When Couples Fight

I consider myself a fairly... sociable man.
...
Let me start that over:
I consider myself the type of guy who gets along well in large groups of people.
...
No, that's bullshit, too.
Ok, last time:
I can stand being around maybe 3 people in a social setting before I start to think bad thoughts.
Yea. That's the ticket.

So I spend a lot of time with small groups of people. A clutch of friends. Conversations exist one at a time, and everyone gets their turn. It's less awkward this way. Like playing a game of catch instead of running along the inside of a batting cage trying to catch every ball fired out by the pitching machines.
The only problem with this is that a few of my friends are in Relationships. Yes, that is a capital 'R.' That's because they live together, and as such I often find myself in a house or apartment that is not mine, restricted in my actions and movements to a single room, and a select number of socially acceptable practices.
Not a huge deal. I never feel like a third wheel and I get the feeling (maybe a false feeling, but no one disabuses me of it, so I keep the hope alive) that my company is genuinely enjoyed. But some(often)times something happens which creates a layer of awkwardness so thick and viscous that it can't be cut with even the strongest, sharpest blade...
The Fight.
When a couple fights it has a strange effect on the rest of the room. It's like suddenly everyone is afraid to speak for fear of somehow making the situation worse. And yet the couple, now the center of attention, makes no attempt at calming down to spare everyone else their quarrels. It is as though they are saying, "Fuck you, world, our shit is your shit now."
Silence looms. Their voices rise, bolstered by the otherwise quiet room. Somewhere a man tries desperately not to sneeze. No one moves. God himself slows the movement of the universe and stays the hand of fate.
I am convinced that while a couple is fighting people on their death beds are hastened to their final reward because they try not to breath.
What the hell are you supposed to do when this happens? God forbid you try to be an arbiter of some kind, an emissary from a world that just wants to be able to open a fresh beer without feeling like they have been singled out.
The couple takes their fight so seriously, and brings to it such emotion, that it seems like sacrilege to try and do something else.
Don't leave the room. Don't enter the room. Don't eat. Don't talk. Don't think about eating or talking. Don't think about what would happen if you thought about eating or talking or thinking about leaving so you could enter again.
All conditions must be left exactly the same so that when the fight ends, the couple can emerge into a world that seems to have been paused. We are but a movie that the fight has interrupted, but now that peace comes again, we can press the collective PLAY button and get on with things again.
And thank God, because this is a pool party and Tim has been underwater for a good seven minutes.

But at least when you are in a large group of people you can glance feverishly between people. When I am alone during one of these raucous Relationship rows I have a feeling of intense dread. What happens if the relationship dies here. What happens if they leave the room and don't come back. At what point can I grab my shit and get out of Dodge? Is there protocol?

No. There isn't. Sit tight, shut up, pray they don't see you and drag you into it. Just remember, their vision is based on movement.

Probably the craziest thing about these fights is that they come seemingly from out of no where.
Picture the most innocuous activity possible - let's say staring at a wall with a picture of a smiley face on it. A couple is engaged in this activity with me next to them. We are enjoying ourselves when suddenly the man will say something equally innocuous.

Him: "Man, this is really getting good now."

Shit. Well, now he's done it. What has he done? No one knows. But for whatever reason, at this place and time, that was the exact wrong thing to say. Had he expressed Nazi sympathies he would have made a better choice of words.

Her: "So what, it wasn't good before?"
Him: "No, I was just saying it's even better now."
Her: "Why, because you had another sip of beer?"
Him: "Baby, I am just saying that this wall keeps getting better and better. Besides, this is only my second beer of the night."
Her: "Whatever, there's no need to get an attitude."
Him: "I'm not, I'm just trying to explain..."
Her: "You are drunk, I can't believe it, we have company over."

At this point I pound my fourteenth shot of whiskey and cross myself.
Did you see where this all went wrong? It was somewhere around the time they were both born.
As far as I can see, there is no way to avoid this type of thing. A joke about a priest and a rabbi will rapidly and horrifically morph into a shouting match about who is more worthless (note: in the end, they both are, because they are distracting me from the wall, dammit) or who has the worse addiction/bad habit/taste in chips.
Usually at the end of this all I am stuck sitting next to one of them (the victor? the vanquished? who knows...) as we sigh awkwardly and I steal myself for the final, painful moment when they ask, "Was I right?"
Fuck me, I don't know if you were right! I don't even know what you were fighting about in the end. At some point it sounded like you two were arguing the tenants of Zoroastrianism. Invariably I try to split the difference because I know no other way to work. You did this wrong, they did this wrong, you ought to stop doing things wrong.

My one enduring hope is that when I get into a relationship my girlfriend and I can only fight about important things. ("I am telling you, the relevance communistic Socialism died along with Lenin, and the only true way to operate a government in the modern world is through a Fascist dictatorship that melds itself with transcendental philosophies and a greater understanding of deist thought!") At least then people will be able to take a side. Or at least fake it.

