REID #149

Aug 08, 2023

pig w/ buttholes for eyes on jess’s vegan calendar that i can’t stand looking at but jess thinks is “beautiful”

SHORT:

Whenever friends text me photos of things they’re eating, I reply, “What is that? Deep fried BUTT?” because I’ve somehow maintained a baseline zest for existence despite the world’s abominations…

MEDIUM:

Yesterday I saw a monk walk into an ice cream shoppe and order a triple scoop of chocolate in a sugar cone.

Then three other monks rolled up and followed suit.

They all sat at a picnic table and enjoyed their sweet treats together.

This sounds like the beginning of a joke/riddle, but it’s just a real thing I witnessed. In the middle-of-nowhere upstate New York. It was remarkable. And also unremarkable. Which is why it was remarkable.

LONG:

There was an 80-year-old woman in the front row of an improv show that I attended this evening (a choice that has the absolute opposite energy of monks eating ice cream, but nonetheless fills me with wonder).

When the waiter brought her a drink, she screamed I WANT TO DRINK IT FROM THE CAN, NOT THE GLASS!

I could afford to adopt a smidge of her bluntness in my day-to-day life. I hemorrhage so much energy planning my approaches to shit & skittering around what I want.

Relatedly, Jess and I went on a guided hike this weekend. Everyone in our guided group was older than us and most owned dogs except one woman who’s “deathly allergic to canines but [has] owned a parrot since 1982”. She showed us pictures of the bird as we walked.

I got a sunburn in a ring around my neck. When I take my shirt off, it looks like I’m a tween at a Bar Mitzvah wearing a glow-stick choker who’s about to tear it up to Gangnam Style! Where are the motivational dancers?! …Life really is a Bar Mitzvah where you have to be your own DJ and motivational dancer, isn’t it?

I’m going to physical therapy for the first time ever on Wednesday because my arm and leg are numb again, thanks to ye olde back spasms. I hope the PT is nice and doesn’t ask me about why I have no tits. If she does, I’ll say I cut them off myself to try and relieve my spine. That oughta go over perfect.

According to my horoscope app, something HUGE is going to happen to me this weekend. I really hope so. My life’s been pretty uneventful as of late. At the top of the hike, everyone was talking about all the different countries they’ve traveled to this summer, and I was like: “Hm, I haven’t really gone anywhere. But I guess I’ve enjoyed exploring my neighborhood.”

Then everyone asked if I was new to NY, and I had to explain that, “no, I just moved to a new area” and they were like, “what have you discovered?” and I was too embarrassed to share the truth (which is that the only thing I’ve really “explored” is the massage place across the street from my apartment because I wanted to know if it was worth going to re: my messed-up back, but all the Google reviews were one-star and said that the masseuse was “on her phone too much” during the massage, which honestly, is an absolutely hilarious image). Maybe I’ll take the leap and sign up for a one-star-phone-massage and come back next week with a full play-by-play of the experience.

I guess I’ll leave you all with this video Canva made about me for their IG (I love the way they edited it so it seems like I just yell “I’m transgender” out of nowhere).

Leave a comment with your favorite line from this newsletter, or another edition of the newsletter, or what I should write about, or what brand you’d do a collab w/ while screaming “I’m transgender”.

C U Next Tuesday!