HOW TO MARKET AND BRAND YOUR SICKENING DEPENDENCE ON ANOTHER PERSON
I’m going to make a sauce that is an ode to getting out of the house. The sauce will be my masterwork, and it will be cream based. “I thought the sauce was about depression,” I’ll say, to the art critics, “But the sauce didn’t want to be about depression. This sauce is about getting out and living your life and following your dreams. in reality, this sauce was never about depression, it never could have been. The sauce had its own voice. It wanted to speak, and I was the medium from which it could. In this way, I am the art, and the sauce is the artist. I am this sauce’s lifework. It incorporates basil but it is not a pesto.”
Mickey said, “I was listening to an Alan Watts audio book today while I was at work and I asked myself how I came to be doing that in that moment, and it was because I heard about it on the Shroomery website, and I asked myself why I was on the Shroomery website and it was because I heard about it on the mushroom camping trip we went on last spring, and I asked myself why I went on that camping trip and it was because Caleb and Jenny invited us, and I asked myself why I knew Caleb and Jenny and it was because Jason introduced us to them, and I asked myself why I know Jason and it was because I know you.” I said, “It’s not my fault you hate your fucking job.” Mickey said, “I’m saying that you’re the source of a lot of good things in my life.” I said, “Oh. That’s sort of sweet.” This was just one of many countless potentially-sweet moments that I have recklessly ruined.
I am wearing the underwear Mickey gave to me as a joke, but I am not wearing them as a joke.
I asked somebody if they had an Instagram account and they said, “yes,” so aggressively and condescendingly that one would think that I had asked if they were born on Earth, which got me thinking about Kate Winslet (because the implication that there was some other planet to be born on got me thinking about the moon, which seems like the most likely nonEarth place a person could be born, and I started thinking about man landing there in the 50’s or whatever, and the conspiracy theories around that, which lead to R.E.M.’s song Man on the Moon and the film of the same name which was about the life of Andy Kaufman and not really the moon at all, from what I can remember, and that lead to thinking about Jim Carrey’s career, specifically his role in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which I think is his best performance, co-starring Kate Winslet, whose performance in that movie is also maybe my favorite of hers.) But Kate Winslet doesn’t seem to have an Instagram, so this has failed to come full circle, which is a symptom of total chaos, and proves that life is an exercise in futility, but does not prove anything about Kate Winslet’s online relationship with her fans because she may have a Tumblr or Twitter, though I cannot confirm it at this time.
I went to Mickey’s room crying and he asked me what was wrong. I threw myself onto the floor in front of him and he asked if Project Runway had made me cry. I said that it had and he asked who got kicked off and I said, “Nobody,” and faintly wept or pretended to weep, and Mickey told me I was crazy.
I asked Mickey if he ever ate cheese behind my back. He thought I was trying to frame him for eating cheese behind my back, but Mickey doesn’t seem to know what it means to ‘frame’ someone. We didn’t go into all that. I said I just wanted to know if he abstained from cheese because I had to abstain from cheese, or if he ate cheese without telling me to protect my feelings, which would be gentlemanly. Mickey said he didn’t trust me and that he couldn’t remember whether or not he ate the cheese, and the way he said, ‘the cheese,’ as if he were referring to a specific cheese he came into contact with, seemed to incriminate him, but I guess I’m just trying to frame him as gentlemanly, as always.
I have preemptively left tabs open in my internet browser showing web search results for “Henry Darger” and “Are octopuses smart” in case I die today and someone wants to know how interesting I was.
Mickey worked his way across his dinner plate starting with the least delicious part of his meal and ending with the most delicious, as he always did. This habit of his is what I based my cooking strategies on. My goal was that one day I could cook a meal that he would not be able to eat at all because each part of the meal would be equally as good as all the other parts, and Mickey would be helpless in choosing where to begin. When Mickey started first at the fish I was proud of, I knew I would end up sobbing secretly on the bathroom floor before the end of the night, letting the cool tiles soothe me.