Notes By My Bedside

Dear Lucas,

We’ve been spending a lot of time together lately and it’s been a wonderful ride, but I think we both know that our relationship is really just an empty substitution for what you’re lacking in your life.  You need to get out more.  You need to meet new people.  You need to help me help you make more satisfying connections with other people.  We’re friends, sure, but our friendship will be corrupted if we continue to lie to ourselves about why it is we’re friends.  Let’s be honest with each other.  We’re friends because we’re partners.  And my role in that partnership is to help make it easier for you to be with OTHER people; it is NOT to be the one to which you turn when you are alone.  I’ll always be there for you.  I’m always around to help.  And maybe the best way for me to help you now is to be the one to call out the elephant in the room.  For the sake of our friendship and, most importantly, the sake of your own sense of worth we need to take a break.

Sincerely,

Your half-emptied bottle of CVS-brand personal lubricant .

Dear Lucas,

Today is a historic day for many New Yorkers.  Today, gay men and women will awaken in cities all across the state beside the man or woman that they will spend the rest of their lives with.  Today, gay men and women will awaken in cities all across the state beside a man or woman that they could spend the rest of their lives with if they so chose.  Today, gay men and women will awaken beside a man or woman that they have absolute no desire to marry, let alone see again, but can finally have the legal right for that decision to matter.  Today, however, you will awaken alone.  Your iPod will be silent, having returned to its main menu after exhausting the Velvet Goldmine soundtrack you were listening to in some lame attempt to “connect” with your homosexuality.  You will be sprawled out with your legs all over the place.  A position known very well to the lovers who’ve shared beds with you and have gotten up in the middle of the night to move to the couch because you were kicking them in your sleep.  You will awaken normal.  This is sad to me, because only you could be this pathetic on such a great, momentous day.  And frankly, it makes me want to stop wasting energy on you.

Sincerely,

The electric fan that keeps you moderately cool at night.

Dear Lucas,

I would like to apologize for the wishy-washiness with which I’ve been in and out of your life recently. I know that you invited me to spend some quality time with you this week and I know that I told you I would.  I mean, let’s face it, we had a fucking blast on Saturday and I really thought I was going to stick around the entire week and we’d continue enjoying how much fun we have together, but I’m sorry that things didn’t work out as planned.  I got caught up in some stuff and needed to see some other people.  I know you were disappointed that I was only sort of there for you on Tuesday and was totally MIA Wednesday morning.  But let’s be honest, I came back Wednesday afternoon and things started looking up, right?  I promise that I will try harder in the future to be there for you more often and when I am around to stay around longer.  I will try my hardest not to be so damned wishy-washy with you.  In the meantime, I think it’s best for both of us if we can just enjoy the brief moments of time we do spend together.

Sincerely,

Personal Success.

Dear Lucas,

When you wake up this morning you’re going to check the statuses of your Facebook friends and realize that some people are having a lot more fun and exciting times than you are.  Knowing you as well as I do, you’re probably going to go into a hissy fit and start whining to your friends on G-chat about how things never seem to work out for you as much as you want them to and how you’re 27 years old and have no direction and still haven’t done this or that while people like Belushi and Spielberg were younger than you and already making their marks in entertainment.  First off, that was the 1970s, a time where fewer young people had access to pursue their dreams, and the ones who did have access were met with considerable amounts of success, not to mention, in the 1970s, being 20 was a whole lot “older” than it is now.  Second, all of the successful people you keep comparing yourself to started pursuing their goals before, during and right after college, while you didn’t start until FOUR YEARS after college.  These things take time.  And with the right amount of perseverance, hard work (which, don’t sell yourself out kiddo, you’re doing!) and the right amount of lucky breaks, you will wake up one morning in your mid-to-late-30s to a message from film and television executives, agents, and hot ass celebrities begging you to do this and that fun and exciting thing, rather than a message from a malignant tumorous growth slowly developing in your lower intestinal tract.

Love,

The malignant tumorous growth slowly developing in your lower intestinal tract.

Dear Lucas,

Please stop judging yourself according to the accomplishments of others. You are your own person on your own path. And everyone else doesn’t exist remember? You are alone in a solipsistic world and everyone else is a delusional abstract representing some repressed idea from childhood trauma. Remember when you died as a kid and thought you survived? You didn’t. You are dead now. This is the afterlife. So you really have nothing to worry about.

Sincerely,

Your neurotic coping mechanism.