Living Large

So my roommate and I are getting along great. No major arguments, no large grease fires, no larceny to speak of. We are both considerate of each others' personal space and beliefs, level of cleanliness, etc. I really have no room to complain, but those who know me know me better than that.

My rommate is a nice young woman, 22 years old from South Carolina. It goes without saying coming from the home/mission/BYU-Idaho background that graces my past 23 years that this is the first member of the opposite sex that I have lived with. (Of course my mom and sister don't count. Don't be silly.) "Interesting" perhaps explains it best, with "educational" and "experimental" close behind.

She's a very nice girl, and not necessarily unattractive. I mean, I am in no risk of throwing away a shot at eternal salvation or anything, but she is datable by most standards. But let me tell you a couple things about the totally platonic state of cohabitation in which I have found myself. A couple of observations, not complaints. No, no complaining here.

I am happy that I have had this opportunity to live with a woman before being married to one. Some of the things that would have shocked me during the first few months of living with my wife have now surfaced, which will take a few surprises away from the adventure called matrimony. And believe me, the last thing that I want in marriage are surprises, except for good ones like new sets of golf clubs and power drills for my birthday/anniversary.

For example, you and I know both know why God invented Saturdays: college football. It's a special day where we can get all of the sports out of our systems so that we are ready for Sunday. Well apparently this memo is just attached to our Y chromosones, boys. Let me tell you what has been broadcast on the new Samsung LCD television and HD cable box (both of which I bought specifically to watch college football, mind you) over the bast two saturday afternoons. Vanity Fair (shoot me now, I beg of you), Working Woman, several excruciating seasons of Sex in the City and Friends, Miss Congeniality (I will let that one pass because Sandra Bullock is my future bride), and Must Love Dogs. That's not right. It just ain't.

So instead of watching football, I thought I could at least vaccuum my room. But our vaccuum just doesn't work like the commercials have told me it should. Its little motor whirs away, but it absolutely sucks at sucking like it should. I flip it over to make sure there is nothing stuck in the unercarriage (such as a Snickers wrapper, stray kitten, etc.). All that I found was hair. Miles of hair, all wrapped up in the vaccuum that just wanted to get its job done. So much hair that the brushes on the plastic roll were not even visible. And people don't buy dogs because they shed. You don't want hair all over the place, get a dog and don't get married (or don't move in with a woman).

And the bathroom, boys, don't even get me started. My rooommate dies her hair red, and although I am not sure how the process works exactly, one step (apparently) also involves dying the grout in the shower the same color red. And when I walk in after she has applied makeup, every exposed surface (mirror, sink, toilet seat, tile floor, toothbrush, etc.) has a light dusting of that powdery stuff. You know, the stuff inside those plastic clams that women always carry in their purses. And I never feel totally at home with my pants down when I can see brushes and combs and curling irons peeking over the edge of the shelf above me.

In the end, what I have in a female roommate are all of the caveats of marriage with none of the benefits. You know, I still have to cook my own meals and my Friday nights are still lonely. For all intents and purposes, all I want back is Mark, Dan and Kyle, who didn't mind when I left the seat up.

A Litany of Regret

I am now a real person, at least idealistically. I am out of college, I no longer live with my parents (my mom just sent me the remaining contents of my closet at home; what was once "Tony's room" is now in the process of becoming "Dad's office," a titled previously held by a makeshift desk secured by a piano hinge sitting in front of his toilet downstairs), and I have a job that makes enough to both pay the bills and sustain select guilty pleasures (you know, eating, paying rent, and going to Mets games). That means that I should only have real concerns, I should only commit real mistakes, and I should only make really good decisions. Again, idealistically, perhaps not practically.

However, I do feel that now is a good time to outline the litany of regrets that I have about some 23 years of life. And this is not a confessional, but a reflection. It may be of consequence that this is being posted between sessions of Conference, but I would like to think that it is something more than that; that is to say that it is a genuine and pensive attempt to leave some things behind and not a spontaneous admission of guilt that will be deleted (both figuratively and literally) tomorrow morning.

