Over on Secret Society of List Addicts, some issues on which I can’t even get started in polite company.

NTKOG Year 2, #17: The kind of moxious seductress who, seizing an opportunity, more or less throws a guy up against a wall and demands what she wants.

I am: good at: long epistolary courtships, slightly saucy wordplay, middle-school confessions and the occasional discretionary skulking.

I am not: good at: talking to humans in bars. I leave that to the experts.

The Scene: The graduate student bar at Justice’s name-brand university in New England College Town, on a weirdly hoppin’ Thursday night. Kiss-Ducker and I are in town, celebrating Justice’s recent engagement. In magnanimous bride-to-be fashion, Justice has transformed into a total yenta, offering herself as wingwoman while Kiss-Ducker breaks a few hearts and I grudgingly agree to make a total ass of myself.

To this end, we whip out a little game we perfected in undergrad: Napkin Lists. The gist? At the beginning of the evening, I pulled out a Sharpie and a bar napkin, and we took turns coming up with challenges to complete before the end of the evening. Yeah, yeah, it’s truth or dare. We’re adults. Get psyched.

It's fair to say that whenever the three of us get together, we make a bit of an impression on the dudes around us. Largely by doing things like asking them to pluck single hairs from their heads, then defeat us in dance-offs.

After a few awkward starts and a heroic effort on Kiss-Ducker’s part, we’d managed to cross off about about a third of the list. With half an hour left before the most convenient shuttle home, though, we had to whip through five more items or admit defeat — a risk I just wasn’t willing to take.

So I brewed a plan to cross off, in one fell swoop, three items: 1) try on a fellow’s hat with his permission; 2) get someone to striptease off one article of clothing; and, if all went according to plan, 3) get someone to tell you what brand of deodorant they wear.

Scoured both levels of the bar to find a man wearing a hat — curses! they’d all disappeared! — then, clock ticking down, watched a guy push toward the bar followed slightly by his friend, a mid-height, sleepy-eyed dude with hurricane hair and, bingo!, a red plaid scarf.

And before I relate the following dialogue, a little context. Men are always asking what women want; what this woman wants? A restaurant recommendation, then for you to leave her alone. Oh, and to never ever ever have to have sex with you. I cemented the impression with baggy khakis, smeared day-old make-up and a slept-in ponytail. Hot stuff.

As red scarf walks by, I hail him, “Hey! Yeah, you! Can you settle a bet?” He sweeps the three of us with his sleepy eyes then smiles. I ask where he’s from; he says Toronto. A Canadian! I rather like Canadians.

TKOG: Okay, so the thing is, this is my friend Kiss-Ducker. She’s from Alabama, and she thinks guys look stupid when they’re taking off their scarves. Can you prove her wrong?
The Canadian:  What do you mean?
TKOG:  Well, I mean, you look like a guy who knows how to take a scarf off sexy. Can you do that for us? Just like really super oh-my-god sexy?

To his credit, he only looks confused for a moment before shimmying out of the scarf and — oh my god, tucking the end of it in my shirt? Ack. Foul. Still, one item down and two to go.

TKOG: See, that’s the thing about guys from Toronto. They know how to take off scarves. This one’s really nice, actually! Kiss-Ducker, it would look super cute on you! Can she try it on?

I toss it to her while he mumbles his consent, and she wraps it briefly around her neck. There are no hats in sight, so this is a fitting substitute — second item crossed off!

At this point, I expect him to run. It’s significantly the weirdest bar interaction I’ve ever had; heck, it’s lasted longer than most of the conversations I have with guys when I’m actually trying. Kiss-Ducker hands back his scarf and I wait for him to shuffle off, but he puts his arm around me. I look to the girls for help, but they’re talking to each other and pointedly ignoring me, those jackals. Still, a challenge is a challenge and I’ve still got one item left.

The Canadian and I chat for a while, and have a surprisingly pleasant conversation. Still, time is ticking away, so finally I lean toward him and exclaim:

TKOG: Dude, you smell fantastic. What brand of deodorant do you wear?
TC: I actually don’t wear deodorant.
TKOG: Wait, so that’s…
TC: Yup. That’s all me.

At which point I do what any normal girl would do (if she were to stop being normal and start acting like me, anyway): lower my face into his armpit and breathe deeply. And son of a gun, he does smell good. And furthermore, all three challenges crossed off. NAPKIN LIST BLITZ: ACHIEVED.

After which, I immediately lost interest. He continued talking and I stared at him in confusion. He wasn’t of anymore use to me! Why wasn’t he leaving? Oh, weird, did he just put his hand on my elbow? I stood in awkward silence until he disengaged; we made eye contact a few more times, but didn’t speak again for the ten minutes before my friends and I left the bar.

And now that I tell the full story, it sounds so obvious, but here’s the thing: it wasn’t until we got back home and my friends started teasing me mercilessly that I realized, holy shit, he might have actually kind of liked me. Justice and Kiss-Ducker patiently explained and rexplained the signs of his interest (arm around me, waiting hopefully for the conversation to continue, ignoring his friend at the bar), and the subtle signs of flirtation that I sent off (like, oh, I don’t know, using the word “sexy” nineteen thousand times before burying my face in his armpit). Because I can read in Russian and do stoichometry, but apparently can’t wrap my head around the fact that an actual Earth human might display boy-girl interest in a friggin’ bar.

