s marrying) was really possessive and he knew that she had a box with love letters from old boyfriends and he made her throw all of them away.

40. My second ex-girlfriend didn’t know (at the time) that I was gay, so she didn’t know that the letters were supposed to be preserved as, like, camp artifacts—so I forgive her.

41. But I still have all of the love letters she wrote to me.

42. Wow, I really DO sound psucho right now.

43. Yeah, I realize I misspelled “psycho,” but the brilliant thing about typos is always when you invent a word and “psucho” pretty much fucking rocks.

44. Psucho, def: noun, the state of being crazy, but also lame.

45. It’s not like I sit around reading the love letters—they’re in a box, somewhere (I’m not even sure where right now—if they’re in a box in storage or if they’re in a box in the garage or where they might be) (I only know that I have them somefreakingwhere) and I haven’t read them since high school and I probably won’t ever read them again, but I will keep them until the end of time.

46. Because they’re words and I hate to throw words away.

47. Seriously.

48. I want you to know that I switched over from Fear Factor to Conan O’Brian and I feel better about myself now.

49. I was sad the other night (see #12) and I watched the Patrick Dempsey classic Can’t Buy Me Love and it was comforting, like a ratty old t-shirt that you’ve had for a dozen years that you never wear out of the house anymore but that feels so good on your skin and you’ll never throw away.

50. This is completely unrelated, but I’m sad about Haley Joel Osment and his whole drunk-driving accident fiasco. I really thought he’d make it into adulthood without doing the whole child-star-crashes-and-burns cliché.

51. I mean, it’s boring, Haley Joel. The crashing and burning thing is BORING.

52. If you really want to get back into the headlines, you should cure cancer. Now THAT would be new. But doing any activity that requires a mugshot afterwards? Hello: boring.

53. Oh, I just remembered another New Thing I did recently—let’s call it New Thing #134: I submitted a play to a theater using a pseudonym.

54. Which was a totally random, weird (um, psucho anyone?) thing to do—but it was a submission to a theater that I’ve worked with quite a bit and it was for their late night short play series and I’ve never written a short play before and I was feeling insecure about my short play writing abilities—okay, actually, that’s a lie: I feel like every scene within a full-length play should be almost like a mini play unto itself, which, yes, is a small piece of the larger whole, but it should also have its own logical interior beginning, middle, and end—so in that sense, I’ve written many, many short plays. But I submitted this short play to the theater under a pseudonym because I’ve worked with them several times before and I wasn’t in the mood for rejection (which I’m typically really good with—you kinda half to be good with rejection if you’re a writer, and I am, I know that it comes with the territory, so when it comes, I just figure that means I’m one step closer to something not being rejected—but when I submitted this one specific play to the theater I was in a very rejection-unfriendly mood), so I figured that if I submitted the play under a fake name and it got rejected, then I wouldn’t have to deal with the rejection because it wasn’t really me, and if the play got accepted, then I could be like “hey, guys, it’s me!” and that would be fun.

55. So the reason I just told that long story is that I just found out that the play was accepted, and so then I had to call my friend Lauren and be like, “um, hey, how’s it going?” and then we talked for a couple of minutes about our lives and then I was like, “I have a confession to make,” and she was like, “uh…what?” and I was like, “I just got an email from you,” and she was like, “you did?” with an extra edge to her question mark because she didn’t remember sending an email to me, and then I was like, “you just sent an email to someone named Dave Jenkins telling him that his short play was accepted into your late night show, but Dave Jenkins doesn’t exist. I’m Dave Jenkins.” And then she was like, “really?” And I was like, “yeah.” And then she was like, “really?” And then I was like, again, “yeah.” And then she was like, “that’s SO WEIRD!” But it was a happy weird, so it was all good, and now I’m excited that I get to work with a bunch of old friends again at this theater I love. (New Thing #135: I'm gonna have a play in Theatre of NOTE's late night series.)

56. So that should be fun.

57. I think the late nights go up in October or something, I’m not exactly sure right now, but I’ll letchoo know.

58. I was going to try to make this list of random things go into the seven hundred range, but I have a wedding to go to tomorrow and I’m tired and hungry and I still have to shower and wash beer off of my feet and I think I might masturbate before going to bed as well, so, see, I have a lot of things to get done before going to sleep and obviously getting this list into the seven hundred range is not going to be one of those things that’s gonna get gotten done.

59. Gonna get gotten done?

60. Those words shouldn’t work together, but I think they do.

61. I mean, I really think they do.

62. I hope there are a lot of cute British/Greek guys at this wedding tomorrow.

63. That’s not a random hope—it’s very possible. After all, the bride is British and Greek.

64. Okay, I’m off.

65. (I didn’t even fucking make it to the seventies in this list, let alone the seven hundreds.)

66. I’m fucking psucho.

67. Wait—

68. Hold on—

69. Just a second, almost there—

70. (big sigh) okay, now we at least got to seventy, so I feel good, and I can get into the shower.

71. Toodles.