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Listen, if Ross hadn’t slept with the copy girl he never would’ve met Emily, they never would’ve gone to London to get married, and Monica and Chandler never would’ve hooked up and accidentally started a relationship. Which is to say that sometimes stupid things need to happen so that great things can follow. And sometimes stupid things need to happen so that more stupid things can follow and that’s what this post is about.
Speaking of stupid, if you haven’t been on Neopets in a while just know that it still exists and is mostly the same, it’s just that now your dragon-squirrels can wear crop tops and jorts. Back in the day, though, my main goal in the realistic capitalism simulation known as Neopets was buying 10,000 books for my magic red goat to read. I was so heavily invested in that goal that when I came upon a shop that said I could get a million neopoints by following a few easy steps, I took my chances. It was kind of surreal getting scammed for the first time, but to be fair it did totally prepare me for the thousands of pyramid schemes I’d be invited to join by my high school classmates later on in life. The weirdest part though was when third grade me made a new account and messaged them telling them to give me my account back. They responded saying they were me and that they didn’t take anything, and that was the first time I questioned whether I ever actually truly existed. Out of fear of unraveling the simulation we all live in and discovering the matrix, I didn’t go back on Neopets after that point and to be honest didn’t miss much about it. Except for the forums (and Cheat. That game rocked and Brucey B can suck it.) Being without the Neopets forums for all my role play and social needs meant I had to resort to the next best step: chat rooms. Chat rooms used to be the place to go if you were a horny nerd with no friends. So it was a natural fit for me right off the bat. In middle school while I was still somehow convinced that I was straight, I stumbled across one chat room that let you go in as an avatar and walk around. It was like Habbo Hotel but worse and hornier. In there I found a pixelated guy that was super sad (which I could tell because he kept typing “::cries sadly::”) so I went up to him and asked what was wrong. He said he was sad because he was gay and no one would hug him and I was like damn… not being hugged definitely is one of the top 3 problems plaguing the gay community right now. Let’s get political and give him a hug. And that, embarrassingly enough, was the moment that I realized that I was gay. Not when I convinced my best friend to take his shirt off so I could drool over him. Not when I had wet dreams about the skater guy in my class. Not when I found myself watching an extensive amount of gay porn. It was when I typed “::hugs u::” to a sad cluster of gay pixels in a chat room. His name was Leoni, he was Canadian, and we ended up dating on and off for about 3 years before he pretended his entire family was being terrorized by a demon queen named Kim (her full demonic name was Rymekilb and she was the keeper of the seventh layer of hell) shortly before admitting that he was actually a confused girl catfishing me the whole time. You’d think I would’ve been more devastated about being catfished, but I was really more just annoyed that the whole demon storyline didn’t pan out, because I was watching a lot of Charmed at the time and was so amped to realize my full middle school witch potential and start dating my inevitably hot whitelighter. But you know what they say, don’t hate the sad cluster of fake gay pixels, hate the habbo hotel ripoff chat room that brought you together to begin with. I’m pretty sure that’s the phrase, but I’m always open to constructive feedback.
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 Probably my biggest failing in life is when I was captured by the zergs, infested, and transformed by the Overmind into their queen, defender, and eternal ruler. It was super embarrassing and overall just a really bad Tuesday for me. (Possible I’m confusing myself with Sarah Kerrigan? It happens sometimes. We’re pretty similar.) My biggest failing beyond that was the beginning of my non-existent theatre career. (See? Basically the same person.)
I have this weird thing about me where whenever I’m not currently having an anxiety attack from being around other humans, I need to be the absolute center of attention. There’s no inbetween. Will I sprint out of the kitchen and into my room at Usain speeds when I hear my roommate coming through the front door? Yes. But do I also want the spotlight on me constantly and get annoyed when it’s on other people? Yes! And so nothing broke my gentle, ego-centric heart more than when I first got into theatre and wasn’t immediately the lead in every single musical that I auditioned for. It was, like, sure I couldn’t sing or dance, but it was 7th grade and we were on Long Island, so nobody else could either and if they could they were already in 13: The Musical. I did end up getting leads towards the end of my high school theatre career, mostly because in my freshman year I’d proven my worth by landing the written-in part of “title-card changer” during a series of one-acts which I used to come out on stage dancing to Dontcha by the Pussycat Dolls because I didn’t want to have a social life, apparently. When it came to community theatre though, I was pretty much a designated ensemble member. Which I was okay with, considering my singing and dancing are about at the level where you’re pretty sure any audition I do is some elaborate What Would You Do episode where they’re testing to see if you can contain your laughter while simultaneously crushing someone’s dreams. It’s part of why I ended up veering away from the path of actor and into the role of writer. When I was younger my future career plans changed every week. First I wanted to be a writer, then a firefighter, then the sole wielder of the keyblade, then briefly a newspaper delivery boy when I accidentally misunderstood what an “editor in chief” was during a career simulation fair in middle school, then an actor, and then back to being a writer when I realized I wasn’t all that great of an actor. And while it was disappointing to give up the dream of acting in order to pursue writing, it didn’t feel like a huge loss. Because it was still an art that I loved, and one that I felt infinitely more confident operating within. First and foremost we've got the link to my new Patreon, where you can subscribe and contribute to the creative process in various ways (including gaining access to previews of future content, getting a thank you on this blog, as well as the ability to suggest future posts!)