The idea of meeting someone had literally never entered my head. Once I realized how thoroughly I’d missed it? Regret. Instant, crippling regret that I hadn’t even tried to extend the conversation or find out more about him. After all, he was darn cute, and he did smell awfully good…

The next night, Kiss-Ducker and Justice joked that I’d lost out on the love of my life, and mostly-teased that we should go out and try to find him again. The day after that, though, we went up to New York and completely forgot about him. After all, there are there are three billion men in the world, and even if he were the one that got away, the odds were less than zero that I’d ever meet him again.

Dead exhausted, we boarded the train home from New York a bit before midnight, in a four-seater on a packed train car where a few last stragglers stood to find seats. One of them was a guy with messy brown hair. “Hey,” whispered Kiss-Ducker, “wouldn’t it be funny if–”

He turned. Red plaid scarf. Locked eyes with us. “Well,” he smiled, “I certainly recognize you guys.”

“Want a seat?” I squeaked, clearing my coat from the one across from me.

“Absolutely.”

Oh snap, y’all, this blog post got SUPER EPIC LONG. To be continued on Friday.

While I was too undisciplined to write last week, posted I think my personal favorite Secret Society of List Addicts list to date: quotes I thought were from the Bible ’til an embarrassing age. Keep in mind, I went to Catholic school.

NTKOG Year 2, #15: The kind of unanchored, pleasure-motivated creature of Id who pays no mind to Should or Ought, but builds her castle on a foundation of Want.

I am: locked in a constant struggle with my discipline, both as a writer and a human being. For the past year or so, I’ve emerged as the victor, thanks to a ceaseless cycle of early mornings, late nights, and forcibly cutting off my internet access after hours.

I am not: convinced it’s been great for my mental health. Let’s put it this way: near the end of the three-month MFA application extravaganza, I had no trouble getting a seat to myself on the bus. ’cause I was twitching and shuddering like an ’89 Honda going a hundred on the freeway.

The Scene: My apartment. My god, my glorious monk’s-cell apartment, night after night, for a week of personally mandated laziness. During the second week of the new year, I made a deal with myself: You don’t have to write. You don’t have to do laundry. You don’t have to socialize with humans. Just do what comes naturally.

It reminds me, actually, of my project during the year after undergraduate: I declared a moratorium on alarm clocks, and spent a year living by my natural clock. I’ve never been happier or more well-rested in my life, going to sleep at 9:30pm and waking up at 5:30.

During this week of laziness, though, I assure you I wasn’t waking up in the wee hours. Oh most verily not.

For the sake of comparison, my general weekday schedule before MFA applications started:

6:30 Wake up
6:45 – 8:15am: Jog or clean; shower; eat
9:00 – 5:00: I don’t even want to talk about it
5:15 – 9:00: Writin’ in the library, with a quick break for dinner
9:30 – 10:30: Goofin’ around for a bit before sleep

Compare that to the mental health extravaganza that was life during MFA applications.

8:27am: Wake up
8:30am: Leave for work
9:15 – 5:00: Ugh
5:30 – 10:00: MFA applications and story editing, living on a diet of cookies and soft pretzels to justify my non-stop cafe tables
10:30 – 1:00am: Back hme, last-minute MFA stuff, research, panic attacks, until the dreamless death of sleep

So. Yeah. I was doing super great for a while. Now that the applications are all in and the weight of the world is off my shoulders, though, I figured one week of utterly debauched laziness would reset my system. And every day, I discovered another thing that I thought I’d forgotten how to love.

Whole novels, swallowed over the course of one decadent evening! Spending hours cooking complicated meals and meditating on the wonders of food! Walking the two and a half miles home from work because, hey, I have nowhere to go and no particular time to get there! My god, some evenings I can spend an hour or more doing nothing but cuddling with my stuffed elephant, vacant of thought, just feeling warm and happy to be alive!

I also, of my own volition, finally washed the dishes that were stacked up from MFA madness. I don’t want to talk about how old some of them were. Like, we’re not talking calendar — we’re talking carbon dating.

The effect of this mindset was best captured last Sunday, when I thought to myself: My god, have I not left the house since Friday night? then remembered with relief, No, it’s okay! I went to the convenience store TWICE today! Oh yeah. The rest of you girls can save the prettiest valentine in the box for Atticus Finch, ’cause apparently I’m in the market for a Boo Radley.

The Verdict: Well, my “week” reprieve started three weeks ago, yet here I am, lolling around in my pajamas, eating chicken curry and contemplating rereading Calvin Trillin’s “An Attempt To Compile a Short History of the Buffalo Chicken Wing”. As great as I feel, I’m afraid we’re going to have to label this one a decided fail.

How is it that just a few days indulgence, following a massive burst of virtuous do-gooding no less!, can push us so far backward in our personal journeys for excellence? I’m filled with discouragement, despair, self-recrimination, etc., etc. Well, I will be. As soon as I finish this chicken curry burrito and lounge around in my pajamas a bit longer. Sigh.

