After resigning from my position as Professional Salon Receptionist I managed to snag a few days between jobs to go home to the Triangle. The idea was that I’d see each person I love for about five minutes and have a quick spa session before returning to New York to start my “new life,” all while maintaining a therapeutic yet dangerously high blood-alcohol level. I’d like to share my experiences with you using the photos I found saved on my phone from that week, since that’s the only way I can recall what happened in the first place.

Day 1: I spent the morning drinking vodka cranberries and tanning on the trampoline at my mom’s house in Cary until Greg drove 4o minutes from his parents’ house in Zebulon so we could smoke bowls and drive around. My friendship with Greg has been going strong for about ten years and we’ve spent most of them doing exactly this. Above is a photo of us on our way out to Chapel Hill to rescue some younger friends from the clutches of our alma mater. As you can see, Greg is sporting his classic UNC hat in forest camouflage and I am sporting my classic boob being out.

I guess it was something in the southern air or possibly the fact that I was WASTED at 4 pm but I really wanted to have a party that night. I made a huge deal about it on twitter and everything, which was sort of hilarious since it was the middle of the week and the only way I was going to get my friends out to Cary was to drive them myself. When most of them opted to stay in Chapel Hill, I googled “rude clip art” and sent these out via text:

Day 2: My relationship with my mother sort of amazing in that I can be whiny and annoying to her almost all of the time and she just finds it amusing. I’m like The Simple Life to her. Above is a picture of me standing in my mom’s backyard after I forced her to give me braided pigtails and she totally surprised me by giving me this tiara! But don’t get it twisted. I may be the princess, but my mom is the queen. There’s a reason she just had one lying around. Later, Greg picked me up because he had to go to Zebulon to do laundry or something and I had literally nothing else to do but ride around with him. I hadn’t been home for 48 hours and I was already bored. Why did I think having nothing to do would be a luxury? Here’s a picture of how high I had to get to make up for it.

If you didn’t know, Zebulon is a town in North Carolina made up entirely of fast food restaurants. We went to three of them.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The next day there was like a hurricane or a tornado warning or something stupid, so I wrapped myself in one of the Ritz Carlton robes my mom lives in and treated myself to that spa day I’d been looking forward to all week. If you thought I was exaggerating about my mom being a queen perhaps her taste in bathroom decor will convince you. I proceeded to send my future boyfriend as many elegant nudes as possible, use every bath and body product in sight and get so drunk in the tub that I sliced the shit out of my leg with a venus razor. I’m proud to say it looked pret-ty gnarly.

That night I was planning to attend one of the few events I used to look forward to back in NC, #NB4R. I was excited to see my boo Jermaine and of course hear what Luxe Posh was spinning these days, but the flash floods were putting a serious damper on my vibe. To lift my spirits I put my hair in my mom’s rollers and decorated my nails with some cheap stickers that just ended up falling off after I got Bojangles grease on them. 

At the party we spent most of our time either in the bathroom or outside talking shit. Apparently I was acting like a Teen Bitch to everyone all night, which seems accurate I guess. A pretty bold choice for someone who was camped out on the floor of the men’s room all night, but I stand by it.

Anyway, it turns out airplanes aren’t time machines. Things have really changed in the last year and most of us have grown up and away from our old scene. This trip made it very clear that the North Carolina period of my life is dead and buried, or at least cryogenically frozen, and I’m totally okay with that. Still, it’s nice to get out of the city every once in a while and remember why I moved here in the first place. No shade on the old stomping grounds, but you gotta grow up sometime.

I’ll always miss Laguna Beach High School.

You all know that since the beginning of August I have singlehandedly held down New York for Team Big Things, getting by on my own with the help of the internet and the 4 friends I’ve made since I moved here. Much of TBT will be moving to Brooklyn in as soon as two weeks, and I am overcome with relief. I don’t even think I will realize how much it sucked to be here without them until I finally have them back. It’s texts like these that prove I will one day be back to norm again.

For a while I played with the idea of meeting some people on the internet, which was a bust for the most part. A few months back I made a fun OkCupid profile as a joke. I often make joke profiles on social networks I think might be dumb out of curiosity. This would explain how I got stuck with “ButtButt” as a foursquare name, “Catdookie” on instagram, and “Slutz[underscore]Taco” on OkCupid. Turns out people don’t think you are joking when you call yourself a Slutz_Taco on a dating website. They truly think you will sleep with them even if they look like a sea monster made of turds and use pick up lines like these:

God bless these fools. Nevertheless, I could not shake my desire for new mans. And attention in general, really.