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| "You’re locked in a room. It’s dark and the only thing you can see is a small hole in the corner of the wall, with light streaming through." "You’re a telemarketer making cold calls on an average work day. Except one of the calls you make today is a familiar number: Your sister’s. She’s been dead for 2 years. You still call. She answers." "A classic 1950s sitcom plays on tv. The black and white antics that take place are equal parts funny and heartwarming. Suddenly they notice you watching them and are struck with fear. They know you, and know what you’re capable of." | "One moment you’re performing a play about a witch trial onstage. You’re on the stand defending yourself when you forget your next line. You close your eyes to try and recall it but come up blank. When you open your eyes the audience is gone. You’re in a courtroom. You’re actually on trial." "You wake up to discover you’ve grown a third arm. The next day, a fourth. The day after, a fifth. You’re starting to run out of room for more arms. The doctor you see is equal parts unfazed and unhelpful." | "You’re listening to soft piano coming from a balcony nearby as the rumble comes once more. This time, however, the earth cracks right beneath your feet" "It’s been ten days since time stopped. Since the world froze. You’re starting to wonder if things will ever go back, or if you’ll spend the rest of your life on the divide between past and present." |
I have unnaturally good luck to the point where I have never even needed to memorize the rules to poker because I just get a full house right away every single time I need it. It’s kind of like how Jodie Sweetin has never had to learn how to play a character that isn’t Stephanie Tanner because she just gets a Full House every single time she needs it. Except the main difference is that I’ve never done pants off dance off. We haven’t forgotten, Jodie. And we never will.
My winning streak was discovered by my mom at a very young age and she wasted no time exploiting me for radio contests to win useless prizes that absolutely nobody in the universe ever asked for. I won one radio contest by submitting an essay about why The Lion King was my favorite movie, which, now that I think about it I couldn’t tell you if it really was my favorite movie because I distinctly remember loving Aladdin and Rocky Horror way more. (I had a weird childhood.) I also couldn’t tell you what I wrote at all. In fact, I can’t necessarily promise that I actually wrote it and that it wasn’t just my mom pretending that I wrote it while submitting some of her own work disguised in a 5-year-old’s handwriting.
Anyway, I (or possibly my mom) won the contest and then found out that the prize was a yearly subscription to a magazine. Which is a terrible prize. Even when I was a kid at the dentist about to have someone drill into my teeth, being in that waiting room with no form of entertainment except for a stack of magazines was the most painful part of the day. I’d walk into the office with the dentist after 30 minutes of Highlights magazines, he would say, “Now you might feel some pain,” and I’d think to myself, “Well, at least I’ll feel something.” Having so easily won a completely useless prize made me feel like the girl that sings I Speak Six Languages from Spelling Bee, except I’m not athletic, not musically gifted, and can barely speak one.
The radio contest was the beginning of my competitive streak and the catalyst for waking up the spirit of the ancient goddess Monica hidden within me. (Speaking of course of the Goddess of the kitchen and cleanliness, the goddess of competition, she whose battlecry rings clean and clear across the night sky, as her enemies hear, “..I KNOW!”) From then on I would use my competitive powers only for good. And by “good” I do mean buying someone back into the game of Monopoly after they lose just so that I can keep winning for a longer period of time. What? It’s called being charitable. Try it some time.
My winning streak was discovered by my mom at a very young age and she wasted no time exploiting me for radio contests to win useless prizes that absolutely nobody in the universe ever asked for. I won one radio contest by submitting an essay about why The Lion King was my favorite movie, which, now that I think about it I couldn’t tell you if it really was my favorite movie because I distinctly remember loving Aladdin and Rocky Horror way more. (I had a weird childhood.) I also couldn’t tell you what I wrote at all. In fact, I can’t necessarily promise that I actually wrote it and that it wasn’t just my mom pretending that I wrote it while submitting some of her own work disguised in a 5-year-old’s handwriting.
