Wednesday, June 14, 2006
Breaking up is hard to do, but rejecting assholes is easy
I'm talking, of course, about my relationship with cigarettes. I had my first cigarette at 11 (a Salem Ultra Light 100), started really smoking by 13, and was up to a pack of Marlboro Reds per day by 16. In college, after a brief dalliance with Camel Reds, I switched to the bitch sticks that have been my undoing ever since: Parliament Lights. Because they are light cigarettes, I smoke them all the time. I smoke when I first wake up in the morning, I smoke after I walk the dogs, I smoke after the gym, I smoke as soon as I get home from work, I smoke after I eat, I smoke while I drink, I smoke after sex, I smoke right before I go to bed. I smoke ALL THE FUCKING TIME, and I absolutely hate and despise it. It makes me stink like an ashtray, it bleeds me dry financially, it makes my hands yellow, it makes my skin break out, and it makes me lie to my parents ("uh, no, Mom, I'm not smoking anymore" as I hold the phone away while I take a drag so she can't hear it).
There is nothing else in my life that is out of my control, except for this blindingly powerful addiction. I am a fucking nicotine junkie. So last week, after seeing yet another commercial of a dude with no larynx talking through his throat stoma, I decided to once again dare the dread course which has thwarted me so many times: I decided to quit smoking. I am breaking up with Parliament Lights, because I don't want to look like this in 5 years:
Granted, Aileen Wuornos looks particularly careworn on account of years spent sleeping under highway overpasses and hooking on rural Floridian trucker routes, but you bet your ass that if I keep up with the smokes, my hair will be equally lank, my teeth equally rotten, and my face equally sallow and strung-out (although hopefully I won't be mean-mugging everyone with the same crazed serial killer expression). I am at the point where I can reverse my inevitable decline into looking like a female death row inmate on methamphetamine, but I have to quit NOW.
As of today, I've gone 5 days with no cigarettes, and things are not going well. I'm cranky, anxious, and have a splitting headache. I am restless and can't sleep well. Even though I'm using the patch, it's not the same as cigarettes. Right now I feel like the only way the patch will be of any use to me is if I can roll it up and smoke it. Whenever I pass someone smoking, I want to rip the cigarette out of their hand and start sucking on it greedily. I even caught myself looking covetously at the cigarette butts floating in an overflowing storm drain this morning. Right now I just keep repeating a litany of "I'm a non-smoker, I'm a non-smoker" to myself in the hopes that I will eventually believe it and stop obsessing about cigarettes constantly. Without cigarettes, I am a wrathful and hot-tempered RAGING BITCH, and not to be trifled with. Goading me antagonistically or attempting to seduce me with poorly crafted insults is very ill-advised.
Unfortunately, that's exactly what this guy did yesterday. There was a party for this postdoc from another lab, and there was beer there. I said I was just going to drop by for a minute to eat some free Indian food. Then, I decided I was just going to have one beer. Three beers and a glass of wine later, and J-Sexy and I decided that we were going to go over to this guy's apartment and drink more. The buzz I had going relieved some of my anxiety and discomfort from cigarette withdrawal, and J-Sexy assured me that she would vigorously prevent me from smoking should I be tempted. Even though the guy hosting us had some rather negative history with me, we were getting along fine, and I didn't anticipate any problems.
Three years ago, when I came to New York for grad school interviews, I hooked up with this guy, a fellow interviewee. We ended up not having sex because we didn't have any condoms, and it was 4 a.m. and my ass wasn't getting dressed to find an all-night drugstore. I said, "No problem, we can still fool around."
"Just so you know, I'm Jamaican and I don't do that," he said. (This guy is Jamaican-American...he is as Jamaican as I am Norwegian).
"Do what?" I asked.
"I don't go down on girls."
"So...you just expect me to give you a blow job and you won't do shit for me?"
"I'm Jamaican. We don't do that." At the time, I was totally unsympathetic regarding his alleged cultural restriction for pussy eating, and needless to say, that motherfucker did not get head from me that night. I don't always adhere to the Lil' Kim policy of "If you ain't lickin this, you ain't stickin this," but I'm certainly not going to fellate someone who declares up front that they won't under any circumstances reciprocate.
Once I started school, I told J-Sexy and several of our other female classmates about this incident, and the word spread. I considered it a public service to warn fellow loose women, since he seemed to be hooking up with half of our first-year class. He confronted me about this at a party, where he vociferously blamed me for cockblocking him with the other graduate students. I was unapologetic, and told him that's what he gets for not being interested in pleasing his partners. Then, unbelievably, he said, "So are we going to go fuck or what?"
