I just got a job bartending. This is funny for two reasons:

1) I don't know how to bartend...
2) ...

OK, so it's only funny for one reason. And maybe it's not that funny. Especially when four people want a shot of something like, say, 'A Red-Headed Slut' and you look at them like they just asked you to pee in a cup. My patient manager has been schooling me on the basics and is right there to answer any questions and knows I'll pick it up. But I'm finding that I'm learning and I have to learn quickly. People want their booze and they want it right and they want it now and they have no time to watch you try to figure out which button on the soda gun is tonic and which is Sprite. Learning quickly has become my life lately-- picking up on something faster than I may have had to in the past has become my full time job.

It's funny being on your own after four years of not being on your own-- it's another skill you have to learn quick to do. See, there's this padding that gets thicker and thicker the more you stay with someone that cushions any sort of blow. Business is slow for a month, well he's there... so that's OK. You left your keys in a friend's car... that's OK because he is home and you don't need them. Your friends all have dates or are working on a Saturday night... it's cool because he's going to be your Saturday night fun. Those things aren't there anymore. You are completely on your own and you have to figure out how that's going to work. You have to test yourself and it's risky. Hurt. Rejection. Frustration.

A loud dance song pops through the bar as a guy sits down asking me for a Apple martini. The manager that trains me is pouring four drinks of his own and has only taught me this drink once. Looking at the rows and rows of bottles that I have to chose from I decide that instead of waiting for someone to hold my hand and walk me through I'm going to give the drink a whirl. The worse that happens? I have to buy him a drink out of tips and apologize for my lack of good-drink-making skills.

So I reach for the vodka and the apple pucker and the triple sec lined against the wall behind me. The dark lighting hides my deer-caught-in-a-head-light look and the biting of my lip. I keep glancing out of the corner of my eye to see what the guy is doing while I shake the martini. I'm nervous. I hate flopping. Failing. Looking like an idiot... especially when there is no one there to blame, but me.

"So, yeah, my second night here..." I say to the hat wearing guy as I pour the chilled drink in a glass. He nods and smiles. I'm trying to warm him up.

I put the glass on the coaster and wipe my hands on my jeans and smile while saying the amount he owes.

"It's perfect." The guys says to me as he pulls his bills out of the wallet. "For your second day, you are pretty confident... you look like you belong back there!"

As I set down his change, smile and thank him I let my nervous stomach settle. Like learning a new drink at the bar I'm going to have to start winging it a little more in life. Sure I'm going to mix the wrong drink once in a while, but in the mean time I'm going to meet some awesome people who are going to be hanging on the other side of the bar. I'm going to pick up a skill I never thought I could be good at. I'm going to eventually have to learn what a Red-Headed Slut is and be good with it. But that's part of all this... you have to learn so you can be better... a better bartender and a better single person.

There comes a point in every guy's life, gay or straight, where they go broke... with a broken heart.

They fall in love and move in with their significant others and spend time together going on trips or visiting each other's family or just staying in ordering Thai food from a joint down the street. Months or years go by and, well, if you're straight you get to take the plunge... marriage.(Us gays are still trying to figure it out).

But if it fails... well, then what?

For the first time in my life I owe the IRS $2,000. After picking up my jaw from off the ground and hanging up with my accountant and even wiping some exasperated tears off my face, I started to think about how I had gotten in to this mess. Sure. Being a freelancer means taking responsibility with your money and setting aside some cash for moments like these. But when, in five months, a boy has to pack up his things from an apartment he spent with his boyfriend with very low rent then move in to a new apartment with a down-payment and furniture and a whole new lifestyle to adjust to... things happen. Savings get smaller. Credit cards get a bit higher. Life changes and so does your financial status.

Which brings me to the Tax Ex-Off. You know, writing off the "Ex" relationship.

When you are married you get certain write-offs single people do not get offered. Sure it might not seem like a big deal when you don't know about them, but when I got off the phone with a good friend that just recently tied the knot and discovered the return they were getting back just because they were married,I got a little ticked off.

What about the people who have to write off their broken hearts or their failed relationships?

Think about it. Why doesn't the government get the picture of how hard it is to think you are going to be with someone the rest of your life and POOF ... now you're not. And then you have to heal. You know, the pizza's your consume to fill the empty sad void you usually get when you are depressed in a break-up. The ice cream and the cookies and let's not forget the booze... oh my God the wine bottles you could write off.

How about the moving costs? How about the tissues and the sheets for your bed, you know, the comfortable ones you buy because you spend a lot of time mourning the end of your long-term relationship in it? What about the gym membership you get to lose the weight of all the depressed eating? What about the bad dates you take to try to forget about the break-up? The dinners you pay for because the other one insists on going "Dutch" and because you are a little more classy you offer to pay? What about the cab drives you take back home to hide from the bad date? What about the therapy you need to not carry past relationship baggage?

In the end, life's choices are expensive and it seems like the mistakes we make cost the most. Even if those mistakes could be the smartest mistakes you make, they cost more than doing something that seems to be so easy for people to do-- get married and sign on a dotted line together.

