Beat Jeremy Coon

A trip to Chelsea

I got tested for HIV and every other known STD this week. Mosquito bites, toilet seats, shaking hands, dirty looks from people - myths, I know, but it doesn't hurt to be careful.

Of course you have to weigh being careful against the possibility that just by getting tested for HIV, you're admitting that you could conceivably have it, and then fate gives it to you. I honestly believe that if you got tested for HIV every single day for a year straight, and even if after your first negative result you never engaged in any behavior that could give you HIV, eventually you'd finally have to have it. There's no way you could get tested every day and then not eventually have it. It's tempting fate.

But getting tested once seemed safe enough.

While at the clinic, waiting for my turn, I watched the video and started getting paranoid. It was all information I'd seen before, but in this context, it really scared me. There was no rational reason to think I had HIV, but I started focusing on my physical problems of late (my eczema is still bad, my side kind of hurts sometimes, I'm tired a lot, I use the fifth notch on my belt instead of the fourth) and coming up with ways that I might somehow have it.

Somtimes I'll remember going on a field trip to the Dallas justice system in 3rd grade or 4th grade. I was a really naive kid, and outside of the courthouse I saw a used syringe on the steps. "Cool! A syringe!" I thought. And I picked it up, put it in my pocket, and it poked me. I went home and showed it to my mom, who was disturbed and told me never to pick up something like that again.

That memory stuck with me, and later, when I knew more about diseases, I thought about that needle, and wondered if I'd caught anything from it.

Logically, I can't have. I'd be showing more signs of it by now, and I donated blood so many times in college that someone would eventually have told me if my blood was poisonous and killing everyone who touched it.

Nevertheless, I was thinking about that needle, and what I would do if I found out I had HIV. I resolved that I would find AIDS jokes funny. Much funnier than I would find them if I didn't have HIV. The opening number of Team America: World Police would become the most hilarious thing in the world to me.

I wondered if Joe and Brooke would be uncomfortable living with me, and if I'd need to find a place of my own so I couldn't somehow accidentally contaminate someone, or at least constantly worry them. I'd never even so much as make out with anyone again was an obvious one. There'd be no problem getting involved with someone else with HIV, but I didn't think I'd want to go out of my way to find other people who had it. I doubted that would make me happy.

No, what I would do is move to the United Kingdom, where I'd have health insurance thanks to my British citizenship (though not very good insurance, I hear), probably to Brighton or some smaller city like that, live mostly in isolation, on a hill, by the sea, write... and slowly vanish.

And that was kind of an appealing fantasy to me.

Before I could take my test, I had to speak to a counseler. She asked me questions to figure out how at risk I was, and how much I knew about HIV. Apparently, my HIV education was better than most people's, even though I went to a high school where condoms were ominously referred to as "The C Word."

Interestingly, she also tried to gauge how I would react if I found out that I had HIV. Would she refuse the test if it seemed I'd react really badly?

"Have you ever been suicidal?," she asked.

"Yes," I said.

She gave me a "bad answer" scowl and typed away.

"Wait, no, no, I haven't," I corrected myself.

She stopped typing and raised her eyebrow at me.

"I mean, I've thought about it. But never seriously. I never actually wanted to do it."

She hesitated, backspaced, and typed some more.

"Would you kill yourself if you found out you had HIV?"

"No," I said confidently.

"Why not?" she asked.

I paused, thought about my fantasy, and said, "I would find my purpose in life outside of intimate human relationships."

"Good answer!" she exclaimed. "That's actually my preferred answer, but nobody ever says that. You'd focus on living your life, and not on the fact that you had HIV."

Kind of a reinterpration of what I was saying, but hey, I'll take the praise.

After my counseling, I had to wait some more before I could take my HIV test, and then have my blood drawn to test for everything else. The HIV test was a "rapid results" test, luckily, because the torture of waiting a week to find out would itself kill me.

They said it would take 30 to 45 minutes, but they called me back in after 15.

"Number 63!"

I went into the office, sat down, and looked at my counseler expectantly. She didn't seem to know yet. Guess they like to find out while you're there, so they don't have a tell-tale expression as you're coming in. What a hard job this must be! She typed something on her computer, seemingly to pull up the results, and then stared at them blankly.

"Huh," she said without looking at me. She stared at her computer some more, pressed some keys and looked at her screen again. "Hmm," she said, offering me no explanation whatsoever. Why wasn't she saying anything?? Because I had it, that's why! She picked up the phone, dialed three numbers and waited. Still without even a glance in my direction.

"Flavio," she said. "Do you have the results for number 63?"

"I am not a number, damnit!" I wanted to shout. "And if I was, it certainly wouldn't be 63!" I was shaking nervously. Was my UK fantasy about to come true?

"Okay," she said, hung up the phone, typed something else, and looked at the computer again.

