Adam Dorsey.com

Mason Jars

Man, drinking out of a Mason jar is good times. Pour some crisp water in there, keep it at your desk at work. Makes you look like you’re too busy to get a real glass. Makes you look like Don Draper back when he was Dick Whitman. Makes your boss give you that promotion over Stanley, because Stanley drinks out of a fucking Nalgene. Who’s Stanley trying to impress? No one, evidently.

Fucking the only way to drink a beer at home that isn’t in a bottle is out of a Mason jar. Hard day at the office, pop open two bottles and pour them into that Mason jar. No one will be the wiser, except the guy who empties out your recycling, but you know that motherfucker drinks out of a Mason jar, because a garbage man is the Walker Texas Ranger of the 21st century, minus all the Republican tendencies.

The only fucking way to get fucked up at the office is out of a Mason jar. Your boss already thinks you just love staying hydrated, I mean, that’s why you got the VP gig in the first place. So tomorrow, just fill that shit up with straight vodka. Once again, no one will be the wiser, except for you, who will be the fucked-upped-er. Just remember to pass out over a spreadsheet or whatever, and if anyone asks about it, you’re just burning the midnight oil, picking up the slack because Stanley can’t carry his weight. Throw in a joke about Stanley’s weight there, if you feel up to it, I mean, that’s the kind of camaraderie you can forge while sipping from a Mason jar.

Let people wonder if you’re really into canning preserves. I mean, don’t say anything outright, keep the mystery alive, but leave that shit to the imaginations. Maybe during that two weeks you took off to go to rehab, you were really just in the woods somewhere, tending to some spectacular raspberry patches. They don’t know.

Maybe one day, bring an extra Mason jar into work and fill it with M&Ms. That dick over in accounts receivable can make as many jokes as he wants to about your breath smelling like a Bukowski poem, but Bukowski never wrote shit about drinking whipped cream vodka out of a Mason jar while taking a quarterly earnings call while cramming a bunch of M&Ms in his mouth. Or did he? I don’t know, I’m not completely familiar with his oeuvre.

No one ever called a man drinking out of a Mason jar a shitty father.

Most of the time 7-11 is pretty cool with you filling your Mason jar with Slurpee as long as you ask them beforehand and pay the full refill price.

Only once did a stripclub bouncer not let me into the fucking Seventh Veil even though I clearly wasn’t that intoxicated and I mean what did he want me to do just leave the Mason jar on the street, I mean fuck you, Gary, I’m here every week, just go get Missy, she’ll vouch for me.

This is why we’re a nation in decline, because I saw a man drinking out of a hose in his backpack the other day like some sort of low-rent camel. Nothing beats the cold condensation you get when partaking in a delicious beverage from a Mason jar. After you break all your real glasses and you can’t drive back to IKEA because your car is being a piece of shit right now and even if you could you wouldn’t want to because it would just remind you of when you went there with her and bought all those glasses to begin with and how she kept talking about how she was going to get into canning. But she’s fucking gone now, man, and she can take the cat and she can take the couch and she can take the kid, but she can’t take the Mason jars. Or at least, I mean, she forgot to.

Mason jar up, America. 

Bonfire of the Sanities

Look, I know you don’t know me and I know we just met. And I don’t know what you know about me and I don’t know what she’s said, but I have some guesses, and I’m guessing most of it’s not true. I don’t know how much you’ve had to drink, and maybe you want to punch me right now, maybe you want to show your dominance like this is a movie and you’re that guy in the movie. This isn’t a movie. Please, okay, that’s what she does, she twists your world around in your head and makes you think that you’re the hero and she’s the damsel in distress—just like in the movies. But not only is that never the way real life works, it’s doubly not true when it comes to her.

Let me see if I can guess what she’s told you… ummm… everyone before you was an asshole, right? No, not just an asshole, everyone neglected her sexually while still somehow taking advantage of her sexually, right? What? And everyone had a “weird sex thing” as if sex isn’t already a weird sex thing. No one was who they seemed. Everyone abandoned her, but no one gave her the space she needed. Somehow she was the one to finally call it quits with all these guys, she was the one to be the proud and strong and independent woman, and so somehow all of these relationships ended amicably, even though they never ever talk ever and she only says bad things about them. Am I close? Do all of those contradictions ring true? True… I don’t mean true—true is the wrong word—I mean do they all seem like things she’s told you at different times?

