Maybe this is standard faire for that demographic but it was mindblowing for me. Had a 70 year old person said something like that to me about their vagina I would’ve likely shrieked and jumped on the table, afraid of the closing-vagina mouse that somehow showed up in my room and won’t someone, please, just kill it?

I’m still refining (developing) my ability to have conversations.

I have friends that are fantastic conversationalists. They have an endless ability to just talk about who knows what. They have insight, anecdotes, and the raw strength of being able to remember their lives.  If you live, and have a good memory, you’re halfway home.  One of my closest friends frequently tells me hilarious stories that I was present for.  It’s always a surprise.

I have a terrible memory.  My life consists of whatever photos I’ve seen, whichever stories my parents tell most frequently, every crush I’ve had from the age of 5 to present (God including that girl I convinced my Mom to get a Strawberry Shortcake Hair Care set for Valentine’s day in like, 1st grade.  That kind of embarrassment normally fades, but due to Facebook we’re still buddies, and I have to relive my shame every time I see pictures of her or her two kids.)

Where was I? Right, listing things I remember. Camp, a few college moments, a couple places I played music, and then last year. For each of my friends I can remember one historical fact, and our three most recent interactions, assuming they all happened this week.  Because of this paucity of anecdotal source material I have to resort to tricks. I’ve been using one, now I have two.

Interrogate: (College -Present)
#1. Ask a question about what they just said. It makes you seem curious about them and not like the self-involved bastard you really are.

Free Associate: (2012-present)
#2. When someone says something, say the first thing that pops into your head!

You know…now that I have it written down like that I think I may have just defined HOW CONVERSATIONS WORK.  That’s embarrassing. The point still stands because if I wasn’t doing that, then what HAVE I been doing? Just know that it wasn’t pretty. It involved a lot of staring and blinking.

Anyway. Chili’s statement broke trick #1 because I had SO many questions my brain had a bottleneck and simply couldn’t pick which one to lead with. I panicked and went with Trick #2.

There’s so much to talk about.  But first, just so we’re all on the same page.

I was stunned by a vaginal comparison I’d NEVER ever considered.
Star Wars Compactor +  Vagina = Star Wars Compactor Vagina.

Those two things weren’t only not built to be friends, they don’t run in the same social circles long enough to even be introduced.  How was I supposed to understand what she meant?   I’d only just wrapped my head around O’Keeffe. They were all flowers and then one day they weren’t.

Flowers.
Flowers.
Flowers.
OH.
OOHHHHH.
I see.  That lady made paintings of flowers that look like vaginas.
Why did she do that?

Had I not been stunned these are some of the questions I would’ve asked.

1. That CAN’T be true.  (A question in the form of a statement).

2. Why is she telling you this?

3. Why did she use the word involuntary?

4. What did you say back?

5. Why is this 70 year old woman still using her vagina like that? I hope I hang up my jersey by 70.*

*Well I guess the issue is that she -isn’t- using her vagina like that but why is it still on her mind?

6. Did YOU shriek and jump on a table?

7. Can’t she do something about this?

8.  Did she expect you to do something about this?

9. Please, can someone do something about this, and then proceed to not tell me anything about it?

One day with any luck I’m going to be 70 years old next to someone that I love, and Star Wars is going to come on the holoscreen and assuming she loves me (so much that she’s read everything I’ve ever written ) she’ll think of this blog and feel very awkward.  I won’t, because <BIG PUNCH LINE>I won’t remember it.</Wasn’t That Big>

I’m not anti-people, I’m just anti-somepeople. It’s not a big deal, you just don’t know which is which until you’re already person deep into the interaction. One of the (numerous) frustrating things about overpopulation is the fact that The Law of Large Numbers suggests that there are likely MILLIONS of people that you would dislike simply upon meeting them.

The Law of Large Numbers (TLoLN) is one of about fifteen things I remember from middle school, and as far as complexity of ideas it’s probably right that it’s something they teach to 12 year olds. The idea is puberty-simple: “If you do something enough times, even the unlikely outcomes will happen eventually.”

[Note: This means, statistically speaking, there’s someone out there that has ONLY met people s/he doesn’t like. At least one person has never LIKED another person, and through no fault of their own. Despite its deceptively jovial middle, TLoLN can be nightmarish.]

[Flip side: There’s a person out there that has ONLY ever had positive interactions with other people.  Which situation makes you angrier?]

