I Drink for a Reason

by David Cross

  And here’s the ultimate aggravation: not one of the happy couples around actually need Valentine’s Day either. It’s always Valentine’s Day for them. It’d be like having a nationally recognized Celebrate Your Perfect Health Day. We’d all have to spend the day watching a bunch of content, fit people flaunting themselves in front of the rest of us. People with limps, coughs, acne, glasses, crutches, and/or wheelchairs. That’s what every smiling, laughing, squeezing, kissing couple is on Valentine’s Day. Unwittingly adding a teaspoon of bitter stomach acid to be drizzled over your heart like so much Malbec reduction sauce over your prix fixe duck confit. Everyone knows this, too. It’s not like it’s some mystery. It seems that the only people who really benefit from this day of forced love are those Casanova con artists from Italy or France who come to America and take a bunch of frumpy housewives and widows for all their worth, or frumpy housewives in long-ago loveless marriages who subsist on reduced-fat cookies and delusion. Oh, and the makers of Stetson cologne for men and lastminuteflowersforfuckups.com. My point is that it’s more hurtful than helpful.

  Although I suppose it is nice to celebrate. And there’s no better way to celebrate something than fucking. And there’s no better way to celebrate the fact that you’re fucking than coming. So, all in all, I guess it’s better than Flag Day.

  PRESIDENTS’ DAY

  Wha… ? Are you serious? Go fuck yourself. Presidents’ Day. Please.

  HALLOWEEN

  Halloween is probably my least favorite of holidays. The reason is twofold: one, because it points out in a personified way just how sexually repressed we are as a culture, and two, because it points out in a physical way just how uncreative and easily amused we are as a culture. As for the first part, come on, we’ve all seen the idea of “sexy” * applied to a number of Halloween costumes that border on the disconcerting. It’s one thing for Pam in Accounts Receivable to get liquored up and wear a “sexy” (for the remainder of this piece, please imagine all uses of the word sexy to be in quotation marks—I don’t want to keep doing that as it will soon turn distracting) cat outfit or nurse outfit or cheerleader ensemble or whatever classic (Harem concubine!) sexy Halloween outfit has become the safe “go-to” outfit for the masses. But these usually have the opposite effect on me (not that anyone’s wearing them with “catching me” in mind). I find myself more turned on by the girl who dresses as a sexy hobo. That’s weird! And who wouldn’t want to fuck a hobo? How about a sexy pigeon costume? Or an erotic AIDS patient?

  The other thing I, on a more specific and personal level, don’t like about Halloween is that it’s got a real “amateur hour” vibe to it for me. Excusing the irony, I wouldn’t get on a soapbox and lecture about this, but I just feel like I do this sort of thing all the time because of my line of work. So donning a wig and beard and period outfit is no big deal. I can’t share in your giddy enthusiasm about your Gandalf thingy. I imagine it must be similar to how alcoholics feel on New Year’s. “Amateur hour,” they think as they pass out in their puke. “I do this almost every day.” Or maybe it’s similar to how the rich treat Christmas—with a sense of the distinctiveness surrounding the day, but really, it’s not that special. “What? Taking a vacation and opening up presents? I do that virtually every day. I’m not trying to be a dick, but… I’m rich. Think about it.” Or maybe a better example is how the mentally ill must feel on Ash Wednesday. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, you put strange markings on your face because an invisible man told you to.” Surely someone must spend Ash Wednesday thinking to themselves, “I feel like a fucking idiot.” What is this, the fucking Dark Ages?