"Your results are negative," she said with a smile. She obviously loved getting to say that. I almost collapsed.

"Have you had sex with or shared needles with anyone in the past three months who is at risk of having HIV?" she asked.

"No," I said.

"Then these results are definitive. You definitely do not have HIV."

I practically ran out of her office with joy, but controlled myself, because I didn't want to gloat in front of anyone who might be less fortunate.

And that's the story of how my dreams of living in isolation on a hill by the sea were dashed forever. At least for the time being.

So I'm back to my normal everyday life of living for the future by finding links for Office Pirates that never get posted, on the premise that I'm going to be around for a while, and I can put off doing what I really love until then.

Then again, next week I find out whether I have genital warts, gonorrhea, syphilis, herpes, chlamydia, crabs, vaginitis, or hepatitis. So maybe there's still hope.

Presents

I had my first "force quit" on my new MacBook Pro today. I thought this thing was flawless! No, I'm sure it is. It had to be Firefox's fault.

Yep, I've been away. Mainly because I've still been acclimating to Office Pirates, which thinks I have potential, but so far has posted only two of the 60 or so links I've found and written up for them. One was a link to a stickman dodgeball game, and the other was a link to a video called "Kicked in the Nuts." There's Office Pirates, for ya! I've got an initial two month contract with them, which means I only have a month and a couple of weeks left to prove myself. If they like me, they'll re-sign me. If not, well... I sure hope ScriptBuddy and Michael Bluejay and Greg's sugar documentary don't desert me.

Luckily, Office Pirates is freezing the contract for three weeks when I go to Israel and then Switzerland, which gives me a distinct advantage over my link scavanging competitors. With Nicole, I'm going to float in the Dead Sea for two days straight, eat falafel, party until 10 in the morning in Tel Aviv, stay on top of Mount Carmel overnight, live on a communal farm, ride camels, fight terrorists, eat vegan Swiss Cheese, and then go to Switzerland. I'll come back to New York a changed man - a man who knows exactly what cheesy video "The Office Pirates Guy" wants to see.

By the way, if you see any good links, send them my way!

This job is perfect for me. I get to do nothing but read blogs and play online video games all day. So how does that advance my goal of beating Jeremy Coon? Isn't it a side-track, a distraction, a red herring? NO! Thanks to Office Pirates, I've put in my notice at Angelica Kitchen. After Israel, I'm going to be a fully work at home man. This means almost no commuting. Which means more time at home. Which means more time in front of my computer. Which means more writing!!

I mean, look, since I started at Office Pirates two weeks ago, I've already written a poem. Surely, a script is just around the corner. Trouble is, I've got only a little over a year left before my high school reunion. No way can I get a movie fully written and produced by then. So how am I going to beat the Coonster, then? Um... my stocks are up $50 today. That's a start, right? New subject!!

"You're 27 now," my dad said to me on the phone on my birthday on Sunday. "Wow."

That's really all one can say about turning 27. There's just nothing special about it. It's an age that you eventually have to turn if you're going to grow up to be an old person. I'm just glad I don't have to worry about getting older for another year. Oh, man. I guess I know what makes 27 special. That's the year where you start to dread birthdays instead of getting excited about them. That's a pretty sorry trap, though. I refuse to fall into it. Besides, there was nothing to dread about this birthday,  because it was the best birthday ever!

To prove this, here's a history of my birthdays past:

April 23, 2005. I was in Prague. I didn't really plan my birthday at all, so I went to The Blind Eye, my Prague roommate Nicole B's favorite bar. Nicole bought me a drink, I think, and our friend Kristen bought me a drink. It was pretty nice, now that I think of it. Prague! Whoo!

April 23, 2004. I had a potluck dinner at my apartment in Austin. Actually, this was a pretty fun birthday. Elisabeth came with a stevia cake! We played board games and I hula hooped while doing a niacin flush. I know, kind of weird to do a niacin flush on your birthday, but the idea was that on my birthday, I could force everyone else to do all the weird things I normally did. Only one other person did a niacin flush with me, though, and that was Mary Sledd, who had to leave early because she reacted so badly to it.

The climax of the party was going to be going the dollar theater and skipping from movie to movie. But then nobody wanted to skip from film to film, and the majority wanted to see Mystic River, a movie I'd already seen. Wren and I went to Barbershop 2 without them, but then the loneliness got to me and we joined everyone at Mystic River. The sad lesson of this birthday: people will be nicer to you on your birthday, but you can't always make them do everything you want.

April 23, 2003. I didn't celebrate at all this year, except that Carrie.Anne gave me a present. I mean, I probably did something with Wren, because it was also our anniversary, but I avoided trying to set up a party, because of the disaster that befell the year before.

