tesslynch:

Monday, September 3rd

Today I woke up early and it was bright and sunny out. Great, I thought, another beautiful day I’ll miss while at my horrible job. I got into my car and my favorite song was playing, but I’d missed the first thirty seconds. Just my luck, I complained to myself, now the whole song is ruined because I’ll just be thinking of those first thirty seconds and how great they probably were. OF COURSE. AGAIN. I got to work and my boss said “Hey David, great to see you today.” Total insincere jerk. Just like the rest of them. Does anybody read this stuff? I guess I’ll go make myself some porridge and pass out in front of the television. Sigh.

Tuesday, September 4th

I was born with a short attention span. I think this is the reason I have trouble making friends. I don’t like to listen to their stupid, pointless stories because my mind wanders. It’s not because I’m a narcissist, it’s a social disability. Hello? Why isn’t anybody liking these things yet?

Wednesday, September 5th

I love my dog so much. She’s one, but next year she’ll be two, and then in fifteen years she’ll be sixteen, and sometime after that she might die. I can’t look at her without resenting her for her stupid dog mortality. I’d happily sacrifice my own pointless life for hers, but nobody is giving me the option. I microwaved something today and it didn’t taste very good. I haven’t cleaned inside my ears in five days and nobody is offering to do it for me. What’s the point? Why don’t I have more followers on here? I guess it’s because everyone is prejudiced against people with social disabilities like mine. Ask me something in my ask box, for God’s sake. See if I care. Hello? Stupid assholes.

Thursday, September 6th

Why is the world such a rotten round thing of depression and suicide? I’m trying to watch “Homeland.” I don’t get it. Everybody gets everything but me. I have never laughed. I smiled once, but it was like this.

Friday, September 7th

Four followers. And all of them European. Why do I bother?

Saturday, September 8th

I quit blogging. Officially. Starting now. It’s for the narrow-minded.

Sunday, September 9th

My least favorite kind of person is everyone. Even Libertarians. And folks who remove their shoes. Especially women. Don’t ever take your shoes off, ladies, it’s foul.I chopped off my feet long ago. It really hurt. HOW DO YOU GET FOLLOWERS ON THIS THING?

Monday, September 10th

nefarious asked: How come you so grumpy?

I suppose you don’t suffer from a short attention span. I suppose everything in life comes easy to you. When I was young, I had the flu so bad that I coughed for fourteen days straight and had to miss a midterm. When I came back to class, one of my peers saw my nose run before I got a tissue and, though he didn’t say anything about it, we exchanged knowing glances for the next six months that were very traumatic for me to endure. The following year, he died. I envy him. He didn’t have to live knowing that everyone had seen his nose leaking. I would go into therapy about it, but I can’t afford therapy because I have to buy expensive coffee to help medicate my attention span. So thanks for your cruel question, nefarious. I suppose life is all peaches, cream and orgasms for you. You’ll probably stop following me now. Everybody else has. SIGH. It’s REALLY frustrating to be writing these things for people to enjoy and everybody is too ignorant to freaking enjoy them!! I HATE THAT!

Tuesday, September 11th

I can’t believe it’s September 11th again. I don’t know what depresses me more, terrorists or my lack of followers on here. Imagine how hard September 11th was for somebody born with a short attention span, and THEN try to complain about your own INSIGNIFICANT problems. Sorry, buddy. Head to the back of the line. I’ll be up here at the front, standing on my LEG STUBS and trying to FOCUS ON ONE THING FOR MORE THAN A SECOND. God, I wish it were tomorrow. Please let it be tomorrow!

Wednesday, September 12th

September 12th is the worst day ever, because it reminds me of the day after September 11th.

Thursday, September 13th

Today is Molly Lambert’s birthday. How do I get her to follow me on here? She’s just another “too popular” blogger with a “trust fund of friends.” Well, listen to this, Molly Lambert: enjoy having feet and no social disabilities. Why don’t you go ahead and use an ottoman and think about that for a minute or five? I can’t do either of those things. Well, I should probably go. I’m going to go in a second. And sign off forever. And probably disappear. If I’m lucky. Goodbye forever.