"Or what!" I exclaimed, and ditched his company immediately. I'm not interested in hooking up with a dude who is so obviously proud of being a selfish lover. Our interactions since then have been mainly polite and perfunctory greetings when we run into each other around campus or at social functions. Enough time had passed that I figured bygones were bygones, and we could drink beer in a social setting and play nicely together.
I figured wrong. Once we got to his place, he brought up the whole oral sex issue again for the benefit of all the people gathered there. J-Sexy and C-Money disputed his assertion that this refusal to eat pussy was a Jamaican custom, and they are both actually from Jamaica. To authenticate his Jamaican street cred, he started talking in patois and was really pissed when C-Money said that my patois pronunciations were better than his when I told him to "gwan den, bwoy." "Mi rasta," he said. "Dat gyal (meaning me) no fi ti no dey speak lak in Kingston." I called him a bumbaclot. This encounter erupted into a massive argument, and on account of the many beers I'd consumed and my non-smoking moodiness, we were trading insults like a couple of three-year-olds. I decided to leave.
He walked out with me, and while I waited for the elevator, unbelievably tried to hook up with me again! I told him to go to hell. "Do you think I'm fucking stupid?" I asked. "Do you think you can spend all night picking on me and fighting with me and I'll be falling all over myself to suck your fucking dick? Don't insult my fucking intelligence!" He then swore that he would go down on me. "Oh, so you don't care about your fucking principles anymore?" I asked. He said that he was just saying that, and that he didn't mean it. Then he tried to kiss me. I smacked him in the sternum and pushed him away from me and declared him "fucking insane." I was so angry that he was wasting my time and actually had the audacity to assume that I would inevitably want to fuck him. I shouted, "Well, I don't fuck people who change their stories every five minutes to get what they want, you DISINGENUOUS PRICK! I'm LEAVING! Get out of my way!"
As I stormed home, I realized that if anything was accomplished by this hostile exchange, it was that it made me forget entirely that I wanted a cigarette desperately. For anyone trying to quit smoking, I highly recommend getting into a screaming match with a ridiculous guy who actually just wants to fuck you, so that you can win the fight by rejecting his ass. It's not as satisfying as feeding your addiction, but at least it's an interesting distraction.
Labels: Rxxx Sxxxxxx
Angie, you can remove this comment from your site if you want to, but one way or another, I will get it out there.
Sincerely,
DISINGENUOS PRICK
: 6/19/2006 5:08 PM I would, however, like to mention that I did laugh out loud at the part where you lecture me on professionalism. I genuinely enjoy being condescended to about acceptable behavior at work by a person who yesterday treated the entire virology floor to a screaming tirade in which you characterized me as a "slut," a "stupid bitch," and (my favorite) a "fucking cunt." In fact, you were so convincing as an enraged lunatic that several of my co-workers were concerned that you might physically harm me. Not only did this diatribe showcase your razor-sharp wit, but it was particularly credible coming from a person who got run out of his first lab in grad school for sexual harassment (and as you were talking openly about that last week to myself and numerous others, that's hardly a fucking secret, so don't bother throwing around any more tedious accusations of libel.) Of course, you must have been drunk when doing that, as well as when you went postal on me yesterday, since you apparently think that's a perfectly acceptable means of dodging any personal accountability for your own actions.
As a hideously unattractive attention whore I realize that I'm not in a position to dispense advice, but have you ever considered that maybe your reputation wouldn't be so shoddy if you took responsibility for your own conduct instead of blaming me or my silly website? Granted, I realize that most top scientists turn immediately to RAZZY.org when looking to employ a new postdoc, and that my patented brand of useless bullshit will certainly outweigh your scientific achievements, publications, or institutional history of behavioral problems in terms of your illustrious career. I'm sure that any scientist looking to hire you will sift through my archives, recognize you despite my not mentioning your name, and ensure that you never dissect another tetrad again. I guess I should have written a letter about what a crazy fucking idiot you are to the editor of Science, or some other crappy journal that way fewer of your potential PIs would read.
As far as the apology/retraction you demanded in the e-mail you audaciously sent me after you cussed me out at high volume in my tissue culture room is concerned, you are obviously not getting one, nor are you getting any future responses or reactions from me. As I said before, I plan to ignore you because this whole exchange is insipid and monotonous, and I really don't care about you or your opinion of me. As far as I'm concerned, you are like a piece of dog shit stuck to the bottom of my shoe: you're offensive and revolting while you're around, but you're forgotten as soon as you've been scraped off and tossed in the trash heap where you belong. However, feel free to continue commenting, since your delusional rants only underscore the diagnosis I made last Tuesday of you being completely fucking insane.
--Someone not hating on you this month
: 6/23/2006 12:38 PM --Someone not hating on you this month
: 6/23/2006 12:38 PM : 12/02/2006 1:16 PM Links to this post:
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