I’m the man waiting for the phone to ring

When I was younger I didn’t realize how much of my adult life would be spent being bored. I’m bored by my job, by my health insurance paperwork, by waiting for the bus. Our society inflicts boredom on us so much, all the time, constantly and so we get really good at being bored. Like I’m bored right now. I’m so trained to be bored I can get bored instantly, during anything. And we’re constantly bored so we get used to being bored, constantly ready to be bored, but at the same time somehow it’s rude to be bored in a lot of settings. It’s like society sets us up to fail, it makes us bored all the time then makes us feel bad for being bored. I call it the boredom blackmail, where you’re gonna get bored but you’re gonna get in trouble if you get caught being bored.

Like you’re not supposed to say this but parenting is boring a lot. Parenting is supposed to be this cool amazing life changing thing, and it has its moments, but huge parts of it are boring and if you say that to the wrong people they look at you like you’re a shitty parent. It’s that boredom blackmail. For instance my oldest kid when she was three used to tell these long, long stories where all she would do is name some character, like Tinkerbell the fairy from Peter Pan, and the character goes somewhere, like to a castle or something, and then she’d go on seriously for like ten minutes just listing things Tinkerbell owned, like her clothing for instance. She’d be like ‘and she had a hat, it was a red, a red hat, it was velvety, it was a red velvety hat, it was big, it was a big red velvety hat. And she had a pair of high heeled shoes, they were blue, and they had buckles, the buckles were silver on the blue high heeled shoes, and she had a pair of pink high heeled shoes, they had buckles. The buckles were silver on the pink high heeled shoes’ and it would never end and I would get so bored and if I told anyone ‘my three year old told me a story today! It was so boring!’ then I seem like a jerk.

And the boredom blackmail, it gets in your head. Like I’d realize I wasn’t paying attention to my kid - and I had to stop paying attention some times because if I had to any more pay attention to how Tinkerbell had two ponies, and three kitties, and four puppies, and five fishies, and six sheepies, and seven more kitties, and eight more puppies, if my mind couldn’t wander on to something else sometimes then I was going to start crying, I had to stop paying attention sometimes just to be able to keep going - but I would notice my own mental state, I would realize I wasn’t paying attention and I’d be like ‘oh, my sweet little baby girl is being boring, that’s my honest opinion, I think this beautiful wonderful person who is the light of my life is just a huge bore right now, that is genuinely what I think. God I am just the biggest asshole in the world right now, I hate myself, what kind of a jerk…’ See that’s the boredom blackmail inside my own head, I’ve internalized it.

Funerals, that’s another one where the boredom blackmail thing happens. I thought of a funeral because I remembered that those stories of my kid’s used to make me want to die. ‘How did he die?’ ‘Just keeled over during a story told by his three year old.’ ‘Oh, bored to death, what a terrible way to go.’ But yeah, getting bored at a funeral, that’s not okay. Like if someone’s going on about how the dead guy was such a great friend or father or whatever it is, you missed it because you were bored and your mind wandered off, then you’re a jerk because you’re supposed to be paying attention and then you realize what happened and you feel guilty and also confused because now you don’t understand what they’re talking about which makes it even more boring, but you can’t go ‘sorry, I lost my concentration while that woman was crying while going on and on and on about her uncle or cousin or brother or whoever it was who died, can you catch me up on the story so far, it’d help me to focus better.’ That’s rude for some reason. What I try to do is just keep a neutral expression and maybe try to take as long as possible in the bathroom just to get a break. Going to the bathroom works with parenting too, if you have a co-parent.

Sex, now that’s another one where it’s really considered inappropriate to get bored during. You’re supposed to be really attentive to your partner, or at the very least you should be thinking outside sexual thoughts that help you, you know, do the, the sex… thing, the sex stuff you’re supposed to do, during, during the, the sex, you know what I’m talking about, don’t make me say it, it’s undignified. You’re supposed to be doing that, that undignified thing, and it takes some concentration to stay in the zone because you have to not think about how undignified it all is, and it’s hard, it’s hard to not think about something, because you tell yourself don’t think about this thing but just by saying so you end up thinking about that thing.