Please don’t freak out. Don’t look at me like that, like I’m the bad guy or like I’m the one lying now. That’s a really nice bonfire over there, and those are a lot of friends who I haven’t seen in a really long time, and I’d really rather that this didn’t become a thing.

There was a time when I thought I couldn’t live without that girl. That time lasted too long before I found out I barely knew that girl. No, that’s wrong too, that’s not what I mean. I found out I knew someone else—I knew the girls she had made up—I knew lots of someone elses. I knew all of the lies and all of the half-truths and all of the—fuck, man, I don’t know.

I just—I couldn’t fucking sit over there anymore and drink my eighth beer and catch up with my friends anymore, because I kept thinking about this. I kept thinking about how much of my life I had wasted because it had taken me so long to see who she is. Was. No—fuck it—is. People don’t change. I couldn’t let you be me without me telling me who I am! Was. Wait.

She’s like a fucking infinite onion, man, okay? Infinite? Infinity? Infinite. Infinite onion. You peel back a layer and you see another layer. Like whoa. And you think that’s it, like each time you think you’ve found the layer that’s the real her, but they just keep coming, man. And then you start to realize that something doesn’t quite smell right, and it’s the onion, okay, it smells like onion in here. And even if you get over the layers and you get over the smell, you’re still gonna spend your life crying from cutting onions.

God, that metaphor was awful. I’m sorry. I… I think I might have been doing a little bit of nervous drinking. I always make with the metaphors when I’ve been hitting the keg a little too fast.

You can punch me now if you want. I’ll even tell everyone that I got drunk and fell down. They’ll definitely believe me. Or if you want, we can go over near the fire—near the people—and you can do it right there so they all see. But here’s the thing, in a couple of days, I’m going to be far away, and you’re going to be here. And you might not realize it now, you might not realize it for a long time, but one day you’re gonna look back on today and you’re gonna be like shit, man, that really drunk guy was right. Maybe you’ll even find yourself at a different cookout for a different engagement party, and you’ll have to play the role I’m playing now for a different guy. And maybe that guy will end up being me in a different guy’s engagement, and then that guy will be the guy who was you who was the guy who was me… Hahaha! There are infinity onions all around us, man! Infinite infinity onions.

Ugh. Whoa. I’ve had… phew, wow, I’ve had feeeeew too much to drink. What was I saying? Jacob, man, Jacob. I know I don’t know you that well, I know we just met, but seriously, okay, you have to listen to me when I tell you you have to—oh god, everything got spinny real quick. I think I should find the bathroom, or the outside bathroom… what’s the word for an outside bathroom at an engagement party like this?

Look, what I’m trying to say is—fuck, I just threw up a little—what I’m trying to say is congratulations, man. I mean—engaged! Congratulations. Wait—what were we talking about? Why did you call me over here? I think I need another beer.

Old Porch

Jake puts the last board in place. There’s a snap, but it’s not as loud as he wishes it would be, considering the time and effort that went into everything before it. Weekend upon weekend he put into this. Friday nights he could have been going out, Saturday mornings he could have been sleeping in, Sunday afternoons he could have been working on his Call of Duty kill-death ratio. And for what? For a new porch? Jake really wishes that snap had been louder. 

He grabs the nearby hammer and begins knocking in the final four of those skinny nails. New porch. How many summers until this new porch becomes an old porch? How many barbecues? How many mint juleps? He remembers being a kid and staying at his grandfather’s. Back then he would sit out on that old porch, down on the floor next to his grandfather’s feet. With a Snoop Dogg cassette in his Walkman and Super Mario Land in his Gameboy, he would sit there until either the batteries died or the sun went down. Grandpa Joe would do the same, except with mystery paperbacks and John Coltrane on a turntable. 

Today Jake stands up and looks at his finished work. He tries to imagine the crisp new boards looking old. He tries to imagine himself looking old. He can’t. He knows he won’t be listening to John Coltrane and reading paperbacks, but what will he be doing instead? Still blasting Snoop Dogg and playing some old Mario game on some new Gameboy? Probably. 

Now seems like a good time to wash his hands and make that first mint julep.

——

(written based on the TypeTrigger “Old Porch.” For more, visit my TypeTrigger)

Billed to

“I don’t know the last four digits of the social.”   

“Well, we need the last four digits of the social security number to prove that you are allowed to make changes to the account.”   

“I’m not allowed—I’m not looking—Look, okay, it isn’t my account. It isn’t—I just keep getting this bill okay? Every month. And it’s billed to my address, but it isn’t me, and I want you to stop sending this bill.”   