I have not valued many personal relationships with good people. I am sorry that I did not remain friends with Ryan (safer that full names are omitted, huh?), one of the purest people that I have ever met. In choir in fourth grade we were voting on who was to be choir president, and he asked me to vote for him. We voted by a raise of hands, and when his name came up, I didn't vote for him. Neither did anyone else. He cried in class, in front of everyone. I am sorry, Ryan. I regret not voting for you. And I am sorry that I was not your friend through what I'm sure were some of the hardest of your life.

Once in Brother Sanford's seminary class we were playing somewhat of a scriptural muscial chairs, and it was a showdown between Betsy and me. The music stopped and I pulled the chair out from under her. She fell and she cried. I'm sorry, Betsy. Sorry I cared more about winning a childhood game involving the scriptures than I cared about your physical safety. Ironic, really. The scriptures, which I'm sure advise people not to pull chairs out from under others. (Probably in Exodus somewhere, one of the "Thou shalt not"s.) I regret that I let my competitive nature get the better of my civility.

I sold a cornet on Ebay with a post which I said that the valves were recently overhauled, which was not true. Sorry about that, guy in Minnesota that bought it. The thing barely even played. But you found that out soon enough, I'm sure. I regret having lied in that Ebay post.

Once I tried to take a corner too fast in my mom's new Volkswagen Jetta (the first new car that she ever bought) and running into a telephone pole at Hastings on Overland. It was a dumb move in a car that I shouldn't have even been driving. My mom let me take it to school while she took the bus to work. The last day of high school, someone keyed the front door and quarterpanel on both sides, which was something that I undoubtedly deserved. I regret having tried to take that corner too fast, I regret that my mom had to take the bus to work, and I regret having offended someone so bad that they would key both sides of my (e.g. my mom's) car.

I have spent most of my life trying to be cool, to little avail. Cool (in the conventional Will Smith sense) is something that I am not, and something that I will never be. I regret having tried.

I never learned the course of romance. (All I know from what love is I have learned from Sinatra lyrics.) I tried taking the physical side of the relationship too slow and taking the emotional side too fast, which broke my poor confused, dillusional heart. Then I tried taking the physical side too fast with little emotional attachment, which just made me a bad person in so many senses. I regret that I broke my own heart and that I undoubtedly hurt others along the way (I won't say "broke others' hearts" because I would be giving myself way too much credit).

I have said things that I have thought would be fun or funny or witty, all in the name of good fun. But in so doing I crossed lines and entered arenas where "good fun" does not belong. Some of these statements have been lewd, others cutting, others self-depricating. I regret having not respected that line.

I have been pefectly pessimistic and unduly cynical for most of my life, which is maybe one of the most unbecoming characteristics (aside from being homocidal, of course) that a person can have. It repels the kind of people that I want to be around and represses the kind of man I know that I should be. I regret calling pessimism realism, an idea which is absolutely repulsive.

I will not go on for fear that people will stop reading or stop caring, although this is by no means the end of my list of regrets. I hope that those who have been offended (such as the person who keyed my (e.g. my mom's) car and those who I offended by virtue of my relationship idiocy) at least understand that I am trying to be a better person. After all, I am now here in real life where I know that my actions have--and my actions have had--real effects on real people.

A Bigger Pond

So I am now back in NYC, back from Rexburg and the rows of alfalfa on Sunday afternoons. I found an apartment in a part fo Queens called Sunnyside, which sounds like such a lovely place. I say it doesn't matter if it is or not, with a name like Sunnyside. I have started work, which means that I go to a place every day where everyone else is better than me at what they do and I only have the right to smile sheepishly and say "Yes'm." So I sit in a cozy cubicle with three others, labeled as the new guy, which will be my title until I stop enjoying gazing at the flashing lights and impatient lines of taxis in Times Square.