In a dramatic turn of events, it was the dumbness of the internet that eventually brought me together with a boothang. Snapchat, specifically. Have you ever snapchatted your phone number to someone in the middle of the night? If you haven’t, it is a great way to start a romantic rendezvous with your celebrity crush. I give it 5 out of 5 stars.

If you live in New York (and maybe even if you don’t, but I can’t say for sure), you’ve probably realized that A LOT of people have been getting sick with colds and haven’t been able to shake them for up to two fucking months. I’m not saying it’s a government conspiracy (CHEMTRAILS) but it has definitely affected me quite a bit and that has definitely sucked.

^Here is a picture of me with a 102 degree fever after I sleepwalked to the corner store and bought a shit ton of cereal.
I’ve been to the doctor 3 times in the last month and in the meantime I have been slacking on all my other appointments. My cats are due for a teeth cleaning (do other people do this?) and it’s been so long since I’ve gotten brazilian that I’m positive my Bikini Artist is going to laugh in my face the next time I hit the spa.

When I’m NOT texting my new boo and nursing an illness sometimes I go out to public locations and alter my mind. I’m not sure what actually happens at these functions besides taking selfies but what else am I trying to do really?

It should also be mentioned that I quit my job at the salon to start working on a TV show. Before I started this new “gig” I had the privilege of dipping down to North Carolina for a bit of fun, the photos of which I will unload later. It’s too much glamour and beauty and suburbia for this particular post.

WHILE I WAS GONE it brightened up substantially around the city and I have been loving it. Honestly if you would just follow me on instagram @catdookie I wouldn’t have to repost these here and it would be far more convenient for me overall.

Cute, right? Now that winter is officially over and life officially no longer sucks, I’ve rediscovered the fun of walking around the city aimlessly. Also I think Jadakiss lives in my neighborhood.

My new job is fabulous and great and everything you’d expect. I even made a new BEST FRIEND to add to the collection. It really helps to have a person around for moral support while you’re ruining your manicure and eating far too much craft services. I’m not sure how long this particular job will last because the end of the season is near, so I gotta get in as much free food as possible before then.  
I actually think I may be physically addicted to terrible food at this point. My hours at work are so crazy that I don’t really have the time (or fucks) for grocery shopping, so GrubHub is essentially my livelihood. The other day I ate no less than four kinds of fried seafood out of a cardboard box, and last week I ordered Chinese THREE times, one of which was just after I had finished eating Chinese. I never regret it until I step out of bed the next morning into a pile of empty takeout boxes. Then I feel just a bit gross.

Late hours do work well, though, with the fact that I like to stay up until 5 am playing with my hair (or having sex). Hannah got a job at a new salon where she gave me a brand new cut and color, and helped me style my fun new clip-in extensions.

If you live in the city you should definitely check out Foster Glorioso at 5 East 19th Street. It’s super gorgeous and beyond chill. Plus they have wine!

^Here we are on our way to the FIRST bachelorette party I’d ever been to. Our friend Lisa celebrated the end of her freedom and I spent all of my fucking money on male strippers! It was fun, but they should have been tipping MY ass…like, do you even see this weave? (Truly I’m kidding, these extensions were cheap as hell and take forever to put in, so mostly I’ve been rocking my new REAL hair a la Uma in Pulp Fiction on a good day. Still though.)

Yyyyeah, I’m still broke, I’m still crazy, and I still have a dead rat in my backyard (in case you were wondering). But I have a new job and new look so like, move over. ‘Cause this is a competition, and I am here 2 win.

Lately I’ve had to put an enormous amount of energy into not letting the haters affect my game. It’s unclear what I’ve even been doing with my life in the last month or so, but the struggle to remain posi is real and alive and I am more dedicated than ever.

This likely has something to do with the fact that everything has kind of blown dogs for me in the last four weeks. If things don’t steer straight for me soon, I fear I may become a hater myself.

Mercury was in retrograde for a minute there, which, for those of you that haven’t decided to arbitrarily assign significance to astrology, means that everything is supposed to be fucked up for a few weeks in the realm of communication. Decisions you make will be misinformed and contracts you sign will probably be reneged. Terrible things are supposed to happen all around, and they usually do for me. I tend to find myself on some manic binge, ending up in strange places at 5 in the morning and getting in trouble with the law. Because my life has been fantastically boring since the last time we spoke, I did not get myself into any life altering predicaments, and it was purely for lack of trying. Most of my days have been spent working my ~shit day job~ so much that all I ever want to do outside of that is shop online and play drinking games to Rookie of the Year. Of course I’ve been desperate to figure out my next move, and for a while I had a few bright options. I choose to blame the fizzling of those prospects on Mercury Retrograde and face it with the “one door closes, another opens” philosophy…because otherwise I’d just spend the rest of my life dipping french fries in my soft serve at the Burger King under the M train and feeling sorry for myself.