So I will pay my money back to the IRS. But when I sign off the check, I will put in the memo: The Break-Up. So some random IRS person who doesn't know me and doesn't give a shit about me will at least know that this money they are getting isn't just some business guy who tried to rip off his previous year's return or some waiter that got caught stuffing his pocket instead of claiming his tips.

This money they are getting is four years of learning lessons and four years of smiles and four years that accidentally led to failure and not marriage and not more tax write-offs, but to more debt. A different type of debt that gets added to your already broke-n heart.

Yeah. No. This isn't a joke. I'm not going in to too many details here, but a dog did eat my cell phone. And I'm not all being dramatic. I mean, I couldn't read the screen because a dog ate my cell phone. Blah blah blah, two days later I get a new one. TWO DAYS LATER. TWO DAYS! People. Do you get this? TWO DAYS I HAD TO BE WITHOUT A WORKING CELL PHONE.

I know this is bad. It's bad to be so dependent on something like this. But it's your contact to everyone. And it's also my contact book.

See, I'm good at having people's phone numbers. I mean, when I was ten I asked for an address and phone number book for Christmas. And when I didn't get one that winter I used the Christmas money that I was given and marched over to Office Max to pick out my own address and phone number book. (I filled it in with my grandma's and aunt's addresses seeing that I was ten and, really, didn't have too many addresses and phone numbers to keep). But that's not the point. The point was I'm good at knowing information about people. It's just my thing.

But when you didn't remember to save all of my phone numbers to your SIM card(I'm going to sound old for a second... come one technology! You should know my phone numbers anyway... even if I don't save them to some magical SIM card!) so now I am getting text messages from random numbers that aren't random because they are people I know, but do not remember their phone numbers.

A conversation that involves this situation goes like this:

"Hey, what u up to tonight?"

Me reading the text... uhhhh... shoot... how do I go about this without them knowing...

"I dunno... what are you up to?"

"I think we r going out tonight... want to meet us?"

Me reading the text... well, now I have gone to far... I should have just told them that I got a new phone and didn't take the time to save their very important phone number in to my phone... I don't want to offend them...shit..."

"Sure... where...?"

And then they tell me where and the time and I sit there wondering who I am about to go hang out with. No, I'm serious. I have no clue. Sure, everyone has a 773 area code so I can't decipher from that. The bar they wanted to meet at was in a sort of either or part of the neighborhood. Meaning... either gay or straight.

I played with the idea. Do I go and meet this person to see who it is. What if it's just a random person you had a number from because you were drunk and said: "Hey, it would be cool to get each other's numbers to chill some other time!" Even though you both didn't really mean it. But why would they text now if they didn't mean it?

So, I got dressed and went.

The whole way there I was thinking about how this was like a blind date, but not really because I apparently knew this person and then I get this knot in my stomach because I was actually nervous and then I started to think about all the times I have been nervous in my life meeting up someone one and how all those were usually connected with the fear of who they could turn out to be and then I got in to the bar and there was my co-worker friend... someone I adore. Someone I didn't even realize I was missing their number.

I had a drink and chatted and added her number back in my phone... on the SIM.

As I walked home I was still nervous. There was no real reason to be. I had met the person, my friend, I had gotten her phone number... and then the next time this happens I'll just get balls and say something like "I am so sorry... I lost my phone numbers and don't know who this is..." and they will tell me and I won't have to blind date it to see who's number it was.

But then I realized it had nothing to do with the numbers... it had to do with the technology. Turning in to my apartment lobby with a cellphone it one pocket and my ipod in the other I ran to my laptop and started writing this blog realizing that ten years ago I would have been listening to my CDs and journaling in a notebook and how in ten more years this knot in my stomach won't exist because it would be so normal to be so connected to things that aren't alive, but make you feel alive. And that's the scary thing. The things that make you feel alive aren't even alive.

Stupid dog.

It's totally egotistical to mention this and if you know me well enough you will know that I'm totally not egotistical, but I feel like it has to be mentioned because this has been a really dumb/stupid/idiotic/mean/ aggressive winter and it would be nice to share something egotistical for once.

So, I'm in Abercrombie the other afternoon(stop your judging) to buy a swimming suit for my trip to Belize because you have to have a cute suit for that (stop your judging) and a girl comes up to me and hands me a business card and says: "This is our model rep in New York for the Abercrombie brand, you should contact them... for real."

I have the business card in my wallet. I'm not going to contact them. Are you fricken kidding me? I like cookies too much. But, sometimes, being egotistical on a gloomy winter day is the only way you can get through a gloomy winter day. (Stop your judging). Seriously. Stop your judging.

I'm not wearing a coat that blocks arctic chills this afternoon. It's coming...

Are you married?

Why white people like Mexican food so much?

Why ain't you married?

Do you get crunk(which needed to be translated... "crazy drunk")?

When do you think you'll get married?

Why you so short?

So you ain't gotta girlfriend?

How old are you?

How you gonna get married if you ain't no girlfriend?

You have any babies?

Your mamma mad that you ain't married?

What you eat on your pizza?

