You Are An Asshole

by Jeff Saporito

You are an asshole.

No matter who you are, where you’re from, what you had for breakfast this morning, or your cat’s name, you are an asshole.  

It’s a complicated thing to do when you’re incredibly tired.  Writing, that is.  It is also a complicated thing to do when you are sorer than you’ve ever been in your life.  Typing, that is.   And trying to come up with a literarily interesting way to project the reason for being so sore and tired while being sore and tired is the hardest of all.  The important thing to remember, however, is that you are an asshole.  And you are the reason I am like this.

When the sun rises and the earth heats up for the first time for spring, you just can’t wait to get outside.  Even a hermit like myself gets excited for the warm air and finally the threat of dying from driving into the side of a pizza shop thanks to icy roads disappears for a few solid months.  Unless, as it was on this day, your agenda consists of hours of moving furniture, food, and all of your earthly belongings from one apartment to another about 100 yards away.   That was my goal for yesterday, naively wishing that I would complete the task of moving the contents before starlight fell over the rolling landscape of the North Hills.  Sad but true, I came nowhere close.  It is imperative to tell you that I was facing this task alone, accompanied by help for only a tiny fraction of the total hours.  Needless to say, everyone was too busy being an asshole to help.

There’s a saying everyone has heard.  “They don’t make them like they used to.”  Come check out the loveseat in my apartment, and you’ll be a believer.  As far as appearance goes, the couch is probably the ugliest goddamn thing you’ll ever see.  It was made in 1976, probably in America by real people earning real money.  Its upholstery is a rough, Tabasco-colored nightmare with dark wood trim up the armrests and along the crown.  Hidden in its bowels is its true sense of humor – a foldout full size bed and mattress that is possibly a tad less comfortable than being crucified naked in the ethnic foods aisle at Giant Eagle.  This bed is the sense of humor because the bastard thing weighs upwards of 400 pounds, and in addition to the 100 yards between the two apartment buildings is two sets of 21 steps, each with two landings.  Unarguably, the couch is one sturdy, well-crafted piece of crap.  I call it a pain in my ass.  

It is obvious that a battle between this couch and me would not end in favor of the one with two legs, but the one with four.  I called in a friend for help with it, and he happily agreed.  That asshole.  Not long after helping me lug it over (which, by the way, was a 45-minute process that removed a shitload of paint from several walls and tore a hallway door off its hinges), he left to go to work, and despite the fact he planned to quit his job that day, did not want to call off to help me in fear of “looking bad.”  I bought him lunch as thanks and sent him away to his stupid job.  Asshole.  One thing was moved, but I still had more things to go than Ron Jeremy has sperm.

Woman who has many cats really crazy about pussy.  Not a Chinese proverb, but it should be.  It perfectly describes the lesbian who lived diagonally from me.  Maybe she wasn’t a lesbian, but she was butcher than a guy named Butch, had spiky hair, lived alone, and had many feline friends with whom she can hold endless conversations, all while listening to her African religious gospel Jesus Lordy Lordy Hallelujiah jukebox classics at full volume.  She also enjoyed rooting through the dumpster when she thinks nobody is watching, and very obviously peeping at people from her sliding glass door.  A complete peeping Tom.  Er, Tammy.  No, wait, Tom is probably more like it.  The point is, despite the fact she’s out of her mind, she had arms, hands, and lesbian muscles that could have been helping me instead of rooting through the BFI treasure chest looking for what the elderly couple below me threw away that morning.  Asshole.  Then again, a wise man once told me to never trust a single woman with a lot of cats.  

Back and forth, back and forth.  A lot of stuff was in boxes, and a lot of stuff wasn’t.  A big blue bag from Ikea and a huge Old Navy shopping bag were filled up countless times to bring over miscellaneous bundles of knick knack pattywhacks.   The bags were dumped in piles all over the new apartment floor like I was laying the props for the next Home Alone, and then carried back to the old place.  Lather, rinse, repeat.  It is no secret that in the physical fitness department, I’m as fit for this job as a six-year old paraplegic with a hunchback and seven fingers.  Quit laughing, asshole.  

I’m in better shape than Ulysses S. Grant was, and his name is on the building in which my now former apartment resides.  And that’s why I was determined to work through it.  I wanted to work through being a shadow of Grant, and move to the light of my new building, named after William Henry Harrison.  The noble William Henry Harrison.  The legend.  The asshole.  If he could kill all those Indians at Tippecanoe, and become the second oldest president elected, I could carry this shit to his building.  Though he did die a month after he took office…

Once the middle of the day rolled around, and a good 25% of the stuff had migrated across the sea of grass, another asshole emerged.  This one looked like one of the guys Chris Hansen would be pulling out of a 16-year-old girl’s pool house on “To Catch a Predator.”  He too had a cat, its eyes open so wide it was either a freaky reflection of its owner or he fed it a bag of weed every day for dinner.  The man looked down from his balcony and asked me the obvious stupid questions you ask someone you don’t know but feel the need to talk to:

 “Are you moving?” No, Sherlock, I’m stealing these bags of shampoo and pillows.