Because I try to always follow through with things I say I’ll do and be a “yes” person, from time to time I have decided to go out and show my face. I realize I need to meet new people, and sometimes when I do I feel great. Other times I’ve followed friends out to their somewhat intimate gatherings full of people I’ve never met where everyone asks me if I’m visiting from out of town and I fall into a k-hole of social awkwardness. Either way I usually just end up taking selfies in the bathroom.

The most exciting things that have happened in the last month are that Rainbow had a sale on crop tops, Hannah dyed my hair brown, I started walking a puppy three times a week, and I finally bought a bed. I’ve heard most Americans have them but I’ve just been sleeping on mattresses laid directly on the floor ever since I discarded my canopy bed when I was 14. The worst was a flea infested twin sized pad from my childhood bunk bed that I threw in the corner of my room and slept on for 5 months last year after I moved out of my ex’s house. The fleas were my cats’ fault, but really my fault. I still find it funny the number of one-night suitors I actually had the guts to bring back to that place, and laughable how many never complained, even with coffee cups and kitty litter everywhere. One of them even dated me for 3 months. Now, though, at the wrinkled age of 23 I try not to even have one night stands because the idea of bringing strangers into my house repulses me. I have to wonder if that’s because I’m appropriately embarrassed by the unfinished nature of my bedroom and the apparent lack of hygiene it projects or if I simply can’t stand strangers enough to commute with them back to my Bushwick apartment, or some combination of the two.

This hasn’t stopped me from giving my number to the wrong people, like the the creepy short guy that followed me home on Sunday night or the dude from Ok Cupid who offered me molly to “party” with him and his girlfriend. Needless to say I’ve changed a couple contacts in my phone to Do Not Pick Up. Somehow I have no interest in sleeping with people I don’t have “real feelings” for, and I definitely don’t have the energy to put myself such a volatile situation of sleeping with someone I actually like.

In the meantime I can’t stop getting shit from the people around me, and I’ve taken it much more personally than usual. People questioning my intelligence based on my open sexuality (I’ve always failed to see a connection between the two but apparently there is one?), women who compliment me with an insulting tone (“your boobs are so BIG”). Someone told me during sex recently that I hate my life but that I’m lying to myself (big question mark on that one) And a coworker pleasantly dispensed the info that my college major was totally useless and that’s why I’m a receptionist. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that she was probably just mad because she’s 37, just went back to undergrad and recently had a nervous breakdown over writing a 2.5 page paper double spaced. Still, if these things are upsetting me it’s because I’m not 100% happy with myself, and that’s on me.

There is always going to be someone hating you for who you are or who they decide you are. Out of fear, out of jealousy, or purely for the fun of it. Negativity is a fucking contagion, and you should never let the fact that someone hates their life mean you have to hate yours too. I’m constantly encountering women who hate other women for being sexual, or for being confident, or because of a man. Women who backwardly find threatening the outspokenness of another. People who are nauseated by other people’s success. People who offer career connections in exchange for sexual favors (a thing I naively thought only happened in movies like Legally Blonde). I try not to let it affect me, but about half the time it does.

Fine, so I’m still figuring out my reason for getting up in the morning. But I’m still going to do it. You can’t go through life believing you’re as trashy or as stupid or as sad as people say. If you want to be better, be better. But don’t allow yourself to be shamed.

My career and my love life may remain virtually nonexistent, but I’m still holding on to my posi vibes and taking my chances. Even if I fuck up royally and it feels like a kick in the gut, at least I know I’m trying. After all, you are the only one who can make yourself feel truly awful. No one else. And isn’t that nice?

I have officially been wearing the same clothes for two days and I smell like chicken noodle soup. I just got home, carrying hair products, birth control and a burrito in the same paper bag. I’m googling “sad diva” and looking at the images. I haven’t done much today and it hasn’t felt like much either, which is good. Sometimes nothing feels a lot like everything.

Last week I had big plans. That is, relatively. I was going to get my first massage on Monday, go to yoga on Tuesday and then to meet my new therapist. On Friday I’d have a job interview. Of course all the time in between I’d be at my current job, but I was excited for all of these new opportunities to relax and reflect. I’d been feeling more and more anxious lately which I thought might have been a symptom of PMS, or the general stress of not knowing what to do next with my life. Or, you know, both.

The massage was awkward. I had a man’s hands all over me. I hadn’t had sex in a month. The entire time I was horny and trying not to fart. How was I supposed to relax? I left with a stomach ache, my shoulders still sore.