Until then, I pray for the day when I am old enough to convincingly fake a fucking heart-attack.

Obligatory Rant Against New Vampires

You know what was sweet about vampires?
They fucking murdered people.
The basic formula for the creation of the vampire mythology played out thusly:

(Zombie-like failure to die fully + human intelligence + werewolf like love of night) X (Man-eating cannibalistic tendency + no natural expiration date) = Vampire.

See how simple that is? My God, a child could figure this out. Vampires are the culmination of everything that is unholy and evil in the human imagination. They were great at scaring people into states of almost incomprehensible fear. They come into your room and drink your blood! Your 98.6 degree blood! You know how disgusting beer is when its room temperature? Amp it up another twenty degrees and that is how hot your blood would be. What kind of sick, twisted hell-spawn could enjoy that?
Sure, they had a deeper evil to them. They were dehumanized in that they killed people (can't stress that one enough) but they retained their intelligence. So unlike the zombie, which could honestly be just too damn stupid to realize he is eating his best friend, the vampire can rationalize the evil he is committing. The purpose of this isn't to cause him Anne Rice level angst. It was to make them even more terrifying.
"Yes, I eat people. Damn right. Do I care? No. Why not? Because fuck you, that's why. I'm higher on the food chain." A zombie kills without reason. A werewolf can't control himself either. A vampire knows what he's doing. He's not the 7-11 clerk who shoots a robber because he has no choice. He's the thrill-killer who can't wait to rip open another carotid artery.
So answer me this: Why do lonely housewives and under-developed teenagers find vampires so bloody (pun fully intended) attractive?
Because vampires have been changed from monstrous to misunderstood. No longer are they to be fear, but nurtured and brought back to humanity.
And this appeals to women, who love taking in wounded and terrible men so that they might change them for the better.
(By the way, let me point out now that this post is in no way saying all women are like this. Just most of them. 97%. And if you're reading this you totally aren't one of them.)
In a way, catering to this idea is dangerous. It basically says, "Sure, honey, you love a man who hurts people and will most likely end your life, but if you stay with him, excuse him all of his faults, and love him a whole lot his humanity will shine through and even if he harms you he will repent and most likely say he only did whatever because he loved you."
...
Yea. There's a healthy message. And if he gives you a rose you owe him a sexual favor.

I honestly can't figure out what pisses me off more about Twilight, Anne Rice, and (to a lesser extent) TrueBlood.
On the one hand, we have the idea that people of all ages are being fed the covert idea that abusive, terrible people should be excused all of their wickedness because of their past (they were bitten by a vampire! their dad never hugged them!). Not to mention that whole, tired "love will conquer all" sentiment. Can we please stop spreading that lie? Let's go back to the Old Yeller approach to the love of something potentially deadly - namely, no matter how much you love it and how much it will hurt to let it go, you should still fucking murder that thing before it gets you first!
On the other hand, though, we have the death of the vampire as a creature of nightmare-breeding terror. And honestly, I don't care if another girl gets into a stupid relationship with an asshole because she wants to feel like she's overcoming something in the name of love (note to you: You're not) as long as some kid wakes up in the night, roused by the sheer, bladder-vacating horror of a vampire-oriented dream.
We don't have many monsters left, people. Zombies have become a fanboy obsession and fodder for video games. Werewolves were never that cool to begin with once you realized they were only a problem once a month. Frankenstein is somewhere in the Arctic. Vampires are our last, best hope for an embodiment of evil to frighten our children with.

This is a moment in history that requires decisive action. Will vampires live on as the life-draining, night-loving, virgin-raping (they did that, right?) hellfiends that we all know and fear, or will they become our children's version of Romeo and Juliet, the symbol of ridiculously misguided love?
It's up to you. You have the power to end this.

College Park Burnout

College Towns.
The phrase works in much the same way Candy Land does.
In your mind you conjure a vision of a wonderland. A fantastical landscape that consists of the pros of the first word smashing on top of the geography of the second word.
To illustrate:
Candy Land - A deep, mystical, bucolic grove of licorice trees with taffy leaves. Milk chocolate bunnies prance around, running for their warrens before the gumdrop rains begin.
College Town - A spiderweb network of streets and footpaths, all of them leading to bars, small local shops, and imaginative restaurants and cafes. Hot girls strut around in miniskirts while intellectually stimulating men engage them in conversations about Proust, Cassavettes, and Picasso. Knowledge abounds and yet sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll permeate the air in an everlasting haze of all that is awesome.

But what you may never think about (though if you want to go to the University of Maryland, you probably should) is the reverse scenario.

Candy Land (the bad kind) - An expansive, soul crushing desert (dessert?) wasteland. Limitless planes of granulated sugar dunes punctuated by the occasional candy corn cactus or rocks made of Now and Laters (better known as the inedible bastard, half-sister of Starbursts).*

College Town (the bad kind) - College Park, MD.