What demons are you facing right now? And if your demons happen to be passing a supermarket, can they pick me up some soy milk?

NTKOG Year 2, #14: The kind of effortlessly kitchen-confident child of Child who, with nary a glance at her shelf of cookbooks (or, let’s be honest here, a google search of her favorite cooking blogs), whips together a gourmet meal. Or at least an edible one.

I am: risk-adverse to a fault. This might sound silly coming from the girl who thinks nothing of shaking her junk on a jumbotron or acing a blowjob class, but when it comes to goal-oriented pursuits like cooking, I need: 1) numbered directions; 2) hand-holding; and 3) uh, maybe half a Klonopin.

I am not: even getting into the cuticle-gnawing follies involved when someone gives me directions that contradict Google Maps.

The Scene: My postage-stamp Brighton kitchen, too small for cabinets or counter-space, to say nothing of big culinary dreams. My kitchen’s so tiny that even throwing together an omelette is akin to building a rocket launcher in a phone booth. Still, I proceeded.

Following my New Year’s resolution to cook at least once a week, a few days ago I made a batch of sweet potato and black bean burritos; however, I rather bungled the shopping trip, which left me with sixteen tortillas, two sweet potatoes and three red onions that needed to be used, like, yesterday.

While I’m usually fairly awful about just letting groceries get fuzzy in my fridge, instead, dug through my shelves and figured out what I had: a tin of crushed pineapple, half a frozen can of jalapenos, infinite black beans — and hey, pork shoulder’s on sale at the Stop and Shop down the street! Perfect for modifying Budget Bytes’s to-die-for pork and pineapple burritos. (Do you read Budget Bytes yet? Everyone with a working oven, stomach and/or brain should be reading this blog.)

But the catch: I decided not to let myself look at the recipe. Like, at all. Instead, let me present you my own recipe for:

Cleaning Out The Refrigerator Pork and Pineapple Burritos (with a huge nod to the sainted Budget Bytes)

Ingredients:

• A few-pound pork roast with bones and skin and weird shit in it because even after four years of university education, you’re not smart enough to look for the word “boneless” on the wrapper;
• A few or, like, infinite cans of black beans
• Two cups of shredded cheese, the some forgotten garlic Laughing Cow in the back of the fridge for when you run out.
• Two big cans of crushed pineapple in juice
• Can of jalapenos. Don’t touch your eyes. Don’t touch your eyes. Don’t touch your eyes.
• A few sweet potatoes shaped disconcertingly like limbless guinea pigs.
• Sixteen tortillas with a sell-by date set for tomorrow
• Various spices
• Proof that god loves us and wants us to be happy (ie: garlic and onions)

1. Like twenty hours before you want to eat (which for me, is literally. any. time.), cut the netting off the roast. immediately grab a handful of pigskin and gag convulsively. Continue gagging while you plunge your knife deep into the roast and shove in peeled cloves of garlic.
2. Spice rub. You need a spice rub. Panic; fight the urge to google; think about what tastes like Mexican food. Cumin? Garlic salt? Chile powder? Paprika? Oh for the love of pete, put back the cinnamon. This is a beginner-level course.
3. Rough-chop the onions and stick ‘em all around the roast, then seal up the whole shebang in the pot of your slow cooker and refrigerate it for eight hours. You could consider sleeping during those hours. Or browsing cooking blogs and getting irrationally angry about sanctimonious militant vegan dickbags.
4. Once the roast is totally marinated, stick it with a few cups of water in the slow cooker on low for eight hours. Wish you’d thought to buy bell peppers. But how many more bell peppers need to cruelly die before humans realize the atrocity of their — oh my god I hate vegans.
5. Woohoo! The meat’s done and your apartment smells gooooood. Use tongs to shred the meat off of the bones and into your biggest skillet. When you’ve gotten off as much meat as you can, dump the contents of the slow cooker into a colander and pick through the bones, fat and skin for any more usable meat.
6. Be sad about the holocaust for a little while.
7. Dump a cup and a half of water in the skillet with a packet of taco seasoning. Give the whole shebang a good stir and let it get thick and bubbly over a low flame. Whenever it looks like a good thickness, just turn it off and let it chill.
8. Scrub the sweet potatoes, then wrap them in saran wrap. Plunge a fork as hard as you can into them every inch or so. Don’t think about guinea pigs. Don’t think about guinea pigs. Stick ‘em in the microwave to bake (eight minutes worked well for two medium dudes).
9. Halve the onions and chop them into strips. In your second-biggest skillet, heat a few extravagant turns of oil over medium-high heat, then drop in your onions. Toss the strips to make sure they’re all oiled, then let them cook for ten minutes without agitating them all that much. The burn is good! The burn is where the flavor comes from! Try hard not to imagine the smoke detector going off; open a window just in case.
10. Open and rinse like six cans of black beans. The world’s most perfect union of fiber and protein.
11. Chop up jalapenos and pineapple. Reserve the pineapple juice in a plastic bag because it feels like a susie homemaker thing to do. Immediately drop the plastic bag.
12. Wait, frig, your neighbors can totally see you through the open window. See, this is why you shouldn’t cook naked. At least put on a bathrobe or something.
13. After the first ten minutes have passed, throw some salt on the onions to help pull out the water, and maybe a sprinkle of sugar to help start caramelization. Lower the heat after a few minutes if you’d like, and while you finish everything else, just give the onions a poke every once in a while. Let ‘em get dark and sweet.
14. Skin the sweet potatoes and mash ‘em in a bowl.
15. When everything’s done (I personally check for onion doneness by picking out strands and tasting them. When they’re so delicious I want to lick the spatula like a lollypop, bam, done.), stick it in bowls, take a few photos, and wait for Tony Bourdain to send you fanmail.