On Tuesday I was so whacked out and paranoid during yoga I spent the whole meditation worried the class was running over and I was going to be late for therapy. The class ran over. I was 20 minutes late for the meeting with my new therapist where I was greeted with one of those “I’m disappointed in you” smiles you get from a parent when you fake sick, only it was especially awkward since we had never met. I had forgotten to print out the paperwork and bring it with me to the session. This was starting off on the wrong foot already. What if she thinks I’m crazy? What if I am crazy? Fuck, am I crazy? We talked about my “life” as much as we could in the 20 minutes we had. I found out later there is a problem with my insurance, so my copay for that session was $115. Afterwards I changed out of my yoga clothes and did my hair and makeup in the bathroom at work.

On Thursday I went out. Winston was djing at Cocktail Bodega where there was an open bar, so I had about 5 vodka grapefruits and we left. On the way home we found a cardboard box filled with no less than 1000 Lifestyles ultra lubricated condoms and some children’s books. I decided to carry it all home with me just in case.

The following afternoon I had my interview, which I’ve now overanalyzed it to the point that I have absolutely no idea if it went well or not. But the best thing that happened to me all week was when the founder of the company came over, stared at my resume with a lifeless expression and said, “It looks like you’re a writer.”

Saturday night I bought a $20 dress from Necessary Clothing and went out to Dizzyland by myself, piss drunk. Aside from the train ride to the Spectrum and taking shots of Wild Turkey all I have is the hazy memory of dancing with some guy and then making a run for it. And apparently taking this selfie on the street.

I think I was going for “violently adorable.”

What happened after that remains unclear, so the next morning I looked for signs of what might have transpired. I woke up with wet hair. I was in my pajamas. Lars and the Real Girl was paused on my computer ten minutes in. There was an empty cereal bowl and a bag of chips in bed with me. On the floor, my new dress was wet from the waist down. A red electric blanket I didn’t recognize was laying next to my condom box. I suddenly had a few frames of memory. Something about shivering in an alley, my legs curled up in my dress, and looking up at the Montrose L station mere steps away and thinking “there’s no way I can make it there.” Something about a yellow cab. Something about a blanket. I don’t remember paying a cab driver. Maybe I didn’t.

I spent the day hungover and laughing it off.

That night was the moment some had been waiting for! And the one I had kind of forgotten about. The Oscars are never really a huge deal to me because I suck at seeing movies the year that they actually come out. The only movie I saw in theaters in 2012 was Pitch Perfect. Not that I’m proud of that, it’s just true.

“But why?” you ask. “For the price of a burrito and some chips you could go see a movie.”
to which I say, conversely, for the price of seeing a movie I could have a burrito. And some chips. 

Of course there is always illegally streaming which I looove to do. The only TV I have is this tiny 90s Panasonic that I use for N64, and cable is just so not in my budget right now. I was able to find a live stream of the Oscars just in time for the tail end of the red carpet. The Seth MacFarlane thing was somewhat painful but most of it was funny/chill and needed to be said, so I’m not mad at him. I suppose it is necessary for award shows to evolve like everything else to that level of extreme self reference.

My stream was abruptly taken down right before the good part and the only replacement I could find was a video mostly covered by ads. So I listened to the rest of the ceremony while imagining what Jennifer Lawrence’s butt looked like when she fell and what facial expressions complimented Ben Affleck’s shrieking falsetto.Since I was really high by that point, and since feeling sad is a sport, I decided at 12:30 to watch Silver Linings Playbook, a love story where crazy people do crazy things and sometimes it’s okay and sometimes it’s not but maybe we can all stop being crappy if we want and find love, or at least help each other, or at least not feel so stuck.

First I cried a little. Then I was OK.

Oh. Valentine’s day happened? I guess one of my favorite things about being a depressed, pathetic single person is the freedom to make your own holidays and never buy gifts for anyone but yourself. This should explain why I spent my Valentines listening to Bootylicious in my kitchen while downing a personal bottle of pink champagne and devouring a large hunk of brie…and ice cream (if you were wondering yes I am still lactose intolerant.) To add self-inflicted insult to self-inflicted injury, last year I decreed that February 14th would be forever celebrated as my cats’ birthday, in case I ever decide to be in a relationship and need to be reminded that–SIKE–I am doomed to be a spinster .

At one point I ran out of crackers and literally took hunks of brie and used them to scoop boysenberry preserves out of the jar like they were fucking chips and salsa. I can do whatever I want! I’m single!

In addition to letting my cats lick the crumbs from my disgusting display of gluttony I also got up extra early that morning (noon) and made them a heart shaped tuna cake that the three of us ate in my bed.

