Jennie Smash

Recently, I was forced to take a few days off from lounging around my favorite bars. I was busy, broke and sick. (A triumvirate of ills that has fortunately plagued most of my friends as well, so, bonus! Also no one to play with.)

While I was recuperating and letting my bank card rest, I came up with the following things to do when you can’t drink:

1) Return phone calls to friends. I am terrible at this. For one thing, my cell phone is actually a prototype built in 1987 and it’s the size of my desk and I have to have a dude run behind me with a generator in a suitcase just to make it work, which means that I can’t skip messages, and who wants to listen to all of that. So I sometimes don’t even get messages for days and days. For another thing, I am a bad person.

2) Consider organizing paperwork. Decide to shove it back in a drawer instead.

3) Do laundry. Realize that skeevy dude who hangs outside the laundromat asking people for cigarettes is always there whenever you do laundry. Wonder if he’s there when you’re not doing laundry. Decide that he is stalking you. Realize that you are paranoid.

4) Call mother and ask if, in her clincial opinion, you have a personality disorder. Act surprised when she laughs loudly and long, and then says, “Yup! You’re fucking crazy!”

5) Contemplate starting fight with mother, then friends, then fella, then coworkers. Realize that this will result in guilt, friendlessness, broken relationship, poverty. Decide to read a book instead. Realize that you are a grownup. Fuck.

Anyway. It’s been a valuable experience, my week of rest. And now … right back to it!