La Flamme

     I think I may lack a level of common sense that is shared with even the simplest of human beings.  The other night I was forcing myself to paint an oil painting.  Forcing not because I hate oils, but because I'm lazy and oils require an overwhelming amount of preparation and clean up time.  You need linseed oil, turpentine, pallet knife, pallet, and big lungs.  The mixture of linseed oil and oil paint smells like ejaculate to me and it also fucks me up.  Painting with oils in a draft-less room has the same effect on me as a hit of acid chased with moonshine.  Acrylics require only water.  Good old fashioned odorless water. 
      It may have been the fumes from the turpentine or perhaps the bottle of wine I had consumed prior to painting, but I suddenly got the urge to test the flammability of a rag doused in turpentine.  I held a lighter to the rag, slowly getting it just close enough to ignite the wavy fumes exuding from the soaking wet fibers.  Instantly a fire ball engulfed my hand and I began to panic as the hair on my arms were singed off in billowing black curly flakes.  I did a few circles in the dining room looking for a place to throw the fireball burning my hand.  I ended up throwing it not in a pot of soil, not in an empty fishbowl, not even the toilet (which I was only a few feet away from).  Instead I threw it on the the already garish hardwood floors, which only made the flame, which was now the size of half my body and emitting clouds of black smoke, more angry.  I ran into the bathroom and cupped my hands under the sink, looking anxiously at the growing flicker of light dancing on the walls outside the bathroom door, and then back at myself in the mirror.  I caught a moment of eye contact with myself and my reflection scolded me for my blatant retardation.  I wanted to scream, but all I could mutter was, "ehhh", like a child would wine to it's mother when it crapped it's pants, and throwing my shoulders up in question marks.
     By the time I made it to the fire my hands were empty and damp, so I slapped the rag and the spreading flame on the floor furiously until finally all that was left were glittering red coils.  I collapsed next to the blackened patch of hardwood floor  and lit a cigarette off a piece of rag that had not yet gone out.   What, I thought to myself, is my fucking problem?   The bottle of turpentine says flammable, I have been warned of it's flammability, and yet; I held a lighter to it to see what would happen and almost burnt my house down.   What was I going to tell Jen when she came home? 
     Fortunately Jen did not notice the dinner plate sized charcoal patch in our dining room, but I decided to come clean anyway.  But in an effort to sound less stupid I told her I was trying to light a cigarette with a rag in my hand and the rag exploded in my face, which in retrospect sounds just as stupid, if not more so than, "I wanted to see how flammable it was so I lit it on fire."  Jen said almost nothing as I told her my story, she just rolled over on the couch and laughed at my idiocy.  
     I wish I could say that this was my first encounter with fire related acts of stupidity, but I actually set a palm tree on fire in my dad's living room when I was twelve.  There is still a trail of melted carpet leading to the bathroom where it was put out.  Last halloween I threw a lighter into a bon fire at a work party.  It blew up and sent my co-worker, Dinease, hurling three feet backwards, which added to my great reputation at work.  My mom got me a baby sitter at the age of thirteen because I had taken to placing napkins on the stove burners to see how long it would take for them to catch on fire when turned on high.  She also shoved the burners in her purse every day before leaving for work. 
     I ended up going to high school with my babysitter, at the same time.  Had I been heterosexual and had she not had a bible blocking her vagina from all attempting objects, it would have been the ideal recipe for baby sitter sex, which I think is every boys fantasy.  Turns out, it wasn't a recipe for pre-pubescent fulfillment so much as it was a recipe for being a looser.   After class with my babysitter she would drive me home and watch my brother and I where she  put us in in time out every time we broke a window, set something on fire, or used the lords name in vain.  I used to get so mad at my mother for making me have a babysitter up until age 14 but looking back I'm wondering if it wasn't such a bad idea.
     My brother, Nick, and I used to buy bulk bottles of rubbing alcohol and set them on fire.  We would write words on the street with rubbing alcohol, set them on fire and dance, jump and cartwheel through burning streets.  This hobby of ours continued for years and is still revisited on holidays and birthdays.  It got out of control when we decided to set a park on fire.  Not the whole park, just the slides.  We started with the metal slides and worked our way to the plastic spiraled tube slide.  We dumped a whole bottle of rubbing alcohol down the spiral slide and watched as the shape changed.  We ran away screaming when we realized the flame had become to large to blow out and when we returned in the morning there were holes in the slide with stalactite cones frozen from cooling.  It was still a functional slide, it was just significantly less appealing after it had been set on fire.
     I wonder what it's like to have that voice in your head that tells you not to do something profoundly stupid and listen to it.  I know I have that voice when it comes to drinking and driving, relationship intuition, and other things related to common sense.  I just typically do not listen to them.  I just sit back after the fact and realize what a dip shit I am.  Looking at the burn marks on the floor Jen suggested renters insurance.  I'm wondering if it's not such a bad idea.

