Just pull the trigger, Meg.

YEP. The release party for our first book, The Misanthrope's Guide to Life, is officially on the calendar! And it's equal parts terrifying, exciting, stressful, and erotic. Well, mostly terrifying and erotic. I've been BM-ing like a champ, though, so when God closes a door...

To reiterate what our jaunty little flier says, we're having a release party/book signing/book reading/poetry slam/key party/just kidding/but maybe not?/I don't know/the night is young and I can't get HPV/so there's that on Thursday, September 22nd at my beloved Big Hunt in Dupont Circle. The hilarious Tim Miller will emcee and Chris and I will be signing books, shaking hands, kissing babies, and stress vomiting into our purses from 7:30-11:30pm. (The good stuff starts at 8:15, so be on time.) (Please.) The bar will have $3 Bad Ass Amber, Big Ass Wheat, Light Ass, and Hipster Ass (aka PBR). (I 100% stole that PBR joke from Big Hunt general manager Dave Coleman.) (Dave also wrote 60% of the book and designed the cover art.) The first ten people to show up will also get a FREE gift compliments of Adams Media. I mean, what more could you want? To meet my parents? Oh, they'll be there. A copy of the book? Hop on Amazon and buy yours today!

I just really think you should come. I don't know if this helps, but pretty much every single person I know hooked up at our last party. It's an exciting precedent. Well, I didn't hook up. I got dumped, drank too much, and passed out fully clothed next to Co-Blogger Chris and his tighty whitties on a particularly uncomfortable corner of my bed. True fucking story. So I say this year, everyone I know gets laid, I step on a nail, have to get a Tetanus shot, and end my night giving Tulane Chris a fleet enema in the alley behind my apartment. YEAH?!?!11 Yeah. Good. It's a date.

So as I've obnoxiously hinted to on Twitter without offering any clarification whatsoever, Chris and I have been hired to write a third book for Adams Media. Theoretically it's a humor book about the butterfly effect, but mostly we just talk about ghosts and titties. We're hustling to get it done before the September 18th deadline (may God have mercy on our souls), which means that we have less than two weeks to throw a party, promote a book, write a book, stop being so fucking fat, and not mess everything up in the process. While this would be hard enough for two adults, it's especially hard for us because all signs point to the fact that we are somehow 16-years-old.

We wrote the first two books in Chris's apartment in Philadelphia, but we've decided to write this one holed up in my parent's basement in Maryland. As we were listening to the early 00's pop-rock compilation CD "Buzz Cuts" today en route to get ice cream, Red Bull, and candy before our 4:45 curfew, Chris took stock of our situation and we realized that we've essentially regressed back to early high school:

- We spend a good portion of every day listening to the ICP and waiting for our Ritalin to kick in

- My mom gave us her bank card to go to the Giant

- We totally lied to my parent's about where we took their car the other day. (I'd like to say we went out to huff Windex and give each other hand jobs, but we just really wanted soft-serve and were too embarrassed to tell my parents because we just ate lunch.)

- My mom gave us $20 to order a pizza tonight because she and my dad were going out

- We had to haul ass to get the Jeep home by 4:45 today because my parent's needed it and I'm not allowed to drive the Lexus

- We keep sneaking out at night. (To take long walks and clear our minds, but, still.) (And yes, you need to occasionally clear your mind when writing an anthology of ghost/tittie/pube jokes. An art form is an art form is an art form, thank you.)

- We laugh a lot at each other's farts, if I'm going to be perfectly honest.

- We talk about how dreamy Jeremy Piven is. A lot.

So there we are. And here we'll be. In my parent's basement, eating Necco Wafers, listening to ICP and writing a humor book. It's not the worst E! True Hollywood Story every told, but it's pretty damn close. (God bless you, Family Affair: The Anissa Jones Story.)

Can't wait to see you on the 22nd!!!!1!

Charlie Brown's Statutory Thanksgiving

Although Fall is always a very nostalgic time for me, this Fall in particular has made me incredibly nostalgic for college. Everything these days reminds me of it. The change of the seasons; the smell of the cold; cozy sweaters and Ugg boots; vomitting Goldschläger and wondering how many papayas in Zimbabwe those real gold flakes dancing around my toilet bowl could buy—it all just puts a little lump in my throat and makes me wish I could go back and do it all over again. Which is kind of odd, considering I spent a good 60% of my college experience hating life and wishing it was over and done with. But now that I've been out of school for three years and the Quarter-Life Crisis' claws have a vice-like grip around my life, I can't help but think, it wasn't that bad...was it?


