Monday, February 2, 1998
Finding fun when you’re alone – an insider’s guide
COLUMN Sleep with the meter man and get high on vitamins and
aspirin
Once in a while you get a break from your tough life to just sit
back and smell the flowers. Unfortunately, that moment doesn’t
always come at a convenient time for the other people you know and
usually hang out with. So, for these situations, I have compiled a
list of things I like to do by myself after the work’s been
completed and everyone else has their own bag to deal with.
First off, watch the water meter on the side of your apartment.
Note the change in water pressure as various residents flush the
toilet or take a shower. If you have enough time on your hands, you
might even consider waiting around for the meter maid, or whatever
they call them, to come.
Though it may take months, the activity can prove quite fruitful
on the day the H2O dude arrives. You might get to know each other
and perhaps rendezvous in the bushes a while for a romantic
interlude. Men in uniform can often be their own aphrodisiac.
Cut the tags off of all of your clothing and white-out all of
the logos on your shirts and shoes in an anti-commercialism
reaction brought on by the advertising agencies involved in
bringing us this year’s Superbowl. I mean, who can forget that Nike
bought the football players their tights or that Sprint was behind
the coach’s headsets? Do you really want everyone to know that "Ben
Davis" made your work pants or that "Doc Martens" supplied you with
your boots? I think not.
Lament the fact that you can’t "drive out to California" and
leave your world behind because you already live here. But begin
highlighting interstate highway routes that will one day take you
to exciting places like New Orleans and Toledo.
Listen to the soundtrack from "Cats," the Broadway musical, and
weep. Not because that one cat gets carted off to be reborn again
but because you never really got the whole thing and now you’d feel
too lame going back to the show to see it again.
Make up a dance ensemble with your broom and mop. Not because
you have no one else to dance with, but because these are the only
two dancers that are truly compatible with your dance moves. Put on
your Strawberry Shortcake birthday album from the first grade and
go to town gettin’ funky.
Start drinking. A whole lot.
Then go to your neighbor’s front door, bang on it, and demand
that he or one of his roommates sleep with you. When he finally
submits to your aggressive charm, tell him you were only kidding
and begin to laugh. Point at him and say, "You thought I would have
had sex with you? Ha!"
Return to your apartment and read the phonebook and the
telephone directory. Call up strangers, use big words like
"proceletyze" and demand that they sleep with you. Whether they
agree or not, laugh at them and ask them why they would think that
you would want to sleep with them. Then use another big word, like
"deontology," and hang up.
Write a letter to Ani DiFranco in which you explain that you’re
a really good singer when you sing along to her songs in the shower
and that if she ever wanted to take a break from her road life,
you’d be available to fill in.
Pick the plaque off your teeth, compile it in a clump, microwave
it, chop it up, and sell it to your enemies as speed.
Watch your roommates play Nintendo. Apathetically stare as they
try for level five and come up short. Disregard the fact that they
just completed level seven. Take another drink and hope you pass
out soon.
Put your peanut butter in the fridge and wait until the
monosaturated fat condenses to polyunsaturated fat and chuckle like
a dirty rebel because you’re just so bad.
Sit all by yourself in your room and make-believe that everyone
in the living room is secretly discussing all of your flaws and
short-comings, slowly shredding you to a barren pulp. Then cuss
them out based entirely upon the paranoid world of your
imagination. Abruptly giggle and ask them if they’ve accepted Jesus
as their savior.
Walk to the street corner and call out bingo numbers to
passersby. Proclaim that the woman in the red shirt won last round,
due to what could be less than scrupulous activities, and proclaim
that the gentleman in the blue sneakers will be forced to pat her
down to prove her alleged guilt or uphold her less than probable
innocence.
Throw your own personal "Andy Warhol Party" where you pop as
many different colored pills within one hour that you can stomach.
Then just wait and see what happens.
Realize that the only pills you have lying around are Tylenol
and vitamins. Feel lame and appropriately pathetic. Then feel
really really healthy and oddly headache-free, even though you
didn’t know you had been suffering from cranial tension.
Do the Time Warp on the balcony for your neighbors’ delight.
Throw pebbles at the doors of your roommates as they study. When
they annoyedly open their door, shoot them an expressionless, dead
pan face. Wait until they close the door and begin the process
again. In reality, I never have much time to do any of these fun
"play by yourself" things because, as Gavin, my
pump-jockey-gas-station-summer-boyfriend once noted, "Life is
hell." But if I ever do find time between Daily Bruin stuff,
homework, and general social activities, you know that these grand
activities will be on the top of my list. Guaranteed.
Vanessa Vanderzanden