Things! Things I made! Things I made without a recipe! (Let's ignore the fact that the only things I actually cooked here were pork and onions. I still had to use my mad knife skills!)

Aww, it seems Mr. Bourdain’s being coy. Guess while I’m waiting, I might as well actually assemble the burritos.

In honor of my attempted culinary upgrade, I even learned the proper way to fold burritos. Way easier than I'd imagined! Just pile yo' fixin's a bit bottom of center, fold the right and left sides in, then roll from front to back. Bam.

The Verdict: Hey! You know those obnoxious cooks who, when they give recipes, ignore the measuring cups and instead give aggravating directions like “a pinch” of this and “a soupçon” of that! BAM! I’m totally one of those annoying dudes now! I prepared edible food, all by myself, and did not have a crying panic attack while deviating from my inspiration recipe!

Heck, I was so high on my newly faked culinary prowess that I used the reserved pineapple juice to whip together a coconut/pineapple dreamcake! (Okay, okay, it was from a mix. Still.)

Granted, this was a lot more work than walking to the pizzeria across the street, but I think I made enough food to last me a few days…

Uh, that takes care of my lunch plans. For 2011.

Over on Secret Society of List Addicts, check out some crazy lies my parents told me that I didn’t find out the truth about until embarrassingly late in life.

NTKOG Year 2, #12: The kind of girl who pits her (non-existent) desire to wake & bake against her law-abiding status and comes up with an, uh, interesting solution.

I am: a total fuddy duddy now. Y’alls, I don’t even jaywalk. And as for any desire to experiment with drugs, well, let’s just say those ended around the time Maroon 5 stopped pumping out number one jams.

I am not: all that psyched with how epically uncool I’ve become.

The Scene: A ritzy headshop (heh, I totally just said ‘head’) on Newbury Street where, after nervously shuffling at the counter for a few minutes, I selected a bag of K2, the legalized pot-alternative that’s been sweeping the nation for the past year or so. The scruffy dude behind the counter rolled his eyes as I asked him half a dozen questions, then asked me, “Dude, have you never smoked pot before?!” Uh, sir, I don’t even take cough syrup. But instead, I just attempted to bat my eyelashes until he agreed to roll me a fake-weed joint.

It’s not that I haven’t smoked pot, for the record. I did it maybe a dozen times in college — mostly courtesy of the culinary genius running the unofficial Stoned on Scones bakery out of the apartment next-door. I just don’t love it: it makes me lazy, anxious, and exquisitely famished. Which is to say, it doesn’t do anything at all. Still, in light of California’s recent failure to decriminalize marijuana use, I thought it would be fun to investigate the last legal recourses of stoners.

Drink deeply of the illicit image, kittens, 'cause in real life you're more likely to see me hold a cockroach than a roach-roach.

Surely any legal substance couldn’t actually get me high, right? RIGHT?! To answer that question, I present you with the musings of Stoned TKOG, who wrote the following completely unedited text after consuming a full joint of K2:

The Choreography of my Evening as a Legal Stoner

During walk from the store, marvel over its delicate sweetness – like a mixture of lemongrass and chamomile tea, you think. Perhaps it shall taste like childhood! It can’t possibly work, you know already, so your sober-as-friggin’-melancholy streak can go on another day.

Walking back from bus, pass convenience store and debate purchasing alleged “munchies” for the purpose of scientific inquiry; consider the contents of your bank account; vigorously veto experiment. Deliberate whether to smoke the fake joint outside, or to smoke it in the warmth and – well, let’s be frank here – nudity of your own apartment. Opt for the latter because you can’t bear the thought of anyone thinking you’re a stoner. It’ll be your little secret.

Back home, use torn cover from Oprah Magazine to wipe the dust bunnies off the plate under your obligatory sad-single-girl bath candle. Get so caught up in architectural marvel of a well-rolled joint (see Exhibit A) that you light it and puff curiously before remembering to open bathroom windows. “Eh,” you reason, “it’s organic. It’ll probably smell like incense. No way you’ll even be able to smell it.”

Yikes! Not a well-rolled joint! The first inch and a half are packed too loose and burn down in three seconds, (“Am I smoking too fast?” you worry, “Should I check into rehab?”) creating a truly prodigious cloud of smoke. After a few puffs, though, it burns slower and you can take satisfying pulls – without the usual lung-searing feeling. Become so fascinated with smoking process that you want to smoke as far into the joint as possible, and try to use small bathroom implements to extend the joint’s length.

