Sallie GAY

I considered working out today, but I decided to call Sallie Mae instead.

And boy is my ass tired.

They're sweet talkers, I'll give them that. The conversation was very "Baby, It's Cold Outside".

Cue music.

Me: "I really can't pay."
Sallie Mae: "But baby, we'll either f*ck you now or f*ck you later. Point is: you're not going anywhere until we take you from behind."

At least having a loan from CHASE would feel appropriately titled. Owing money to a Sallie Mae is so emasculating.

This is the type of relationship I have to awkwardly bring up when somebody proposes to me in 10 years. "Hey, I really love you a lot, but there's somebody else that's had a choke-hold on my dick since I was 18, so..."

I just have to keep imagining the day when people will be reading this blog on their Kindle Apocalypse and both of my "You Pick Two" at Panera can be Signature Items.

I'll be so remotely famous that Time Out Chicago  will review me and my parents won't have to ignore my texts for money.

I can see you read them, Mom.

I haven't had a drink in four days. Take THAT AA.

JK I had a martini yesterday but just one,

TJB: Making It

201?

The new year was exciting until approximately 2 a.m. when I was left chugging a bottle of sparkling water found on my bedroom floor to wash down the three day old Chinese food that now coats my pillow.

The holiday decorations are being ripped down to make room for snow covered trash, salted to Oregon Trail status. I've already ruined three pairs of shoes. The most eventful thing that will happen for the next three months? People sarcastically damning themselves for writing 2013.

It's been two thousand fourteen years. We get it. Change is hard. But we have a black president now, so just backspace and hit 4.

I made the mistake of waking up on January 1 and checking my student loan payments.

They've doubled.

There's something funny about White Privilege where your mind skips "get a second job" and goes straight to "prostitution".  Do people still carry cash? I'll just camp out by an ATM.

A few weeks ago, I was feeling incredibly positive. Seriously, I wrote like...a really upbeat post. Then, I had a conversation about how awful it's going to be to turn 24 in March.

Guys, I've been 24 for nine months. There goes prostitution. I won't hit another niche market until I'm 40.

What the hell, 2014? How do I pretend to focus on my art if I have to make money full time? I tried that in Chicago and I was still as broke as my parents in 1983. I mean, if our children have to work as hard as we did, are we even progressing as a society?

Also, if kids can be pop stars, why can't they work in factories?

The fear of a new year brings so many unanswered questions. I guess that's the exciting thing about life. This time last year, I was still sleeping on my friend's couch, jobless and covered in glitter.

GOD, that was a comfy couch.

I'll just have to do what I did so well in college. Make up the answers and write an apology to my T.A. on the last page for not taking the class seriously enough due to my expansive life interests and dedication to the arts.

That's always good for a B+.

Sorry Northwestern,

TJB: Making It

I Relate to Animated Princesses

I wanted to write something beautiful to sign off on the year, but I've suddenly hit that point of what-the-hell-happened. One year ago today, I was writing my first post from Chicago. Now, I'm sitting in NYC wondering if I've somehow taken two steps forward and three steps back.

Reading through my past was the definition of WTF. I laughed a lot, but not in the narcissistic "I'm so funny" way I had hoped...in more of a "Holy Hell, who is this guy?" kind of way.

Growth? Probably not. Self-pity? Likely.

I could try to sum up my feelings, but that sounds exhausting and requires creativity. Instead, I shall listen to the following video on repeat from a movie I've never seen, mostly because I'm in no state to sob during an animated film. So why don't you hit play and look back through my year to laugh with me.

Or at me. Either way, I feed off of your attention.

Cheers, 2013. I have no idea what we were drinking, but it did the job.

I'M FINE MOM,

TJB: Making It

The Way We Were

I LOVE  Christmas. I love Christmas so much that I couldn't even blog about it for fear of staining the screen with red wine tears.

The highlight of my season is Christmas night, when everyone is sick of their families and my friends come to my childhood home to compare whose life is more amazing. Just when I feared the attention was slowly drifting from myself, I made the suggestion to pull out my Senior Memory Book.