I have a very complicated love/hate relationship with my alma mater. On one hand, I never actually wanted to go there in the first place. AU was my safety school and I guess nobody's really like, "HURRAY!!! WE'RE GOING WITH PLAN C!!!!" On the other hand, once I actually got there, I slowly realized that most of my new friends were smarter than me and it felt like maybe I should pipe down, feel lucky to be there, pick up a book and learn some shit. But then again, the giant bureaucratic circle jerk that is the AU administration made my life hell, and I loathed the average AU kid; or "WONKS", as I believe they're called now. (We just called them "ASSHOLES" in my day, but those were simpler times, weren't they?) But on the other hand, I met most of my favorite people at AU. Alex, Helena, Laura, both Andrews, Ex Co-Blogger Eddie, Ashleigh, Lara, College Roommate Danielle, Rachel, Dan, Jenna, Carl—all AU Eagles. But do I feel like I got an education there that I couldn't have gotten for significantly less money at UMD? Not really. See? I waver. But god forbid I hear someone talk shit about AU or I'm all up in their face with more glowing statistics about our academics and rankings than an admissions counseler on crack.


A few months ago (I think?) I was at a party or something talking with some friends of a friend (I know this intro sounds incredibly vague, but then again I don't remember an entire week of October. During these trying times, you're just going to have to bear with me,) and one of them asked me where I went to school. "Oh, I went to AU," I replied. Two of the girls instantly turned to each other and burst into laughter.


"Sorry, we don't mean to laugh, it's just we have this inside joke with our friends that AU is a fake school." That's when I gave her a look that clearly conveyed, "I have a liver full of three glasses of Robert Mandovi and a hot Irish temper—shall we dance?" and the other started to back-peddle.


"Well, I mean, we know it's a real school. It's just we used to drive by it on Mass every morning on our way to work and we never saw anybody walking around there. So we had this joke that nobody actually went there and it was like just some big conspiracy or something."


Now, from the amount of shit I talk about AU on a daily basis, you'd think I'd be like, "Ha ha, yeah, well, it might as well have been a fake school from the education I got," or something, but instead I freaked out all, "OH, I'M SORRY, BUT WE DON'T GO TO CLASS IN THE MIDDLE OF MASSACHUSETTES AVENUE LIKE A PACK OF WILD STREET URCHINS ROAMING THE CITY, PICKING UP BITS OF KNOWLEDGE AND HOT DOG SCRAPS WHEREVER WE CAN—WE HAVE AN INTIMATE CAMPUS TUCKED AWAY FROM PRYING EYES. THAT'S RIGHT, A CAMPUS IN THE CITY. IT'S THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS. AND IT'S A GORGEOUS CAMPUS, BY THE WAY. OUR FRIEDHEIM QUAD WAS DESIGNED BY FREDERICK LAW OLMSTEAD, DESIGNER OF A LITTLE SOMETHING CALLED CENTRAL PARK. EVER HEARD OF IT? YEAH. THOUGHT SO. EVER HEARD OF JUDGE JUDY OR GOLDIE HAWN? YEAH, TOKEN ALMUNAE. NO BIG DEAL. SO I RECCOMEND YOU SPEND LESS TIME MAKING INSIDE JOKES AND MORE TIME TRYING NOT TO SUCK MY DICK SO HARD."


And then six hours later and I was back to making "the Harvard of Spring Valley" jokes. 


But there's one aspect of AU that I have never, and will never waver on: the food. (Slightly predictable, I know.) The food at AU is delicious, and it certainly made those four years more do-able. I remember when I was a senior in high school looking through Princeton Review books, the little "at-a-glance" survey for AU was always like:

Campus Life

Liquor is popular

  Drugs are popular

       Most students smoke

                 Most students are unhappy

                                                  The food is amazing. But like, stupid amazing.

And that's when I said, "Sign this girl up."

Helena was over one night a few months ago and we started talking about how much we missed college and how our sophomore year was the best year ever, and we miss the food and OH MAN—REMEMBER TDR THANSKGIVING??!!

TDR Thankgiving was the pinnacle of our year. (Or my year, at least.) Every year, the week before Thanksgiving break, TDR (or, the Terrace Dining Room, if you will. Basements are called "terraces" at AU. It's kind of like how White Town calls being unsigned, being "an independently financed band." It just sounds more dignified. American University—polishing that turd since 1893.) holds a big, delicious Thanksgiving dinner and it was always the best day of TDR food evz. Suddenly Helena and I had hatched a plan to figure out the date of this year's TDR Thanksgiving; find a freshman who'd obviously have a shit ton of meal blocks leftover because when you're a freshman, your parents are like, "GET THE 5,000 BLOCK MEAL PLAN! MY BABY WILL NOT GO WITHOUT!" and then the next year they wise up and send you off with a pack of Luna bars and their best wishes; get them to swipe us in; and FEAST  slash relive some of our old college glory days. It was an amazing plan. But where to find that freshman...?

