I have something to admit. First of all, my last article blew and I'm very sorry about that. The truth is that I didn't really have anything to say last week, and therefore I failed to meet my usual expectations. But today is a new day, my friends, and I have something new and daring to say.
During a period of great insecurity and confusion in my life, I shaved my chest. It was a weak and unmanly move, I know, but I wanted to conform to some strange male ideal that existed at the time which entailed me being not just toned but strangely hairless as well.
These bizarre urges predictably came to a tragic head during a family cruise in the Caribbean. I used a fake ID to get hammered on good whiskey in the boat's bar, bought a bottle of Nair in the pharmacy and brought it back to the cabin with me.
I weighed the pros and cons of going through with it, and having made my decision, proceeded to apply the toxic lotion over my entire chest and then waited entirely too long to wash it off, causing the Nair to not just remove all the hair from my chest but cover it with puffy, pink chemical burns that screamed with pain every time I put on a t-shirt as well.
My week was pretty much screwed after that: I couldn't let my burnt chest bake in the sun and felt confined to walking around the pool in a shirt, so I spent a lot of my time in the bar just drinking and talking with older women. Which didn't turn out to be such a bad time, but it wasn't anything I couldn't have done back home in Boston.
About now you might be thinking this story has no point other than emasculating me to the entire campus, but you'd be wrong. Dead wrong. To begin with, I'm all man and thus cannot be emasculated, and furthermore, I have a point. My point is that I allowed my superficiality and vanity to take control of my actions, and I paid a steep price as a result.
Instead of spending a week in the Caribbean skin-diving with manta rays and naked chicks named Bambi, I drank a lot of whiskey and passed out on the shuffleboard court. Twice. Which, once again, wasn't that bad of a time. But the point remains, I let insecurity rule my behavior and consequently severely limited my potential for having a good time.
Nowadays, I've gotten over all that bull and don't really care or know what I look like. Seriously. For example, I decided to shave my regal beard yesterday, but instead of shaving it off completely, I left a moustache which I rocked around campus for the day.
My friends told me that I looked great, like a young Tom Selleck in fact, but I'm clever enough to realize they're just lying bastards looking for continued laughs. In all honesty, I probably looked like a porn star from the seventies, and while being a porn star isn't the worst racket in the world, it's nevertheless something I want to reserve for the future.
After I shaved the moustache off, I thought back to my experience shaving my chest and reflected for a moment on how I've changed since then. The guy who shaved his chest on that cruise boat was never capable of having fun. He was so worried about what other people thought of him that he never got the chance to do or say the things he wanted to.
And conversely, the dude who rocked the moustache yesterday, me, had fun introducing himself as Burt and offering people moustache rides.
I guess what I'm saying here is that you shouldn't do anything disingenuous, whether it's as small as giving a phony laugh to a idiotic joke or as annoying as telling a group of potheads how much you like weed, because then you're just setting yourself up for future misery.
Eventually your Wonderbra will be taken off and the chick will find the sock you put in your pants, and then you'll be left sitting by yourself naked and wondering why you're both putting socks in your pants and wearing a Wonderbra. Which will be confusing.
But anyway, be yourself, watch the Animatrix, don't shave your chest, and your life will be a happy one.
And obviously, it's important to remember that all this advice is completely null and void if you're at a bar trying to get some hot random ass.