April 23, 2002. Disaster. I planned a huge birthday party at Playland Skate Center, but not a single person came. Except for Eliza Wren, but that was only because she was playing a concert there. And I lost my best pair of glasses. Even Joe didn't come! He had an excuse. He was helping record the "Who is Jim Holt?" soundtrack. Which, in the longrun, was more important. Nevertheless! Oh, but someone did come to salvage the night.... Camille Deprang, who was also born on April 23. I'll never forget her for that. I didn't email her on her birthday this year, but Camille, if you're reading... happy birthday!!

April 23, 2001. Here was a happy, simple birthday party. It was just me, my best friend (Joe), my really good friend (Henry), my roommate (David Burnet), and the girl I was in love with (Emily Deprang). We sang karaoke at the Korean place in Austin where you can get your own room and is supposedly a cover for a prostitution ring, but they bring you apples to keep your throat hydrated. Then Emily, Henry and I went to Henry's apartment to watch L.A. Story, one of the best movies of all time. What a birthday! Except that some time later, Emily told me that she'd a huge crush on Henry that night. In retrospect, ruined. No, not really... it was still nice.

April 23, 2000. Don't get me started on April 23, 2000! This is the year I turned 21, thus becoming a man under American custom. To rebel, I decided to have a child's birthday party, going to a skating rink, Chucky Cheese's (even though I was vegan), and then to my friend Peter's apartment to watch cartoons and not drink alcohol. My friends, however, thought it would be funny to pull one over on prude, ascetic Rhys and secretly hire a stripper for my birthday. And so I suffered a lapdance in front of all my friends, who watched awkwardly as I didn't seem to enjoy one second of it. As much as I hated this trick at the time, in retrospect, it actually probably did loosen me up somewhat (I masturbated for the first time ever a couple of months later, an important step for a young adult to take), just like my friends wanted. So I guess this birthday was okay too.

April 23, 1999. I really have no clue. This was my first birthday in Austin, I know that much. And everything pre-Austin is a blur. Probably because of all the meat and cheese I was eating.

April 23, 2006. This year.

My birthday was all but sure to suffer from a lack of planning, like in Prague. But you know what you get when you don't have a plan? Spontaneous Order, which is far better.

First, though, there was Nicole's birthday, on April 20th. Nicole. That's my girlfriend. We're only been going out for a little over two months, but we're already fully and completely in passionte like with each other. Nicole had a birthday dinner at her neighbor's apartment. Here are some photos from that:

That's me and Nicole with her Polish housekeeper. So far I know how to say "hi" and "thank you" in Polish, which seems to impress her well enough. Behind us is Nicole's mom and Nicole's sister.

Here's the exact same photo, except that this is the version Nicole likes better. But you can't see my face in it! Or is it... AND you can't see my face in it? NICOLE!

The housekeeper looks on happily as Nicole's sister presents a birthday blueberry tofu cheesecake surrounded by chocoloate covered brown rice krispy treats.

Yet she looks away when Nicole's neighbor presents Nicole with a brownie cake. But why?

You can't quite see it here, but uh, hello, guacamole at 12 O'Clock!

It's your party, and you can cry on the inside if you want to, Nicole!

There's us reading a pink sheet. What was that thing?

And then everyone hugs their good-byes.

Two days later, it was time to celebrate my birthday, since I was working at Angelica on my actual birthday. For some reason I gave Angelica a month's notice instead of the standard two weeks. Maybe that was a little overboard, but at the time I was quitting, Angelica seemed pretty desperate for people, and I didn't want them to shut down because they couldn't replace me in time, or to squeeze extra shifts out of my old co-workers.

But now that I think about it, businesses that require workers with very specialized skills are able to find replacement workers in two weeks. Why couldn't Angelica find a new person to answer the phones in that time? Still, I kind of like having my new totally-work-from-home-without-Angelica-food life starting after the Israel trip. In retrospect, it'll be easier to catagorize all my memories from this time.

Anyway, Carrie.Anne had proposed a joint birthday party for me and her on the night of April 22, her birthday day, a while back. It was to be some kind of multi-media type event at Galapagos, where our friend Thomas shows experimental films every Monday night. I was busy all the time in between Carrie.Anne's proposal and the party, so I didn't help with planning at all. It's a good thing, too, because spontaneous order took over, and we had the best birthday party ever. Want proof? Here are the photos.

I was the host of the evening, and opened with a poem I'd finished writing that night about miscarriage and vanity. Pretty much the whole place was talking over it (who were all those people?), since I guess it wasn't really a party poem, but at least the people in the front row (the only people there I knew) liked it.

Then came a band whose name I won't mention. They tried to ruin me and Carrie.Anne's birthday, and they tried hard, but they couldn't.

My brother Miles and his girlfriend Dana were the only two people I remembered to tell about the party. Good thing they came! It was their anniverary night, and the party started at midnight, so they couldn't stay too long. FOUR STRONG YEARS! Here's to a fifth, you two!