And that's when fate came a-knockin' on my door. Or blog, as it were.

And Bingo was his name-o. Well, Meaghan, actually. AND GOD BLESS HER HEART. Because last night she and her friends swiped me, Helena, Laura and Andrew of the Great Juno Debate into TDR Thanksgiving and then into our old dorm to let us wander around and reminisce. And the results were...mixed.

First and foremost, homegirl and her friends were friggin' adorable. I should really meet up with readers more often because I never don't like them. Although it did freak me out that they were all class of '14. '14! What's even the point of going to college at that point? We'll all be dead by then. But, really. Adorable. She took a picture with me to send to her mom. I mean, really.

Second and secondmost, TDR Thanksgiving did not dissapoint. Being in TDR felt like being home again, and I mean that in the least morbidly obese way possible. It's just whereas the rest of our newly renovated Mary Graydon Center now looks like a discarded set from a "Saved By the Bell" episode heavily centered at The Max, TDR looks exactly the same. And there's something oddly comforting about that. Come, take a walk down memory lane with me:

The old Salad Bar! This takes me back to four years of meals spent with Ex Co-Blogger Eddie being like, "Did you know that colleges wash their lettuce in sugar water so that the girls with eating disorders who only eat lettuce get some amount of sugar?" And me being like, "That's the biggest crock of shit I've ever heard. Because if that were true, how could diabetic students eat salad?" And her being like, "No, it's true." ...I don't really know why I told that story, except to point out one more time that I think I'm right.

The old Comfort Zone.

Truly the finest zone of them all.

This image is pretty much all I think of when I think of TDR. That queer little bin full of chicken and the vat of queso and hot dogs. 

And the french fry station and how the quality of my day was dicated by whether or not they had curly fries. This, clearly, was destined to be a poor night.

TURKEY CARVING STATION!!!1

That, again, has nothing to do with TDR. That's a picture of my freshman year Understanding Mass Comm professor, Daryl Hayes. His class came up in dinner conversation and I remembered what a huge crush I had on him. He had this absurdly soothing voice and he was always flicking the front part of his hair away with this graceful little -swoop!- and it was hypnotizing. He was also brutally honest that he was never going to remember all of our names, so on the first day of class, he took a picture of each of us holding a sign with our name on it in front of our chests. Just think, he has that picture somewhere...

Which is why I don't feel awkward that he's now my phone's screensaver.

So, yes. Dinner was magical, the reminiscing was magical, but then we made the mistake of asking if we could tag along and come back to the dorm with them. And eesh. Shit crossed over from, "OH HA HA REMEMBER WHEN?" to being curled up in the fetal position, weeping, and harrassing young students as they tried to study and/or go to bed.

Before I go into this, I just need to express what a poignant year of my life sophomore year, living on the second floor of Hughes Hall was. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. That year, by the fate of the Housing and Dining gods, a motley crew of 40 of the most random, off-beat, and fun people you'll ever meet were gathered together to live on the same floor and the results were, in my mind at least, epic. I would love to write a short story about said experience and the characters involved. Maybe I will. Good. Done. Goals.

Anyway, because I associate Hughes Hall with all of these powerful memories and because I hadn't been there there since moving out, being back there last night was an incredibly bizarre experience. Like the smell of it. It smelled like all of these random, yet oddly specific moments that weren't necessarily important to me, but are clearly still floating around my subconscious. I can only imagine what Meaghan and her friends thought of the four of us, barging our way into their dorm, wandering around, frantically sniffing the air and alternating between shouting, "THIS IS WEIRD," "I'M NERVOUS," and "DO YOU MIND IF WE GO SMELL THE FORMAL LOUNGE?!"

After we thoroughly sniffed out the lobby, we went upstairs and Meaghan showed us her dorm room, which is when Andrew got sufficiently spooked and bailed. Laura, Helena and I, however, wanted to press on and go downstairs and revisit the old second floor. To me, this seemed like a completely reasonable thing to want to do, but apparently to a bunch of 18-year-olds, it's kind of "weird" when three 25-year-old women come up to your place of residence at 10 o'clock on a Wednesday night to wander around all, "NO, IT'S COOL, WE LIVED HERE IN 2004!!!" 

Although, we did run into one kid who was actually pretty cool about us being there. (AN single kid.) He gave us the skinny on the floor's 2010 shenanigans and was even up for listening to us talk about how it was in our day, even if it was just because he didn't want to do his business homework. Although I did appreciate this conversation:

Kid: So where do you guys live now?