At least one good thing about February 14th is it means the month is half over. The snow from the recent blizzard has almost completely melted which I appreciate even if it has allowed the rat corpse on my back patio to finally decompose and populate the house with a swarm of impressively massive flies and I mean seriously, Bushwick, come ON. I was just glad to feel the warmth of the sun for the first time since I returned from Maui.

Oh yeeeeah MAUI. I’d sunken so far into my mattress after my return I’d almost forgotten we were ever there.

Talk about a makeshift holiday. The story on Maui is, one miserable icy evening my similarly afflicted (single, drunk) older brother called me and asked me if I wanted to accompany him to the island for his 30-ish-ith birthday. So I said “doy,” made contingency plans for my dumb job, and 4 days later I was on a plane.

I cannot stress how much I needed this quick island “sampling,” as Nate called it. I had managed to get so over-caffeinated and anxious in the days before I departed that I was acting like Gimme from United States of Tara while doing something as simple as shopping for beach supplies. Sometimes I get so wigged out and isolated in my routine that I forget there is a world outside the individual postal districts of my house and workplace. As much as I love New York and as much as I always wanted to live here, there is really no better feeling than leaving my house at sunrise to catch the train to JFK. Even if I am just going to spend all my money at the airport Chili’s and cram myself into a coach seat for 12 hours while trying to ignore the terrible in-flight movie about a guy who dies in a surfing accident.

^Being fancy in row 300.

The original plan was to meet Nate at SFO and fly to Kahului but due to a ferry delay back in Martha’s Vineyard, he ended up having to spend a night in LA. This meant that when I arrived in Maui at 10 pm that Thursday, I took my the $80 cab ride back to our RIDICULOUS Fairmont resort alone where I spent my first night ordering room service and sending naked snapchats. Our room was upgraded to an ocean view, so the next morning I woke up to watch the sunrise over the water.

It’s whale season in Maui so while I was eating eggs benedict and tanning my crotch on the lanai I could see them breach above the surface of the water. Essentially the exact opposite of a typical morning for me, unless you count guzzling cups of coffee in my windowsill and talking to the feral cats in my backyard a similar experience.

Let’s not talk about it.

When my brother finally did arrive it was about 2 in the afternoon and I had been waiting ALL DAY for a cocktail. So we spent the hours before sunset “sipping” island beverages poolside and scamming on all the sexy guys who had brought their disparately unattractive wives to the resort.

“When I die,” Nate said swallowing his third Mai Tai, “I’m coming back as an ugly white woman.”

We swam in the ocean at sunset, disregarding it as prime shark feeding time.

That night we ate our weight in fresh caught fish at the infamous Mama’s Fish House (which we affectionately referred to as Mama’s Fish Hole). We continued getting drunk and rapping ad nauseam on our history of shit relationships before crashing against our will. Maui is five hours behind east coast time, so my late night nudes met their recipients just in time to start the New York work day before I poured myself into bed.

Nate wasn’t kidding about staying busy on this trip. There wasn’t a moment that we weren’t swimming or diving or hiking or power sipping our cocktails, beginning at dawn every morning. The next day we ventured to Black Rock and Hololua bay to snorkel with sea turtles and hear the whales chit chatting under water.

“I don’t give a damn about anybody’s coconuts…unless they’re my coconuts. Saddi!”

Idk why I look bummed. Probably all the exercise.

Later we drove out to our drive to West Maui, a gorgeous labyrinth of one lane roads that weave through the mountains. This shit was seriously off the map. No cell service and miles away from actual civilization. The closest things to  commerce on this part of the island are the fruit stands and the meth dealers. Our destination was something called 13 Crossings, which is a somewhat treacherous makeshift trail across Makamakaole stream leading to a waterfall. Unfortunately we got started so late that the sun started dropping before we made it to the end, and we barely made it out before dark. This was not a place you wanted to get stuck in the middle of the night. I mean, it’s a damn rainforest. Luckily there are no poisonous snakes in Maui, but they do have wild boars. I almost cracked my moneymaker on a rock like three times. Do they even have plastic surgeons on this island? I wasn’t about to chance it.







^^no pants allowed on the hike.
That night we took a disco nap before getting up at 5 am to drive the 10,000 feet up Haleakala, a massive volcano on East Maui. This took forever, but the 15 year difference between us gave us plenty of catching up to do. Coming out stories, psycho boyfriend stories, the works. It was essentially a therapy session, and one I desperately needed. I was still digesting this piece of wisdom as we approached the summit:

“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time” (that’s ya girl Maya Angelou)

Damn. Was it time to make a change in my life?

When we finally got to the top of that volcano the sight was so breathtaking it was impossible to feel like the center of the universe. That kind of perspective is freeing and necessary, and something I don’t get often.