You too old to not be married. I bet you're depressed?

Gross. Why you eat that on your pizza?

You think you'll be married before you thirty?

Why don't you have a car?

When you get married you gonna go let us know?

I'm doing some writing at the coffee place that's up the street and around the corner from my apartment. Behind me is a couple. A mom and teenage son. They have plates with bagels and are sipping out of paper coffee cups. They are speaking French.

For a second or two I close my eyes. For a second or two I just listen to the way the words make little sense. And for a second or two I am not in Chicago.

For a second or two I am in France at a coffee place writing stories on my laptop.You know, one of those places where the chairs are wood and old and the grind of espresso beans echoes through the old buildings walls. I moved there because I got a teaching job then, of course, fell in love with some French guy--probably a writer himself... or maybe he's a doctor. Yeah-- a French doctor. And we live in this little flat that's in the city, but tucked around the corner in a neighborhood that has a coffee place that tourists don't know about and the locals rave about. Since he's a doctor he tells me: "Vous ne travaillez pas" because he doesn't want me to work so I don't need to work which means I can wander the cobble streets with my laptop or a journal or got to museums or eat really awesome pastries or smoke a little bit(because this is my daydream I can smoke without the whole I'm-going-to-get-cancer thing). And on the weekends we'd go to London because that's where the French doctor's sister would live and then on holidays we'd go to Italy and Greece and then on my birthday there would be a plan ticket to go to Egypt because that's like going to Mexico for us.

For a second or two it's not cold and it's not winter and I'm not worried about what job I'm doing this summer and I'm not worried about finishing this and I'm not worried about how I'm going to pay this month's cell phone bill.

But after a second or two I get a text message: "Let's have lunch this afternoon. I miss u." from a good friend that makes living in Chicago worth the winter and the snow and the temperatures that make your ears feel like they might fall off.

Sometimes it totally just takes a second or two to appreciate years of what you actually have.

Three women in their late twenties are eating at the table next to me. I'm evesdropping... of course. They are nutritionists talking about the clients they've been working with for the last couple of months who, apparently, think their clients habits of eating such bad foods are disgusting and in judgmental tones keep making fun of each client and the things they were eating.

What each nutritionist is eating at that lunch:

Woman with dark black hair: French fries and grilled cheese with a whole bunch of ketchup.
Woman with brown hair and this creepy mole on her lip: French toast with a gob of butter melting on the top slice
Woman with dark hair and glasses that looks like Tina Fey: A hamburger and Fries and a Coke

Just saying.

The other day I lost my wallet.

OK, it was one of those situations where I thought I lost my wallet and then I realized that it could be one place and if it wasn't there... I had then lost my wallet. But, this one place was my friends car and her car was at work and she worked until, like, eight so I had to wait a whole day to see if it was in the side of her car or if I was going to have to call cancel two bank cards, two credit cards, a Zipcar card, sacrifice a gift card to a design store, lose my license that I had had since I turned sixteen that has a picture that--I'm going to go there--people compliment me on and I am proud of, a few dollars in cash, and a picture.

The picture. It's a picture of my grandma.

Sentimental, it fits me so well. I'm the type of guy that keeps first date corks from bottles of wine. I'm the guy that keeps the ticket stubs and the concert bills and posters from events I went to and even hotel stationary. I have all of my yearbooks and even the love notes that I used to pass back and forth to my very first girlfriend in high school.

But that stuff stays in albums or boxes tucked away to be discovered when you are looking for something in particular or when you want to prove to someone you still have what you are reminiscing about. The photograph of my grandma, that's in my wallet.

I call my brother to, well, whimper.

"So, yah. For the first time ever... I think I lost my wallet."
"Shit..."
"Yeah, and, the thing is... sure I'm freaked out about all the cards... but you know what's in it...?"
"What?"
"That picture of grandma..."
"Oh..."
"Yeah..."
"Why do you carry that in the first place?"

And for a second I paused to take a breath to explain that: "Duh, because I want to think of her all the time and having her in my wallet is a way that I can do that..."

But then I stopped because I realized why, for the first time, I really carried her in my wallet.

Everyday we use cards to pay for things. We get in to bars with IDs. We have receipts stashed in corners of our wallets in case we need to return... we keep just living life pushing forward trying to get somewhere or get something. Everything in our wallets are usually so functional... business cards or train tickets or something that we need in the moment... something we have to carry to succeed.

My grandma was totally that person who pushed me to succeed. Like a debit card, she gave me the power to get what I wanted when I wanted... without the overdraft fees. But carrying her is like carrying a membership card or a credit card with no limit-- it gives me this confidence that I belong somewhere... and that I am always going to be able to get somewhere.

When my friend told me she had my wallet I was relieved, yes, that I didn't have to get a new ID-- GOD, do you know how hard it is to take a picture at DMVs... I only hear about the horror stories. But I was excited to have my grandma back... even if only she's a piece of paper tucked behind my Visa.

Today it is 49 degrees in Chicago. Yum.

Friday it is supposed to be 23 degrees in Chicago. Boo.

HOLY. Shit.