Look up and see yourself – dude, seriously, life choices – in the most grim of drug tableaux: naked on the shower rug of your grimy bathroom, holding a fake-weed joint to your lips using a toenail clipper as a roach clip

Flush the roach down the toilet, then throw open the bathroom door to realize two things: 1) you are stoned. as. balls.; 2) judging by the skunky smoke billowing under your door crack, everybody in the building knows it. Judging by the reek of pot pervading the hall, there was enough K2-infused air pumping through my building to contact-high all my neighbors and several rounds of their ancestors. Uh, so much for no one thinking I’m a stoner.

Back into my apartment, and there’s only one urgent task at hand: camouflage the stench of pot wafting from my apartment.

Man, why did I veto the munchies experimentation? Mistakes were made.

Oh, no, right, the smell in the bathroom. Immediately, without thinking, turned the shower on at full blast. …with my head still in it. Drew the curtains and closed the door. Five minutes later realized, oh, I shouldn’t leave a shower unattended! and dashed to the bathroom to turn it off. Felt proud of myself. Got distracted by sad-single-girl bath candle and realized it could cover the smell, so lit it, went to close the door.

“Oh daaaang,” I realized, “my carelessness is increasing with comic exponentiality. I’m totally the after-school special about fake-marijuana use. I’m one scene away from a tragic-but-morally-nourishing grisy ending.” Decided to fend off tragedy by babysitting the candle while it works its de-incriminating smell magic.

Which makes me now a much more nuanced yet still grim drug cliché: naked on the shower rug of my grimy bathroom, hunched over a laptop, hoping the smell of a TJ Maxx hazelnut/toffee candle will overpower the odor of fake-weed billowing from my apartment at 9:21 on a Wednesday night. I – I often wonder what choices have brought me here.

Whoa, my heart’s beating the usual speed, but harder, and every beat’s reverberating like the taut face of a drum.

Screw this. I’m going to order a pizza and read a book about centaurs.

I only have three more distinct memories of the night. First, after an hour of deliberation, finally dragging myself to the pizzeria across the street and realizing, whoa, I feel almost happy.

Next, finding this picture by @cakewrecks, and laughing out loud to myself for a full three minutes…

…before thinking to myself: “How embarrassing to misspell that on your van! That’s weird, though, she usually posts pictures of cakes.”

Finally, just before I passed out, I grabbed my phone and frantically texted myself: “I feel very calm but I don’t feel very useful. Don’t do this again, dude. This isn’t you.”

The Verdict: Okay, Stoned TKOG, you may have almost set your apartment on fire and mistaken a cake for a van, but you managed to pull out a little wisdom at the bottom of the ninth. Cannabis lovers (and cannaibs lovers too, for that matter), I’ve got good news for you: legalized K2 is a fairly legitimate product and, though it isn’t identical to marijuana, it offers a very similar high.

Which means I’ve got bad news for myself: turns out I just don’t like the feeling of being stoned. Guess I’ve got another sixty years of fuddy duddying in my future, huh?

Warning: the following post is extremely silly. For a slightly more substantial reading experience, head over to Life as a Human for: “NaNoWriMo: Pass the prom dress, ’cause mama’s got a novel to write,” a quick reflection on writerly quirks.

Meet Pete. After an absolutely ghastly day at work on Tuesday — only Tuesday! — Co-Worker and I dashed to the restaurant across the street and imbibed a downright irresponsible amount of beer. (“How much beer can you legally bring me?” she asked our server, while I attempted to construct a makeshift booze trough out of laminated menus.)

Twenty minutes later, I downed the last third of a schooner, swiped foam off my upper lip and decided to MAKE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE. Which, in my state, amounted to picking up the lonely tortilla chip on the table and — with the aid of bleu cheese dressing and a Sharpie — brought forth into the world Mr. Peter A. Chip, Esquire.

Peter A. Chip, Esquire. Yeah, I realize he's not a pita chip. Look, life is complicated.

I’ve got a pretty exciting weekend lined up. Laundry, grad school applications, maybe cleaning my kitchen — all part of my rockstar lifestyle, baby.

But hey, while I’m stuck inside, stressed and sober all weekend, at least I can remember the warm and support of my beloved Pete. Slash photoshop some pictures of him working his charms for you.

King Pete is the master of all he surveys!

Holiday Pete is waitin' for you under the mistletoe!

Hooligan Pete is your biggest fan! Woooo! Go you!

Quarterback Pete's dedicating this next touchdown to you!

Sexytimes Pete doesn't know quite how to say it but, baby, he thinks tonight's the night...

Well this was an awfully silly post. Happy Friday, kittens. What’re y’all drinking tonight? Allow me to have a vicarious social life through you!

Over on Secret Society of List Addicts, a few Dudes I Wouldn’t Mind Marrying Immediately. Like, yesterday, if possible.

NTKOG Year 2, #10: The kind of brooding commonspace poet who, so moved by the transcendence of everyday interactions, writes you a blistering sonnet in exchange for some mozzarella sticks.

I am: often moved to volcanic warmth for strangers, based on the way they clear their throat before they talk to me or how they shift their weight to one hip when they’re lost in thought.

I am not: crazy enough to actually tell them this. Plus, as discussed, I’m nobody’s poet.

