Gay Club Jet Lag

In my ideal world, I sit in a big red chair all day in front of a TV set. There’s a cat sitting in my lap and a universal remote in my hands that gives me whatever I want, whenever I want. Donuts? Click. A jug of water? Click. The RENAISSANCE visuals? Click. 

I never have to move or make any real choices. Things just happen, things just appear for me, and I don’t have to leave. I’d love for this to be my reality because unpredictability makes me anxious. I try to have my whole life mentally scheduled to the minute- at all times I want to know where I’m going, who’ll be there, what I’ll be doing. If I know these things, there are no decisions to make, because all the unknowns have already been settled. I can simulate the comfort of my big red chair.

This is rarely how my life works out, in case you have any doubts. People always show up to the function with someone I don’t know and then I have to pretend I like them before I actually get to know them. Maybe there’s a wrench in the plans or someone decides to change them last minute. 

I’ve gotten better over time at adjusting expectations in situations like these but they still stress me the fuck out. Surprises are like earthquakes in my chamber of peaceful indecision. The ceiling rumbles and cracks, the cat jumps, and I have no furniture to hide under because I never planned to leave my chair. Is that how earthquakes work? I wouldn’t know because I missed the one two weeks ago. #IAmSaltyAboutThis

To illuminate my reality a little more, here’s a list of things that stress me out:

• Whispering
  • Why aren’t you talking normal?
• Children
  • You never know how they’re going to behave. They’re always coughing. Do they wash their hands? Why do they have to touch everything? 
• Teens
  • Especially scene kids. Where are your parents?
• Dogs in businesses and restaurants
  • It’s the same thing as with a child- if it doesn’t know how to talk properly or control itself, why is it in public?
• Small talk
  • What are the rules of this? When does this end? How do I politely exit? 
• Strangers looking at me
  • Mind your own business! Go away!
• Airports
  • There are too many schedules in one room that have nothing to do with me… even though the only thing I have to do is be on my plane on time, I somehow feel responsible for every flight in the airport boarding and taking off without a hitch.
• When people laugh but it sounds like they’re crying
  • Why don’t you laugh normal? Now I’m beating myself up for criticizing the way you express joy and I am also blaming that on you.
• Phone calls
  • Just shoot me a text for the love of god

I could come up with more things, but I think you might get the gist already. Too many unknowns make me feel like the earth is about to open underneath my big red chair.

I’d like to think I have more control over this when I’m alone or at work. When I’m by myself, there are no people around to provide these surprise-quakes. When I find alone time in my schedule, I can plan to be by myself for as long as I want. Even when I start feeling lonely, I often stay in my solitude in favor of steering clear of other people’s unpredictability.  

With work, I can’t know what the day will look like, but I’m getting paid to roll with the punches, so I’m able to commodify quick thinking and problem-solving as a skill. This is what trips me up when I’m out in the real world. I don’t want to have to feel like I’m on the clock to feel like a normal human. Can’t I just function without forcing it?

So here is the mental habit I’ve picked up as a result. I can’t hide in my chair forever, and when the house starts shaking there’s only one option left. My Bazooka. I imagine I have a giant rocket launcher and I mentally explode the things that stress me out.

Too many teens at the park? Kaboom. I envision a teen-free swing set. Someone is laughing and/or crying in the next room? Boom Boom POW. I create a world where I don’t hear them.

With my bazooka, things work in the logic of a cartoon. If someone gets blown up, they will go flying away, but they’ll survive the blast. It’s less about exploding them so that they die, and more about exploding them because they threaten the peace of my big red chair.

For example- when people stand in front of the train doors when I’m trying to get out, I imagine launching the bazooka into the crowd to clear a path. I obviously don’t own this heavy artillery but it gives me the confidence to push through and say “Excuse Me.”  The underlying tone of this is me going: “tsk, tsk.” In other words, they deserve to get exploded, and I deserve to walk off the train without an obstacle. 

This leads down another rabbit hole of my stressors, but I wish there was some kind of standardized social conditioning required for people to leave the house. Why do people stand in front of the train doors? Why does everyone walk so damn slow? I thought we all knew that the right side of the escalator is for standing so people can walk up the left side. Why are you standing in the middle? Basic manners are dead.