  THANKSGIVING

  There’s a bit of cognitive dissonance involved with this holiday as you get older. You are celebrating sustenance and family and a vague attachment to the founding of this country, which seems to lose its glory with each bit of information about how we really got this land that sneaks its way through the fairy-tale police. Thanksgiving is not an easy day to celebrate because of this. On the one hand you have the simple, universally relatable theme of taking one day out of your busy, increasingly impersonal life to appreciate and be thankful for what you have * and on the other you have the shameful actions of a bunch of elitist racists who thought nothing of killing savages in preemptive actions because they weren’t “civilized” (and they had all the corn). And we all know how that worked for the people who lived here already. If they weren’t being killed and having their land stolen from them, they were being tricked into keeping warm under a blanket knowingly infested with smallpox that a generous federal agent donated to them. Of course, years later they got us back by rigging their slot machines to play extra tight, but what are you gonna do? At least they can get a family of five hammered on half a case of Milwaukee’s Best, and that’s nothing to drunkenly sneeze at and then wipe the snot on the sleeve of your filthy Wisconsin Badgers sweatshirt you got from Goodwill. That’s a huge savings over the years! But I do enjoy the story about them teaching us how to make popcorn. Obviously this was before we slaughtered them. I wonder if that was the first time popcorn was eaten in a “snacky” way. By the white man and his family as they watched the slaughter. Also, what’s up with oyster stuffing? Makes no sense on paper.

  MY BIRTHDAY

  While I realize that this is not yet recognized as a federal holiday, by the time this is published, if my agent is worth his commission, it will be. What will I have done to earn this? Uh… does the gift of laughter mean anything to you people? How about developing little-watched TV shows? What about my work with the folks at the Office Depot over on Broadway and Eighth? How about teaching indigenous tribes in the Amazon rain forest how to dig for fresh water and creating viable aqueducts? * My birthday should be a day of celebration and somber reflection, rather than what it is now—a day of mourning or penance.

  The Mystifying Allure of Gratuitous Luxury

  idrinkforareason.com/luxury

  AS I CONTINUE MY TODDLE THROUGH THIS LIFE THAT OTHERS HAVE chosen for me (I’m talking to you, God! What was the deal with the Red Sox blowing that 5-run lead to fucking Kansas City last Tuesday? And how about that crazy thing with You getting me drunk and then having me accidentally run over that boy’s dog, killing it? What were You thinking?), I will on occasion have a momentary lapse in my endless habitual daydreaming where I will see things in a clear and stark way that point out some absurd human foible that, although a ubiquitous part of my life, I hadn’t really noticed before. That’s my gift. And it’s a shitty gift too, so don’t get jealous. Some people refer to this as an “epiphany,” but I think that might be a little too grand. It suggests an angel’s knowing hand in the whole thing.

  The latest in these tiny “What the fucks?” occurred early yesterday evening as I was in my hotel room pooing. I was experiencing a particularly bad spell of IBS that saw me cramped and on the toilet with my arms uselessly wrapped around my stomach as I leaned forward in some involuntary sense-memory re-enactment. I had left the bathroom door open. (Why wouldn’t I? It’s my room, and also there was a full-length mirror on the inside of the bathroom door, whose existence has always bothered me, as I don’t like to watch myself taking a shit. Maybe if I was German, but I’m not. I’m one hundred percent American, so suck it, Lou Dobbs!) Anyway, while I was sitting there the maid knocked on the door and announced, “Housekeeping.” I panicked, but because I was all cramped up, all I could manage at that moment was a weakly croaked, “No!” She clearly didn’t hear and knocked again, saying, “Housekeeping, turn down?” I said, louder and much more urgently, “No thanks, I’m in bathroom!” Except she did that thing most hotel staff do where they will open the door as they’re knocking and announcing themselves. I yelled, “I’m taking a shit!” as she turned, looked, and, having no choice in the matter, smelled. She was as embarrassed as I was (Perhaps more so: I think hotel maids are often like black bears—they’re more scared of you than you are of them, and all they really want to do is just root through your trash), and she quickly b
acked out, averting her eyes, apologizing the entire time, and that was that. Now, that alone didn’t bother me. In fact I found it pretty funny almost immediately, as well as being a top candidate for a good story to relate to my friends and family at the upcoming Thanksgiving Throwdown my sister sponsors. What does ever so slightly bother me, though, is the reason she was going to enter my room in the first place. She was there to administer the “turn down service.” She was given a key to my room for the sole purpose of turning down one of the corners of my bedsheet and to leave a small piece of chocolate on the pillow. Thank you, but no. The sight of a mini chocolate on my newly exposed pillow does nothing for me. Absolutely nothing at all. Am I to be filled with the warm, comforting sense of being cared for by a nurturing Dominican grandma? The wholly satisfied feeling of being luxuriously pampered by an unseen but benign corporate nanny? I find it odd that this practice exists. The idea that after a long, tiring day in a strange town or even stranger culture, that I’ve come “home” to a place where a strange lady of decidedly lesser economic class and status is dispatched to my room to move my sheets around and leave a tidbit of chocolate like some lazy, under-achieving elf.