The Scene: In and around the Boston Public Library every night in this suddenly gray, drizzly city. As a dude who’s only ever lived in cities where early November was considered late summer, I’m in a bit of a malaise about the impending onset of my second-ever (and possibly last!) New England winter. Compound that with endless library-bound nights banging out MFA applications, and my morale’s about as high as a sopping wet motivation-post kitten, clinging to the tree branch called “everything’s probably going to be okay”.

Grad school apps, y’all. I’m apparently saving my good sentences for them.

But for the past few weeks, I’ve been fighting to get out of my head appreciate this sunless city’s charms by doing what I do best. Er, eating peanut noodles in a bathtub filled to the brim with Beaujolais. But after that: trying to find new (to me) ways to never stop seeing how really enchanting other people can be.

It’s no real secret that my favorite people to interact with are dudes behind cash registers and wearing aprons on a professional capacity. Because I’m an emotionally guarded person, I feel safest channeling most of my warmth into one-shot social transactions. And for the past little while, I’ve been focusing on doing just that in, y’know, as weird a way as possible.

Limericks. Post-Its. You know it.

Scrawled on a neon-green Post-It attached to a dollar bill in the tip jar at the Copley Square Borders Cafe:

In this season of all things pumpkin
My night needed a little somethin’
Your recommendation
Drove me to elation.
Madame, you have set my heart thumpin’.

A hot pink missive stuck to the inside of the check-holder at Other Side Cafe, where it is a question for the ages whether servers are more knowledgeable about beer than adorable or vice friggin’ versa:

There once was a server named Dan
Who vended us sudsy shenans
Until we were quite full
Of beer most delightful –
Of your work, dude, I’m a huge fan.

A note tucked away in a black bag of medical equipment outside a temple in Brookline:

To your trade it is clear you are loyal,
Working heedless of struggle or toil
With keen precision
and your clean incisions –
You’re Boston’s best friggin’ moyel!

Okay, you got me, I didn’t really give anyone the last one. YET.

The Verdict: Hey, look at me, makin’ jokes, bloggin’ about circumcision. Just like old times! You win this round, limericks. That actually felt pretty good.

While searching my gmail for my favorite cornbread recipe, came across the following email I wrote to The Ex shortly before midnight one night in April of this year. Earlier that evening, I’d taken a nap, then woken with my throat completely sealed. Months later, I learned that the cause was sinusitis. Side-effect? A serious case of The Morbids. So I did what any normal 20something with no health insurance would do. Emailed my ex my living will, then completely forgot about it.

However, finding this email was completely delightful, and — just to make things official, in the event of my untimely demise — passing my MORTALLY BINDING list of death preparation requests on to all of you. This is — this is kind of me in a nutshell.

1) Totally want a wedding cake at the wake. I know, I know, it’s inappropriate, but in life I just really super wanted a wedding cake. I feel strongly about it. Buttercream frosting, not fondant; any reasonable flavor but chocolate. Get it from Freed’s Bakery, assuming the funeral’s in Vegas. (Although I’d rather be buried in Northern California.)

2) At the service, definitely want something read from Gatsby. (The clock falling off the mantle scene? Time motif = super poignant at mortality times!). Some PG Wodehouse? (There are no appropriate passages that I can think of, so just choose a good, funny bit from one of the Jeeves stories. I want people laugh/crying so hard the church charges us extra for snot removal from the pew upholstery.) A good, relevant passage from Catch-22. (I trust you to pick one). A non-cheesy, non-obvious poem of some sort. (Kiss-Ducker should pick it out, but tell her not to make me sound too gay for poetry.)

3) Man, I’m really feeling Indian food. If that’s too controversial for my parents, then barbecue would be fine. Plenty of cornbread.

4) Would you mind going through my computer and printing out all the stories and decent prose for my parents? I think they’d like that. And have someone arrange to get my blog proofread, then printed and vanity-bound.

5) Forgive me for anything you find on my computer that you find distressing. I can’t think of anything off the top of my head, but, y’know, just in case there is.

6) Anything valuable I have goes to Sister. Everything else, you and Justice have equal first dibs, then my sister, Kiss-Ducker, Physicist and Muscles can go through, then anyone else. [Months-later edit: Co-Worker can definitely take a crack too. I know she'd be interested in a few of my books, at least.]

7) I’d like to be buried in a dress. I think one of the cocktail dresses I have should be fine — the one I wore to Murder Mystery Party? And wearing my “how else to feel other than i am?” necklace and the wire ring with black wax beads.

8) You can use the “Bath Singalong” playlist on my iTunes as the basis for funeral/wake music.

9) Obviously everyone needs to have a great time at my funeral and get so drunk that they get trapped in elevators without noticing. Also, when everyone’s drunk, make sure to play a drinking game that involves people admitting if they are or ever were secretly in love with me. If anyone was, tell Justice and Kiss-Ducker to let me know from the beyond through any means at their disposal.

10) You are Nichka’s executor. I’m not sure whether she’ll die when I die; if she does, I want her buried with me. So. Make the decision you think is best.

11) Oh, let my blog know that I died. LiLu has all the passwords; you can email her. But don’t reveal my true identity if I haven’t come out of anonymity by then. (See, even in death I love you guys!)