Here’s where the bazooka comes in handy. I’m not going to reprimand them for their bad behavior because why would they listen to me? If a stranger told me what to do I would not listen. I’d probably just bazooka them. I know because it’s happened before. The other day, some lunk at the Planet Fitness saw me struggling on a machine and said “You know, if you make it heavier, you’ll see results faster.” Okay? I can barely handle this, to begin with. Also, I didn’t ask for advice, asshole. I mentally exploded him. 

My bazooka is a way of reverse engineering the earthquakes that come from surprises. If you’re going to interrupt the expectation I had of my day, I’m gonna shake you up right back. And since it’s no one’s fault but my brain’s that I get so stressed out by people, I don’t have to do anything to people in the real world. I simply use my mind’s eye to explode them and continue about my day.

Over time, I’m starting to think this isn’t the best habit for mental wellness. Since I know someone or something is eventually going to make me whip out my bazooka, I’ve started actively looking for reasons to use it. I’ve become trigger-happy. 

Shooting rockets at my mental earthquakes is like when people were shooting their guns at the hurricane that one year.

There’s an inevitable natural phenomenon, and there’s a weapon that has nothing to do with it. Why would I expect this crossover to solve my problems?

But in a way, my bazooka prepares me for my expectations to be shaken. It helps me go out into the world and think, when something bothers me, I’m going to handle it. I am no longer retreating when I’m stressed out, but forging ahead.

I guess the next step is figuring out how to deal with stress instead of trying to destroy it, but the bazooka is addicting. It’s a method of giving myself power in a situation I’d otherwise feel like I have no control over.

Of course, this becomes yet another philosophical wormhole, the idea that we can be the masters of our fates, a question of how much control we really have over our lives. 

The only thing I feel like I can control is my bazooka. Because of that, I start feeling like I want to blow up everything I see. I mean, if you had a military-grade rocket launcher at your side with unlimited ammo and instant reloading, wouldn’t you use it on everything that pissed you off? 

Now, even the smallest things are bazooka-worthy. For example, if I’m hanging something up on the wall and I just can’t hang it perfectly straight? Bazooka. If someone beats me to the last open seat on a packed L train? Bazooka. I have a paper cut and it’s stinging real bad. Bazooka.

Perhaps by repeatedly shooting the bazooka from my big red chair, I’m causing the earthquakes all on my own. I’m blasting rockets through the wall at invisible enemies, convinced that the universe is conspiring to annoy me. Maybe if I show whatever force is responsible for our existence that what’s happening right now is reeeeallly bothering me, it’ll take pity and give me some reprieve. This never happens.

I’m not a particularly spiritual person, but ever since I was a kid, I would look to the universe or whatever God figure there might be and blame them for all my problems. It’s God’s fault I’m losing in the video game. It’s God’s fault I can’t fall asleep. Now, it’s the universe’s fault that everyone in the world is dumb and I have to bazooka them with my mind. 

No, the universe is not aligned against my inner peace, dead set on annoying me. At least I hope not. The problem with the bazooka is that after some time, I realize that it’s nice to imagine punishing the little headaches for getting to me, but unlike the imaginary cartoon in my head, these problems don’t go away after I explode them.

The bazooka helps me identify things that bother me. But when I use it, I end up blowing things up. You get it? I just got it. That just clicked for me. Isn’t that crazy. Everyone commence the eye roll.

But god, I love my bazooka. I love getting mad at strangers and at that picture on the wall for being imperfect and ruining my day, and I love to use the bazooka on myself for being imperfect and feeling like I’ve ruined my life.

Am I becoming my father? Maybe. I can tell he wields his bazooka mercilessly. My mother has always warned me, “Don’t start getting mad at everything like your dad! Once you start you never stop!” Welp. (Perdón papá, I didn’t mean for you to catch a stray. At least he doesn’t know this blog exists.)

I don’t have a solution to my bazooka problem. I’ve depended on it for so long. Growing up is so annoying. Like damn, I have to identify stifling behaviors and try to improve them so I can have a better tomorrow? 

I wish I could just bazooka my brain, or my anxiety, or maybe I just need to eliminate the bazooka itself. Perhaps I need to change the weapon. What if I start making it a T-shirt cannon… A marshmallow gun? Do I need to be like one of those hippies and put flowers in my bazooka? Okay, Miley. You win this round. Keep tuning in to my blog to see if I ever figure it out.

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