Dear Fellow Writers,
Do you ever come across bits and pieces of writings you've never finished that are just sitting on your hard-drive making you feel more and more guilty about their lack of completion? Here is something I found that doesn't really belong to anything. I was in a stand-up comedy class in my last semester of school and I think I was trying to turn this into a joke. But when I reread it, I came off like a Yankee or something. Not the ball team. This is a true story though. And no; I do not remember what I was drinking when I wrote this.
I’m incredibly self-absorbed. Whenever I’m walking I never look up or notice people waving to me or trying to say hi. Later they’ll tell me that they were waving and I have to tell them about how I really only care about myself and my thoughts. But I can’t always do this with everyone, especially the people I don’t know. I had this neighbor who was always strung out and high and he would have these random visitors in Beamers come to the apt complex to “chat” or something then leave after 20 minutes. Now I think I have this thing where I do not ever want to risk being considered racist, so I go over the top to be nice and cordial. This neighbor of mine happened to be a black man and whenever he walked by me he would say, “Hey neighbor.” I would not say anything back because I only care about myself. After a while of this going on, he stopped me one day while he was talking with one of his clients and said, “You’re mean!” “What?” “Yeah, you’re mean! You never say hi to me.” Well, I was really fucked because he caught me and I couldn’t tell him how self-absorbed I was because then I would just come off as white-absorbed. So I did what I thought brilliant. I made him carry up my dresser that I just bought. This was not a small dresser. He was a nice guy and kind of rotund, so I didn’t think carrying up the dresser would be that difficult for him. So I watched and drank my tea as he carried the dresser on his back. I thought it was a very polite gesture, on my part. It really made up for all those times I didn’t say hi back. When he was done, I told him good job. I thought I needed to compensate him, but not with money. Someone left an unopened pack of Malboros in my car so I ran down and gave them to him. He said, "No, look at my skin. What do you think I smoke?" I said, "I don’t know. Do black people not smoke cowboy cigarettes?" He said, "No we just always smoke Newports." I said, "Sorry I didn't know."
