Morning Sickness

I woke up feeling like an asshole today. Well, at first I wasn't sure what I felt like. I hadn't eaten Taco Bell recently nor had I read any Ann Coulter, so it wasn't the usual. This was different, yet familiar.

I slipped on my Teletubbies footies and walked over to the mirror. I look like crap. That must be it, I thought. My body's feeling like crap to remind me that I look like crap. Thanks buddy. I love you too.

As I lay back down to hopefully sleep off my ugliness, the feeling began to take on a more acute throb, centered in my chest. Feeling like crap doesn't throb; it just exists. This was something else.

Whatever it was, it would have to wait since I was late for class. I make lots of things wait when late for class: eating, getting dressed, posting messages on Lindsay Lohan's forum about why she shouldn't be so thin. There's a hierarchy to life and that hierarchy says girls I have no chance with place second to passing college, unless they have green eyes and think The Muppets should be on the $50 bill. I'll miss class for them.

So the feeling continues to occupy my senses during British Literature. I've felt this before, I know I have. It's usually accompanied by a sharp pain in one of my cheeks and the word "bastard" hanging in the air. And then it hit me.

"I'm an asshole!" I exclaimed out loud.
"Thank you for that, Bobby," responded my teacher, "but I believe I asked you what Chaucer meant by making the Wife of Bath change Ovid's story of King Midas."
"Oh."

I spent the next few minutes trying to weasel my way out of this predicament by arguing "I'm an asshole!" was what Chaucer meant. That failed and I resorted to what usually works for any modern song lyric: it's about drugs.

I left class feeling less confident about my Middle English paper, but satisfied in knowing what was wrong with me. I was an asshole. The satisfaction of discovering my feelings washed away faster than the government's plan to deal with Katrina and I was left to wonder why I felt this way.

Why am I an asshole? I don't recall doing anything wrong lately. I've been good. I haven't forgotten any birthdays, anniversaries, bar mitzvahs, or funerals. Nobody's been stood-up or unfairly poked on thefacebook by me as far as I can tell. There's only one answer then: I've forgotten.

You know when you forget something important and your mother says, "You have the memory of a gnat," and you respond, "Mother, do you have any idea how small a gnat is?" I forgot to respond. I can remember almost every lyric, every line, and every quote from every song I've ever heard, film I've ever seen, and book I've ever read, but not remember that I have a Statistics discussion once a week, which reminds me, I'm late for discussion.

Okay, so I did something worthy of the title of asshole. What was it? I put up an away message saying, "Sorry whoever you are. I'm sure I didn't mean it, whatever it is. And if I did, I was probably justified in meaning it if you look at it from my perspective." Not the most personal thing I've ever written, so to fix that I added one of those sad-faced smileys, a blue one.

I also checked the call history on my cell phone. The last person I talked to: my mother. I called her back.

"Hi, Mumsy."
"Don't you have papers to write?"
"I just wanted to ask if I did anything wrong lately."
"You mean besides take 40 grand a year from your father and me and run halfway across the country to that liberal hell?"
"Yeah, besides that."
"You're on smack, aren't you?"
"I'll talk to ya later, Mom."

Phew. At least things hadn't changed on the home front. I was in the clear there. So who was I an asshole to?

No girlfriend, no enemies, nothing: I'm an angel. I was beginning to think I should just down some Tums and get over it. But no, this was one feeling I could distinctly put a label on and I wouldn't let myself be wrong.

I called all the ex-girlfriends (okay, okay, ex-girlfriend, singular) and IMed all my friends, but still no crime. Being a pacifist, I usually try to avoid confrontation and, being a guy, I usually try to avoid any blame at all. Nevertheless, I actively pursed a fault like a Paparazzi member. There had to be a reason.

As leads fizzled out, the situation became dire. This wasn't happening. Feelings are so inconsistent and unreliable that losing even one, an unfavorable one at that, was unthinkable. Why was this happening? Being an asshole and regretting it afterwards was one of very few constants in my life at this time of confusion and discovery. It couldn't leave me here alone to drift in the winds of social interaction unaided; it just couldn't. Standing up in my room, I affirmed in my best Ed Harris impersonation that "failure was not an option."

In the end, I failed. I evidently had done nothing to make me feel like an asshole. However, that didn't comfort my manic condition at the time. Instead it drove me to create an asshole image to satisfy myself and I called the girl down the hall a "fugly slut."

So now I am an asshole and am internally at peace. But it did come at a high price to bear. The floor is watching Lost in one of the rooms down the hall and I have been exiled until further notice. As I sit and write this in my banishment, I can't help but wish that emotion was as apparent as the note on my hand saying, "Crew Meeting @ 9 PM." Crap, I forgot.