“Is your new place cheaper or something” Why, do you want to move in with me and touch me while I sleep?

I snuck away and made a half dozen more laps between the buildings when he asked if I needed any help carrying “heavy stuff.”  I told him it was all moved already, and he said “Oh, I was going to help you with the heavy stuff,” as if that wasn’t obvious from his original statement of “I’ll help you with the heavy stuff.”  It was already moved, and I can’t deny it was nice of him to ask, but I think he wanted to do me.  Self-flattery aside, the man looked like he would be handing out drugged candy on the Good Ship Lollipop.  

I was, however, growing increasingly sore.  If I stopped moving for more than a few minutes, my muscles would tighten up and become useless for a while, so it forced me into a robotic state.  Meanwhile, assholes were all around.  Sports-playing assholes.  Jogging assholes.  Driving assholes.  Doing nothing assholes.  Tennis-playing assholes.  Little Chinese kid on his bike asshole.  But I was unstoppable.  Unstoppable until at 8:45 in the P.M. when I collapsed.  Literally.  Mentally.  Physically.  Coll.  Apsed.  Half the stuff was moved.  I sucked down a pot pie, texted a friend the simple message “I am going to die,” and admitted defeat.  

I apologize for sounding like a journal entry.  I’m just trying to help you understand why you’re an asshole.  I suppose it is obvious how day two of moving shit turned out.  An elevated level of awful pain to an almost unbearable level, more assholes sitting around and speaking to me with no offer of helping, etc etc etc.  At least that day I did have one helper.

Let’s look at another situation.  Within a week of Don Imus saying what he said about the Rutgers players, 7,000 people had posted on the YouTube board where the video clip could be seen.  These 7,000 people were calling each other much worse things than nappy-headed hoes, whether in defense or outrage against Imus.  Their behavior is now public, just as his was, but yet it is fine for them and bad for him.  Seriously people, calm down.  Calm right the fuck down.  He’s just a guy like you.

There are only two reasons why people should get offended by anything.  You either don’t understand it, or you can’t laugh at yourself.  I have my own suggestions on how to get the most out of situations that others get worked up about.  Take them or leave them, just remember I’m an asshole like you, so you don’t have to listen to me:

1. Quit playing the race card.  Quit playing the weight card.  Quit playing all your cards.  We’re all holding a Royal Flush if we’d just chill.  Not everything needs to be so serious.  Fat people are fat.  Black people are black. Gay people are gay.  They’re facts, not attacks.  People are different, and that is fantastic.  I don’t cry when someone calls me a skinny Casper ass mumbler.  That’s pretty accurate.  Tell everyone.

2. Stop doing things just because someone asks.  You aren’t required to answer your stupid cell phone every time someone calls.  Quit letting people boss you around.

3.  You really aren’t that important.  Several people you know and you consider friends actually hate you.  So when you do answer your cell phone, stop talking so fucking loud.  And when you are around other people, stop telling everyone what you did yesterday.  Unless it is something that any other person couldn’t have done, nobody cares.  

4.  This is the most important one.  Most things aren’t that big of a deal.  Poor baby, you dropped a coffee.  A bookshelf collapsed in your living room.  You have to prepare to move from one apartment to another on three days notice.  Remember that in the grand overture of life, this isn’t even one note.  People really tend to flip out over the small stuff.  You’ll get through it.

That’s at least what I think.  But yeah, I’m an asshole.  Maybe the rapist guy was actually just being nice.  Maybe the lesbian had a husband who died tragically, leaving her alone in the world with only her cats as companions.  Maybe doing-nothing asshole had a bad back and can’t lift things.  Then I’m the asshole for calling them all assholes.  I’m also a hypocrite, because I probably wouldn’t offer to help them either.  Most people wouldn’t.  

But, there is one comforting thought… you’re probably not a complete asshole.  You’re not a Cho Seung-Hui, a Timothy McVeigh, or any asshole like that.  I hope.  You’re just a person, trying to do what you want and make yourself happy.  You are just going through your own days, worrying about your own business, pleasing a couple others along the way.  Just like everyone else.  The best you can do.  The best you should do.  

So please, with a little less emphasis on the truly unimportant, by all means asshole, keep on stinkin’.