“I’m sorry Ms. McKee but—”   

“I’m not Ms. McKee! That’s what I’m telling you! I’m a—I’m a dude! This isn’t my bill!”   

“If it isn’t your bill, then soon it will go to collections, and you will stop receiving correspondence from us.”   

“You mean I’ll start receiving correspondence from the collection agency?”   

“Well, yes, yes, but—”   

“Just stop sending the bill! Or send the bill to a different address.”   

“I’ll need the last four digits of the social security number to change the billing address.”   

“Of course you will. God, I’ve still got four more months on this lease. That’s four more months of getting this bill with her name on it.”   

“I’m sorry, sir, but why is this bothering you so?”   

“McKee… McKee was my ex-fiance’s name.”   

“Well, sir, if you can just have your ex-fiance call us with the last four digits of her social, then—”   

“No. It’s not her bill. She was Sarah, this is like Olga or something. It’s just—every month—just when I’m really feeling like I’m moving on, I get a note in my mailbox with her name on it saying she owes… I just… I don’t want… Nothing. Nevermind. Nothing.” 

“Thank you for calling, sir, I’m sorry I wasn’t able to solve your problem today. Is there any other way with which I can be of service today?” 

“No. No. Goodbye.”

——

(written based on the TypeTrigger “Billed to.” For more, visit my TypeTrigger)

A Sexist iPhone Gamer Gives Relationship Advice

She did what, bro? To your face, bro? Damn, bro. Look, bro. Here’s the deal, bro. I’m trying tell you, okay, bro, just give me a second, bro.

Girls are crazy. That’s why they call them girls, bro. If they weren’t crazy, they’d call them bros, you know? But let me break it down for you, okay, it’s like this: You don’t need ‘em. The girls, I mean, because you can have them all, you know what I mean?

It’s like the popular iOS game Infinity Blade II, you know, the follow up to Epic Games’ other popular iOS game, Infinity Blade I. Like in that game, man, you have this Infinity Blade, okay, and you’re like a fucking God, you know, and you gotta like go on these adventures and you gotta stab dudes with your Infinity Blade and steal their power and level up and shit. Man, I’m telling you, it’s just like that. You got your “Infinity Blade”— if you know what I’m saying — and you gotta get out there and go on adventures and “stab” “dudes” with it and steal their “power” and “level up” and “shit.”

The Infinity Blade is your dick, bro.

Okay, okay, just making sure you were picking up what I was putting down. So you gotta do it, man! Stop feeling like you just got one ancestral timeline to go through, man, like you got one God King to slay, you know, man, YOU GOT MILLIONS OF GOD KINGS TO SLAY, okay, redheads and brunettes and blondes, ALL THE GOD KINGS, I mean you’re gonna be leveling up all that ish, okay, absorbing all they power and shit.

And like, stop acting like “casual” is a bad word, okay? You say “casual” like it’s an insult, like the ladies don’t love it, but you know what? Ladies LOVE “casual games,” okay? They be all up in those touch controls, them Angry Birds ain’t got nothing on these birds, okay, and they be acting like they not be into the Peggle, but all girls like to Peggle, okay? Balls bouncing around hitting pegs until some dramatic slow-motion and then Ode to Joy plays? Shit, son, that’s like the closest thing to lady porn I ever seen in an app store.

So forget that girl, and leave that hardcore gamer shit in the past, son. Nobody gives a shit whether you prestige seven times on the same game, okay? Let me float you some stats: 40% of players have dropped cash money on that free-to-play shit. It’s legit, dawg. Numbers don’t lie, because numbers don’t wear pants, you heard, so like what’s going to catch on fire? Exactly.

So get out there, man. There are plenty of apps in that app store sea, okay, dawg. Some of that shit free. And that youngin’ who be coming up on the street today? He ain’t be afraid of no goddamn in-app purchase, so why you be trippin’? Fuckin’ how else are those ladies gonna know your swagger if you ain’t be rockin’ some primo hat that matches your primo style? With a gee-dee in-app purchase, that’s right, playa.

Okay. I think I done given you all the advice you need, bro. That’s what a Game Center friend is for, motherfucker. Yeah. See you on Draw Something or whatever.

The Problem with Women

The problem with women is that they’re all so fucking different. You can keep trying to fit them into boxes, and cram them into stereotypes, but in the end it’s fucking hopeless—They’re always going to surprise you. You can take what you learn from one woman and try to apply it to the next, but it rarely works out that way. Instead of finding yourself with just another woman, you find yourself with a whole other woman, and she’s all different, and you’re just at square one again.