For a quick rundown, the Senior Memory Book is a scrapbook project our AP English teacher forced us to do senior year. It sounded really cool for the first three pages, and suddenly it was 3 a.m. the night before a deadline, blood gushing from paper cuts and sixteen limericks full of slant rhyme.

There we were, the final hours of Christmas 2013, flipping through pages of pictures and

THE MOST AMAZING WRITING AN 18 YEAR OLD COULD PRODUCE.

OK, to be fair, almost everything I wrote emitted visions of dyed black swoop-bangs and Evanescence albums, but some of the shit was legit.

Like this shout-out to God:

God-
Thank you for making me who I am. Whether you accept me or not, I hope that one day we will find a common ground and learn to truly love one another. I find myself unworthy of all you have given me and deeply try every day to show my appreciation.

What's a Catholic boy to do?

The real crown jewel came in a sealed envelope stuck to the tribute page of my best friend Meagan. Though I believe the rule was to leave it sealed until 2017, I was a little impatient. So, I leave you with one of my proudest (and most coming-out-gay-emo) moments in writing history.

-----

Dear Meagan,

You began in kindergarten, age five - going on sixteen. Still, it was years before you would truly impact my life. Tall, awkward, and barely growing into yourself, we remained on my common ground simply based on altitude. Nobody knew you were a bombshell until you exploded. How could I ignore you after that? Shallow? Yes. Worth it? Definitely.

In eighth grade history, I found that for some God-known reason you could tolerate me. This will get you everywhere in life. I shouted, I screamed, and I played my games. You pushed, you fought, and you fell for me too. One free ticket to a performance of your choice held us together. Since that time, when I am asked who I would take on a deserted island, I only have one choice: you. We're already there.

I don't think you know how much you've impacted me. I'm sure I've never told you. You remain unaware of the broken tears I've cried in a hyperventilating rage of anger mixed with regret at the fact that I can't even begin to express how much you mean to me. My poetry could never begin to touch upon what "this" is. For the first time in my life, I have found a subject that leaves me lost for words.

Never once has any single being encouraged me to be myself more than you have, even when you hated who that was. For that, I will continue to be completely me, if only to make you alone proud. One day, I want you to be able to say, "I have his cell phone number, and we had dinner together last night." I am already so honored that I can say the same about you.

So here I am, professing my awe of your entire being. My own Persephone, my Venus arising from her pearly shell. I raise you up to give you back the strength you gave to me through my years of inner struggle when you remained by my side. And in ten years, if you by chance happen to have forgotten my name and I remain but a glancing image of a boy across your memory, remember that boy saying one thing:

"Whether or not I am able to love you, I always will."

Thanks for the world,

---

TJB: Making It

Recommended for You

You're standing at a bar you ended up in by accident during one of your "F*ck it, I live in New York, let's
do this" nights. The first drink is still in your hand, but you can already tell the room is looking at you. Liquid confidence comes fast.

Your friend says something funny, you give a flawless head-toss laugh, and slowly turn in perfect timing to lock eyes with the boy across the bar.

Bam.

It's a once-in-a-lifetime feeling that has only happened twice in your life.

The instant connection.

But even though the opening sequence was executed with cinematic genius, the cynic inside of you has already written the rest. You fast forward through the 127 minutes of dialogue that will cover the next 5 minutes or 500 days, knowing that once it's over there's a high chance you'll walk away with too many feelings to repeat with a bottle of wine and a replay on Netflix.

While you were over thinking which song to play during the credits, he's already crossed the bar holding the sequel to your first drink.

Well, shit.

The first three lines reveal the fatal flaw, but you can't hit pause. You're no longer sure if your character is so invested because there's no chance of this being anything or because there's a chance this is everything. We used to only deal with love at first sight (if you can still stomach the mention of love), but now we can find out if we'll like a movie with the click of an app. So, you pull out your iPhone to find

he's lost his.

