MasterSelf Year One Read online

  Having pulled safely to the side of the road, I sat in my car and contemplated my miserable luck. Here I am, alone and nearly broke, and I’ve spent almost the last of my money on a useless, stupid shovel. In retrospect, it wasn’t the shovel’s fault, but in times of anger it sometimes helps to externalize. I’m sorry, shovel, you deserved better. I was wrong.

  With my misplaced frustrations out of the way, I put on my donut and got back in the car. I figured that I’d come up with a solution while I was changing it, but I didn’t. I started to look around the car for something to pawn, because I couldn’t think of anything else to do. I have my guitar, but I’m fairly fond of it and it’s also incredibly cheap, so that probably wouldn’t be enough to get a tire out of. It was in this moment that I realized “packing light” may have been a bad choice.

  I looked in my wallet, thinking I could try and sell the $100 Walmart gas card my mother had sent me before I left. This actually would not have been the first time I had to sell a gift card to survive, but that’s (also) a story for another time. Wait a minute! I looked closely and discovered that the Walmart gas card was in fact a Walmart gift card. Oh, thank you, ghost of Sam Walton, and also my mother for writing “FOR GAS” on the card. The same lack of casual observation that drove me into a pothole also prevented me from wasting those sweet, sweet Wal-Bucks on the stupid kind of shit that I (and people who know me) know that I would have bought.

  Emboldened, I drove as fast as I could (50 mph- worst donut ever) to the sanctuary of Wally World’s Tire Center. Turns out they don’t have a tire that matched the two I got the week before, but I figured that was fine, I just need my car to roll. While they set to fixing it, I set to finding some better tent stakes and a rubber mallet (because trying to hammer the stakes they give you in with rocks was evidently not ideal.)

  Fun fact: the rubber mallet they sell in the camping section costs about 500% more than the one in the hardware section.

  Turns out that if your tires don’t match, they can’t put it on the car for you. Weird. I changed the donut out for my nice new nonconformist wheel, and, rolling again, went on my merry way. Now my mission was to find replacement tent poles.

  Not only did no one have “industrial strength” poles, the ones they did have were not big enough, nor were they cheap. I did, however, find a new tent that was the same as my old one, except one person smaller and two tiers cheaper. It also turned out to be blaze orange, so in the event that anyone decides to go hunting where I sleep, they probably won’t shoot me. Nice.

  I drove back into the desert, and upon attempting to set up camp, realized that the poles in this tent were not only broken but the wrong size and missing links. I thought to myself that this must have been why the cheapest tent in the store was also on clearance. My day was approaching a comic level of misfortune, but I would not be deterred. I drove my happy ass back to Big 5 (an otherwise pleasant place that I would highly recommend) and prepared to attempt to bitch my way into a better tent. At least, that was my in-tent. (I heard that groan, just so you know.) Of course, the great customer service I received managed to prevent me from getting to yell at someone’s manager, so I ended up walking away with a fully-functioning replacement.

  It performs surprisingly well for a $25 tent, with the exception of the fact that it’s about an inch too short for my legs. Oh well, people who were one gift card away from being literal beggars can’t be choosers, right?

  The next day, I, being a man of many gift cards, went and saw Murder on the Orient Express with a theater gift card I got from my old job. With it being 10:30 AM, I was the youngest person in the theater by at least 40 years. It was awesome, and I now aspire to have a ridiculous mustache like the Detective in the movie. One day…

  I went back to work, and everything was going smoothly for a few days. If you’re as clever as I’m sure all of my readers are, however, you’ll know that that’s not how this story works. Since you’re so smart, you Clever Trevor, you, you probably also caught my very subtle foreshadowing earlier when I mentioned my Christmas Tires and their seasonally-appropriate ability to bring joy to the world. If you didn’t, better luck next time, sport.

  As I’m driving to work one morning, I begin to feel the steering wheel wobble and think to myself, “This would happen again, wouldn’t it?” There’s a great saying about this, “If it happens once, it is a miracle and it will never happen again. If it happens twice, it will happen a third time.” I, being a person who is not a fan of math, had failed to count the number of tires that I had blown out and the common knowledge that good things always come in threes. As Hunter S. Thompson once said, “All energy flows according to the whims of the Great Magnet. What a fool I was to defy him.”

  Christmas had come early this year. Not because I got any presents, but because it was fucking cold as hell, although I see where that could be confusing. My tire exploded pretty forcefully, and I ended up riding on my sparking rim for a quarter mile before I could pull off. Out of options at this point, I decided to accept the donut as the only option, and ended up somehow making it to work on time.

  Speaking of work, Tesla has free cereal and I had no money, so, thank you for that, Elon Musk. Speaking of Elon Musk, it turns out that he tweeted that he was camping on the roof of the factory. Obviously, I messaged him to see if he wanted to camp in the desert with me.

  Despite my friendly gesture, he hasn’t responded. I’ll keep you all posted if that changes.

  I ended up getting to work two days of overtime. My line of thinking was that if I’m at work, I won’t be able to blow out any more tires. Let me tell you, I patted myself on the back for that one. Fortunately, work is fun and, with the free food, I wouldn’t have to eat as much of the uncooked ramen I have in my car. Win-win, right?

