You're a Horrible Person, But I Like You: The Believer Book of Advice (8 page)

1) Start reading
Teen People
.

2) Rent a stretch Hummer to go see Noam Chomsky speak.

3) Model your life after the movie
Sideways
, but instead of wine make your passion Mountain Dew.

4) Ask a state trooper where the closest gay bar is.

5) Have a Super Bowl party with no television.

Zach

…

Dear Zach:

My girlfriend and I have been together for about two months. The relationship is still new, but I think we’re going to be together for a
while. Some days she has a mustache, though. It’s light and wispy and makes me want to die. Is there any subtle, safe way to alert her to her own facial hair and make her get rid of the mustache?

Eddie Turner
Atlanta, GA

Dear Eddie:

I know what you’re feeling. I date a Jewish girl with a Hitler mustache and I’ve never said anything to her. I even bought a biography of Frida Kahlo and pretended to read it while my girlfriend looked on. I just shook my head and muttered, “Can you believe this woman?” It went right over my girlfriend’s mustached head. Now, I’m not normally one to recommend roofies, but sometimes they can help. Do I need to say anything else?

Zach

…

Dear Zach:

I live in a medium-to-small one-and-a-half-bedroom apartment and have the unfortunate habit of flea-market-find collecting. I am especially drawn to vintage celebrity dolls and action figures as well as ’60s barware. While my apartment is not yet to the point of being overstuffed, it is threatening to happen any minute. Do you have any suggestions for displaying my finds comfortably in my limited space?

Darwin Bell
San Francisco, CA

Dear Darwin:

I, too, live in a small place that at least has high ceilings—or they may be low floors; it’s hard to say. My place is overflowing with Malcolm-Jamal Warner memorabilia, so I know what you’re going through. If you’re living with someone, maybe you could kick them out to make room for your stuff. After I moved my grandparents into mini-storage, I was able to move around more freely.

Zach

…

Dear Zach:

My high school French teacher once told our class that French people hate root beer because “it tastes of medicine.” Additionally, an Indian friend of mine claims that Indians despise most cheeses, especially ricotta cheese, “because of the texture.” I enjoy cooking international dishes for my international friends, but now I’m worried I might inadvertently make someone gag. Are there other “Food Prejudices from Around the World” I should know about?

Tiffany Lee-Youngren
San Diego, CA

Dear Tiffany:

During my worldly travels, I have experienced a couple of cultures with mysterious food turnoffs. For one, I know that many Hindus will not eat pizza with buffalo wings as a topping. I also know of a town in Wales where it’s illegal to eat a foot-long hot dog because of the fear that someone might say, “I would like to have a foot-long inside me right now.”

Zach

Janeane Garofalo

Dear Janeane:

My boyfriend hasn’t had a job in three years. But he’s a pretty boy, very easy on the eyes. Is it worth keeping him around anyway, like a lamp that’s long since stopped working but you don’t throw away because it goes with the furniture?

Susan M
.
Richmond, VA

Dear Susan:

The lamp provides you with a convenient place to hang damp laundry. The boy without a job does not. The lamp complements your home’s decor. The lad on the dole does not. If you are able to fuck the lamp, then you must donate the boy to the Salvation Army. Get a receipt for tax purposes.

Janeane

…

Dear Janeane:

I’m thinking about getting a tattoo, but I want something that isn’t quite such an urban hipster cliché. Maybe something literary? Is having a paragraph from
Atlas Shrugged
tattooed on my back cool and unique, or just pretentious? I’m not sure
.

Julia Rockson
Atlanta, GA

Dear Julia:

It is only “cool” if you allow room for an additional tattoo that decries the cynical bastardization of Ayn Rand’s philosophy of rational self-interest by the conservative think-tank movement.

Janeane

…

Dear Janeane:

I know there’s a difference between stalking and being romantically attentive, but I can’t figure out what it is. Please advise
.

Regards
,
Paul
St. Louis, MO

Dear Paul:

It all depends on how good-looking you are. “Stalkers” tend to be similar in appearance to people who saw
Cats
on Broadway more than forty-seven times. “Romantically attentive” describes people who don’t look like they’ve seen
Cats
on Broadway more than forty-seven times.

Janeane

…

Dear Janeane:

My hair is starting to go gray, but I can’t tell if it makes me look distinguished or like one of those hippie ladies who wear sandals and teach pottery classes. What should I do?

Mrs. Larkin
Melbourne, FL

Dear Mrs. Larkin:

If you don’t have the silver fox appeal of a James Brolin or a Fionnula Flanagan, then you must work in concert with destiny. Straddle that pottery wheel like you mean it!

Janeane

…

Dear Janeane:

I’ve been a smoker for thirty years, and I know I should probably quit. But I don’t want to satisfy those pricks who are always obnoxiously preaching to me about cancer and coughing every time I light up. Is there a not-so-unhealthy-but-equally-annoying habit I could pick up that’d allow me to live longer while continuing to piss off the right people?

Thanks for your help
.

Jason S
.
Owensboro, KY

Dear Jason:

Join the Republican party. Do what they tell you.

Janeane

…

Dear Janeane:

I went to a swap meet where I cut my leg on some rusty scrap metal. I don’t remember the last time I had a tetanus shot. It hurts and there is blood. Should I buy the mannequin arm or the Marky Mark coffee mug?

