turtle shell

I wonder if, when, I’m feeling better that I’ll be so used to being at home that going out will feel even more anxious than it did before all this started a year and a half ago. I was thinking about that. Thinking about parties and dinners — the sort of thing I really never enjoyed if I knew there would be over seven people. Seven’s the upper limit of my social comfort zone. I think, have I become agoraphobic? No. I go out every day. Either my 2 mile walk for coffee in the morning or my frequent doctor and physical therapy sessions. I’m out all the time.
One thing I never liked about parties and shall never miss if I’m not able to attend one again is screaming drunk people. I hate how you have to shout at parties and how you can’t have a substantial conversation about anything lest you be considered a bore or a party pooper. Here’s a fun fact: I’ve never been drunk. Not once.  Which isn’t to say I haven’t had alcohol, I have — maybe 3 or four times a month I’ll have a glass fo wine. But I’ve never been drunk because I come from a long line of alcoholics and the moment I feel buzzed I feel anxious and stupid and I stop drinking. I’ve tried pot, acid, MDMA, and Ketamine but I’ve never been drunk. I also won’t do coke because I lived in South America and Miami as a child and well — it’s pretty much the same reason why I won’t get drunk.  And of course Heroin’s out of the question — what amazes me though is how it wasn’t out of the question for so many of my friends in the mid 90’s. Jeesh! Only one of them survived that shit and even him I look at sideways given it took him ten years to clean up.  His lost decade.  The others are dead or walking dead. Hello, it’s heroin — there are no heroin success stories. 
For dinner I had three leafs of Romain lettuce and a cup of green tea.  My sciatica hurts like an MFer tonight so I’m being extra anti-inflammatory. I watched all six episodes of Alan Partridge: Knowing Me, Knowing You. I’ve been on a BBC bender lately. I have to say, British comedy is the only thing that really makes me laugh. It’s not some pretentious thing – like I think they’re so much funnier. I actually think there’s a lot of great American comedy but for some reason the British sitcoms seem to connect with my sense of humor. I think about Nighty Night and how Darren Star wanted to do an American adaptation for HBO. No way. They tried that with Absolutely Fabulous and it did not work. I don’t know exactly why not, but it just didn’t.  Shameless worked. The Office worked. Coupling, nope. And then a show like The Comeback, which I thought was Lisa Kudrow’s best work, was  a flop. Why?  We have different cultures, but not that different.
The Writer’s Guild did an audit of my earnings.  It’s suspiciously timed in my opinion because my earnings are tied to my eligibility for insurance. The didn’t find anything but they wanted my records going back six years. I’m a very meticulous records keeper. I wonder if Blue Cross called them up and said, "this guy’s using his insurance — see if he’s got anything we can use to kick him off his policy." Maybe I’m being paranoid but I talked to a bunch of other WGA members and they said that they’d never been audited. 
Here’s my birthday picture. My friend touched them up and sent them to me the other day.  I’m not very natural when being photographed — I tend to kind of look tense, sneaky or mean.