12) I’m kind of kidding with this list — I don’t really think I’ll die tonight — but you never know what the near future holds, and since my flash drive with all my funeral plans broke, might as well have it written down somewhere.

And now I do! They always say you’re supposed to die as you lived, and when I lived, I threw some pretty awesome parties. One last one for the road, eh? How would you most like to be remembered?

You guys, I was absolutely floored by the sympathetic responses — and the heart-rending stories — you poured out in response to yesterday’s post and over at Life As A Human. You truly are the best.

And speaking of things I love, head over to Secret Society of List Addicts to read my list of Things The Northeast Does Wicked Well. (Other things I love: smooth segues. Cough.)

NTKOG Year 2, #7: The kind of bold, interpersonal opportunist who, where others see a full cafe, just sees the chance to make a new best friend.

I am: deeply into personal space — especially when I’m working. After all, it takes a certain amount of discretionary tablespace to spread out two books, a laptop, an iPhone, and a few beverages, while still leaving enough free space to spazzily computer-dance to Queen’s Greatest Hits.

I am not: one to deny any other cafe-goer that same right. (C’mon, who doesn’t dance while they word process?)

The Scene: The Back Bay Borders down the street from the Boston Public Library. Sneaked into the cafe in late afternoon with big dreams of snagging a coveted wall socket for yet another marathon grad school application session. But apparently half the city had the same idea, ’cause there was only one plug left — right next to a table occupied by a statuesque mid-twenties gentleman, tapping away at his own laptop.

The three chairs splayed around the table rather optimistically oversold the real estate. Clearly the table is intended for one and a half — at best — and any reasonable person would back out of the cafe and seek a battery top-up at the terminally lame but always-empty Finagle A Bagel across the street. But since when have I been in the business of doing what any reasonable person would do?

Picked up a drink and strode over to the table, where I put my bag on one of the accompanying chairs before even catching his eye. “Mind if I join you? I need to charge my laptop,” I explained, already reaching for the charger. He grimaced but gave a defeated shrug and scooted his laptop a few inches closer to his torso.

The table was so small that, with both of our computers set up, we were leaned in nose to nose like the poster for Sixteen Candles. And maybe it was the tight quarters, but over the course of the next half-hour, we quickly formed that casual stranger intimacy. He accidentally nudged my leg under the table with his Whole Foods bag, stuffed with a bouquet of carnations; I offered him a napkin when he sneezed twice in quick succession; after a while, he jumped up to find a book, leaving his computer, laptop and wallet in plain sight without so much as a word of warning.

After he’d jumped up, the breeze from his retreat sent one of his papers fluttering onto the floor. A woman who’d recently sat down at the table next to ours leaned over to pick it up. “Excuse me!” she coughed through my earbud Queen haze. “Excuse me, is this your boyfriend’s?”

“Oh, I don’t know, but — wait, whaaaaaaat?!”

Huh. Nothing says relationship like a Whole Foods bag, I suppose. And his two books of Proust on the table screamed “grad student” almost as much as my dog-eared copy of The Creative Writing MFA Handbook. Even our beat-up Moleskines were perfectly coordinated: my square-ruled notebook, jammed with strangely angular drawings and errant ticket stubs, every inch as eccentric as his unlined drawing notebook with its tight spidery handwriting scrawled perpendicular to itself.

Dude. Dude. Setting aside the fact that we’d never met, we totally could have been dating! Finally he returned, bearing the new David Sedaris book I’ve had on my to-read list for weeks now — the final seal of our imaginary-relationship status.

For the next hour or so, as we worked in parallel, I couldn’t help but sneak peeks at him over the top of my laptop. Was he a margin-scrawler? What kind of paper was he working on so intently? And who kept texting him?!

The last question, at least, resolved itself when a slightly younger guy in a truly devastating blazer wandered up to the table and grinned hello — then gave my imaginary boyfriend a movie-moment kiss hello. Sigh. Brutal break-up, dude.

The Verdict: Never share too-small cafe tables. You’ll only get your heart broken that way.

Plus, seriously, if the table’s small enough that you force the original table-holder to rearrange their belongings, then I can’t help but feel it’s overstepping a huge boundary. That, and once you sit within a two feet of someone, dude, it’s hard not to get involved, apparently. That’s — that’s, uh, normal, right?

Are you a table-sharer? Ever get too involved with the goings-on of other cafe dwellers?

NTKOG Year 2, #1: The kind of hardened pick-up artist who slays men in her wake by mastering the art of The Neg — jabbing the object of your desire with semi-insults until they … magically want to sleep with you?

I am: already kind of working The Neg in daily life. Or at least already the part where you’re not super nice to dudes.

I am not: mega adroit at communicating that I want to smooch a dude even when I totally, totally do. Let alone when trying to appear aloof, craft witty dialogue and remain seventeen moves ahead in the chess match of seduction — all without spilling my drink.

The Scene: First, a quick lesson in The Neg, for those of you who aren’t as obsessed with bro culture as I. (You’re welcome, mom.) The Neg is basically the pivotal tenet of the Mystery Method — right behind stupid hats — and suggests that women, especially beautiful women, have been hit on so many times that they automatically filter out compliments, so in order to woo her, you need to pooh-pooh her. The Neg can range from homicide inducing (“You wouldn’t think a girl with your figure would look so nice in a dress like that.”) to the subtle (“Huh, you’re not a lot of fun, are you?”). And, when properly applied, is supposed to coax any woman into desperately trying to prove just how wrong you are. With sexytimes.