Well, I remembered to tell Joe and Brooke, but they're my roommates. This really ought to be their wedding photo. Uh, strike oil wells much, guys?

And of course I told Nicole. How much of a jerk would I have to be to go to Nicole's birthday party and eat her vegan pizza, and then not invite her to mine? A big one. Plus, I wanted her there!

One of the best birthday presents I could have got is that Joe has taken up songwriting again. That night Joe wrote a new song about how much he hates Greenpoint, Brooklyn. But it wasn't Polished yet, so he played some of his classics, like "Me and My New York Friends."

This is Nicole and I watching Joe perform.

Next up was Carrie.Anne, the headliner.

And this is us watching her. I thought we were supposed to be acting sleepy for this photo, but Nicole thought otherwise.

And that was it for my early birthday party!

The next day was my actual birthday. On Saturday, I realized that I actually did want that day off, so I called Angelica and got my shift changed to Monday night. Freedom! I still counted Saturday night as my birthday party, so I didn't try to have a gathering or anything like that. Instead, Nicole drove us to Flatbush, apparently one of the worst neighborhoods in Brooklyn even though *we* didn't get shot there, so we could eat at Veggie Castle, a former White Castle converted into a vegan restaurant.

When Miles heard I was going to Veggie Castle, he asked me to bring him some food back from there, because he'd never been, even though he'd always wanted to. The subways in Brooklyn mostly go East/West, not North/South, so it's really hard to get to some neighborhoods on the train. As Miles bought me a printer/scanner/copy machine for my birthday, and promised to take me and Nicole out for dinner later, bringing him back some food didn't seem like that big a deal. I was kind of expecting all the White Castle type fast foods except vegan at Veggie Castle, which isn't what it was, but we all agreed that it was still the best food we'd ever had.

For dinner, Nicole took me to Counter, a vegetarian restaurant neither of us had been to. Here's a photo from that:

Just kidding. That's Jensen Ackles in the very back of the cast photo for "Smallville." I bet Jensen was feeling pretty small that day!

After dinner, which was even better than Veggie Castle if you can believe that, we went to Nicole's apartment so I could open presents in the privacy of the indoors so that not every freaking body on the street would be trying to steal them from me the second I unwrapped them.

Hmm. What could this one be? Could it be a Supernatural pillow case? No, but the next one was! And the one after that?

An America-Centric map in the style of an ancient map, with monsters in the oceans and everything! There were also matching His/Her towels, books about the Golem, and look at this...

A dog tag with "Asymtomatic Wolff" written on it. Everyone has to have a heart condition, and that's mine; my mom wanted to make a tag for it years ago, and though I thought that would be great, it never happened. I mentioned the idea to Nicole in passing, she covertly communicated with my mom to set it up, and viola... actualization! I only wish I had it with me right now. Joe and Brooke, if you find me half-dead in the morning, remember: Asymtomatic Wolff.

And then, you all remember the trip to Israel and Geneva that Nicole and I were taking? Her mom organized it, devising our itinerary like a pro, setting it up so that we could stay with various members of her family all over the Israel, already making it the best trip to Israel ever.

So what are those tickets doing in my hand on my birthday? Had I just paid for them that day and then they fell out of my pocket while I was opening other presents? No, not quite. Nicole announced on my birthday that her parents were paying for the tickets. All I had to do was not lose them.

And here's me, thinking, "Thank you, Nicole. Thank you... for making this birthday even better than the time I saw Mystic River a second time." And thanks to Joe, Brooke, Nicole's family, Carrie.Anne, Miles, and Dana too!

To conclude, here's an apt article by someone I knew in Austin that might give some insight into why I haven't been blogging as much lately: Here. And here. (It's the same article in both links. Either "here" will work, in other words.)

I guess I'm turning 27.

And I think this is my birthday party.

This too shall pass

If I've learned anything in life, it's that a headache is your own cross to bear. I forgot to drink water today and I have a weird sleeping schedule. There's no one to blame for my headache except me, and even though everyone gets one, no one really can or should empathize. There's no point in complaining about my headache, and I certainly wouldn't want anyone else to have one just to suffer with me. Headaches are the loneliest things in the world. And they hurt too. Fortunately, as Rabbi Burt Siegel might say, "Gam zeh ya'avor."

One of the purposes of Office Pirates, my bosses tell me, is to act as a mighty stalwart against the overflow of useless information on the internet, to sift through it all, and post only the important stuff. There is something dismaying about there being so much out there. It makes it seem like nothing needs to be done. Plenty exists already to make anyone laugh or feel moved. What's the point of adding to it?

But I still want to write screenplays. Especially when I don't have a headache.

At the moment, however, I have to sift. My deadlines are in the morning, before I wake up.

Time Management Brilliance

Today my brother invited me to a picnic. "I can't," I said. "I'm busy."

I think he was pretty impressed.