  Similar to this is the men’s room (or ladies’ room) attendant. Unlike valet parking—which, while not completely necessary, actually serves a useful (while arguably gratuitous) function—the men’s room attendant is useless, save for people with advanced arthritis or unbendable elbows. The feeling of easy, cheap elitism is inescapable. There’s a nagging sense of, “Hey, you might be having a bad day but at least you’re not stuck listening to and smelling the greasy, vodka-soaked explosive shit splatters of people enjoying yet another night out.” It’d be one thing if the attendant was a twenty-five-year-old frat guy named Joey standing around in a mesh Giants jersey, but it’s always a black guy or Mexican, and about eighty percent of the time he’s about sixty and moves with sadness.

  There are numerous examples of what seem to be wholly unnecessary and ultimately laughably ineffective attempts at luxury foisted upon the unwilling in this way. When I travel first class on planes, I don’t like being addressed by my first name. I don’t like being addressed at all really, but I suppose there needs to be some way to get my attention to find out whether it’s going to be the balsamic vinegar or creamy peppercorn dressing. I don’t like being approached, and I watch as the stewardess squats down in front of me, puts her hand on my knee, and, as she displays the DVD selection, asks me, “David, will you be joining us at the movies today?” This really happened, by the way. But I’m getting off point. This is about excess.

  I have a friend who is a bit Jappy. And by that I mean that she is a Jew who is whiney and deeply concerned with her own comfort at all times. What did you think I meant? That she is cute and shy with horizontal eyelids, looks great in a private school uniform, and is a bit subservient? No. Anyway, the other day this friend told me (this is all true, by the way) about how she has been getting massages once a week at her house. She pays a licensed massaging man to come over with the full massage kit (table, scented oil, candle, and ironically ineffective “atmospheric” CD featuring the sound of cicadas, running water, and plinkety New Age electronic harp and soft techno whistles and farts) wherein he plies his trade. She’s mentioned this a couple of times and I’ve never really commented on it past a “That’s nice,” or “That sounds great, maybe I should do that.” That is, until, after mentioning it again, she added the following stunner: “I usually get a four-hour session.” Huh? Four hours!!??!? Who the fuck gets a four-hour massage? People with severe physical disabilities maybe, and even they’re probably thinking, “Okay, enough’s enough” around hour two and a half. Four-hour massages are exactly why people hate Hollywood. Come on! That’s got to be one of the more indulgent things I’ve ever heard of. Have you ever received a one-hour massage? As nice and relaxing as it is, by the last ten minutes or so, you get so antsy for it to end so that you can check your messages or at least just get out of the “virtual, New Age woods” you’re lost in. Of all the examples of indulgence that the idle rich might indulge in, this would have to be right up there at the top of the makes-very-little-if-no-sense-list to hardworking people whose idea of a holiday is waking up, walking ten feet to the porch, and drinking themselves into a stupor while they daydream about all the unimaginative things they’d do if they won the lottery. (“I’d quit my job and move to the Haunted Mansion at DisneyWorld! Just make them build me an apartment there!” or “I’d get super fucked up and buy a bunch of cars and just shoot them!”) There’s a surprisingly large and extensive industry that caters to the super-duper rich.