Me: I live in Dupont.

Laura: Cleaveland Park.

Kid: Oh, wow, that's cool!

Laura: Yeah. We moved slightly further down the red line. It is really...cool.

Things could have ended there and I suppose it would have been fine, but I got it in my head that I really wanted to see inside my old dorm room. (Remember: so much happened there.) In my head, this is how it would go: I'd go down to my old room, the door would be open, two kids would be listening to music and browsing the 'nets, I'd be all, "Knock, knock. Hi, I used to live here back in the day. Just thought I'd shoot down and take a gander." "Oh, that's cool." "Welp, thanks!" "Later." But of course, nothing in my life is ever that easy.

First, our new Hughes Deuce ambassador advised me that given who lives in my room now, he didn't think it would be a great idea if I asked if I could go in and see it. And look, I liked this kid. I trusted him. I was willing to abandon my dreams and let that be that. But then suddenly, a kid who looked pretty much like The Bee Keeper from Wet Hot American Summer, if he took a shower, walked off the elevator and into the lounge, and my new friend nodded in his direction and gave me a, "That's him!" look. Ok. Point taken. He looked sufficiently weirded out that we were even standing in the hall, nevertheless trying to get into his room. But I was still undecided. I asked Laura what I should do—"Let it go." I turned to Helena—"I say do it." Damn.

Suddenly, The Bee Keeper walked out of the lounge and started heading for the stairwell. My chance to see my old room was about to slip out of my hands. And that's when one of Meaghan's friends we went to dinner with, Alyssa, walked onto the floor and said hi to The Bee Keeper. WE HAD A MUTUAL FRIEND! Now it wouldn't be weird if I asked him if I could see his room! But he was about to leave—time was of the essence.

Thus, feeling the pressure, I lunged towards him and shouted, "CAN I SEE YOUR ROOM!??!?!"

OK, that wasn't quite the way I had originally planned on asking, yes, but the moment was slipping away from me and I had a goal. You would have done the same. DON'T JUDGE ME.

That being said, he looked at me like I had just asked if I could check him for ticks.

"Uh...you want to see my room?"

"Yeah. I used to live there and we're back tonight and I just was wondering if I could see it for old time's sake?"

After some cajoling, he begrudgingly agreed to take me down and show me the room. We walked down and he opened the door wide enough so I could see in, but not quite wide enough so that I'd feel invited to physically enter.

"Well, this is it," he said. 

"YES. IT. IS." A flood of memories, some good, some bad, came back to me. That year man. That fucking year. I was a bit caught up in my emotions while simultaneously trying to carry on a conversation with this kid who obviously didn't trust me or what I was doing there, and as we all know, multi-tasking is not one of my strong suites.

"So, which side of the room is yours?" I asked, somewhat absentmindedly.

"Uh, that one," he said, awkwardly nodding towards the far side of the room.

"That was my side of the room too!" I said. My eyes went up to the curtains and I imagined the star-shaped twinkle lights my roommate had put up hanging over them. My gaze wandered to the wall where I hung all of my pictures, down to the heater, and stopped at the bed. I imagined my navy sheets and the white and navy toile duvet cover I bought at Ikea the summer before on the bed where his blue rumpled sheets were currently wadded up in a ball.

"Yep, I used to sleep in that bed," I said. Except I didn't really say it like that. And he didn't know that I was thinking about my navy sheets and toile duvet cover when I said it. And when I feel awkward but am trying not to be, sometimes the tone of my voice auto-pilots onto: FLiRt! mode. So it came out sounding a little bit more like this:

"AHHH. Yyyyyep. I used to sleep...in that bed. Wiiiiink!" The Bee Keeper immediately backed into the hall, forcing me out of the doorway, and slammed the door.

"NOPE. NOPE. THIS IS TOO WEIRD. THAT'S ENOUGH. THAT'S BEEN ENOUGH FOR ONE NIGHT. YOU SAW IT, YOU CAN GO NOW." 

"No, wait! I didn't mean it like that!" I yelled after him, as my friends, Meaghan, Meaghan's friends and our newfound Hughes Deuce friend stood there laughing at me. "Well, thank you for letting me see your room!" The door to the stairwell slammed.

I think our original plan was to stick around and have a drink with the girls, but after that I just felt insanely creepy and wanted to get the hell out of there as fast as I could. A line had been crossed. Well, I think a few lines had been crossed (some by accident) but it was definitely time to go. 