It's life now, I guess. It's not the all-inclusive pleasantries of school or a mission. My life is comprised of work and, well, life, I guess. It now comes down to how I will fill that ambiguous void, those hours of the day where I am not allowed to work. So far, it has been coming home and watching Barry Bonds and Alex Rodriguez swing too hard at inside sinkers and fly out to shallow right. But soon they will pass their landmark homerun marks and I will have to fill the void in some other way. I like to think that I will fill it with something productive, but it is so hard when the void is so great (from here to eternity) and my goals in life so broad. Not nonexistent, but broad.

Reading is always a productive pastime, but if I am not reading to accomplish something specific, I feel like I am firing in the dark. I am sure that I can learn or thing or two about the enigmatic nuances of life or about the childhood of Abraham Lincoln, but I am sure that I can focus that learning on something, you know? I have never had the opportunity to be productive and no product to work towards. I guess that this is the reason that we have hobbies and collections and friends, unfortunately none of which I actually have.

I'm not too worried, though, because life is good. I am happy and healthy and live in Sunnyside, where the world always smiles, even when it doesn't. I am not worried about what fills that uncomfortable void, because something good will fall into place. If all else fails, I can start to collect stamps. Or I can write mediocre blogs about how I don't have anything to do with my life.

Antisocialitism, you say?

So the other day, I had my first house guests here in my Queens apartment. For those of you who thought that I wasn't "cool" enough to drum up a solid friend base here in New York, well just listen up. My charisma and gregarious charm naturally attract and draw people to me, in case you hadn't already noticed. The other day I had a little get-together with a couple of these newly acquired "BFsF," Elder Chamberlain and Elder Chase. (Yeah, they're missionaries. What of it? I take what I can get.)

It was actually the first time that I had sat down and talked to missionaries after I got back from my own mission one year and four months ago. I felt like my world had imploded, leaving me on the far side of the nametag and pavement-thrashed shoes. But I won't get into that because I fall into "I'm a spiritual failure" mode, comparing my intern self to my mission self. Whatever though.

What I also realized is that I don't have a social life (other than the Elders and a couple of gracious BYU-Idahoans also here in NY). Although this is not significantly different than any other period of my life, it's different this time because I feel like I don't have a choice. You know, in high school, as long as you fish low enough in the social barrel, you can find someone to befriend you. You know, the AP Calculus and marching band kids. But here, it is not so easy. First of all, I live in Queens. It is a lovely neighborhood, but I think that I am the only non-Spanish- or non-Hindi-speaking person here. I of course have nothing against diversity, but it becomes problematic with a language barrier securely on all sides.

Also, living here in Queens, I am kind of detached from the Manhattan mainstream. Granted, I am only a 20-minute subway shot away, but the boroughs define not only geographic boundaries, but also social ones. There is somewhat of a sentiment of a superiority/inferiority/separatism that plagues us here. Kind of like how everyone at The Ridge is too (quasi-) rebellious for the rest of the riff-raff at BYU-I. And how everyone at Colonial House is too Utahan and everyone at Arcadia is too frugal, etc. On top of that, consider that there are only singles wards in Manhattan, and not in Queens. Again, not an excuse in and of itself, but it is all part of the larger excuse equation.

Check out my co-workers. They socialize, but do so by drinking (more accurately categorized as "getting sloshed"), which is hardly social if you don't drink (which I don't. Well, only DP). My roommates do the same, only for extended periods of time (Stu's nights on the town last at least 36 hours. His endurance amazes me). Sobriety is a prize too great to sacrifice for a stint as a socialite. Or so they tell me.

In the end, a social life in its purest sense is hard to find. I have the luxury of not having to worry about it too much because I am only here for three months. I will then go back to BYU-I for one more semester, where socializing is as easy as compulsively laughing at inappropriate moments. After 14 weeks of extensive flurries of social activity (or more accurately, 14 weeks of deferred social opportunity), it will then be over. I will come back here to New York for the rest of my immediate life, and I will have to either come to terms with my situation or just complain about it in blogs that no one reads. Either way, I will be a better man for it.

One pleased, please.