Yes, I live in and have endured College Park for upwards of four years. Be it in dorms or in the House of Awesome Times this place never gets any better. We have four bars (to anyone who says we have five: The Mark doesn't fucking count) and every restaurant we have is either some godawful fastfood chain, 'quick-service' chain, or it closes in two months. Ratsie's and Plato's Diner stand firm, are exceptions, but you know what they say about exceptions. They only serve to prove the rule.
The one independent bookstore we had closed recently, we have more bubble tea cafes than we have any other form of food, and heaven help you if you want to sit down for a cup of coffee at a local shop. Fuck you, here's your Starbucks. We have four seats, all occupied by hipster or sorority trash who would just as soon eat your heart as look at you. Those MacBooks might as well be tazers.
Perhaps you can tell that I am upset by this. Perhaps you can also walk outside and tell whether it is raining or not.
The point is that my sister went to school in Fredericksburg, VA, where they have local joints, thrift shops, book stores, and a rich colonial history. Not only that, but the city seems to actually like the fact that there is a college close by. The municipality seems to understand that these young hooligans are actually its life-blood.
Not so in College Park, where the city treats the students like some sort of benign cancer, barely tolerated, constantly on the verge of being violently excised. They would happily sink into the mire of their own socio-economic destruction at the hands of the townies (I know I am coming off as elitist, but its true, ask around) if it meant all of us college kids with our book learning and our parents' money would just leave.
How backwards is that?

I suppose the genesis of this rant is the fact that soon I will be moving to Silver Spring. And while Silver Spring is the very definition of gentrification ("Starbucks... we meet again...") it at least has character and culture. It has a soul. It is alive.
For four years I had to escape College Park any time I wanted to do anything that had any meaning. Rather than serve as a joining point for me and my intellectual peers to nurture one another's minds, it acted like a massive, bed-bug ridden pillow slowly smothering the life and verve out of me. I would step off the metro after having seen an indie flick at E Street or AFI Silver and immediately deflate because I was back on Route 1, that four lane street that cuts through the block and a half of "downtown" that everyone frequents.
Depressing.

Anyway, I could go on forever, but why? If you are ever in DC and feel overwhelmed by the culture, the sights, the sounds, and the rich history, hop on the green line and come to College Park. Five minutes later you'll be begging some over-eager tour guide to tell you where Lincoln combed his beard one last time.

*If you like candy corn or Now and Laters, you might as well stop reading this blog now. I have nothing to say to you.

Cubicle Culture

There is a certain amount of otherworldly strangeness that comes from working in a cubicle.
There you sit, doing your best to do you work. The confines around you have been designed to make this easier. Bare walls to reduce distraction. Small desk space making clutter almost physically impossible because why the hell would you even think you could fit a book on the desk in the first place, let alone a drink or your mobile? You can't see anyone, they can't see you, and for all intents and purposes the world doesn't exist.
Perfect for keeping your mind sharply attuned to the work at hand - editing, writing, managing, accounting, all sorts of -ings.
Sadly, there are those among us - notably myself - for whom this collection of supposedly streamlining criterion creates an environment ripe for...

The Existential Crisis.

No, I am not talking about the intense desire to go out and stab an Arab (before the ACLU contacts me about a hate crime, might I suggest you kindly fuck-off and read a book). I am referring to a horrifying period lasting no less than five seconds but not to exceed one lifetime during which the entirety of your existence is up for debate.
Allow me to illustrate:
Currently I am sitting in a box that could not accommodate two of me. All around me I sense the telltale signs of other intelligent life. The sound of tapping keyboards, of errant sneezes and coughs, muffled conversations. The smell of some exotic food freshly cooked in the office microwave. Other people are out there... the clues to their existence are faint and insubstantial yet tantalizing.
However, I cannot see them. From my lowly perch I can just see the walls of my cube, the screen of my PC, the single notepad that I have never used.
But there is writing on it! And my God, I think I just heard footsteps, and if I crane my neck just a bit I think I can see someone standing on the other side of the room! I am not alone! Like the great pyramids, like the face on mars, like the Tunguska event, these are the signs that my little world is just the beginning of a great expanse of other life with which to interact and learn and grow!
Invert this argument. If the cubicle was all I ever knew, I would be skeptical of other people existing. But they do. So even though this world is all we know, and we think we have it all figured out, maybe those above mentioned wonders are the sounds of alien keyboards tapping.

Or...
I could just be imagining all these things. Creating them in my mind. Solitude and the realization of my own infinitesimally minuscule place in the world has forced me to create these myths to allow myself the small glimmer of hope that will buoy me up.

See what I mean? I shouldn't be thinking about this while I am writing profiles and editing poorly written documents and otherwise trying to make a living. Either I am a sick, sick man, or something needs to change.

In short... I wish my cubicle were closer to the window, and that I hadn't forgotten my iPod today.