Like you don’t want to think about my sweating face all crinkled up from the effort, my eyebrows scrunched up and eyes squinted but my mouth open because I’m a mouth breather and my lip is curled out a little, that’s my during sex face, and you don’t want to think about that, especially because that face, on the front of my huge pumpkin like balding head, is on top of my clammy, cheese-smelling pale, fat, hairy body, and it’s naked, right now it’s naked under these clothes and during, during the, the sex… stuff, during the sex stuff this body of mine, it’s like a cottage cheese plate taken human form, pale white and lumpy and gooey and oozing and stinking and then two shriveled hairy peaches just dangling there, and it’s all out there just, just there, a body, a disgusting human form there, just there during the, during the sex stuff, while I’m doing the sex… thing, the sex thing you know what it is, I won’t say it, it’s undignified, and you know I’m making that face while I’m doing that undignified sex thing, and you don’t want to think about that but as soon as you thought of me you all immediately started to think about it, the disgust is just written on your faces because you all just know right away when you think of me that this is what it’s like when I do, when, during, in the sex stuff, you all knew about that and you tried to put your mind off of that thought, you told yourself “don’t think of his hairy, pimply butt, don’t think of the beads of sweat on his upper lip, don’t picture the face he makes, don’t think of him doing the, doing that, the sex thing, that thing, don’t think about it it’s too horrible don’t think of it don’t” but telling yourself that just made you think about it more until you felt sick and it’s even worse when you close your eyes because the black of your eyelids is a screen that your mind projects that awful image onto.

I mean obviously I’m wearing clothes, I’m opposed to nudity, but even with the clothes it’s clear what the general state of me is from the outline, the details of my unfortunate body are covered up - the full monty is so much worse than you can imagine - but still even though it’s covered by clothes you know the gist, the heart of the matter, the basic fundamental hard truth of the situation and you know, you just know it’s there, my jug of curdled milk of a body just there quivering and pale and rancid and runny, and with that sour smell, underneath these clothes and you can’t stop thinking of it being exposed to the open air during the, in, when I’m, when, the sex thing… when I do… when it… happens. And if you close your eyes you see it in more detail, worse than when your eyes are open, and that’s distracting to you right now, which is similar to how you can get distracted in the middle of the sex… thing, it’s distracting how undignified it all is, the face, the body, the… the thing… that you… what you do during the, I won’t say it, you can’t make me say it.

It’s distracting that it’s so undignified and so you can’t concentrate and your mind wanders and you can’t think about the sex stuff, the thing you’re doing, you know, the sex thing, and you just want it to end, and then you’re off your game and it’s gonna take even longer now, stretching out the indignity of it and the person, the other person involved, the one you’re, who is doing the, your accomplice… the one who… is also part of the sex thing, they can tell your mind isn’t in the right place anymore and it feels to them like you’ve been so rude and disrespectful and now they have to think about that on top of you and of how undignified it all is and so it just takes so much longer and you just prolong the unpleasantness, the sex stuff you’re doing, the, it, the thing, the sex thing becomes basically a waiting room, just something to endure until finally one of you fakes like you’ve reached a satisfying conclusion so you can both just give up and retain at least tiny shred of dignity, you can both manage to give up without having to admit out loud to another person’s face this defeat you’ve just endured, and it’s all so undignified, humiliating even.

So you get bored in the middle of doing the sex and it makes the sex thing take so much longer, excruciatingly longer to where you’re both privately thinking ‘can we just get this over with?’ and ‘god why did we even start doing this?’ and then when you finally finish because it took so long you’re sore and tired and feeling sorry for yourself and so then you can’t even think of a good excuse when the person you came to the funeral with asks why you were in the bathroom for so long. So yeah man, society sometimes sure is boring.