EVERYTHING ISN'T ABOUT YOU!

I'm pretty sure I have Premenstrual Dysmorphic Diet-Pepsi-obsessed Dayquil-swilling Distemper Disorder. Why? Well, I'm pounding even more of the aspartame treat than ever, my throat is fucking sore, my boobs have hurt for a week and I really can't stand anyone nowadays. Especially internet commenters.

Yeah, I know. "Who cares?"

I CARE. I work a boring desk job in which I have nothing to do half the day. So I read. A lot. I read Jezebel. All day long.

So the other day, this big Jez shitstorm hit, when one of the editors published an article on sexual consent that all the humorless feminists obviously wouldn't agree with, and the commenters lost their goddamn minds. You'd think they'd never encountered life outside of an encapsulated sounding board, where men can be total assholes and people don't always share your opinions. The idea that they'd even have to face a point of view not in line with their own - and ARGUE its merits - made these women more inflamed than a hemorrhoid.

The editor apologized, noting that she put the post up right before the holiday and wasn't as attentive to the reaction as she should have been. The commenters weren't going to hear it. Someone actually said, "You couldn't do your job because it was a HOLIDAY?" How dare she travel to go spend time with her family on a national holiday when people on the internet are MAD?! The editor then posted a counterpoint article. It wasn't good enough.

So anyway, the content of the original piece was fairly vague and stupid - some American guy goes to Paris, wonders why American chicks aren't as hot and easy as French ladies, and says that maybe we USians sanitize our sex a bit too much. I didn't much care for the article, and I thought it was poorly written. I thought the guy sounded like a douchebag with a fixation on European women. He could have had a point and started a real discussion, but fell short.

But more than anything, the entitlement of these internet lurkers made me want to vomit.

The world does not fucking revolve around you. Somebody wrote something you don't like? Tough fucking shit. The Gawker Media Corporation is not beholden to you and your opinions. The editors of a web magazine do not owe you anything. If anything, they're beholden to the people who buy advertising on their site and pay their bills. People were seriously saying "I am not satisfied with this. I am owed an apology."

Really. REALLY?! You're that mad about the fucking internet? Do you know how many people in the world don't use the internet? ALMOST FIVE BILLION. Do you treat everyone you encounter in your real life like that? Oh, wait, I forgot. You don't have a real life. You spend six hours a day asking people you'll never meet what you should do about that internship that you really wanted but didn't get. 

Maybe that's the scourge of the modern age - absolute and utter narcissism. There are actually people out there believing a company that's the second largest online newspaper in the world should bow down, admit defeat, and let the 200 people who comment regularly control the content that tens of thousands of people read every hour. It goes beyond this to every element of our lives - people who make kissy faces in their Facebook profile pictures which they change twice a day, friends who get pissed off because you don't respond to their text messages immediately, women who are average weight and height and attractiveness and think they're models. I'm just so tired of the fact that everyone in my generation thinks they're some big fucking star.

I'm truly sorry, really I am, but you're going to work a boring job for 45 years. You're going to pop out a couple of mediocre children, you're going to marry someone who's going to get fat and bald, and your idea of a good time will end up being white zinfandel and a U2 cover band. You're not going to go great places and do great things. You're not going to drive a Porsche, you're not going to attend fancy galas, and when you die, there will be but a small crowd of people there to see you into the ground. Just give it up.

Obviously everything isn't about you. It's about me.

v-cards: part two, the higher education edition.

This was sort of what I was like, except I didn't have any friends.

God, I hated college.

College is really weird because essentially you're just throwing horny, inexperienced children into a building where they can sleep together and throw up from drinking too much Bacardi 151. You don't know ANYBODY and you're desperate to make friends, so you hang out with people who have absolutely nothing in common with you and would otherwise make your skin crawl. You'll try anything, you'll talk to anyone, you'll wear whatever. You'll encounter many people that are nothing like you.

So anyway, I met a guy. Actually, I met a lot of guys. A lot of virgin guys.

My whorish self was quite unaccustomed to having someone stop me when I reached for their pants.

"Wait, Chelsea, I have something to tell you... I'm a virgin."

"Are you fucking serious? AGAIN?"

But, I fell for one of the never-been-touched crowd. I have no idea what it was I liked about this guy. Really. I couldn't articulate it if I wanted to. He was unambitious, pretentiously into literature, and ridiculously jealous of my success in school. He was one of those guys that sits in basements and plays World of Warcraft. His mother still did his laundry. He wasn't very good at oral sex. I had to pressure him after three months to actually become my boyfriend. Yes. I had to talk him into it. I'm not going to go into how wrong that is - you should already know.