Anyway, TLoLN is my go-to law for advice giving.

Auditions? “Just do a bunch of them, one will work out.”
Apartment hunting? “Just commit to looking at 100 of them, you’ll like one.”
A friend of mine was lamenting his dating situation — I told him “Just go hit on four thousand hot women. It’s statistically unlikely that they’ll all reject you.”

This was a crap thing to say because:

a. I made that number REALLY high. 4,000?!|
b. I’m giving him the same dating advice that I would give, if I were twelve.
c. I softened my answer by saying -stastitically unlikely-. I left myself an out just in case all 4,000 did reject him.*

(*He’ll be fine after a few. Probably.)

Anyway. The Q&A.

This guy in line started talking to me. I don’t remember the exact phrase, but somehow his conversation starter went something like:

“Man, homeless people in L.A. what a pain!”

He then started, earnestly, bitching about the homeless, in all of the ways that really terrible people bitch about the homeless.

“They don’t REALLY want food.”
“Oh you know they just want to spend it on alcohol.”
“Oh my god you know they make a LOT of money doing that.”

What I should’ve said was “Being homeless probably isn’t awesome, so who cares what their agenda is?” Instead I tried to soften it with my latest homeless story. In another world I would transition to a homeless story here.

He then asked what I was doing in Hollywood. Tricked once, I thought this was genuine interest. And it was… he was genuinely interested in showing me a magic trick where he took a perfect douchebag and [shazam] replaced him with a perfectly self-involved douchebag. It was houdini fast AND puberty simple.

HIM: Oh you’re a screenwriter what are you working on?
ME: Well my writing partner and I are just gett —
HIM: [PHONEPHONEPHONEPHONEPHONEPHONEPHONEPHONEPHONEPHONE]
ME: — done with our ..oh.
HIM: [PHONEPHONEPHONEPHONEPHONEPHONEPHONEPHONEPHONEPHONE]
ME: So… I …what are you working on?

Unfazed he put away his phone and launched right into his description of his project.

Turns out, he’d just “starred” in a “film” where he was the “lead actor” and he “played” a “superhero.”  I don’t know if quotation marks can be used to convey hate but I’m trying my “hardest.”

The movie involved fights between superheroes.  I asked what his character’s superpower was, and he said:  “it wasn’t specified.”

I’m not an expert on these things but… it seemed like…maybe…they should’ve specified. It could possibly have been a little helpful in those fight scenes.  Being in a state of evolution I did NOT laugh at him and say that sounds like a terrible creative decision oversight.  I just nodded and said “Hmm” and that was the end of our line-friendship.

I’m tiptoeing into being completely honest in interpersonal interactions, it’s not as easy as it might look.

A few weeks ago I posted a snarky comment on a social media site. The basic gist was I thought it was funny (in an Alanis Morisette sort of way) that Anne Hathaway was getting famous-er and rich-er singing a song about Not Having Your Dreams Come True, when all of her dreams have come true like whoa, and never moreso than when she’s singing that song.

A friend of mine chimed in and called me out on being kind of wrong in my critique of that, if it were sincere. He was right to do so. Another friend of mine chimed in and said something along the line of HEY MAN IF YOU DONT LIKE IT ITS A FREE COUNTRY YOU DON’T HAVE TO WATCH THE MOVIE.

(This is a paraphrase.)

My knee-jerk reaction was to say “Oh man there must be some kind of miscommunication, I know what you mean and yes, artists don’t have to blah blah blah.” You know, paragraph after paragraph of apologies and understanding and re-establishing rapport and — being that guy gets to be exhausting. So I deleted it and started over.

I started with a link to the trailer for TipToes, the movie where Gary Oldman plays a midget.

I ended with this:

“Play nice. Alternately, exercise your right as a free person and read someone else’s facebook page, there are like a billion of them. Some of them have pictures of food and dogs.”

It was an ending in every sense of the word because he defriended me. This was December 25th.

I was hoping for a “HELL YEAH THIS IS WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO ESTABLISH BOUNDARIES!” feeling in my soul, because establishing boundaries is something I never ever do but am learning to.

To be perfectly honest, I didn’t feel triumphant. I felt bad. Like I’d done a bad thing, and made a mistake.

Then some time passed. Now I don’t feel anything about it, one way or the other.