No news feed, no hashtags, no texts. The only thing he's connected to is you. What is this, a period film?

The rest, as you can imagine, is quite beautiful. Though there is no clear direction, the movie has a perfect balance of comedy and drama that keeps you constantly wondering what happens next...but you couldn't figure it out. A bittersweet ending leaves you wanting more with no one to blame. You wrote it.

You got inside your head. Maybe you're not as great of a writer as you thought. It ended too soon, nothing was resolved. We wanted more fight. But you're exhausted, so you decide to shelve the project until you can figure out a better ending. One that doesn't have to end, maybe.

Or maybe just forget it all happened after you blog about it like a little bitch,

TJB: Making It

Talking is HARD

There's a certain security that comes with writing. I much prefer libel over slander. It sounds more
sophisticated.

When I was recently dragged off the page and handed a camera with the direction "Go!", I suddenly second guessed my entire existence over the past two and a half years. I had built up a lot of clout in the world of my twelve readers. Could my words possibly be as influential and inspiring on camera? Could my cheekbones exceed their textual expectations with sexual visualization? How embarrassed would my parents be?

For hundreds of posts, I had been writing to impress the only person in this world that mattered to me:

ME. 

Now, I was spending hours to impress some rich kid I went to college with and a phantom producer in L.A. with only the feedback of "Go crazy. Gay it up." as encouragement to be a movie reviewer. I had never even turned on a camera before, let along set lighting, edit footage, and blindly find my angles. But I would do anything for fame. 

Perhaps all for naught. But perhaps because this crafty little Jewish boy who lived with my incredibly Aryan friend was the push off the page that TJB needed. 

My Christmas gift to you, 12 readers, are the hours I've spent filming and editing on a computer built only for e-mail. You can practically see my genius growing as you progress. Watch now, before I realize what I've done and dismantle the internet. 

Sorry Dad,

TJB: Making It

Personally Speaking

"Don't take it personally" has become one of my least favorite sayings, because everything really is personal. If somebody says, "It's not personal," then they wouldn't have to tell you because you wouldn't have been involved in the first place. Your situation actually had everything to do with you. More often they mean, "It is because you're you, but please don't be pissed because we'd all rather not deal with confrontation."

and that's fine to admit. I actually prefer to believe it's personal. It makes me feel more important. Controversial even.

But we've become a culture of not wanting to say, "No." We seem to have adopted "no unless you hear yes." That way, nobody has to be the bad guy and nobody's feelings (directly) get hurt. To say, "It's not personal," suggests that there was, in fact, a way that things could have been different if you just weren't you. That's even more insulting. 

Instead, we can build up a quiet resentment until we're forced to assume there were many other factors at hand and it really was nothing personal. It's that time of year, things are crazy, everyone's busy or on vacation, they would have reached out, but you understand. It's nothing personal. 

I was recently accused of not having feelings...about anything. I questioned if the interpretation of my lack of feelings was based on the fact that I do not let things greatly upset me. They took this as defensive. "It's nothing personal."

I was also recently told that I may be afraid to be the "bad cop", and that I should be wary of giving too much positive reinforcement to those doing a poor job in case messaging got mixed up. But it was just a note, nothing personal. 

I auditioned for an agent I had worked with before, but it wasn't going to happen this time. I was great, it was nothing personal.

These are three pretty specific personal situations. 

America, this is how we end up with bitter housewives who drink wine all day. Because we go through life thinking it wasn't personal and we couldn't possibly be the reason. They said we weren't the reason! In reality, we need to accept that we really sucked in a lot of situations. They didn't like you. It's OK not to be liked. 

Trust me, I'm thumbsed down like 500 times a day, but hey, somebody is trying to give me my own show. Who would have thought?

We all thought. 

The moral of the story? Stop wasting time on people who want to make it nothing personal. It's the people who want to make it everything personal that matter. 

Your feelings might get hurt, sure.

But you probably don't have them anyway. 

It's nothing personal,

TJB: Making It