We said our goodbyes to our new AU friends and ran across the street just in time to catch the shuttle bus. As we rode to the metro, I got more and more fired up about what happened with The Bee Keeper. I mean, first of all, I was obviously not trying to pull anything with that kid. And if I were to pull anything with anyone, it would have been with that Hughes Deuce kid because he wasn't horrible on the eyes and seemed to have a considerably more open mind. Second, you should be so lucky that I physically come to your person, ask you to take me to your room and pull something with you. My ex-gentleman friend from New York texted me, "text me something raunchy" last night, and I didn't solely based on the fact that I couldn't reach my phone without raising my torso and I was watching Netflix. YOU. SHOULD. BE. SO. LUCKY. Third, just be cool about shit, kid. That situation would have been infinitely less awkward had you not been so awkward about it in the first place. I wasn't asking to give you a colonoscopy with my beak; I just wanted to see my old room. React accordingly.

When we got to the metro and it was time to say goodbye to Laura and Helena, I was livid. "I MEAN, I'M NOT CREEPY, AM I?" I asked them.

Laura responded first, "I mean, I don't think you are, but then again I've fallen asleep with you before."

I don't know why, but that statement completely hit the spot. I think it's because it's just such an ass-backwards way of saying, "I don't think you're creepy, but then again we're friends." Oh, Laura.

I think all in all what I've learned is that although it was fun and meaningful at the time, it's probably a good thing that we're not in college anymore. Procuring the money to buy alcohol is hard enough, nevertheless having to go that extra step and hide it. Not to mention the actual work involved in going to school, which is an aspect I always forget about. I mean, nowadays when I have a hard day at work, it's generally because "Night Court" isn't available on Instant Watch, Subway doesn't deliver and I lost a few Twitter followers. Can you imagine if a group meeting was somewhere in that mix?? Although my (unemployed) lifestyle may suggest otherwise, adulthood can be pretty cool. 

Plus, those college guys are fuckin' prudes.

Ooof. This is a lot for a Tuesday Morning.

Hi-oh. Results from yesterday's K. Griff giveaway will be up later today, because I posted late yesterday and I want to make sure you fine people get a fair 24-hour window of opportunity to enter. And because it's currently 3 o'clock in the morning and my highly scientific way of picking a winner this week involves calling Dan and asking him to pick a number between 1 and 200, and he might deactivate our friendship if I call and wake him up right now all, "HEY BUDDY!!!! PICK A NUMBER, HUH?!!?" So I'll let him slumber and have his sweet Kathy Griffin dreams while I give you guys some half-assed advice. Because it's Queer Abby time, baby! A day late, yes, but much like your period, better a day late than never. AM RIGHT, LADIES?! AM I RIGHT?!?! Haha ohhhhhhh, I don't have sex and we both know it. Tears. Tears of a clown.

Queer Abby,

In 2006, I was working full-time in San Francisco at a start up company, and nannying part-time for my bosses daughter part-time. I’ve since moved back to the East Coast and have loosely kept in touch with my old boss and her, now 10-year-old, daughter via random emails. She’s a pretty influential lady who could definitely help me with jobs and recommendations down the line, so I'd like to stay on her good side, but she can be fairly manipulative and she takes advantage of people, especially in terms of pushing her kids off on others. For example, last summer they planned to come for a long weekend to see me and stay with a friend in Great Falls, but it turned into me taking the daughter all over the city while her mother lounged poolside with her friend. A day of sightseeing turned into a sleep over and all day the next day as well, cooking various meals, going out to dinner, etc.... As soon as I knew it I had babysat for a full 48 hours and the mother had a lovely vacation - all under the pretense of "WE are coming to see you!"

I got over it, moved on etc. until just recently when she wrote saying they wanted to come to town again in late August. I responded immediately, clearly and in the nicest way possible, to explain that I would be in the middle of moving and that Sunday was the only day I'd be in town and off work for 2 weeks, but I'd save some time to see the daughter. I said I'd come TO THEM, because my place will be in an uproar. She responded to me via email, “[My daughter] wants to spend maximum time with you and I am sure will "help" you with packing and moving. We'll figure it out. Perhaps I can have my friend's driver bring her to you for the day and you can come back with her for dinner and swimming toward evening?" I haven’t responded to her... I do not want her child hanging around all day with nothing to do but stare at a room full of boxes. She constantly complained and hated doing fun things like museums and boating last time, so this pretty much guarantees a day of complaining and misery on her part while I try to pack.