But you know how these things go. You love people, for reasons that no one, especially not you, understands. You pretend to like metal and get taped for the Killswitch Engage tour DVD. You pretend to enjoy playing MMORPGs and hanging out in his crappy small town in central Massachusetts. You pretend to like his mother. You pretend to understand the big words he drops to make himself feel intelligent. You pretend to like his poetry. You pretend, and pretend, and fake everything because you're so desperate to keep this person near you.

And so I pretended to treat taking his virginity like a BFD (big fucking deal, for those of you not versed in hip acronyms). 

It was an afternoon, just like any other afternoon. The door to my single bedroom was closed. I don't think any of my other roommates were home. The shades were drawn on the windows, which overlooked a 6' by 6' concrete courtyard with dead pigeons in it, and the light was soft. I don't remember the exact logistics - a problem to be blamed on my overzealous alcohol consumption and the fact that I try to block out any and all memories of my mouse-infested shithole of a freshman dorm room. His apprehension was boring, as all perceived apprehension about something is when you're the one who's done it a million times. I believe it was missionary. I don't believe it took very long. I believe he made some statement post-coitus about his feelings, which I'm sure I dismissed with some kind of assuaging statement. And all I remember thinking was: I shaved my pubes for this?

 What a waste. Razors are so expensive.

Every first time, for the most part, sucks. It has to suck. It's a sport - some would say, even a game - and everybody sucks when they start playing. This is why I don't understand why virginity is valued so highly. It just means that when you finally have sex with that person, it's guaranteed to be awful.

I like to think of my v-card takings as an act of valiance, freeing these men from the inevitability of terrible intercourse with hopes to set them on a path toward a more fulfilling sex life. It's a thankless job, but someone's got to do it. I've gone into retirement, but I'll never forget the acts I did in the name of mankind.

talking 'bout my (so sad, so sorry) generation.

 The other night I watched "Reality Bites" for the first time of my twenties. I had seen the movie when I was younger, but the message was not quite as clear or relevant as it appears now that I'm older.

I know it speaks to the issues faced by those a bit older than me, but I find my own generation is not too far behind. We struggle with the same demons - inherent desire to do well, but a lack of resources, and a sense of entitlement that mismatches the opportunities available to us. We were the generation who were told that we were 'special' - special enough, it now seems, to be saddled with economic collapse, environmental catastrophe and financial ruin. The Greatest Generation cash their Social Security checks; the baby boomers sleep at night knowing they did the best they could by their children; even Generation X came out of their existential crises to own America's homes and run America's companies. We are left with astronomical student loans, a dismal job market and no chance of ever retiring.

Without going too far into detail about the logistics of my current life, things are a little tough right now. My grandmother is very ill. I received some good news about work but it has yet to come to fruition, and I am feeling somewhat disillusioned. My endlessly bright and talented husband has been forced to apply for internships, despite the fact that he just received a master's degree. The world seems like a hostile place, and I'm not sure I'm ready for the implications of real life.

I guess I perform it every day; I wake up, get myself to work on time. I perform numerous tasks, ranging from the challenging to the mundane. I go home and play the role of wife, daughter, friend. In all of this, I feel the slip of things I used to do when time wasn't so wrapped up in itself, when things weren't so dictated. I wrote poems. I made collages. I obsessed about all of my relationships. I felt, often it wasn't pure and often it was overly dramatic, but I felt, and I had the pursuit of finding myself to guide the forward motion of my life. Desperation only existed in my head. Things weren't so final. Possibilities were endless.

Now, I find myself adrift, just another Lelaina of a generation failed. We all wanted to really be something by the time we were 23. We all swore we would break out of the chains of college, an out-of-the-box sprint toward career success. We were all given the opportunities our parents sacrificed for. Now we're working as personal trainers and waitresses and cubicle rats, numbing our minds with low-calorie beers and reality television.

I know I sound jaded. It's hard not to. Nobody wants to work at the Burger-Rama (which is why we need immigrants coming into this country, but that's a rant for another day), and nobody wants to sell out. Everyone just wants to shut their eyes and their minds and pretend that none of it is happening. Stop watching the news. Drink another Coke. Go to Walmart. Spend a fortune on a wedding. Have a baby. Get a tummy tuck. Buy some Louboutins.

Or, we can act out in little ways every day. We either change the status quo, or we die this way.

"And they wonder why those of us in our twenties refuse to work an 80-hour week... just so we can afford to buy their BMWs... why we aren't interested in the counterculture that they invented... as if we did not see them disembowel their revolution for a pair of running shoes. But the question remains... what are we going to do now? How can we repair all the damage we inherited? Fellow graduates, the answer is simple.

The answer is... The answer is... I don't know."