Friday, September 14th

Friday. As you can imagine, my calendar is booked up for the weekend with drudgery. Somebody asked me to have a beer with them, a “real friend” probably flaked. I would never flake on somebody, but I’m always playing second fiddle to the star violinists of the world. Among all the ukuleles and Casios and snare drums, I’m just the second fiddler on the composite roof, always sliding off because I can’t wear grippy shoes. I’m not going to get a beer with this person, obviously. I have better things to do, like stay at home and think about all of the things I hate. Does anybody read these? Probably not.

tesslynch:

[FOR REFERENCE]

It’s 2012 in Los Angeles, the desert of Fatburgers and termite tents. Of sushi, noodles, ooshie-gooshies and durmbling burbies — regular Twizzlers, strawberry Twizzlers, and the other kind of Twizzlers. And dizzlers. And fizzlers. The Lap Band Commercial is playing at Largo.Hey, mister, are you my cat?

Oh, hi Larry, you say, what time is it? 2:30? That sucks, nowhere is serving lunch. Oh, look. Now it’s 2:31.

And I’m sitting on a chair with no upholstery.

____

If you live in my neighborhood in Los Angeles, maybe you’ve seen me. I’m wearing sweatpants, or normal pants, and usually drinking something in a cup. If you went to high school with me, you’ve probably at least heard of me. I was raising my hand and saying, “Africa” or “I only got to chapter fourteen.” My name is Tess Lynch.

I’m the one with the clothes on and the hair on the head, who’s a sort of modern-day Anne Mulroney or Dubois de Habernet, in a t-shirt or a tank top or a sweater when it’s cold, a pen — inexplicably — nearby on a table in case I have to use it to write down a doodle or a letter to myself about what I need to buy, like Viva paper towels or a hat (roll your eyes, PLEASE). I’m all two- or four-eyes and human thighs, gagging down french fries and robot sighs, vibrating like a dog on a waterbed.

That’s me today with the hankie in my hand, blasting the “To Wong Foo” soundtrack from my eleven-pound boombox. Under the boombox is a gnat I killed because it was a daytime vampire miniature street urchin. I’m in front of you in line at the ice cream place, clutching a miniature plastic spoon dripping with pineapple sorbetto.

I notice you watching me, so I start to touch your heinie. You call the police. I am so fucking weird that way. I smell like the pineapple sorbetto because it got all over my rainbow overalls and three of my big toes, the 76 station on Beverly that I disappear into like a Mario Tunnel when I’m frightened of fumes, and tar paper. Weight report from Mars: five thousand tons and seven ounces, or nothing at all.

I’m cracking like a newborn rooster. Steal your chick at the mall, yeah we call that boostin’.

I stutter, “A-a-a-bra-bra-bra-bra-ca-ca-ca-dab-dab-dab-ra-ra-ra.”

Someone, I think the vice president, has written “PENI5” on my forehead.

What does that mean? I wonder. Genuinely confused, like, why put a five there?

Us Weekly arrives. I don’t subscribe. Time is a vibe.

I’m used to this stuff. Sometimes I get the neighbor’s mail.

“A-a-a-bra-bra-bra-ca-ca-ca,” I’m stuttering again. Someone puts a sock in my mouth. I pull it out and rummage through the sock: lint, Mexican crema, two ticket stubs to Disneyland.

“Who put this shit in this sock?”

“Ah, I love you Tess,” says the sock, and then explodes.

Is it my sock? You bet.

“DO NOT BELIEVE HER LIES,” I have written on my bathroom mirror in CVS Wet n’ Wild green lipstick from 1992, a good year for Wet n’ Wild.

Now it’s off to the mall to drink coke and slope popes. I’ve got a bathrobe from Bed, Bath and Beyond and bug bodies on my windowsills. My apartment smells like tapioca pudding, bedsores and carnitas. Then we all play Trivial Pursuit in snuggies, and eventually everyone goes to Catalina Island to play Monopoly. I pop a pizza into the oven, as well as brownies, a roasting chicken, four cakes and some popcorn (don’t you go do that. The chicken takes a long time and the popcorn becomes infected with chicken germs and the cakes taste like gravy).

