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 The Mating Game (’07/’11): |
One of the most existentially depressing, grotesque, and sorry ordeals I’ve ever seen. Involving forty lonely single folks, who seemed to’ve had half the blood wrung out of them. |
 Happiness (2011): |
A hook-up so oneiric that I still don’t understand exactly what happened. But it’d seem perfectly normal in a Charlie Kaufman film. |
 Miss Misery (2011): |
I’m not sorry this relationship ended. I am sorry I won’t get to have this wedding. |
 A Perfect Sonnet: (2011): |
If I’m wrong in my atheism, and there turns out to be such a thing as a soul, the woman here detailed still has most of it. |
 Manufacturing Magic (2011): |
What happens when you fall in love with a set of circumstances instead of the person those circumstances concern. |
 Do the Opposite (2011): |
She said, ”What if I told you I would not have sex with you again until you read a Harry Potter book?” |
 Watch the Weather Change (2011): |
Possibly not a good sign that the high point of this relationship came when I may or may not have been unconscious. |
 A Siren of Titan (2011): |
It was years until I got my head around just how exceptional this girl actually was and probably still is. |
 Everyone Has a Summer (2011): |
I’ve discovered that the words “understand” and “love” seem to mean entirely different things every few years of a life. |
 Sometimes Eleven Is Better (2011): |
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 Ten Sentences About Two Dreams (2011): |
Sometimes it’s fun to impose ridiculous restrictions upon oneself as a writer. It’s sort of like going to the literary gym. Still, true story, and utterly vexing to me. |
 Reveal the Best of Me (2011): |
2007 may conceivably have been the worst year of my existence, or at least the most miserable. I was ready to check out until a cat saved my life. Seriously. Written for the occasion of that cat’s fourth birthday. |
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Begun when I was seven-and-a-half years in; edited after twelve; finished in my soul-deadened fifteenth year: If you’ve waited tables, enjoy. Giggle. If you haven’t, enjoy—but mighty fuck, please try and retain some of the advice. |
| A confluence of freak events and circumstances which I could not possibly replicate even if I tried prevented me from seeing one of my favorite bands, The Decemberists. I fucking hope Toronto’s Sound Academy burns to the fucking ground. Fuck. | |
 I Am Trying to Break Your Heart (2010): |
In a workshop, I was pressed by a shockingly hostile roundtable of peers to explain why it is that I write. Eventually, as has been the case in so many situations in my life, scotch and Trent Reznor led the way to the truth. |
 In This Twilight (2009): |
On my (then) fifteen-year, intensely intimate yet simultaneously non-existant relationship with Trent Reznor’s Nine Inch Nails. |
 Good Jeans (2009): |
This is, no joke, about the difficulty of finding and keeping hold of a killer pair of jeans. It’s also written as a series of eulogies, and makes any number of jokes at the expense of Schindler’s List. |
 Peregrine Carrots (2008): |
By the time I was seventeen years old, I had a drug problem. Chiefly, the problem was that I didn’t do drugs very well. And when you mix a days-long bender, the heat of a restaurant kitchen, and a hair-trigger gag reflex, you end up with a horrifying and hilarious biohazard. |
 Failing the Litmus Test for Apathy (2008): |
After a summer in which I had literally attempted and failed to commit suicide (with what are, in retrospect, fairly hilarious results), and an early autumn during which an evening spent with a gram or two of cocaine, a bottle of Jameson, and a Carvel ice cream cake wasn’t at all out of the ordinary, I had my very first OD and suddenly discovered something rather important about myself which came as a complete surprise. |
 An Entirely Different Cuban Missile Crisis (2008): |
A cautionary tale: how not to get drunk for the first time. Involving magic shoes, the world’s most unlikely barkeep, and a pint of blood. |
 Pink Turtleneck About Which No One Asks Any Questions (2008): |
How I blew my suicide. In one sense, the memoir section doesn’t get any bleaker than this piece. But in another, for those possessed of a rich and dark sense of humor, the abject hilariousness of this essay’s ending should make it all worthwhile. |
 I Just Made Her Up to Hurt Myself (2007): |
The story of my last imaginary friend, first fictional character, or possibly my first girlfriend. Well into adulthood, I still don’t know what to call her. |
 Lifeline (2007): |
This essay details the comedy of errors that was what should have been one of those “Rock Bottom” moments that changes the course of a man’s life. Quoth Cletus the Slack-jawed Yokel, “Shoulda, but didna.” |
 We Suck the Moon (2006): |
Despite the fact that I’m a writer and a poorly disguised Hopeless Romantic™, I’ve never really been a love letter kind of guy. I started one once, years ago; I found it recently, it made me smile, and I decided that the sentiment shouldn’t go to waste just because the relationship ended. |
 {;} (2005): |
Topic sentence pretty much sums it up: “The semicolon is the most complex of all punctuation marks; it is also the most beautiful.” This essay goes a long way toward explaining why I’m enough of a nerd to have one tattooed over my heart. |
 Rationale of Sesquipedalism (2005): |
Why would I opt for the obscure and abstruse word opuscula when “minor triumph” is readily available and more comprehensible? I have my reasons. And, though it is suggested at least once a season, they have nothing to do with feeling smarter than you. |