^Rare photo of me tired and happy. Here’s why:










We spent the rest of the day by the pool while crowds of rowdy straight men gathered around the tiki bar to scream about something called a “superbowl.” Taking in one last sunset over the ocean, we spotted two distant whale tales, a mom and a baby, flipping out of the water in succession.

We made time for a quick sushi dinner before catching our flight home. Nate departed in first class of course, and I crammed myself into the corner of three coach flights. I didn’t get home until 10 the next night and immediately slept for 12 hours.

When I awoke for work the next day, Maui felt like little more than a dream. My dreary routine was back in full swing and lo and behold I was alone again.

But at least now I have a tan.

After I died from a sinus infection and came back to life just like Jesus herself, I decided to put my clean bill of health to use by moping. Every year around this time the whole world starts shitting themselves over ~*SNOW DAYS*~ most of which I spend wrapped in my snuggie complaining that it’s too cold and that people aren’t paying enough attention to me. Which is true. Winter totally blows my butthole and I’m tired of pretending otherwise.

Maybe it’s the fact that I don’t actually own a proper coat. Maybe it’s the fact that I don’t really have that many friends in New York yet (cue “Home” by Michael Bublé and also me eating a whole cake). Or maybe it’s the different piles of frozen vomit I’ve been finding outside of my apartment every morning and–ahem–the massive dead rat on my back patio that is covered in snow. I just don’t really find it that cute.

The only things that have gotten me through these past few weeks have been

a) the yoga class I just started (I’m a mom!)
b) drunk dancing to Gloria Estefan on the M train, and
c) my new haircut

I got bangs, and then of course Michelle Obama did too because she’s like obsessed with me or something. I’ve also become especially fond of these (second hand!) fur earmuffs I’ve been wearing every day.

So okay, I know I don’t even go here, but I just have a lot of feelings. And for whatever reason that’s only between the months of November and March. In the summer I’m always the first person to buy a round of DGAF for the crowd and start the party. I want that to be my winter look! I really do! But strong hoes also cry.

Strong hoes. Also cry.

When I’m not wallowing my social life basically consists of getting drunk way too early and making intimate winter gatherings as awkward as possible. Here I am around 11pm at Beth’s birthday potluck last weekend.

Since I’m not going to move to LA tomorrow and I probably shouldn’t take any more of that Xanax that was prescribed for my cat, my plan is to stay so busy that I don’t have time to be a psychopath! Buying breakfast for the people I’ve drunkenly abused is getting expensive, so I should probably find a more productive outlet for my nervous energy.

Uh, I’ll let you know when I think of one.

Meanwhile, the Identity Crisis Diet has made my body 100% beach ready. So when I received the call to be +1 on a SECRET ISLAND VACATION this weekend with hands so frostbitten I could barely even answer the phone, I clearly said yes.

Miss Jesus works in mysterious ways, y’all.

Bye Bitches. I’m Outie.

You all know I love to complain. It’s partly because I am a loud, bratty perfectionist incapable of being satisfied and partly because I enjoy finding the humor in my misfortune and sharing that humor with you people. So it should come as no surprise that even though I have reunited with nearly every one of my closest friends in the past four weeks I can only think about how being with said friends exhausted me completely and how I’ve since become physically ill.

When I returned to Brooklyn after Christmas I spent a few days working and trying to relax. When I unsurprisingly failed at that, I focused my efforts on frantic attempts to stave off the illness I’d been trying to avoid since November (swallowing 9 whole cloves of garlic per day, mainlining packets of emergen-c, spraying the homeless with Scrubbing Bubbles, etc). Sometimes I have to remind my body that I have shit to do, and a good handful of the most important people in my life were to arrive in mere hours. I primped and dustbusted every corner of my apartment in anticipation of everyone’s arrival, which was expected to be sometime around 7 am New Years Eve. Although I only had two guests staying with me that night, pieces of my crew were to be scattered all over the city for the next week or so. I even planned a dinner for that night at Chimu, the restaurant next to my building, to bring us all together in grand adult fashion. Of course, not one individual arrived at my house before the sun was down, and only about half the reservation showed up to the restaurant.

Y do I even try?

Never mind the epic of reasonable alibis each absent member provided. I suddenly knew just how my mother felt when I showed up at her house this (and every) Christmas hung over and two days late. When I got over the minimal ego bruise of the situation and realized the food was just as delicious as I knew it would be, it was time to change into the New Years outfit I’d had planned for a month and pop no less than three bottles of champagne. No need to start off the year with any drama. Although, in a way, that was exactly what were were about to do.