I haven’t seen Prometheus yet, of course, but my tank top is from Forever XXI’s alien edition line. A famous clown college alum gave it to me when I first moved to LA. It has pancake makeup and laughs smudged all over it. I’ve just burped aloud, which I did alone, whatever.

My thumbs weigh as much as thumbs weigh. I put them on a scale to check.

I am cool beans, exercise machines, but I feel at ease. I ate some frozen peas. I did not defrost them. Which is so strange and so…unappetizing but people keep telling me to try it out or whatever because it’s like eating Dippin Dots for vegans. Why? It’s nothing like Dippin Dots and I am not vegan. And now I’m starting to cry — again — because I promised myself I’d finish all of these peas but they’re hurting my cavity and they taste like prison food that they serve in Antarctica to people who have committed felonies. God, remove the peas. I am pea-slushie weeping; these are green tears that have notes of ham and salad. Now I’m watching The Sorrow and the Pity projected onto my bathroom wall on MUTE while I PEE.

Eventually I start thinking, hey. Maybe I should lay off some of these drugs.

tesslynch:

Morris was watching Southland when he realized that a police siren was nearing his house. Immediately he panicked: so they knew.

He quickly changed clothes, stuffing his sweatpants into the overflowing hamper, then thinking to cover them with some of the stuff from the bottom, mostly sweatshirts, that smelled. That would put them off. He cleared the beer bottles, an open pack of “yumberry” flavored gummy bears, a supermarket sushi container with one funky piece of avocado roll, and a zillion paper towels off his coffee table. The sirens stopped. Car doors slammed. Morris turned out all of the lights, got into bed, and tried to moderate his breathing. There was a rap at the door.

Morris messed up his hair and pinched his nose hard. He turned on the hall light and affected a squint. He opened the door.

“Officers? Can I help you?”

Two officers, a man and a woman, stood on the porch. He noticed their nightsticks.

“We’ve got a report here of something fishy going on at this address,” explained the officer on the left.

“Just following protocol,” said the officer on the right. “Mind if we come in for a second?”

“Is that really necessary?” asked Morris. “I have a bad cold.”

“Just a few questions,” said the officer on the left.

“Fine,” said Morris. He coughed.

The officers came in. The man stood by the mantel and noticed the dust.

“Sir, where were you this evening?” asked the woman as she took a seat on the sofa. She removed a remote control from under her butt, looked at it with disgust, and put it on the coffee table. He hadn’t cleaned the coffee table in a while, he noticed.

“I was at home on account of my cold,” explained Morris. “I thought I might go out at one point, but the truth is I felt really lousy and the last thing I’d want is to infect people with my germs, when they might be elderly or pregnant.”

“Is that so?” asked the officer by the mantel. “Where were you thinking about going?”

“My good friend Cassidy had a party at her house,” said Morris. “It was her thirtieth birthday party.”

“Excuse me, you said ‘good friend’?” asked the officer on the couch. “And this was her ‘thirtieth birthday party’?”

“That’s right,” said Morris. “Pardon me, I need a tissue for my nose, because it’s running.”

“It doesn’t look like it’s running,” noticed the officer by the mantel.

“It’s stopped up too,” said Morris. He got a tissue from the bathroom and blew his nose noisily. He returned.

“So your ‘good friend’ Cassidy’s birthday was tonight,” mused the male officer. “But you were way too sick to go. That true?”

“At first I thought I’d go,” said Morris. “I RSVP’d a long time ago, and she kept emailing these follow-up reminder things and I’d say, wouldn’t miss it, so I felt as though I really should go. Because I’ve known her for a long time. And she went to my birthday last April, and she brought a bottle of wine. So I really wanted to go. And I actually put on clothes and shaved and everything, but then I realized, hey, this cold’s getting worse, if anything. I might even have a fever. This was around eight.”

