kitty lumpkins

Internet, the last time we talked, I was was bleeding and worrying about my dwindling cash hillock. You’ll be happy to know that the former, at the very least, is no longer a concern, so now I’ll die, malnourished, in a cardboard box, rather than slumped over and headfirst in a blood-filled sink.

That’s the short of it. Basically I am still an unemployed slacker; not too proud of that one. Granted, nobody’s hiring—that is, nobody’s hiring unexperienced college graduates, a category that I slot into nicely. Point stands.

HERE’S THAT THING AGAIN, A FOLLOW-UP THING, IF YOU WILL

You might remember this past winter when I talked about My Friends Wot Seem Like They’re Getting Married. Anyway, that happened just the other week. I was not invited because I am Shiva the Destroyer¹ and was therefore liable to make an awkward, unplanned toast. But Groom and Best Man invited me to the bachelor party, which I am more than happy about. There were no cakes, or strippers, or (it logically follows) strippers in cakes, but there were a lot of chips and cupcakes and even video games, which, I don’t know, close enough? Groom doesn’t drink, and Best Man’s not drinking age anyway, so no shenanigans.² But you know what? Sometimes that’s okay!³

CALLING AROUND

Did you know that I have been in a long distance relationship? Shit sucks, man.

AND FINALLY

Have you noticed the fancy footnote shit going on yet? I admit that it is totally unnecessary, what with my posts being minuscule and all, but it still looks great. You wish I made that all by myself. Damn! Maybe one day I will make things that fancy.

Long story short, I graduated and moved back in with my parents. UGH. One of those people.

JOB CONCERNS

“Technical interview.” Technical. No, not comforting.

Here’s something I forgot that grown-ups have to do: know stuff. Since when?! I thought grown-ups just sat around and drank beer and watched their interpersonal relationships dissolve, sip by sip. I had that one down, solid.

BLOG CONCERNS

I figure I need to be technologically informed or some shit and I decided to look into cached webpages, and so but like long story short, you’re supposed to be looking at a cached, static page. A lot of stuff is supposed to be served by Amazon S3. Like a buck a month, so why the heck not?

This is supposed to be good, but I have no clue if it’s actually working. It’s pretty goddamn obvious when it’s not working, though, which is all the goddamn time. What am I doing wrong? I haven’t got the slightest. It’s probably super simple to figure out what it is, exactly, but four years of formal computer science classes have made me despise technology, and so I give up.

MONEY CONCERNS

In high school, I worked in the (fast) food service industry, and as a result, I received tips in the form of wads and wads of wrinkled small bills. I was also (and still am) shy and awkward and lazy, and I didn’t want to put the bank teller through the ordeal of sorting through wads and wads of wrinkled small bills, even though that is sort of their job, and even though I straightened out the bills and stacked them neatly and ordered them by denomination and oh god.

Anyway, I got into the habit of squirreling away my tips in weird places, thinking, I’ll remember this. Guess what? I didn’t! And so now every time I take a book off my bookshelf, or I look in my desk for a pen, I run the risk of encountering a wad of singles or something. Which is great, except I like knowing where my money goes, so I want to stick it in my checking account so the spending shows up on my account statement, oh, but I don’t want to take it to the bank because it’ll look weird that all I’m walking into the building with just this stack of singles, and sir? is that all you’re depositing, sir? and oh god.

BLOOD LOSS CONCERNS

And so eventually I just sucked it up and deposited like a hundred bucks in ones and fives into my checking account, and basically the fact that I waited so long to do it just really made it worse, somehow, but no matter! Because I decided I needed a graduation present, and there is literally no better way to reward the fact that you have grown-up responsibilities than by spending one hundred dollars on wetshaving supplies and sharp blades that you put near your face, every morning, when you’re groggy and not at all with the program.

It’s questionable exactly how much I can justify the purchase, since I only have, like, four square inches of face that require shaving. But the shave cream’s pretty fancy, so my face smells great, at least. The actual shave’s pretty smooth, I guess, smoother than I was getting with my crappy, ancient electric shaver, but maybe that’s just the blood lubricating everything.

A little more complicated than just that. See, the problem is less a lack of things to say than an ability to say them. It’s easy to say, e.g., that I’ve been making foods¹ or freaking the shit out over this particular piece of work—if you can call it that²—and it is almost trivially easy to say that I have filled the rest of my time with a collegiate creative writing class, although mentioning it makes me feel like I have to justify it by saying that I just had nothing better to do, okay, don’t judge, which I have just done. Easy. Fair enough. A little less easy: girls who taste like garam masala. Where do you even start with that?

Merry Thing. I forgot about all about you, but now I am back with more information about bagels and concerns re.: my bank account.

SO HERE’S A THING

B proposed to his girlfriend. We watched. He got down on one knee and almost didn’t make eye contact with her, but then he did, and he asked her, except he didn’t have a ring because he was still getting it fitted and they couldn’t have it ready in time, so he only had a little box to give her.

He put a lot of things in that box.

I’ve always found the concept of a public marriage proposal, that is, any proposal that involves spectators, to be brave but cringeworthy, and I’ve always hoped that I’d never witness one. Not especially because I feel like I wouldn’t belong, because it’s the proposer’s choice as to who should be around at the time, and if he1 thinks a bunch of us should witness it, then so be it, but no, really, it’s more because what if she2 says no? What if the proposal comes as a complete sucker punch because they haven’t ever, for whatever reason, talked about their white picket dreams, and all she can do is smile kind of weakly and go, “Haha,” and then, “Um, what?” And in this case, if they were alone, they could just have a nice heart-to-heart, but if there are people around, are there rules? Because there is expectation. Terrible, terrible expectation.

So when he went down on one knee, all of us said, “Ohhh!” And then fell silent when he produced the box. Looked up into J’s face. Said, “Will you marry me?” That single second, between his question and her answer, lasted so, so long.

And then, as the milliseconds stretched, I had a different sinking feeling, a more personal, decidedly more selfish feeling:

I thought, it’s finally happening.

Everyone is getting married to everyone else.

I will have to go to my friends’ weddings, and I will feel like an utter faker.

What if there ends up being an odd number of marriable people? And that I am the odd man out?

Which is completely insane. Like a fear of invisible cars.3

Why do people marry, anyway?

Who even gets married? Twelve year olds?!

All this and more. I can’t comprehend marriage. I think this makes me an idiot, but I have an excuse: I’m too young.4 Or maybe just too stupid. Am I completely insane for thinking that you shouldn’t get married while you’re an undergrad? Because we’re all undergrads. We’re almost graduated, but we’re students, at least for now. I’m still not sure that I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing right now. Marriage seems like it should be way foreign for people our age—even if I’d been in a relationship since high school, keeping it alive through all those collegiate relationship hurdles, proving my love, etc. etc. etc., right now, I don’t think even going through that could convince me of my emotional maturity and/or my ability to make any commitment beyond lunch for next week, and that is to say nothing of my economic situation.5 So I guess I won’t be getting married until I “get” it, except maybe you need to be married before you “get” it? Or in a meaningful relationship? I don’t know. Sounds vicious either way. Perhaps I will grow up to be a spinster. Or a crazy cat lady. Only, you know, the male equivalents.

ANYWAY

She said yes. Of course she said yes! It was very sweet. She jumped into his arms. They could not stop giggling at each other. They’ll have the ring by New Year’s.