One by one they started filing in. Lil Kim, Tall Pat, Katy, Patrick, Matt, Kam and Connor joined Brad, Winston, Hannah, Coby, Peter and myself to briefly “pre-game” (something I’ve really got to find another name for) before heading to the drag show at Secret Project Robot…an event that boasted all any event need boast: free champagne and a Bushwick address.

I decided not to drink much to leave room for other activities. I was not about to have a repeat of Last New Years. 2012 was merely the beginning of my comeback. In 2013 I aim for perfection, beginning with my alcohol-to-drug ratio.

After we arrived, the ten dollar cover–five more dollars than we had expected—tore our crew into smaller, albeit much more manageable pieces. Those of us that made it through the door were served an ample supply of teased-wig realness, a good two hours of free champagne and all your favorite crowd-pleasing hits from the 2000s. Hannah and Winston were acting like total love bugs spreading PLUR all over the place despite the fact that Hannah could barely stand up after 11:30. At one point I was on Hannah-duty and kept having to sit her down on the bench outside while I went to get drinks or go pee. By the time we finally counted down to midnight everyone around me was totally loopy, either lip syncing for their dear lives across the dance floor or caught in a tear-filled heart to heart by the pinball machines. But all I could think about was how much my god damn feet were hurting, so before we went to the next party I stopped by my house to change my shoes.

Our next venue was oddly enough a Lutheran church in the heart of Bushwick. We entered through a dimly lit dirt basement where we checked our coats and spiraled up to the stairs to the main hall. It was unlike anything I’d ever seen. What used to be a “house of God” was now a playground for heathens and insomniacs (that could afford the $60 entry fee). By this point I was so out of my mind all I could think was that it made sense. Finally a church had made itself useful to me. After I successfully over-vibed with everyone I was with to the point of toplessness, security started yelling at everyone to get out, presumably due to the rising sun. We waited for a cab in the freezing winds, checked our email and went to the second location. Inside the warehouse, the address of which remains unclear to me, we danced until our raggedy faces had fully drooped to the concrete floor (sometime around 10 am).

That day I slept as well as I could with the afternoon sun beaming through the curtain and into my eyes.

The few nights that followed were certified flops as I had to work and was otherwise useless, until that Thursday when Patrick and I decided to hoof it in Williamsburg and have just enough drinks to say rude things to people. We left just in time to eat all of the pizza, and I fell asleep with ranch in my lap watching Reno 911.

The next morning Patrick went to court to deal with that ticket we both got last summer (remember that time we trespassed like 6 months ago? Well I had pretty much forgotten about it too). I stayed home to fail at sleeping until Austin arrived and I skipped off to work. Afterward, in typical fashion, Patrick, Kim, Austin and I went to the Metropolitan, had some laughs, took some photos and left. And as usual, most of the fun was had on the train. But before going back to my apartment I made sure to stop by a nutritionally unsafe taqueria that was basically located in a trashcan under some stairs. I ordered a burrito situation that I drowned in 12 ounces of different hot sauces and immediately came down with a disturbing case of GUT ROT that lasted through the next day at work. I didn’t want to go out that night, but Bill had finally arrived and I couldn’t pussy out. On my way to the party I projectile vomited mid sentence on the sidewalk. I later continued to throw up in the toilet, and followed that up by drinking liquor and performing more than my share of 2009 antics, ie. runway walks back and forth in my brother’s apartment, things just flying up our noses, etc. For a minute I completely forgot we weren’t in my college living room. When we were finally heading to the bar, two of my friends got tickets for doubling in the subway turnstile before realizing the train wasn’t coming for another hour. We ended up just going to a bar in my neighborhood instead, and when we ultimately separated I decided to sleep out. This decision later left my friends stuck in the snow, desperately trying to get in touch with me (asleep, naked, fetal positioned me with a stomach ache in a boy’s bed). They ended up having to take a $50 cab to our friend’s house in Park Slope. Yeah, I’ve been doing a lot of flopping lately. Perhaps I’m getting too old for this.

Sunday night, Austin and Bill were the only two visitors left standing. Refusing to stay in for even just one of our nights together, we dragged ourselves around Brooklyn aimlessly for hours looking for bars and restaurants that may have not even existed, before settling on Greek takeout and going home to watch Archer.

Could I fucking sleep now?

Like clockwork, I was immediately overtaken by the paralyzing cold that had been stalking me for weeks. I can’t breathe, I have chills, and I’m forced to work because I just spent my last five bucks on kitty litter. As I write this, snot is pouring onto my upper lip and I miss my friends terribly. But now that they’re gone, I have the freedom to sit here alone, removing my nail polish with Burger King napkins and watching all 7 seasons of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia in succession. And believe me, it’s just what the doctor ordered.