You have a couple of choices, even if you don’t really get to choose. A.) You can fall for them all at once, or B.) It can build inside you until it bursts like a dam, and then you can fall, which is maybe easier because then you’re falling into water, but maybe it’s harder because I mean there was like a town down there called “Friendship” and now the water from the dam bursting has washed it all away, and if this doesn’t work out, can that town be rebuilt, you guys? I mean, damn it, maybe the problem was building this dam here in the first place, so close to this other stuff.

And you can let her change you, you can let her make you better. But then what happens if you break up? Then do you just go back to being the lesser version of you? What happens if you don’t break up and you just wake up one day and you love her because you love her, and because you love her you let her change you into her, but now maybe you don’t like you anymore. I don’t know.

You can even begin to feel comfortable in your “type,” in the sort of girl you find yourself attracted to. You can chase the girls that look like the celebrity you were into when you were twelve, you can continue to clamber over the girls who remind you of college seminars and Radiohead listening parties, you can swoon over the girl who reminds you of all your exes, and you can shrug off the girl who’s “just not your type.” You can do all of that, but then in an instant the girl who’s just not your type can flash you a smile in a new way, or tell a joke in a funnier way, or reveal a piece of herself that matches a piece of yourself and it’s like I DON’T EVEN HAVE A TYPE ANYMORE, WHERE AM I, WHY IS THIS GRASS SO TALL, WHERE DID ALL THESE WEEDS COME FROM, ETC, MOTHERFUCKING, SOFTWARE ETC.

Why can’t they—THE WOMEN—why can’t they all be the same? I did this before, I can do this again—I mean, I could do this again if they were all the same. But instead they’re all new puzzles—or worse—they’re not even puzzles, or objects, but actual human beings, with individual experiences and personalities so that they can’t be boiled down in generalities or won over by practicing the rules to a game you read in a book by a douchebag. At the least, they’re a girl version of you—a slightly softer, slightly more fuller-chested version of you—AND FUCK, MAN, you’re just starting to even have the slightest grasp on understanding you. How are you supposed to begin to understand something that’s like you, only slightly more delicate, slightly more complicated, and infinitely better at everything, besides maybe lifting a couch?

In the end, they’re people. Women are people, just like men, only more interesting. And probably you can’t ever really get a real good grasp on them, but maybe that’s the fun part. Or maybe that’s my downfall, I don’t know, it’s still a little too early to tell.

Man on Man (stop snickering)

So I think I’m a man? Like a grown up man? Like I’m confident, and I’m unafraid, and I’m able to solve any problem that is thrown at me, you know, eventually. I’m continually striving to be a better person through experience and learning. I’m trying to share the world with other wonderful people, helping them and allowing them to help me. I’m not letting chances at happiness or interesting experiences pass me by. And women—women are beautiful, and hot, and smart, and delicate, and hilarious—they’re tiny shards of the world that I’m striving to surround myself and occasionally stab myself with. Those are all things a grown up man would do and feel, right? Yeah. So I think I’m like a grown up man.

I remember being a child and looking up to my dad (pictured above) and wondering how he could do the things he did—How he knew how, how he knew what was even happening. He knew everything and had stories about everything and could explain everything. Now I guess I’m old enough to realize that he didn’t know everything, he just knew how to figure everything out. And I guess I can do that now, like I have the confidence to do that now? Because that’s what it is, really, it’s confidence—I mean, maybe it was more than that when my dad became a grown up man, but we have the internet now, so it’s confidence and a good google search.

Maybe it’s confidence and doing the right thing. But doing the right thing is just having confidence in following your own voice, hopefully, and if your own voice makes you do bad things, then you’re an asshole and you probably snickered enough at the homoerotic title of this post to move on anyway. So just be confident, do the right thing, and google everything else.

When I was a child my dad knew everything and he had a story about everything. So now I’ve got that first part down, and I’m out in the tall grass accruing the second part. Wish me luck and stuff.

An Open Letter to LinkedIn

Dear LinkedIn,

Today you sent me an e-mail, the intent of which I believe was to urge me to go to your website and do whatever it is a person does on your website. I have a day job already, and the sort of career that I’m working towards isn’t the sort of career that is helped by LinkedIn, so I understand your concern. You were probably thinking, “Hey, let’s e-mail this guy and maybe he’ll click on this thing and maybe he’ll remember he has an account with us. Hell, maybe he’ll even forget his dreams and his ambition, and maybe he’ll use our service to finally sell out completely.”

