Jimmy Chen

I claim my seat with my bag, place my coffee considerately equidistant from all the other cups on the middle table, swear to God one day I’m going to run away into the woods, and sit down. All the outlets are taken.

Perhaps a less sad man, or better person, would honor yoga by restraining himself from the exact petty ties of pedestrian vulgarity from which practitioners attempt to escape through this very practice.

Tonight I’ll go back to all my likes, like a sick dating site only I’m taking part in. It’s easy to obsess about strangers. You just pour nothingness outward, as if, through some accident in the universe, that very act could somehow fill you.

For every bubble that came up, a thought bubble came up in my head. What am I doing here? I envy people who seem able to place themselves inside a jacuzzi and have their problems melt away; where my problems, it seems, just brew.

Regular sexual intercourse two or three times a week, usually Thursday nights after The Office and on the weekend; Saturday date night dinner at ethnic fusion restaurant whose assimilation of Southeast-Asian or Latin flavors one earnestly abridges with “wow.”

My condominium is spinning. I may have vomited a little bit inside my mouth, which I intuitively swallowed like some money shot in the ongoing auto-erotic porn of my life.

It is odd yet existentially endearing, perhaps even beautiful, to think of how a group of strangers who would otherwise never share a silent minute or two in a metal box now have this moment together, and to dismiss this moment as either a modern inconvenience or banal imperative throughout their day, into the week.

This story, which might flaunt itself as an article, is about my best friend at the time, and something he did back in high school, when love was so simple or dumb it perhaps wasn’t even the right word.

We shall discover herein analytical aspects of our subject, punctuated by commentary of a more personal sort, starting right here with a description of the emotional status necessary to get Cheetos Puffs. One does not wish to live any longer, but still wants their final moments filled with joy.

The beep as a noun will beep as a verb, breaking the silence after a set of tic-tocs understood and lamented as the negation of time, for the stranger could not gather from the paltry set of letters the right thing to say.

He hopes that somehow his grim loyalty to the non-physically rewarding friendship will convey his good character, that he will “break down” or readjust her sensibilities and transcend the conventional constraints of “shallow” physical attractiveness that she doesn’t feel towards him.

I like to keep unworn pairs of fine cashmere or merino wool knit socks around in case I have a date or something. I find that the right pair of socks will augment one’s outfit as a kind of aesthetic anchor in similar capacity to nice shoes.