As I was growing up, my mom, by virtue of her calling as a mother, was a cornucopia of handy advice. You know, things like, "Oh, it didn't hurt that bad," "It'll only hurt for a second," or "that didn't hurt, did it?" For some reason, my childhood is full of memories that hurt that probably shouldn't have. In retrospect, she was probably always right, again, if by nothing else than by virtue of motherhood. That and the fact that I was (am) somewhat of a pansy.

Anyways, my mom also gave me advice that didn't come when I was crying because I bumped my knee on the piano bench or when I saw a bug. She said, "If you please yourself, then that's one pleased." Although there may be several ways to interpret that statement, I will use it in the context that it was given to me. Essentially, in the case of tough decisions (such as what I should do on Friday nights, what I should have for dinner, whether I should go to zero hour BC Calculus, etc.), she would advise me to do what I wanted to do because I understand myself well enough to know what pleased me. I didn't have to worry about anyone else but myself because in trying to please others, there is no guaruntee. Since my mom is a math professor, she lives her life based on expected value. (She will even play the lottery when there is enough money in the pool to have a postive expected value.)

In theory, the probability of pleasing yourself entirely if you make decisions based only on your interests is 100%. This would make the expected value of pleasing yourself 1. If I can be 80% sure that I please, strictly for the sake of argument, my girlfirend Grendel (she may not be a lot to look at, but you should see her move furniture), then I have an expected value of .8. Now consider that when I act strictly to please myself, I still have a 20% chance of pleasing Grendel. That's an expected value of 1.2. Good deal, huh? The reason that I say this works only in theory is because there is a serious logical fallacy at work.

First of all, let's imagine a 12-year-old Tony. The probability of having what I thought would please me actually be what would please me was probably around 15%. I might have said to myself, "You know what's good for lunch? Snickers." When I was 16, I might have said, "Friday night? Halo here I come!" When I was 19, "Procrastinating research papers until the night before they are due is what all the cool kids do. And boy am I cool ..." Much to my surprise, none of those would please me in the end. Fortunately, I slowly learn from my mistakes. That percentage rises gradually, so today it may be something like 25%. But after this first fallacy of a grossly overestimated percentage of success, there is still a second concern to address.

I soon came to find that I could not be happy when other weren't. I think that this is not so much a sign of unbridled magnanimity, but more one of envoronmental paranoia, much like as if I were a skittish social chameleon. In other words, I have a 0% chance of being happy if my delicate Grendel is not absolutely ebullient. And perhaps the converse is also true; Grendel is happy only when I am. This becomes fallacious because the process to arrive at mutual happiness is circular. Optimistically this would be called a symbiotic relationship, but I deem it more appropriately labeled a dysfunctional one. As I look at the problematic nature of contentedness, I see why it is so intrinsically imbued with contention.

In the end, the only way out is slowly developing an understanding of what brings us pleasure coupled with pure, undiluted selfishness. At least I have one of the two, right?

An embarassing addiction ...

Every day I give thanks that I don't drink and that I never have. There are, of course, the health benefits and the financial freedom as a result, but the main reason that I'm glad of my sobriety is because I know that I would be a sloppy drunk--truly a crippled alcoholic. Although I have never experienced the addictive power of alcohol, I have let myself become addicted to another substance. However embarrassing this is to admit publicly, I feel that it is necessary for the purgation of my inner suffering.

Ever since my childhood, I have had a particular attraction to something that piques all of our carnal passions from time to time. But I was not only attracted, I was infatuated, even titillated, stimulated. As I grew older, I felt the same sensation seep through my body, and soon enough I had to act on the desires of what is so accurately labeled "the natural man." The self control that I once firmly grasped was soon dross next to my drive to attain the physical whims for which I so yearned. It started small and has now swelled into a gigantic, obstreperous monkey on my back.

