The Loneliest Number

I have a confession to make. I'm weird. You're probably weirder, but that doesn't make me feel any less comfortable with my own weirdness.

Regular readers of this

(monument to the English language)

blog probably don't find that admission too far-fetched, but let me assure you, if you were to meet me, and neither alcohol nor bowling were involved, you'd find I'm pretty straight-laced, often vexingly so. But when I'm alone, man, do I do some odd shit.

As an example, a few minutes ago (current event, dig it!) I went into my bathroom to smoke a square. As soon as I lit up, The Clash's 'I'm So Bored With the USA' started playing in the fucked-up jukebox* part of my brain. That's not the strange part, this is: I started lip synching the lyrics and spasmodically contorting my neck, hips, and arms.

Then I caught myself. Then my cheeks, despite me being completely alone**, reddened. Then I wondered why the hell I do shit like that.

See, it wasn't an isolated incident. I've done weirdo shit like that most of my life, the absolute nadir being the time I came home early one afternoon during my junior year of high school, thought no one was home, and started singing NWA's 'Straight Outta Compton' in operatic falsetto while scooping out a bowl of strawberry ice cream, only to cut short my performance when my father, home sick for the day, walked into the kitchen.

That was nearly 14 years ago. I'd like to think I've grown up a lot since then, but, sadly, that doesn't appear to be the case. If you were a fly on the wall in my chateau of hedonism, you'd regularly see me making faces in front of no mirror, bobbing up and down like a toddler (or someone on meth), and displaying all manner of other cringe-worthy gestures.

Why do I do it?

Answer "you're crazy" and you might be half correct; but, word to Joseph Heller, I've thought the same thing, and you're not truly crazy if you worry you might be, right? (You're just paranoid, AKA crazy-lite). Answer that it's genetic and you may have something, because my father has been known to sing to animals when he thinks no one's around***. But the real reason, I believe, is that human beings in isolation (ie. alone) instinctively need to reassure ourselves that we're alive, that we exist.

Perhaps that's why you sing in the shower, or why you talk out loud when you watch TV alone. Perhaps that's why you blog about pseudo-psychoanalysis.

Um...

My key point is that we do these things in private. Talk to yourself, break out in song, scratch your ass then smell it, or jerk off candidly (ie. not alone) in public, and you just may be a little socially fucked up, a little out of touch with the world we live in.

Then again, who am I to say what's improper? I just spent the last 40 minutes -- interrupted by two phone calls and one Wikipedia page on the snow leopard -- talking to myself.

I have to stop doing that.

Now.


* iPod

** Nancy Lang hopped out to pick up some canned coffee. And Tootsie Rolls.

*** also, pick nose