I know its just a day, but the fact that she’s once again planning on using me as a free form of babysitting so she can have a nice, quiet, kid-free weekend while I’m in the throngs of moving in the dead august heat REALLY PISSES ME OFF. If she'd at least just drop the bullshit and be honest with me about her motives that would be different. And dammit, I just want to be heard and respected by this woman. So, how do I get the point across (to someone who clearly is determined to have me entertain her kid), that I will not be having her daughter over to my apartment all day, without upsetting anyone? And, am I totally over reacting, and being a giant bitchy brat? Do I need to stand my ground, or suck it up and shut up?

Help!

Your frustration is warranted—she sucks. Definitely stand you’re ground. She’s being entirely manipulative and self-centered (at both your expense and her daughter’s), and she’ll continue to take advantage of you as long as she knows she can. So, don’t be this woman’s doormat just because one day you might need her to help you out with something. There’s no guarantee you’ll ever need to call in that favor, and if you do, there’s no guarantee she’ll be willing and able to deliver. And even if she could, that doesn’t give her license to treat you like shit and insist you do things for her instead of asking.

Write her back and say, “Yea I understand that, and that’s why I wish it was a better weekend for me, but I just don’t think that’ll work this time. I have friends and family helping me move things all day Sunday and I’ll be in and out, so I wouldn’t be able to watch her. Not to mention, I’d hate for her to have spend her vacation (and a hot August day) in an apartment that probably won’t have power or AC, especially since I won’t be able to entertain her at all. All the same, I’d like to see you guys so I’m sure I can take a break to come see you that evening...” And if she still pushes the subject, just don’t respond. Until she’s shown that what you say matters to her at all, there’s no point in saying anything else to her.

I don’t care how much influence someone has, you shouldn’t make a practice of letting people treat you poorly. While sometimes you do have to suck it up and pander to people even though they’re assholes, you should know exactly what you’re looking to get out of it so you can determine whether or not it’s worth it. If that person is uniquely able to provide exactly the opportunities you’re looking for, that’s one thing. But, otherwise, there are plenty of influential people out there; preserve relationships with the ones who respect you, your time and what you have to say. They’re far more likely to help you out in the end anyway.

HAHAHAHA. Wow. That woman has a pair of testicles on her bigger than my breasts. (There. That was to appease yesterday's comment from "Greater Than Stan" asking for less diarrhea talk and more book talk. And you're welcome, sir.) This question has got me all kinds of fired up for reasons that I will gladly share with you now:

1.) I can't stop imagining this woman as Boss #1, who was neither influential nor powerful, but was an asshole.

2.) This woman is clearly rich and I clearly do soft-shoe in Metro Center twice a week to afford my Netflix account.

3.) I hate children. 10-years-old? Foul. Keep the run-off from your sloppy life decisions to yourself, lady.

4.) A driver is involved. Where are we, Kuwait?

5.) As if the concept of nannying isn't vile enough, she wants you to do it for free? And while moving?! ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?! Unless this woman is Anna Wintour and she's agreed to lick you out and give you a sterling recommendation at your next job, I say FUCK. THAT. NOISE. Because there's kissing ass, and there's getting fucked in the ass. You, friend, are currently experiencing the latter. And hurts, don't it?

What I need you to do is watch episode 7 of Kell On Earth entitled "Tough Times" immediately and take notes when Kelly breaks it down for you why she doesn't give free advice anymore to anyone, not even her closest friends (George Wayne. Asshole.) Then I need you to stop washing your hair for a week, put on a caftan, ikat table cloth, and/or oversized white Hanes Her Way t-shirt and leggin's, CHANNEL THE CUTRONE and tell this woman that she can keep her blueberry-pancake-covered nightmare to herself. You need someone to help you move who can carry more than 10 pounds and menstruates, thanks just the same. Or what Amy said. Depending on how badly you still want that recommendation.

Dear Queer Abby,

So, basically, today I found out that my great uncle is a pedophile. I'm a well-endowed-in-more-areas-than-I-should-be sixteen year old, so it wasn't anything to do with direct experience, or my little sister (thank god). It's due to several incidents with his grandchildren--my cousins--two boys age three and four. He didn't hurt them, but he was touching them in an overtly sexual way, and god knows where that will lead.

It's basically torn my aunt and her husband apart. When he confronted her about possible danger to their sons, she started on the defensive, acting as if it was all his imagination and there was no danger whatsoever (which was bullshit, I saw what he was doing. It's was at Johann's birthday party, for fuck's sake).

This is screaming, raging defensive I'm talking about here, and it got to the point where it was blatantly obvious that she'd had bad experiences with her father as a child. So now my uncle-in-law is being torn apart, she's gone into trauma and has started bitching about him with her best friend, and nothing is happening for the kid's safety. Nothing. They get left at their grandfather's house while their dad's at work and their mum's having coffee with her friends.

