I can shove my foot pretty far into my mouth.
Once, at an internship, the intern manager got everyone together to tell them that if they were in the kitchen, they could be heard by everyone in the nearby cubicles. And he stared right at me while me said it. And I replayed, in horror, every conversation I'd had in the kitchen where I filled all the other interns in on office gossip.
I've gotten better at it. Applying the general rule of "don't talk shit" to my life has actually been pretty great for a number of reasons. First and foremost, obviously, it seriously cuts down on the amount of shit people talk about me. But a close second is that I don't get caught by the people I'm (no longer) talking about.
But life being what it is, I have of course found new and embarrassing ways to make an asshole out of myself. Case in point: this afternoon.
I met someone last night who was obviously more interested in me than I in him. There's nothing wrong with him, objectively, but I didn't exactly spend my morning practicing my signature with his last name in some middle school delusion. He texted me to set up a time to hang out this week and I told him I was always too tired and usually too busy to do much during the week, but if my weekend freed up I'd let him know.
Then today, on my way home, I passed by about ten bars. I hate walking home from work, because I have to walk through downtown Westwood, which is pretty much the greatest place ever to be if you love alcohol and clothes and you have unlimited money. Unfortunately I'm only 2 for 3 there, so I usually end up in a huge internal struggle which goes like this:
"You can't afford to go to the bars."
"Just one drink. Barney's has #3.50 beers all day every day. Surely I can afford that."
"Can you have just one drink?"
"No, but I can definitely just have two. And besides, there's no food at home, so I need to go somewhere for dinner, and I might as well have a beer with dinner..."
Often this struggle ends with me going home to eat a muffin (which is pretty much all I have at the house, thanks to the kick-ass IT guy at my old job who went to Costco and bought me my favorite flavor muffins in bulk as a going away present) but not being very happy about it; slightly less often, this struggle ends up with me going to a bar for a burger and a beer and walking out of a different bar at midnight, hammered, with five new friends and a singular level of dread about the rapidly approaching workday.
Today, in an effort to mollify my inner alcoholic, I stopped at Whole Foods to get an Arrogant Bastard. Enough to give me a solid buzz, but I could get my solid buzz at home without spending $25+ tip. And then Whole Foods had a sale on Ed Hardy wine - which I didn't even know they had - for $5, which was too good to pass up just for the humor value of a luxury clothing brand selling cheap hooch, so I picked that up too. I didn't even have a basket, I was just double-fisting it in the store on my way to the checkout.
When I saw the guy I just blew off. Actually, more accurately, he saw me. Which is probably worse. He saw me, walking through Whole Foods, alone, at 6:30 in the afternoon, with enough alcohol to make a frat boy impotent. After I told him I was too busy and tired during the week to do anything or go anywhere. So my options were to admit I'd been lying to him, or tell him I'm a lonely alcoholic ... which are not mutually exclusive, of course, but it's not the kind of choice I like to make.