“Did you take your temperature?” asked the officer on the couch.

“No, but I had that thing where I was sweating a lot. And I tried to take a lukewarm bath but then my head was swimming so I wondered, is it even safe to drive?”

“What time was this?” asked the officer by the mantel.

“Around…” Morris thought about it. “Around nine.”

“And what did you do then?”

“I got right into bed, turned off the lights, took half a dose of Nyquil — only half because I don’t like the hangover feeling — and went to bed. I texted Cassidy, ‘I’m so sorry to miss your birthday, but I’m sick and going right to bed.’”

The officer at the mantel produced a Breathalyzer. “One Nyquil, you said? Are you willing to blow into this?”

“This was hours ago,” explained Morris. “It’s worn off because I’m hydrating a lot on account of the congestion.”

The officer on the sofa removed her glasses and pinched the bridge of her nose. “I’m sorry, sir, but this just isn’t lining up. I have to ask you: there wasn’t any chance that you lied tonight, is there? That you weren’t actually sick, you just didn’t feel like attending the important birthday of this woman who you claim is a ‘good friend’?”

“No!” exclaimed Morris. “Obviously not! It was a party, and I love parties! I had going-out clothes on, but I took them off because I didn’t want to be patient zero!”

“Wow,” observed the officer at the mantel. “You seem upset.”

“Of course I’m upset. Look at what you’re implying!” Morris had begun to pace. He coughed while he paced. “I’m a great friend. I watched Cassidy’s cat over Thanksgiving, and he’s high maintenance. He has irritable bowel syndrome. She knows I’m a great friend. I was going to wear a pink polo shirt and my light jeans and loafers. I had everything on but the loafers. I just had to stop myself as I was going out the door because I basically couldn’t breathe from this illness I have. And I texted her as soon as I had decided. I texted her as courteously as possible and offered to take her to lunch another time. As soon as I’m better.”

The officer at the mantel was taking notes. “And just when do you think that will be?”

“I suggested next Thursday, because this feels like a thirty-six hour thing and I have engagements on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays.”

“I see,” replied the officer. “I’m sure you wouldn’t lie again, would you? You wouldn’t make firm plans for Thursday and then just not feel up to it, would you?”

“No! I promise I won’t do it again!”

“Aha!” said the officer on the sofa. “So you admit that you lied! You aren’t sick at all!” The officer picked up a piece of paper from the coffee table and flicked it with her fingernail. “Ralph’s? Sir? From nine-fifteen this evening?”

“I was looking for Vapo-Rub, but they didn’t have any!”

“So you bought sushi instead,” mused the officer. “Sushi and — what’s this? A six pack of dehydrating, bad-for-you-when-you’re-sick beer? DUVEL?”

“My grandmother’s remedy,” explained Morris. His face was hot. “She’s Belgian! Go ahead,” he whispered. “Write me the ticket. Write me the ticket and leave.”

The officer at the mantel let him off with a $250 fine and a compulsory apology to Cassidy and all of her friends.

“I don’t want LYING on my permanent record,” entreated Morris as he walked the officers to the door. “I don’t want everyone thinking I’m a flake and not hiring me for things or taking me on as a boyfriend.”

“You can go to liar’s school,” said the officer on the left, who had been on the right, “or flake’s school, which is online.”

Morris didn’t feel so well after the officers departed. He was dehydrated from the Duvel and had that thing in the back of his throat. He had learned a valuable lesson.

tesslynch:

My favorite fictional stalkers, over at Grantland.

tesslynch:

Hello, I’m an angry white yuppie who lives in the Silver Lake neighborhood of California. Recently it’s become nearly impossible for me to relax, due to the hardships I face every day. For instance, this afternoon I saw a young woman laden with bags of (I presume) disgusting vegan cuisine from Trader Joe’s trying to cross the street. In front of my sports utility vehicle, which had been trapped in the parking lot for over two minutes! And against the crosswalk! I rolled down my window and told her a thing or two, which made her cry, but I was not sure she’d learned her lesson, so I spat at her as I screeched away. Why do people think my time is so expendable? She’s lucky I didn’t run her down. I could have. I have a very good lawyer.