Now, while I know that I should just "let the responsible adults sort it out," I love my cousins. And the adults aren't exactly being responsible. So my question boils down to I don't know what to do. I'm one of very few people who knows about this, I'm too young to be taken seriously, and I don't know who to talk to. This is not the way shit is supposed to happen.

Sincerely,

J.M

Dear J.M.,

Where are your parents in all of this? I hate saying this (please take it in context) but you are too young to deal with this by yourself. No one your age should ever be (or even feel) responsible for handling a situation like this. So, if you want to be taken seriously, you have to approach this with honesty and the maturity to know you need to recruit help.

First, you should document it. Write a letter that includes the following:

· A description of what you saw (try to leave your anger and your judgment out of it).

· An honest account of how uncomfortable what you saw, and the situation you’re in now, made/makes you feel.

· Thoughtful suggestions about what you think should happen about it (without making it sound like an ultimatum). For example, the kids need to not be left alone with him, other relatives with kids need to be notified of the situation, someone needs to talk to/report your great uncle, etc… whatever you would like to see happen.

Then you need to give the letter to your parents or some other adult you trust in the family. They should step in—even if they don’t think your aunt and uncle’s situation is any of their business, they should recognize that the way you feel is. I suspect they’re going to appreciate that you brought this to them, and they should reinforce that behavior by taking you seriously and doing something about it. If this really isn’t an option, or nothing happens as a result, write me again and we’ll go from there.

Honestly though, you’re only responsibility here is to tell someone about the problem; it’s not to fix it. Ultimately, the father should be taking care of it, regardless of how the mother responds. And it’s possible that if he feels validated by either you or someone else in the family, he’ll take more definitive action.

Yowzers. Becca happened to be over when I read this week's Queer Abby questions and she had to explain to me how you're related to all of these people like 19 times in a row. Seriously. I feel like I just took a test for Autism. I asked her to walk me through your email and substitute our family members for yours (so I could put ourselves in your shoes,) but coming from the world's most microscopic family, we ran out of family members like 5 seconds in and she had to start bringing dead pets and fictional family members into the mix and suddenly it was like, "OK, Fictional Great Uncle Gary is molesting Evie. Nope. Nope, this is not working," and we gave up.

But despite having failed our little Autism test (or passed, depending which way you look at it,) we do have advice—step 1: tell your parents. Because you should give them the opportunity to handle this situation correctly before you bring in outside help.

Which leads us to step 2: tell a guidance counselor or a teacher you trust immediately. Every single member of your family is biased in this situation one way or the other because they know your Great Uncle and have already made up their minds about him. Whether they've always thought he was kind of creepy or could never imagine him doing something like that—they've got an opinion and it's going to cloud their judgement and make it hard for them to see or accept the truth. You need to bring in a non-objective third party who doesn't have any emotional attachment to this situation or the people in it and who's only concern is figuring out what's going on and removing anyone who might be in danger from it. And there are people who's job it is do just that. This is not your job; it's theirs. It's literally what they get paid to do every single day. You turn it over to them and they'll know how to handle it from A-Z. It will have serious consequences yes, but hopefully, you'll save your cousins from a lifetime of unthinkable pain and suffering. Because to quote my sage of a sister, "Child Molestation: shit fucks you up." Truer words were never spoken, madam. Truer words were never spoken.

I'm not really quite sure what else to tell you because this question falls outside my normal realm of PEOPLE DUMP ME ALL THE TIME TOO! and Oh, raspberries! GROWING UP IS THE PITS!...Hang in there, kido.

Queer Abby,

Short backstory: I've been "involved" with an older (I'm early 20s, he's early 30s), recently separated (only a few months, after a 5 year marriage) guy for the past few months. We both agreed, from the start, that it would never turn into an actual relationship, and things were going great: great conversations, great sex, beating the DC heat together, sending dirty emails back and forth to get us through boring work days, etc.

The problem is, he's on a bit of an emotional roller coaster. Understandably. And I've barely made it past 5 months in a relationship, much less 5 years in a marriage, so try as I might, I can't even fathom what he's going through now. He's always insisted that what we have is good for him, and since I enjoy the time we spend together so much, I've never worried too much that us being involved is a bad idea.

Then, for reasons I'm still not quite certain of, I listened to a friend's recommendation that I read "Eat, Pray, Love." While I find the author rather annoying and am as un-enthused by it as I expected to be, I can't get one line out of my brain: "Going through a divorce is like being in a serious car accident every day for two years." (Something along those lines -- not putting in a direct quote a) because I don't have the book handy and b) because I don't want Meg McBlogger to get served by another author.) (Ed. note: Thanks!)