Practic Patience.

     I don't think I'm a very patient person.  I bought some cilantro, basil, and wheat grass seeds and planted them about three days ago.  Since then, I have stared at dirt for a collective five hours...approximately.  I have watered them more times than I can count and dumped a highly concentrated dose of Merical  Grow into one of the pots.  I heard shit was full of vital nutrients for plants and even tossed around the idea of crapping in our house plants, I want these seeds to grow as badly as a mother wants her children to grow.  After spending ten minutes today breathing on dirt to circulate carbon dioxide and wondering why my seeds haven't reached maturity in almost four days, I noticed that my impatience had probably murdered my plants before they even had a chance to become plants. 
     I can't help but see a pattern with my impatience bringing on bad ju ju.  Last night, or example, was best friends night.  Rachel wanted Chinese food, Jen didn't care, and I was starving.  I didn't want to wait for take out, so we went to a Chinese buffet instead.  The buffet had everything from Orange chicken to tater tots, and I swear to god I blacked out once I saw the cheese sticks.  I am still shitting egg rolls and will most likely continue to do so for the next few days.  Should I have been patient and ordered take out?  Maybe.  Was a Chinese buffet with cheese sticks and a taco stand a bad choice?  Perhaps.  Do I regret it?  Yes.  Best friend nights almost always includes eating way to much garbage and fighting for the bathroom.  I have even, on occasion, been known to shit my pants on best friend nights.  Eating what is essentially deep fried laxatives is one of our favorite past times for a few reasons but mostly because we are lazy and can't fathom waiting for a dinner that takes more that 30 seconds to order, pick up and eat. 
     Naturally you may be wondering, "Ryan, how do you manage to stay so skinny when you eat like that?"  To which I would respond, impatience.  I don't have the patience to go to the gym, devote time everyday to elevate my heart rate and wait for results to happen.  I just ration my food.  I've created a way of eating that is scientifically formulated to imitate anorexia except with the binging qualities of bulimia minus the purging aspect.  Basically you eat enough to keep your metabolism from shutting down and enough to give you a full feeling via nuts, fruits, vegetables.   Then, about once or twice a week after eating small amounts of foods with high nutritional density, I go absolutely psychotic and terrorize a buffet or maybe even an entire chicken. 
     My impatience allows me to create shortcuts like these on an almost daily basis.  Unfortunately, my low body weight is really the only positive thing I can see coming from my mastered craft because mostly my impatience allows me to be incredibly lazy in addition to fucking things up.  Take for instance, every relationship I've ever had, not excluding my relationship with Justin.  I can't even begin to relay the cosmic number of men I have chased away in the matter of weeks, days, and more often than not, hours. I tend to get bored with the, 'getting to know each-other' part, which I don't think I'm alone either considering half the gay population practically walks around with a bottle of lube smuggled in their taint (just in case), but at the same time I want to know everything about a potential mate. 
     To shorten the time it takes to get to know someone and for someone to get to know me, which can sometimes take months, I do this thing where I condense everything about me into about a two hour horrific verbal machine gun.  "Hi I'm Ryan, I was addicted to NyQuil for a while, which I think is why my ex, Aaron, who I lived with left me, or it was because I'm crazy but I don't think I'm crazy.  How big is your penis cuz this isn't going to work if your hung like a wasp, actually it doesn't matter, but most of the guys I've been with have huge penises.  What was your childhood like? When did you come out, I came out when I was 17.  Do you cheat in relationships, because I don't and I would stab someone if they cheated on me, just ask Jake Truffle.  You don't have HIV do you?" 
     My goal isn't to frighten them off with an overabundance of information and expectations, I just want to get everything out of the way so that we can start having sex and start going to family reunions together.  As I get older this manic need to hurry that type of thing has subsided slightly.  I was turning my job application in at the sex shop when I met Justin.  The first story he told me while he reviewed my application was the time he threw a boulder through his ex's car windshield, which was quickly followed by me telling the story of the time I faked my own death in the bath tub to get Aaron back for not coming home the night before.  I don't know if we were impatient in the way that I am impatient, or if we just are two people who don't have walls, social tact, or reservations about ourselves.  That night Justin moved into my house, and two years later he is still by my side.   We had trouble at times, him because he wouldn't let me love him, and me because I was telling him I loved him after a week. We both held each-other underwater, smothering one another, but somehow we didn't drown.  We just stayed stagnant for a while before growing.

