8 June 2004
I know this girl. Yes, I know, most of you are shocked, but keep with me here. She's worked for us for about five weeks. We became friends very quickly, and then her and her boyfriend were fighting a lot, and her and I started becoming slightly more than friends (no fucking), then she decided that her boyfriend was the love of her life, and so that's fine, I really don't care.
But why is it that now I have to get phone calls at two in the fucking morning because he came home piss drunk and was an asshole... AGAIN?
There are people in this world who create their own problems. There are people in this world whose problems are the result of others. But problems always have a solution. You may not LIKE the solution, but a solution always exists. Let's say you wake up one morning and decide you don't like being a 34 year-old fat drunk anymore. What do you do? You can (a) drink to forget that you're fat and you drink, or (2) change your lifestyle, cut down on drinking, and start working out every day. Option (a) is easy. Option (b) is hard. However, with Option (b) you end up a year later sixty pounds lighter with fifteen pounds of extra muscle and a serious reduction in body surface area. You may not want to exercise and eat right and stay sober, and that's fine. Stay fat.
Likewise, you may wake up one morning and realize that your boyfriend is a violent drunk with no job and no ambition in life. Option (a) is to say, "But he's the love of my life, and things aren't always like that" and Option (b) is to toss his ass into the street. And if you're the girl I work with, you pick Option (a), because your twenty years old and 20 year-olds are stupid.
Like this morning, two a.m., I get a phone call that boyfriend came home piss drunk two hours late, they got into a fight, and he left. Great, well, it's not like I was asleep anyway. Then my phone rings six more times, but it's in the other room and I can't hear it, so I get the message that "bad things happened last night, call me, I'll be awake," and that message was at 6 a.m., so I call at 9:30 a.m. and it's all more, "Oh, he came home drunk and we fought and now he's asleep." Ten minutes later, she called me to tell me boyfriend got out of bed, pissed all over the bedroom, then went and passed out on the couch.
But he's the love of her life.
I love that I get phone calls from her only when things are lousy. "Terry did this, Terry did that, waaaah, my life sucks, I love him." If you kick a dog enough times it won't come near you. Humans don't have the same intelligence as a dog. First of all, you can't have met THE LOVE OF YOUR LIFE at 20. Sorry, nope, the judge has ruled. And after the whole peeing incident, she tried to defend him on it: "Well, I know a lot of people who have done that, they don't know what they're doing." Really? I'm 35, I've drank more alcohol than some entire countries have consumed over the last 20 years, and I've managed EVERY TIME to pee in a toilet or in a bush. Never on my clothes, my girlfriend's purse, my girlfriend's clothes, etc. And oh, it's a good thing that it wasn't REALLY his fault, he didn't know what he was doing, that will make the stench of urine in your purse that much less rancid.
There was a time when I would have gone out with her. Not anymore. Now, we're friends, and that's fine. Because I don't need another emotional headcase.
And why is it that every time there's a fight, she has to call me? And what advice do I give her? None, apparently, because my advice is to lose the prick, and I get "He's the love of my life" back. So there's minutes upon minutes of dead air, dead air on my cell phone, during bill-me-through-the-ass period, it wouldn't be so bad if it was 2 a.m. when I can talk all fucking night. So the majority of our phone conversations consists of her sniffling / sobbing, and me not saying a word.
And this is why I can't have a girlfriend. Because even the ones that seem like they have their shit together at first really don't. They're all fucked. If a doctor tells you that you have gangrene in your leg and they need to amputate it, you don't say, "But it's the love of my life, and besides, it only hurts if I do this or this, and I know lots of legs that look like that, it's OK." No, cut the fucker off.
And if you don't want to, don't call me expecting sympathy when things go bad AGAIN. Because you're not getting it. Don't keep sticking your hand in the fire and cry for someone to kiss the booboo.