After turning out of the lot, I found myself behind a family of bicyclists with annoying little red flashing lights alerting me to the presence of their prehistoric two-wheelers. What’s that about? We live in a city. Roll down the windows of your Prius and enjoy the air that way, instead of slowing traffic. Exercise at the gym like the rest of the world. Do you think I have hours upon hours on a chilly Saturday to take in the sights as I roll down the street at 25 MPH? I’m a busy professional! I honked, which only spooked the family, and made one weedy adolescent take a spill onto the sidewalk. Luckily, this distracted the rest of the pack of idiots so I was able to save thirty seconds making my turn. But then, of course, more obstacles popped up like swarms of obnoxious fruit flies around my pristine margarita of a drive: here, a couple walking in aggravating happy ignorance with their scraggly Yorkshire terrier — I cannot tolerate those awful little dogs, so I threw litter in their faces as I passed; there, an insufficiently filled reservoir, ruining my view of what should be an abundance of water — can this city do nothing right?; and, finally, a little old lady pausing to take in the view at the top of the hill which is the site of my modern condominium. “Get out of my way!” I screamed. “Go somewhere else! This is my driveway! It isn’t your driveway! Go home to wherever you live, downtown or in some un-gentrified suburb!” She did not move, or take note of my yelling, which I knew probably meant she was deaf (the volume of my yell is very loud; I practice often). I gave her the finger and she feebly tottered away, after wasting another sixty seconds of my life.

When I arrived home, I unpacked my $14 ham sandwich to discover that they had only speckled the bread with like five capers. Five capers in a sandwich that really needs seven bites, at the very least. I threw it into the garbage where it belonged. I sat at a desk pretending to do work for that $14 and all I wanted was mouthfuls of capers. As if this day could get any more horrible, my espresso machine had not been cleaned by the maid in the manner I had explained to her upon her hiring, so when I went onto the veranda to enjoy the sunset, all I could taste was old froth residue, like a mouthful of dirty scum. Unforgivable. I phoned her cell and fired her, then called her names and insulted her mother. Of course, by this point the sun had dipped below the hills and I was left, with an empty stomach and hard heart, in the dark on a cold Adirondack chair. I thought about calling my sister Sally, but then I remembered that she was still sore at me for criticizing the placement of her hammock. I thought about calling my best friend Steven, but he wasn’t speaking at me due to the fact that I’d smashed a bottle of wine on his coffee table after he beat me at Scrabble in late 2010. I called my lawyer and shot the breeze for a while, asking after his daughter and pretending to give a damn about where she was going to college.

“UCLA,” responded my lawyer.

“Fuck the Bruins!” I yelled, because I hate the Bruins, and because my lawyer was unlikely to hang up on me, as he charges by the minute.

“We’re very happy for her,” my lawyer continued. “She wants to be a dancer.”

“That’s horrible,” I said truthfully, “You’ll never recoup your financial investment in her. She’ll probably grow up to wear palazzo pants and weave dreamcatchers in the desert.”

“I’m just about ready to fix dinner,” said my lawyer. “Was there anything else you wanted to discuss?”

I went through the list of people against whom I’ve been considering filing lawsuits, which took another ten minutes, and then let him go to tend to his stir fry. The rest of the evening stretched out before me like the big, bleak, vast San Fernando Valley. I’ve never been there (who has?), but I know it’s large and stretches out pretty far, because I looked at it once from a friend’s mansion on Mulholland before I realized I was far better than that, and stared back into my martini glass instead. Why was there no one left to call? Perhaps it was because I am such a busy professional that my lifestyle is intimidating to others, who seethe in jealousy when they hear about all of the $14 ham sandwiches I have eaten, and how nice my veranda is. Nobody will ever understand how difficult my life is. It is a burden I will carry with me forever, and very few people will ever be lucky enough to understand.

You’re going to have to pay me if you keep quoting my diary, Tess.