Hopefully my plants will follow suit. 

    
   

I wanna be a ToysR'US kid.

     I fear that I may be getting older.  I realized this today when I made a 'yo mama' joke to a friend of mine at work.  "My mothers dead," she said after I told her the PLU code for cabbage was her mother.  I felt terrible but I would have felt worse had it been the first I had said a joke to someone about their mother who had died without my knowledge.  The first time was in highschool.  I was a sophomore at a new school and given my shyness, flamboyancy and utter social ineptitude; I had but one friend.  Her name was Terra.
     We were at the lunch table discussing our favorite websites, among myspace and AIM one of my favorites was maddox.xmissions.com where this astonishing ass hole who went by codename: maddoxx, wrote angry rants.  The only thing funnier than reading this guys rants, was reading his hatemail.  One rant about how stupid you have to be to die in a house fire, as fire moves at 2.3 miles per hour, was a favorite of mine.  It also covered mothers dying in fires trying to save their children.  It wasn't that I found hilarity in the death of people who die in fires, I simply enjoyed talking about something and reading something so void of consideration and able to put sick twisted humor into horrible things.  I was telling Terra and the gang of highschool renegades about this blog and how funny it was when out of no where Terra starts bawling.  It was soon after Terra ran to the bathroom cupping her face with her hands, that I was informed of how Terra's mother had died.  She died saving her in a house fire when she was a toddler.  This not only explained her sobbing but the burn scars on her arms. 
       Even though I didn't directly insult her mother, I did inadvertently send the message that people who die in fires are stupid, her mother being one of those people.  I've always been told I'm an ass hole and even know as I write this I can't help but think maybe people are right in saying that.  People think I'm an ass hole because my sense of humor is so demented.  I know there is a line, and I very rarely cross it, but I'm still nor will I ever be above laughing at a three legged ally cat or even a good Jonbenet Ramsey joke.  I don't really think the murder of Jonbenet Ramsey was funny, but I feel better about the world when I can make something that awful into a laughing matter.  I probably shouldn't laugh at things like that, I guess there is no good way to explain dark humor.  You either get it or you don't. 
     But after today I'm going to try really hard to keep my lips on lock down and not say things that might possibly hurt someone.  I think this means I'm getting older for two reasons.  The first being, I'm growing up and becoming a more considerate and empathetic human being.  The second, I'm getting old enough to where when I say a 'yo mama' joke, I'm saying it to my peers and my peers are old enough to have mothers who are dying or have died.  We are not in grade school anymore where your mother jokes don't effect people becuase the vast majority of kids have 26 year old healthy parents.  I'm not in grade school anymore, I myself am almost 26, and the people I love are losing people they love. 
     I don't know if I'm cut out for being an adult.  I've been avoiding it for 6 years now.  Just for an example, earlier this evening I picked my nose and pulled out a frighteningly large, bulbous, bloody booger.  Now usually, when I pick my nose I wipe it on the nearest surface.  Take for instance, the underbelly of my drivers side car seat; it is so covered in boogers I'm going to need an ice pick to scrape them off if I ever decide to sell it.  I walked around my dining room for about 45 entire seconds searching for a place to wipe it before realizing that it would have taken less time to grab a tissue from the bathroom and flush it than the search and rescue mission I had embarked upon.  I decided to do the grown up thing and wipe it undernieth the kitchen chair arm rest. 
     How am I supposed to be an adult when I can't even muster up the grown up energies needed to wipe my boogers on anything other than dry wall and chairs?  I'm scared.  I'm scared at how stagnate I have become in my paralyzed fear of adult hood.  I mean I pay my bills, go to my full time job, arrange and set up art shows, but something is missing inside of me that makes me feel and act like an adult.  Maybe I'm missing out on personal fulfillment, which I am, and that's the reason I don't yet identify with words like, man, adult, and responsible.  Or Maybe, being a grown up is like dark humor.

You either get it or you don't.