When I went to the store with my mom, while she was deciding between 2% and 1% milk, I stole away and found myself wide-eyed in front of rows and rows of my new-found best friend, which I now know is my unavoidable worst enemy. They came in all shapes and sizes. Of course, the best ones were wrapped keenly in plastic to keep scavengers at bay, but I knew that I soon would be able to get my own passionate fingers around a couple. Then it happened. I won't be specific about the wheres and hows of the story, but it suffices to say that I had my first experience. And once you have experience, you are never the same. I might call it a right of passage, really.

Of course, in this day and age, there are plenty of places to go. You aren't safe at home, work, or even at school, however disturbing that is. Adolescents and children, girls and boys don't have to look too far anymore. The corner store. Dad's "special collection" on the top shelf. The locked drawer in Mr Engleking's desk. Rupert's backpack in health class. Everywhere and everyone seemed to be a resource. Before I even realized it, I was sneaking around behind my parents' back trying to be clandestine in my now compulsory tendencies. Before I knew where I was going, I was on the road to addiction, where I still find myself trodding along in embarrassment. And of course small things don't stay small.

I knew that I had a problem when I got into the serious stuff--double stuffed, to be specific. And once I had tried double stuffed, I had to try the mint and cream and the peanut butter versions of the same vice. Why stop there? My Oreo fetish began to sink in deeper and deeper. My dreams started to involve giant cups of milk spattered with Oreo icebergs. Although I started by indulging myself maybe once a month, it soon became once a week. Then it was twice a week. Now it is almost a daily routine. This morning I was barely able to get the package back into the cupboard before my roommate Stu came around the corner. Can you imagine what he might have thought of me (a self-touted "Mormon") if he saw me with a chocolate crumb-covered mouth at 6:30 in the morning? It was a close call, but when your desires are so intense, your uncommonly strong passions cloud your common sense.

If there is anyone out there than reach down and bring me back from my Oreo addiction, I am reaching out to you. I would do anything to become the man I was before I let myself become the shell of a man that I am today. Oh, reopen (if you caught that play on words, please accept my hand in marriage) the gates to my happiness.

It's made for whom?

We have this intricate set of personal tastes that no one really understands. These tastes dictate our romantic lives, or so we tell ourselves. In reality, they only exist to give girls an excuse to criticize guys they don't like without feeling bad about themselves. I am not so naive (or so gender-biased) as to imply that this only works one way, but I will tell the story from a man's point of view just for the sake of saving awkward gender-sensitive phrases such as, "When a man/woman and a woman/man fall in love/lust, he/she just can't help him/herself to treat his/her honeybuns/stickybuns to a romantic evening under the stars/makeout sessions during the halftime show."

These tastes become so important to girls that they become somewhat of a code, or a set of rules. Of all of these rules (aka excuses), there are essentially only two categories. The first category is "Too much" and the second is "Not enough." I will ask your pardon in advance to the poor grammatical structure that I will use, but often parallel structure is more affective (not effective, in this case) than grammatical accuracy. "He is too much affectionate." "He is not enough compassionate." "He is too much loud." "He is not enough funny." "He is too much stinky." "He is not enough relaxed." The only time that a woman thinks that she is pleased is when a guy is neither "too much" nor "not enough." But those are just excuses. Contrary to what is most comforting to think, we cannot quantify love.

There is no formulaic answer to the already nebulous question of "what is my type?" In my life, I have "fallen in love" (in quotes because I use love in the Hollywood sense and not a true love, which still eludes me) with all types. I have "loved" a girl that was too loud and liked to dress up and throw parties. I have "loved" a girl that was a fireman's daughter. I have "loved" a girl that liked to read fairy tales in the back seat of my Lincoln (and no, that is not a euphemism). I have "loved" a girl that liked to do puzzles until all hours of the morning. And with every one, I was "too much" something and "not enough" something else, which was just a self-preserving way that they had of saying, "I don't like you."

However difficult it may seem for us guys who try to become the right amount of everything, it is a waste of time because girls don't really want what they say they want; they just want a guy that they love. Until they find that guy, they will make up "too much" and "not enough" excuses about why they don't like those would do anything to make them happy. And I guess that is okay.