  I saw on one of those “magazine” shows, Dateline or something, a titillating story about high-end luxury items, and I swear to you that I am not making this up. And I grant that a lot of the examples I use to illustrate a point I’m trying to make are logical but fabricated extensions of what I find absurd, but this is not one of them—this is true, I swear it. One of the items they showed was a 24-karat gold inlay for the soul of your foot that fits inside your shoe. What the motherfucking “f”?! Jesus, why not just have diamonds surgically implanted in your heart? Gold does serve a handful of useful purposes—it conducts electricity, doesn’t tarnish, is very easy to work with, it alloys with many other metals, it’s widely used in the aerospace and medical communities—but what purpose could it possibly be used for as an instep? You don’t even get to show it off, so there’s no real gratification in even that. I suppose you could take your shoe off at dinner and say, “I know you have to go up and accept your Pulitzer in a minute, but check this out!” As I am writing this I realize that there is the equivalent of the golden instep for every economic class out there. This next item isn’t exactly gratuitous luxury, but I would put this in the subset category of unnecessary items. I’ve seen this around a couple of times now. It’s called “the bumper badger,” and it’s a thin, corrugated piece of rubber that latches on to the inside of the trunk of your car. It hangs over the back of the exterior and protects the bumper—the bumper of your car, of course, being the thing that protects your car. The bumper is usually reinforced rubber or plastic and is designed to take the impact of a hit. So this thin piece of nothing is there to protect the bumper from scratches, I guess? So in order to keep the back of your car looking pretty you have to drape a goofy piece of rubber mat over it? Kinda defeats the purpose. So many things that are presented to us as “time savers” or just regular “thank god somebody finally figured out a better way!” type of items are wholly superfluous and not really needed.

  You can see it in the perpetually empty smile of the models performing mundane, everyday tasks in the ads throughout the Sharper Image or Sky Mall catalogs or in any given infomercial. Folding an easier to fold ladder, storing something under your bed with ease that up until now was not possible to store under your bed without fifteen seconds of focused imagination. The joy of finally cleaning your gutter without having to stand on something to elevate you. Making pancakes without all the muss and fuss that you used to endure with the new “30 Second Pancake Batter Thing!” How did the pioneers ever do without it!? Jesus, we are a lazy, gullible, mindlessly consumptive culture, aren’t we?

  YourStar.com

  I DON’T GET IT. WELL, I GET IT IN THE SENSE THAT I UNDERSTAND what it is. And I get why, given the intelligence and gullibility of Americans, it not only exists but also truly thrives as a business. But, come on, paying money to a suspiciously generic-sounding company called the Universal Star Council to have a star named after you or a loved one?! You’re kidding, right? You’re not? Go to www.yourstar.com, you say, and I’ll see what you’re talking about? Okay, fine! I will!

  The home page of yourstar.com features the sentence “As your star shines… your love will last. Eternal beauty, and infinite possibility mingle among the stars, and now, one of them can be yours… 30 day guarantee—imagine the look on their face when you give them their very own star, officially recorded with the Inte
rnational Star Council!” (At least it did before I started making fun of this.)

  Okay, I’ll do just that. All right, give me a minute here to let me stop laughing. Hang on. Man, this is taking longer than I thought. Okay, here we go. Nope, still laughing. Need another second here. I snotted myself a little. Let me wipe. All right, I’m done. Let’s see now, hmmmm, I’m imagining a look comprised of a mixture of incredulous outrage and pity. Is that right? A look that says, “How motherfucking dumb are you? You named a star after me? Which one? Point it out. Oh it’s “up there somewhere”? Wait, you can narrow it down to the Crab Nebula? Well, that’ll save some time in finding it. What the fuck is wrong with you? I’d rather have a gift certificate to Shit Farm Indian Food Diarrhea Outletters. I’d rather have forty dollars’ worth of henna tattoos on my face. What does that even mean, you named a star? Why not just name a microbe after me? Or anything else equally intangible and impossible to see after me? What happened, they ran out of cubic inches of Atlantic Ocean to name for me? How about a “patch of air” over the Rhine? What about the Queen of England’s next fart? Can I get that named after me as well? Why stop there? What about truly imaginary things that, for a nominal fee, can be named after me? I’d like to name the next sighting of the Loch Ness Monster after me, for $39.95. How about the whisper of an angel? For an extra fifty bucks I’ll throw in its celestial “aura” up to, but not exceeding, a radius of six inches. And seriously, the “International Star Council”? Again, you’re joking, right? What do you have to do to be a part of that “Council,” provide proof of citizenship from a country on Earth, while being able to look up and point? What kind of scam is this?!