REID #87

May 31, 2022

SHORT:

I cannot believe that the President of the United States tweets about issues like mass shootings the way that I tweet about how nobody in our generation comes close to the talent and genius of Sandra Bernhard: “when in god’s name will we do what needs to be done? i’m sick and tired of it. we have to act.”

He really responded like, “sry I don’t have cash on me”…

Maybe Joe and I should both rise up and do more than tweet…

MEDIUM:

I took my girlfriend to Providence this weekend for Brown reunion so I could show her all the amazing places I threw up after getting blackout drunk and playing “I’ll Make A Man Out Of You” on guitar for a group of fraternity boys I locked in a room with me.

What’s funny about Brown fraternity boys is that they’re huge nerds who just say “bruh” to make themselves feel less nerdy.

What’s funny about the night I locked them in a room to play guitar for them is nothing.

I woke up the next day so incredibly hungover I thought I was going to die/drop through the floor straight down to hell.

LONG:

It was cheap to stay in the dorms at Brown, so I booked us a room in what I thought would be a cool house-castle-old-building-dorm-thing where my friend used to live and brag about.

When I arrived, I found that we’d been placed in the basement where they usually keep bikes and trash.

They threw a bed down there just for us <3

They also said they’d be providing “towels and linens”. They provided: rag.

Just 1.

And just 1 sheet.

Made of paper.

Jess and I slept on top of one another.

In a twin bed.

In the middle of the night, she woke up and whispered “this is like 3rd class on the Titanic”.

It was actually worse that because at least the people on the Titanic got to die. We had to wake up the next morning and shower in the world’s most crumbly-hairy bathroom.

Someone make a film about THAT.

Over the course of the weekend, I made Jess walk 15 miles to see the various classrooms where I learned to be gay/annoying.

Then I made her watch a drunken a cappella reunion performance in which I could no longer hit any of the soprano notes.

Then I made her climb into a bush to “see the pool” where I used to dive (she had to climb into a bush because I messed up the timing of things, and didn’t realize the facility would be closed, but then a man in a stroller came out of the pool door and I sprinted inside and she got to see the pool from a better angle— thank god! Not like she’s ever seen a pool before!).

It was a little strange to go back to school with a new name and voice.

I didn’t love that I clenched my butthole each time someone passed me, worried they’d scream out the name of John McCain’s daughter.

I am sad that I can no longer sing dumb a cappella songs in the regular key.

It was weird to be the only one onstage with no tits when they invited up all the alumni.

But overall it was nice. I have a nice distance from everything. And I am thankful for the time that I spent in North-East Rhode Island.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to see my college diving coach because he retired. I miss him and how he’d chain smoke out of the side of his yellow mini-cooper that had flames on it.

I always feel pretentious talking about Brown, so if you hated this newsletter, I am so sorry. It’s more or less just a place with a lot of brick buildings and smart/dumb people who are working on eye-contact in the middle of a state that prides itself on inventing something called “coffee milk”.

But when I go back, I feel lighter. And sort of feel like I’m going to cry. In a good way.

Btw I’m kidding about the “classrooms where I learned to be gay/annoying”. I am gay because someone let me do hip hop routine at halftime of a women’s basketball game when I was 8. And I am annoying because I am Jewish.

Also Shaggy got an honorary degree from Brown this weekend, and Jess and I missed the performance but apparently he did a medley of his greatest hits inside the historic first ever Baptist Church in America.

I am going to create my own university so I can give Sandra Bernhard an honorary degree.

C u next Tuesday.