A good friend of mine said recently that December is the Sunday of the year, which might explain why in the few weeks after Thanksgiving I’d been feeling a strange combination of lethargic and anxious. I’d taken on more hours at what I refer to as my “day job,” thus falling into and perfecting a routine that gave me a sense of not entirely false responsibility and sent me to bed at a decent hour. In fact I’m almost certain that my most exciting nights leading up to the holidays were: 1) watching Contagion while babysitting in Prospect Park, 2) my worldview imploding at my workplace Christmas party when I smoked weed with my boss, and 3) getting my credit card rejected while trying to order a gin and tonic at an Irish pub on Crosby street.

Routine gives me the creeps. I’m always a worried that if I get too used to my life as it is I’ll wake up ten years from now and still be making $300 a week. I need change, I thought. I need to make moves! In a notebook I keep next to my bed I’d scrawl manic to-do lists and grandiose long term goals before waking up the next day with just enough time for the bare necessities, running all of my errands between the hours of 9 pm and 9 am. Who the hell had I become?

But I found some comfort in my friend’s observation. For as long as I can remember, that Sunday night feeling has been synonymous with the onset of a stomach flu or a category 5 identity crisis. But I’ve tried to accept over the years that there isn’t much you can do to change your life on a Sunday night. Nothing is open, everyone is checked out and home with their families. The only thing you can do you is reward your accomplishments, assess your failures and prepare yourself for the coming week.

I decided that now was the time to be kind to myself. This meant, of course, that I would focus all of my attention on my holiday plans, putting great emphasis on the best idea I’ve had all year (next to moving to New York)–

Combining host forces with Sarah Sassafrass and Jeffrey Scott, the idea was to collide each of our most precious social pockets into one massive North Carolina Holiday Extravaganza. I arrived that Saturday at RDU airport at 11:10 AM, feeling quite sprightly in spite of my 50 hour work week and 5:30 AM train ride from my apartment to JFK. After meeting my father at the baggage claim I instructed him (as we agreed) to take me promptly to Starbucks, then to the spa for an eyebrow wax, and then to the nearest Moe’s for a taco salad. It was the perfect entree into the Triangle after such prolonged absence (although I may regret for weeks to come the fact that I did not consume one morsel of Bojangle’s while I was in town). Following lunch, daddy-o dropped me at the St. Kat K-Mart (AKA Party City) where I met Sass and Katy to buy tinsel, a disco ball, costume accessories and miles upon miles of garland. Of course no one place was fully stocked with all our needs–one employee even served me a big plate of attitude over some twinkly lights–so we had to hit up a Target and a Big Lots and a Taco Bell before going home to decorate.

The rest of the day was spent taping black streamers into a web in the Lexington Drive hallway, covering every visible corner of every inanimate object with garland and taping an entire wall floor-to-ceiling in aluminum foil (for portrait backdrop purposes, of course). Around 7:30 we received a pleasant surprise when two girls from Red Bull rang the doorbell, said they saw our party on facebook and donated an absurd 48 free Red Bulls to the cause. I was sure it was a gift from the party gods as I was already on my last leg and I wasn’t even dressed yet.

Proving that you can lead a bitch to water but you can’t make her drink, I decided to have a sizable portion (the entire thing) of what someone called a “less than potent” weed brownie. Next thing I knew, my friends were already arriving and I was applying liquid eyeliner with rickety hands, one shoe on and my face nearly plastered to the mirror. Was I already losing it? I didn’t care. Somebody hand me my curling iron.

(the final version of my outfit that lasted about five minutes)

The rest was a whirlwind of fantastic fuckery. People I hadn’t seen in months, some in years, came out of the proverbial woodwork to dance in our tiny, iridescent living room. Winston Filet and Princess Hannah emerged from their influenza death beds to serve holiday disco realness. Haters became lovers, enemies became friends. Someone took a shot of formaldehyde from a jar of preserved goat brains (this was a half-horror party, after all) and vomited all over the carport. The police even stopped by for a bit around midnight and refused to dissipate despite my clear and audible instructions, leaving one cop standing disregarded at the entrance like the opening scene of Home Alone. We could not be stopped.

And then, I don’t know if it was the brownie or the natural exhaustion or the vodka I’d been mixing with champagne, but I was out. By 2 am (and that’s being generous), I had fallen asleep in Justin’s bed with my clothes still on, leaving the over-caffeinated partygoers under the supervision of my co-hosts.

I awoke the next morning in a beer-stained ball, forgetting for a minute whether I’d even made it to my own party. But as the southern sunlight glimmered off empty bottles of Andre and strangers still slept on the living room floor, I picked up Sarah’s camera and declared another a success. I couldn’t remember much at all, but it looked fabulous in the pictures.

times were fabulous. times were tough.