So, my question: is it a terrible idea for me to be riding shot gun for some of those car accidents? While he hasn't brought me in too much emotionally, I can't help but wonder if I'm just a distraction for him - possibly one that makes some of those car accidents even worse in the long run? While I'm not looking for a relationship and neither is he, I can't help but wonder if this whole situation is just a messy, bad idea?

Sincerely,

Should I get out of the car?

Yea, I’ve never read it, but something about eat, pray, love annoys the fuck out of me too. What is that?

Anyway, yea, you are a distraction… and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It doesn’t have to mean he’s using you or doesn’t care about you, but this close in to a divorce/separation, he’s definitely still going through some stuff and there are obvious limits to his emotional availability. So, without intention or potential for depth and longevity in this relationship, I don’t really know how else you’d qualify it other than as a distraction from being single… and again, there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, as long as you’re not expecting more.

So, I would caution you against being involved with this guy if you were looking for something more sustainable in the long-term. However, if you both really are just fine with being here-for-now (and you don’t mind potentially having to deal with some of this guy’s emotional baggage), then I wouldn’t worry about it too much. The only way I really see it going super sour is if either of you end up developing hopes or expectations for the relationship that aren’t mutual, or if one of you is ready to hit the brakes (for whatever reason) and the other isn’t. And if you’re worried that either of those scenarios is approaching, then you should listen to yourself and deal with it because you’re probably right…

Otherwise, you just need to make sure you’re not fooling yourself into thinking this is an arrangement that works when, in reality, you’ll be hurt if it doesn’t progress into a Relationship or you think he’s more invested than you (and that goes for both of you). The way you prevent that is just to make sure you’re being honest with yourself and communicative with one another.

I only have one word for you: SHOPGIRL. WACH IT. CALL ME. 301-936-1212. WE'LL CRY TOGETHER.

Actually that's just the number for the local weather, but I do recommend you watch and/or read Shopgirl as soon as humanly possible. In case you haven't exposed yourself to the prosaic soul-raping that is Shopgirl, it a.) speaks to me in a way that's nauseating and I can only watch it once a year because when I do, I cry hysterically. But like, alone in my apartment, gasping for air, just kind of making noises at this point, crying; and b.) is about a 20-something girl named Mirabelle.

"Mirabelle Buttersfield moved from Vermont hoping to begin her life. And now she is stranded in the vast openness of LA. She keeps working to make connections, but the pile of near misses is starting to overwhelm her. What Mirabelle needs is an omniscient voice to illuminate and spotlight her and to inform everyone that this one has value, this one standing behind the counter in the glove department and to find her counterpart and bring him to her."

BEAUTIFUL. I could vomit. I could vomit everywhere. Anyway, Mirabelle starts a relationship similar to yours with an older, divorced man named Ray Porter, and it's fun and sexy and good, but in order to maintain that breeziness, Ray keeps Mirabelle at an emotional distance. In the beginning Mirabelle is fine with it because pshh, whatevs, who's trying to get married? But over time, the distance wears on her because she realizes that what she wants (and deserves) is to be completely loved, not just half of a low-maintenance relationship. The culminating moment:

Mirabelle: Ray, why don't you love me? Are you just biding your time with me?
Ray Porter: I thought you understood.
Mirabelle: So, I can either hurt now or hurt later. So...Now.

POETRY! GOD DAMN POETRY! So I guess what I'm trying to say is you need ask yourself what you really want: a fun, breezy relationship or something more? And I don't know you or your Ray Porter; he could want both, you perhaps want neither, but my point is having unrealistic expectations about the relationship you're getting into only breeds a world of pain. So in the vain of Mirabelle Buttersfield, be honest about the relationship now so you don't hurt later.

Oh god. Let's do one more quote because I'm a sick son of a bitch.

"Some nights alone he thinks of her. And some nights alone, she thinks of him. Some nights these thoughts occur at the same moment. And Ray and Mirabelle are connected without ever knowing it. But Mirabelle, now feeling the warmth of her first reciprocal love...has broken away from him."

Vomit. More.

"As Ray Porter watches Mirabelle walk away he feels a loss. How is it possible, he thinks, to miss a woman whom he kept at a distance so that when she was gone he would not miss her? Only then does he realize that wanting part of her and not all of her had hurt them both and how he cannot justify his actions except that... well... it was life."

OK, I'm done. I can't. I just physically can't anymore. Good day to you all. Got a question? Email QueerAbby@2birds1blog.com and I'll quote really sad movies and cry for the rest of the night. It's really fun and helpful for both of us, I promise!