  The best part about living on a hill in the desert is that it doesn’t rain very often. The worst part about about living on a hill in the desert is that, when it does rain, it’s a giant muddy mess. If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll know that my little Acura is neither a truck nor does it have great tires. The combination of those great features and the muddy nature of the hill meant that getting up it was going to be difficult.

  Long story short, I got stuck for a good twenty minutes one of the nights. I did manage to get to the top eventually, so that was cool, but I couldn’t sleep in the tent, what with the torrential 36 hours of rain and all. Fortunately, I made room in my car. Unfortunately, my car is not pleasant to sleep in. Oh well.

  There’s not really a humorous anecdote here, it just sucked.

  I got my final check from Microchip on Friday. The good news was, I had money. The bad news was that it wasn’t a lot. I had just enough to get some Denny’s (try the Lumberjack Slam, it’s a revelation,) get my tire fixed, and theoretically put enough gas in my car to get me to work and Vegas for Thanksgiving.

  Today I returned to Walmart. It turns out that the tire I got was not only the wrong speed rating but also the wrong size compared to the other two, so I ended up getting two new tires. Oh, Sam Walton, you merciful ghost, you. Good man.

  Thus ends the story of How Garrett Got His Roll Back for now.

  In the Desert, Ch. IV

  When I last left off, I was trying to figure out how to get to Las Vegas with a comically small amount of money. Fortunately, my wonderful aunt sent me a very thoughtful card with a very practical amount of gas money in it, because she’s a saint. With nothing holding me back, I was ready to head south Tuesday after work. It’s about a six-and-a-half hour drive from my hill to the house of my cousins in Henderson, NV, so after a stop for gas I hit the road.

  The best part about driving in the Nevada desert (and the Utah desert, for that matter) is that you can generally see any oncoming vehicles several miles in advance. This means that, if you’re into this sort of thing, you can drive as fast as you want. I’m not saying I did that, what with the fifth amendment and all, but you theoretically could. If you wanted to.

  A
few exceptions exist, though. For whatever reason, the few towns between Reno and Vegas (I’m talking about you, Tonopah) all have a 20 mph speed limit for no good reason other than the fact that it’s damn near impossible to drive 20 miles per hour after you’ve been traveling at [SPEED REDACTED] for a few hours. Needless to say, they’re horrible speed traps and, more importantly, a huge pain in the ass. When I drove through Tonopah in October, we got pulled over, but only for broken tail lights, for example.

  I know what you’re expecting, but actually nothing bad happened, for once. The drive was pretty uneventful, and I ended up getting in around two AM in Henderson. Being exhausted, I went straight to bed, trying to ensure that I would be well-rested for Twerksgiving.

  Yeah, you read that right. When I let my Vegas family know I was coming down, one of my cousins invited me to join in what is apparently a tradition known as Twerksgiving. Naturally, I was concerned that it had something to do with a dancing turkey, but it turns out I was (thankfully) mistaken. What a relief.

  We left the house that night to go to a friend of my cousins’ to pregame. I ended up having a strange conversation about Buddhism with some guy at the pregame who apparently didn’t know anyone there, which, at this point in my life, no longer surprises me. After an hour or two of hanging out, we, now somewhat loaded, loaded ourselves into the Uber and headed to the Wynn hotel/casino.

  Some necessary information going into this part: I’m routinely the kind of person who likes dive bars and pubs. Having lived in Jacksonville and Fayetteville, NC, I’m inherently wary of anyone talking about “going to the club,” “getting turnt,” and “getting mad krunk, yo.” I don’t know anyone who said the latter, because I know how to pick my friends, but if I did I would be concerned. That being said, there is (obviously, I know) a big difference between shit “clubs” in military towns and the impressive Vegas nightlife venue known as the Intrigue.

  Somehow my cousins “know everyone in town,” so upon arriving at the club, we got to walk past a line of 200+ much fancier looking people than myself and skip them all. I’m not going to lie, that was just plain cool as hell. Feeling smug, we continued down the stairs (it’s underground!) to the club proper, but then went in through some fancy looking doors to the left. I learned later that this is called the “Living Room,” and it’s one of the VIP sections of the club. It even had private bathrooms with the expensive breath mints, and not just the shitty chocolate ones, either.

  We had a table in the corner complete with a handle of Belvedere, a variety of mixers, and a scantily-clad waitress who poured our drinks for us. I sat down, and while drinking a much higher quality screwdriver than I am historically accustomed to, took a look around the room. The room was set up like some kind of very shiny library, and in my country-mouse ignorance, I attempted to take a snapchat of it. Of course, that wasn’t kosher, because a vested man with a lisp immediately walked up behind me and hissed, “No photography in here, sir.” Maybe he didn’t have a lisp, who knows. Maybe he did. Either way, that was displeasing.

  The room was very dimly lit, and the bathroom doors were poorly labeled and close to each other. A number of times some drunk women in the bar “accidentally” walked into the (very small) men’s room, resulting in screams and giggles galore. One of those times (which I somehow doubt was accidental) was when I was in there, and the intruder loudly shouted at the handful of dudes in the room, “Hey, nice dicks!” Unsure of how to respond to that, I took it as a compliment and drunkenly shot the finger guns as I exited.

