NEUROTIC AS FUCK

When you are neurotic as hell, the trick is to appear casual. Pretend to be a person who doesn’t care. For example, I hate sharing food. It gives me hives. Everyone I’m close with knows this about me, but there are still times when I’ll be out and the server will say “family style”, and if you watch closely, it looks like a man just told me I’m gorgeous but he doesn’t pay for sex. It’s not a germ thing. It’s control. I want what I want and I’m too nice: a shit combo. Let’s say I want the chicken piccata—I like the less fatty piece of chicken (because chicken fat is fucking disgusting)—but the person on the other end of the table gets the dish first. Then passes it on and someone else grabs that piece of broccoli I had my eye on, and so forth. I learned early on that it’s less stressful if I just order for myself. I'll quietly ask the server to set my food in front of me. The food issue is easy to connect to my ridiculous cocaine-filled childhood (I was constantly hungry). But I’m a freak about almost everything. Case in point. I’m sitting here writing at a bar and the air conditioning is hitting me directly in the face. The minute I noticed the offensive draft, I tested four other tables for their wind velocity. Not much luck. There’s a guy in the corner watching a hockey game and he thinks I’m crazy. He’s right. You have no idea how much I wish I didn’t notice this shit. The occupied tables seem oblivious to the Freon wind (and I can see it’s blowing their hair). Life must be nice for these types. I’d love to spend sometime outside of my head. Oh Lord. A guy just sat in front of me and is swinging back and forth on his bar stool—directly in my line of vision. Even though I’m looking at my composition pad, the motion making me seasick! Christ, I might as well be on a fucking boat. Whiskey, take me away.