But instead of just sending me an e-mail that was straight-forward like that, you sent me an e-mail designed specifically to tug at my nostalgia, an e-mail meant to fit right into the jagged jigsaw of my decaying tower of dreams and detonate it all from the inside. Bravo, what a good job you did. The e-mail began like this:

Hi Adam,

It’s been 8 years since you graduated from The Evergreen State College. See and explore over 200 LinkedIn members in your alumni network.

And you know, what? That’s not a bad way to start, LinkedIn, but don’t think I don’t see the subtext. What you’re really saying is “Hey, Adam. It’s been eight years since you graduated from college. Remember college? Yeah, that’s when you spent those four years studying all of those books and working hard on all of those projects so that you could procure a degree in your chosen field, so that maybe you could parlay that knowledge and experience into a healthy career. LOL! Just wanted to remind you that yeah, it’s been eight years since you graduated, and in that time you’ve—hmmm, let’s check your LinkedIn profile—you’ve worked in a video store, which is kind of close to your major except that it’s not close at all. And then you were a game tester, which is great but c’mon, that’s like a stereotype job for a stereotype guy who’s running away from a stereotype adulthood. And then you—wait, it says here on your LinkedIn profile that you looked at cat pictures for eight hours a day everyday? That’s… That’s a job?”

So yeah, LinkedIn, in the words of my current people, I C WHAT U DID THER. But you know what? That alone would have been fine. I mean, you’re a job website or whatever, I understand that you’re trying to evoke a primal fight or flight or renegotiate-my-stock-options or whatever. That’s fine. The tipping point, though—if you can say a piece of spam e-mail has a tipping point—is when you put a photo collage of my former college classmates together. Oh look, there’s that guy from my film class who always had great things to say about my projects, right on, and there’s that guy who’s some kind of wine review startup entrepreneur person now, right on, and there’s—shit…is that? Oh wow, it is…

Oh man, I had the biggest crush on her. Is that something that it’s okay for dudes to say? That doesn’t make me gay, does it, to say I had a crush on a girl in college? Whatever. She was the first of a string of women with which I pretended to like Radiohead, so as not to put a cramp in the conversation or the late-night consumption of a mixtape. And yeah, years later, I’ve wondered if I ever was attracted to the girl herself or just the haircut of the girl, because yeah, I guess I have been known to just fall in love with a haircut, but now LinkedIn you’re sending me a new picture with a new haircut and goshdernit if she isn’t just as fetching.

But I’m sure we’re different people now, LinkedIn, and that whatever smiles the two of us shared in a hippy seminar or whatever memories I have of being twenty-one and ordering my first beer in a bar with her is just that—just a memory—I’m sure we’re different people now with different lives now, and thanks for the offer, but it’s probably best if we don’t internet stalk each other right now. But now you’ve got me wondering if I am a different person now. Am I, LinkedIn? If I went back there now, Sam Beckett style, and put romantic-creepy-stalker right what once went nervous-college-man-child wrong, would I even do anything differently? Would I lean in and kiss her when I should have? Would I understand what she was saying when she told me in her car that that guy “wasn’t really her boyfriend” or would it still take me months to realize it? Would I continue to second guess everything she said, second guess everything I did, and second guess the very nature of the universe itself so that I would never have to put myself in any sort of position to be hurt?

So look at what you’ve done, LinkedIn. Now I’m having some sort of existential crisis regarding whether I’m the same man I was in college, whether modern-day Adam Dorsey has the same strengths or weaknesses as some former version of Adam Dorsey. You’ve got me realizing that I’m two years away from a ten year college reunion, which means that I’ve got exactly two years left to turn this shit around or face having to tell former classmates, professors, and girls with cute haircuts that YEP GAME TESTING AND CAT PICTURES. LinkedIn, you’re having me realize that Radiohead only became Nick Cave who only became Kanye West, and that the most ridiculous part is that no matter how much I try to like these musicians at the time to impress the girl, it’s only three years later, when my intense affection for a girl becomes a nagging memory that I think “Oh yeah, I see what they were saying about this OK Computer” or “There just is something that is beautifully haunting about the first half of Abattoir Blues” or—I’m sorry Kanye, not yet.

Isn’t the internet fucking great?

So in conclusion Linkedin - UNSUBSCRIBE

—Adam Dorsey.