  Despite that entry-level debauchery, The Living Room was fairly quiet compared to the main club. As we had finished our vodka, we lost our table and got thrown into the wild of the greater club area. The place was packed with women in short dresses and men reeking of Drakkar Noir. Pushing through, we made our way to the other VIP area outside. This actually happened to be, I shit you not, a cave under a waterfall, adjacent to a fountain that shot flaming water out of it. I couldn’t even begin to understand how that worked, and as a result I remember drunkenly asking a number of people, “Hey, how'd ya think they lit the water on fire, huh?”

  I don’t think they knew, either.

  At some point, Diplo showed up to DJ, and the crowd twerked away to such hits as “Boy Oh Boy” and “Bubble Butt.” Good times. He puts on a great show, and there was a number of women dancing precariously on the stage. I wondered whether any of them had ever fallen off. I certainly would have, because at that moment it was a wonder that I didn’t fall into the fountain.

  The only unpleasant moment of the evening was when I went to buy myself and one of my cousins a round. Everything had been free at this point, so I wasn’t worried, but when I got the two Long Islands, I also got a receipt for $38. What the actual fuck, man, that’s obscene. I’ve ordered whiskey in NYC for less, and drinking in that town is a nightmare. Shocked and a little upset, I limped away, sipping a good-but-not-nineteen-dollars-good drink.

  We ended up crashing at the house we pregamed at for a few hours, then we went home and I slept my hangover away until dinner was ready.

  Speaking of dinner, I have never seen such a relentless verbal assault as I witnessed that evening. My Aunt is truly a good sport, because what she endured was probably tantamount to senior abuse. She regaled us with a story about one of her elderly suitors, who attempted to court her by swimming naked in his pool. As the conversation alternated between things I didn’t want to hear at that or any other dinner (or any other meal for that matter) to horrible expletives that I cannot, in good conscience, reproduce here, everyone got drunker and more absurd. Eventually, someone put a bandana reading “BOSS BITCH” on my Aunt’s head. I was thankful, indeed.

  After that insanity ended, we watched Elf and then went out for Black Friday, which wasn’t as crazy as I had expected. I got some pants. It was good.

  The next day, we made plans to go downtown to some bars that evening. We went to get some dinner beforehand at an all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant, which I thoughtfully noted “probably isn’t what you should eat before a night of drinking.” Oh, how right I was. Why didn’t you listen to me, me? You fool.

  It started innocently enough, with small, tapas-sized portions of pork belly and salmon sashimi. After the first round of our orders had come out, we were still feeling good, so I decided to put in a quantity of food I would very shortly label as “way too damn much fish, man.” It was awesome sushi, but the menu gave you no concept of how big any of the plates were. I then learned, to my horror, that you have to pay full price for anything you don’t finish. That’s when shit got real.

  The three of us made a valiant effort to put back as much as we could, then a final plate showed up. At first, I thought it was a mistake, but it turned out that I can’t read Japanese or even discern simple menu items, because I guess it was something I ordered. It was also the only part of the meal that wasn’t delicious, because it was six large rolled pieces of seaweed filled exclusively with roe and rice, along with some octopus and oysters.

  We managed to finish it, but oh, the price we paid. I have never felt so ill in my life, and it was all the more painful because I knew, deep down, that I deserved it. Remember, kids, that little voice in your head that says, “No, Garrett, you can’t eat four more oysters, just pay for the damn things and keep your dignity,” isn’t challenging you and only wants the best for you. If nothing else, remember that.

  As you can imagine, we did not make it downtown that night. When we got home, I layed down on the couch and prayed for a swift death, while National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation played on in the background.

  All in all, it was a great holiday adventure and I’m happy to have been able to visit my family for the week. I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving!

  In the Desert, Ch. V

  It’s been a while since I wrote Ch. IV, I know. I’m sorry, you deserve better. There is a good reason for that however- I am no longer in the desert. Okay, come on. Try not to gasp like that, it�
��s unbecoming.

  *Cue flashback music and fade effect.*

  It was a dark and stormy night. Oh wait, we didn’t flash back far enough…

  *Re-cue flashback music and fade effect.

  It was a dark but completely unstormy night. That’s how they get you, you know. Anyway, I, in my cap, had just settled my brains for a long winter’s nap, and nap I did. Several hours later, outside my tent there arose such a clatter I attempted to spring from my sleeping bag (but failed because I was stuck in it) to see what was the matter. When what, to my wondering eyes should appear, but the damn stupid wind that took the life of my first tent. Merry Christmas indeed, but it seemed I was the filthy animal.

  With the god of the wind having returned for his yuletide sacrifice, I thought to myself, “This sure blows.” Apparently, in the midst of the gale, my roof had somehow broken halfway. This left the big vent in the ceiling completely uncovered, so when it started to rain, I was exposed. Surely this must be some form of divine retribution for monotheistisizing a pagan holiday, I figured, as I sat helpless, a victim of the elements.