20nothing.com

When I was five years old I loved birthday presents because I didn’t have the money to buy that kind of crap myself. Twenty years later, nothing has changed. Although I once begged for monkey bars and now for someone to pick up my tab at a bar, the premise remains the same.
LA Girl Friend gave me a novelty cigarette lighter as a present for my birthday. She knows of my penchant for comically large objects [insert joke here] and indulged in my dream to produce a blowtorch the next time someone asks me for a light at a bar. I have always wanted to be the butt of such a joke, but like monkey bars, never bothered to buy the object myself.

Life is filled with so much poisonous, negative and useless crap but it is not until I am alone with no funds to buy breakfast, let alone a lighter on steroids, that I realize how simple it is too make one happy.
Sex, for example, is free. Or at the very least, the price of a couple of phone calls.
When one must be conservative with their finances but can be liberal with their time, they are forced to think about what they really want to do with their life. And I have come to discover, so long as I have scotch and a cigarette, everything is OK…
“Well, that is because you like cheating death,” my boy friend informed me.
“No,” I informed him. “I am a libertarian, if we must attribute. And pro-choice on discovering what works for you at zero expense to another person.”

There is so much crap that is purchased, indulged or ingested because of what is told or what such a thing will adhere to – Rayban sunglasses, a Porsche, oatmeal for breakfast – that it can distract a person from what really makes them happy.
I don’t date, for example, because, like what actually ignites euphoria in me, I decided to stop and think about what I wanted in my life. Sex, makes me happy. Love, makes me happy. And I have always found that dating is merely the distraction between the two which I have been told to adhere to rather than actually wanting to.

I went on date number two with a boy because with sex and love already presently sorted in my life, I needed a distraction.
“So, um, I have to be honest with you,” He said. “I actually have a girlfriend.” Raybans would have been really beneficial to hide my expression. “…Who I live with.”
“Ok…” I didn’t really know what to say. Obviously I wasn’t getting laid at his house. “Does your girlfriend know that you are here?”
I paid my own bar tab, finished my scotch, lit a cigarette and went to sleep thinking about why people adhere to things that obviously don’t make them happy and flame the fire of immorality[?].

After I admitted to myself that sex, alcohol and cigarettes make me feel more fulfilled than the material possessions I am surrounded by, I started to think about how I wanted to conduct other areas of my life so that they worked for me. I had fallen in love with a boy who didn’t have the respect to tell me that he had a girlfriend and had needed to reassess what I involved myself with. Knowing that monogamy, like [apparently] for so many other people, wasn’t going to make me happy, I decided to take myself out of situations where my actions would be at the negative expense of anyone else.

While some make a moral decision on casual sex or drinking breakfast, I created morals that were rational rather than traditional. I knew that I had to stand for something or I would get on my knees for anything and decided that so long as no one was cheated by my penchant for sex and scotch, the judgement wouldn’t tarnish my enjoyment. Do I think that my choices are for everyone? No. But I don’t make choices for everyone. I expect them to think about it in their own alone time. However, when you are in a relationship with someone, a decision you both agreed to adhere to, choices affect other people. To take away someone’s happiness is a right that no one has.

I took a Chihuahua and the novelty cigarette lighter out in public for breakfast. Caffeine and a cigarette under the morning sun. I am sure it was what God did on the Eighth Day. It is That good.
A woman with a babything sat down at the table next to me.
“Excuse me?” I thought she wanted a flame. I pulled out my lighter on steroids. “The smoke is blowing in my baby’s face. Do you mind putting that out?”
I looked at the comically large amount of empty chairs she had to choose from. But, instead, she had decided to sit next to me and obstruct my happiness and alone time.
“Actually, I do.”
She moved to the other side of the courtyard. I finished my drink, lit another cigarette and started thinking about why she, Him or any other people feel that they have the right to make decisions for others.
I put on my Rayban sunglasses and walked home alone, knowing that while I am I full of poison, I am not full of crap.
But I was full of happiness. Which is the real gift.