Maggie Faris
St. Paul, MN

Dear Maggie:

The three-foot Mr. Peanut icon is a better buy. After you leave the swap meet, put the oversize peanut in the car. Drive to the nearest apothecary. Squeeze a dollop of Neosporin from the tube onto your leg. (You don’t need to buy the salve.) Exit the pharmacy. Drive home. Install the large peanut in your bedroom. Throw damp laundry over it.

Janeane

…

Dear Janeane:

My dad, whom I haven’t seen in almost two decades, suddenly turned up on my doorstep the other day. He wants to make up for lost time and have the father-daughter relationship he denied me as a girl. Is there a nice way to tell him, “You’re my dad, I love you, but buying a My Pretty Pony for a twenty-eight-year-old woman isn’t sweet, it’s just kinda creepy and sad”?

Regards
,
Anonymous

Dear Anonymous:

You now have the perfect opportunity to utter, “Father, don’t darken my doorstep again!” I envy you. Most people don’t even have a doorstep.

Janeane

Daniel Handler

Dear Daniel:

Now that we have a black president, is it okay to be a racist again?

Terry R
.
Eureka, CA

Dear Terry:

No.

Love,
Daniel Handler

…

Dear Daniel:

My grandpa was just laid off from a major car manufacturer. Do you have any suggestions for work for the elderly? I don’t want him
lazing around the house, driving my grandma crazy. He is a grouch
.

Peter
Austin, TX

Dear Peter:

Dog walker.

Love,
Daniel Handler

…

Dear Daniel:

Do you have any tips on getting rid of a gopher infestation?

A.C
.
A part of Indiana you wouldn’t know

Dear A.C.:

Move.

Love,
Daniel Handler

…

Dear Daniel:

I can’t enjoy cream soups anymore without thinking of that nasty Asian fetish. You know. Rhymes with “your latke” or “Milwaukee.” Are there any tricks to eating a delicious cream of broccoli soup without being totally grossed out?

Rocky
Gaithersburg, MD

Dear “Rocky”:

Tabasco.

Love,
Daniel Handler

…

Dear Daniel:

Are there any good reasons to be proud of my Norwegian heritage, besides that John Lennon song?

A Man Without a Country

Dear Man Without a Country,

Kristin Lavransdatter
.

Love,
Daniel Handler

…

Dear Daniel:

My boyfriend wants us to move into a geodesic dome. I understand that the real estate market is unpredictable and scary these days, but I still don’t think that justifies living in a huge soccer ball. What do you think?

Call me “Nancy”
Winnipeg, MB, Canada

Dear “Nancy”:

“Cool.”

Love,
Daniel Handler

Dear Daniel:

I’ve been walking around in hundred-degree-plus heat and I can’t find my car. It’s a dark green ’97 Camry, and the parking lot outside Ross is frickin’ huge. Plus there’s strawberry ice cream in the trunk
.

Mario M
.
Gillette, WY

Dear Mario:

Huh.

Love,
Daniel Handler

…

Dear Daniel:

How can you break up with your boyfriend in a way that tells him, “I don’t want to sleep with you on a regular basis anymore, but please be available for late-night booty calls if I run out of options”?

Lily
Charlotte, NC

Dear Lily:

The story’s so old you can’t tell it anymore without everyone groaning, even your oldest friends with the last of their drinks shivering around the ice in their dirty glasses. The music playing is the album everyone has. Those shoes, everybody has those same shoes on. It looked a little like rain so one person brought an umbrella, useless now in the starstruck cloudless sky, forgotten on the way home, which is how the umbrella ended up in her place anyway. Everyone gets older on nights like this.

And still it’s a fresh slap in the face of everything you had going, that precarious shelf in the shallow closet that will certainly, certainly fall someday. Photographs slipping into a crack to be found by the next tenant, that one squinter third from the left laughing at something your roommate said, the coaster from that place in the city you used to live in, gone now. A letter that seemed important for reasons you can’t remember, throw it out, the entry in the address book you won’t erase but won’t keep when you get a new phone, let it pass and don’t worry about it. You don’t think about them; “I haven’t thought about them in forever,” you would say if anybody brought it up, and nobody does.

You think about them all the time.

Close the book but forget to turn off the light, just sit staring in bed until you blink and you’re out of it, some noise on the other side of the wall reminding you you’re still here. That’s it, that’s everything. There’s no statue in the town square with an inscription with words to live by. The actor got slapped this morning by someone she loved, slapped right across the face, but there’s no trace of it on any channel no matter how late you watch. How many people—really, count them up—know where you are? How many will look after you when you don’t show up? The churches and train stations are creaky and the street signs, the menus, the writing on the wall, it all feels like the wrong language. Nobody, nobody knows what you’re thinking of when you lean your head against the wall.

Put a sweater on when you get cold. Remind yourself, this is the night, because it is. You’re free to sing what you want as you walk there, the trees rustling spookily and certainly and quietly and inimitably. Whatever shoes you want, fuck it, you’re comfortable. Don’t trust anyone’s directions. Write what you might forget on the back of your hand, and slam down the cheap stuff and never mind the bad music from the window three floors up or what the boys shouted from the car nine years ago that keeps rattling in your head, because you’re here, you are, for the warmth of someone’s wrists where the sleeve stops and the glove doesn’t quite begin, and the slant of the voice on the punch line of the joke and the reflection of the moon in the water on the street as you stand still for a moment and gather your courage and take a breath before stealing away through the door. Look at it there. Take a good look. It looks like rain.