Doghouse Day!

“Guess I’m still in the doghouse with your mom.”

“You’re not in the doghouse!” your girlfriend’s daughter says.

“Oh I sure am,” you tell her. “You wouldn’t understand. It’s a grown-up thing.”

“You’re not in the doghouse! My mom left you two years ago. She left both of us.”

“She’s just taking some time to blow off steam,” you explain. “It’s a grown- up thing. Hope when she gets back I’ll get out of the doghouse.”

“You’re not in the doghouse,” she says. “And I am a grown-up. I turned 18 three months ago and I got a lawyer that says I can evict you from my mom’s house.”

She hands you papers.

“But you’re all I have left of your mom,” tell her. “And I’m all you have left of her.”

“Move on,” she says. “I have.”

You fold up the papers and pack your things.

Happy Doghouse Day!

The Fuck Happy World Of Brad Day!

You’re the main character in a porno movie called The Fuck Happy World Of Brad. That’s why you feel so fuck happy and you keep having sex during what should be routine situations. Like when you bump into your neighbor by the mailboxes and the two of you have sex in the lobby and the doorman joins in. Or when you’re bartending and that woman comes in looking for a job and you tell her you’ll put in a good word so the two of you have sex.

“I just want to go back to my day,” you think while having sex. “I want to just be.”

You don’t know you’re a character in a porno so to you this is madness. If you were told you were a character in a porno you might experience a brief moment of relief (porn ends) but then someone else would push play and you’d get back to it. There is no escape. There is no end. The Fuck Happy World Of Brad is both finite and eternal, and it is all you’ll never know.

Happy The Fuck Happy World Of Brad Day!

Domino Doreen Day!

Doreen is making your pizza. It says so on the tracker. It says your pizza is being made, and for the seven minutes it takes before it says your pizza is out for delivery, you can stare at your computer screen and envision your best friend Doreen making you dinner. She’s applying the toppings and fluffing the crust and putting it in the oven with care.

“You put in the order yet?” Sam asks. Sam’s your boyfriend. He used to go out with Doreen.

You don’t answer Sam. You just watch the pizza tracker. You ordered the pizza with a fake name so Doreen wouldn’t know it’s you she’s cooking for. She doesn’t know where you and Sam moved to (he had to move out of his apartment with Doreen) so she won’t recognize the address either. She has no idea she’s making a dinner for her former best friend. She has no idea how much her former best friend is savoring watching the little bar on the tracker. Doreen has no idea how much you miss her.

Your pizza is out for delivery.

You go downstairs with Sam and wait for it to arrive, trying to focus on you and him, trying to convince yourself he was worth it. But it’s no use. All you can do is listen for the car outside, search the air for the scent of pepperoni, anticipate the moment when a little bit of your best friend is delivered back into your life.

Happy Domino Doreen Day!

You Don’t Really Care About The Environment Day!

You don’t really care about the environment but you tell people you do because you want people to think you’re cool.

“No way would I ever litter,” you tell people at coke parties and while trying to get into clubs. “CFCs piss me off. Damn straight.”

At work when the cool guy at work who wears his tie as a bandana during happy hour tells you that you should turn off your monitor when you leave for the day to conserve electricity, you say, “You’re damn skippy I should!” Though you really couldn’t give a crap.

Problem is, you’ve fallen in love with a girl. And you’re afraid that if you let on that you don’t really care about the environment as much as you’ve pretended to during the courtship, the relationship will end.

“What do I do?” you ask your butch best friend, Slats.

“Be honest!” Slats will say. Slats is your best friend but she secretly loves you and she hopes being honest will end it with this dumb, rich, environmentalist girl you’ve been seeing. “If she can’t handle the real you, she doesn’t deserve to be with you. Now practice kissing on me so you won’t blow it when you kiss her later tonight.”

You practice kissing on Slats, then you go out on your date with your girlfriend. Midway through dinner you tell her you don’t really care about the environment.

“That’s really upsetting,” she says. “I don’t think we can go on.”

“But Slats told me to be honest!”

Your girlfriend says, “I think Slats is the one you should really be with.”

You leave the restaurant and run out into the street and you find Slats walking down the middle of the street with tears in her eyes.

“When we were practicing kissing together earlier,” you tell her. “It shouldn’t have been practice. It should have been just kissing.”

You and Slats kiss.

“You’re the only one who’s cool with me not giving a shit about Global Warming and all that other crap,” tell her.

“I am,” she’ll say. Then she’ll kiss you some more. Then the two of you will go home, have sex, and not recycle stuff.

Happy You Don’t Really Care About The Environment Day!