The stuff men come up with, eh? Still, I’ve witnessed The Neg used with mortifying effectiveness on all kinds of smart, cool women, so why not give a few dudes a taste of their own medicine?

Neg the first: Late-twenties guy sitting on the stoop of my local convenience store, comforting a young girl whose giraffe rubber Silly Bandz bracelet has just snapped. He’s attempting to finesse the tiny bracelet into a delicate knot.

Usually I’d pass on hitting on stoop-dwellers — for some reason, almost none of them have read Camus, if you can believe it — but seeing a guy comfort a random child does something for a girl. As he futzed with the bracelet, I hovered and we made friendly eye contact. Everything was so positive. So of course it was time to throw The Neg.

“Hey, if you hold the broken ends to a lighter, you can probably fuse them back together.” He blinked up at me, non-plussed. “Don’t stress. You’re too cute to have to be clever.”

According to the Mystery Method, I should have been friggin’ in there like swimwear. Angsty glances! Flirtatious verbal sparring! Sexytimes? Instead, he rolled his eyes and I awkwardly shuffled away. But when I peeked back at him, he was indeed trying the lighter suggestion. So, uh, victory?

Neg the second: Since my first attempt felt less like flirtation and more like just plain rudeness, let the venerable ol’ Mystery script my first encounter. Stopped in alone to a neighborhood bar after work and grabbed a stool near a dude who was sitting alone, trying to read the head of his Sam Adams like tea leaves.

After I’d established goodwill with a little neutral chatting (weather! Sox!), I dropped the bomb with a neg line stolen directly from a Pick-Up Artist website.

“Dude, you want some gum?” I offered sweetly.
“Uh, no thanks. I’m drinking a beer,” he grunted.
“No, no really. You should probably take some gum.”

I’m sorry, in what parallel universe does this lead to make-outs? Dude turned away from me and suddenly became very invested in the Sox game. Which is probably just as well, since I don’t carry gum anyway.

(Accidental) Neg the third: On the way home, I toyed with the idea of staving off psychological debilitation long enough to try out a few more negs and, in that vein, jaunted to the convenience store to pick up a pack of non-phantom gum. The brah at the front of the line spent ten minutes mulling between Pall Malls and Parliaments, and in that time, I established standard mute-courtesy rapport with the attractive mid-twenties girl behind me.

After I rang up my pack of Orbit, I ripped off the cellophane to take a piece, then, since it was open, held out the pack to her. “Gum?”

She declined, politely, but I held her gaze for a moment too long afterwards and her face clouded with anxiety: “Do I need gum?”

Pause. Pause. I smirked, not unkindly. “Well, a little gum never hurts.”

Gave her the piece, walked out onto the street where — oh, I kid you not, my blessed kittens — two minutes later she shot out after me, physically stopped me, and proceeded to chat with me for nigh ten minutes about the neighborhood, laundry days, and how hard it is to make friends when you’re new in town. After the conversation had reached its natural end, she smiled at me — still chomping the gum — and said she hoped she’d see me around again.

The Verdict:  Holy frig, guys. Holy frig. I may have gotten shot down by two guys, but I PICKED UP A STRAIGHT WOMAN. Rejection be damned! Never before in my life have I felt more like a bro.

That said, maybe I was doing it wrong, or maybe I’m not the type, but I’m going to go ahead and veto The Neg for any future seduction attempts. While it’s devilishly effective on women, I’m not convinced the approach translates well across gender lines. After all, at least according to bar-hopping stereotypes, women are either wooed or ignored, and thus captivated by uncourted rejection; men, on the other hand, get rejected all the dang time, so it’s barely a blip on their radar.

Whether it’s gender differences or just the stupidity of the method, hey, The Neg, this is me rejecting you. (Though hopefully that’ll make you want to hook up with me. Call me?)

Now that the project is out of its madcap final days and I have a little time to breathe, let’s meet up and catch a dang drink, shall we?

Sunday, August 29th. 3-5pm. Regal Beagle in Brookline.

Yes, it’s Moving Day weekend, BUT! can I tempt you with the information that my friggin’ mother will be there?! Yeah, she’s basically the coolest lady in the world, and definitely funnier than me. I’ll be honest with you guys — I’m the one throwing the silly party and even I’m mostly going to be there to bask in her awesomeness.

Come say hey, grab a gin/basil martini and a bacon-wrapped date, and give me a friggin’ fistbump after a year of awesome.

Also, if you’re interested in coming, can you shoot me a comment so I can have enough of an idea in my head to try to strike up a drink deal with the management?

(And for those of you who might have speculated that I’m trying to avoid a big introspective wrap-up by filling my blog with short administrative posts now that the project’s over, all I can say is that i’m offended, affronted and, what, are you part super-sleuth or something?! While I’m enjoying some blogging rest this week, check me out at Secret Society of List Addicts for a list of completely insignificant things I’m weirdly good at.)