Anyway, I (or possibly my mom) won the contest and then found out that the prize was a yearly subscription to a magazine. Which is a terrible prize. Even when I was a kid at the dentist about to have someone drill into my teeth, being in that waiting room with no form of entertainment except for a stack of magazines was the most painful part of the day. I’d walk into the office with the dentist after 30 minutes of Highlights magazines, he would say, “Now you might feel some pain,” and I’d think to myself, “Well, at least I’ll feel something.” Having so easily won a completely useless prize made me feel like the girl that sings I Speak Six Languages from Spelling Bee, except I’m not athletic, not musically gifted, and can barely speak one.
The radio contest was the beginning of my competitive streak and the catalyst for waking up the spirit of the ancient goddess Monica hidden within me. (Speaking of course of the Goddess of the kitchen and cleanliness, the goddess of competition, she whose battlecry rings clean and clear across the night sky, as her enemies hear, “..I KNOW!”) From then on I would use my competitive powers only for good. And by “good” I do mean buying someone back into the game of Monopoly after they lose just so that I can keep winning for a longer period of time. What? It’s called being charitable. Try it some time.
The mess builds without you noticing. And before you know it you’ve knocked down a stack of books and ripped the side off of a high rise, your footprints marking the streets. At some point you remember to clean, but the pile builds so fast, too fast to keep up with.
There’s a ring on the dresser in Boston and a long island in the hand of a friend. And the flies are starting to swarm, and you can’t ignore your mess for much longer. And you justify. You explain. You give excuses to grieving families and insist it’s not your fault.
“I was curious. And I ended up making a mess.” You’re the long island. You’re the ring. You’re the monster in the streets.
And you’re the mess.
There’s a ring on the dresser in Boston and a long island in the hand of a friend. And the flies are starting to swarm, and you can’t ignore your mess for much longer. And you justify. You explain. You give excuses to grieving families and insist it’s not your fault.
“I was curious. And I ended up making a mess.” You’re the long island. You’re the ring. You’re the monster in the streets.
And you’re the mess.
When I was grocery shopping about a year ago I almost walked directly into the most gorgeous boy I had ever seen. We’re talking full on lacrosse twink, which is kind of like a soccer twink, but taller and with wavier hair. And a soccer twink is kind of like a twunk but with a hair flip and way too perfect legs. And a twunk is kind of like-... You know what? Never mind. Just open up urbandictionary in another tab. It is not my job to educate you. In fact, I am maybe the least qualified person to educate anyone on anything considering my attendance in high school was as rare and spaced out as the entire Black Mirror series.
When I walked into him I was blown away. I thought, could I really be experiencing the first ever gay grocery store meet cute? Because, let me tell you something, gay meet cutes don’t happen in grocery stores. You want to know how gay meet cutes happen? You see a hot boy on the street, pull up grindr, and look to see which faceless torso is going, “51 feet away, 52 feet away, 53 feet away…” You definitely do not approach them in a grocery store. And you don’t meet them in laundromats either. The one place we have is gay bars, and even there you can’t meet cute. You can meet drunk, you can meet messy, or you can meet their boyfriend. And sometimes you can do all three!
The problem with running into this beautiful, beautiful man was that when I turned the corner I saw that he was there shopping with another hot guy. And they had a shopping cart. Which means they’re locked down. Shopping carts in the city mean commitment. Or homelessness. If you need an entire shopping cart for your trip to the grocery store in the city, you are fully prepared to stick with this person and apartment for at least another year, and that’s just a fact.
His boyfriend was cute too, though. (He was a soccer twink.) And, realistically, if I wanted, I probably could have approached them for a threesome, because one of them was wearing a sleeveless shirt so they were definitely in an open relationship. If you’re gonna wear a sleeveless shirt to the grocery store with your boyfriend you might as well just have a neon sign that says, “LOOKING FOR A THIRD.” It’s like how wearing a baseball henley means that you’re vers, but you prefer to bottom. Honestly, gay guys communicate half through their clothing. We’re very advanced in that way. It’s like how chameleons communicate through changing their skin color. (I’m pretty sure blue means “looking for fun but can’t host” in chameleon. I’d have to urbandictionary it to be sure, though.)
When I walked into him I was blown away. I thought, could I really be experiencing the first ever gay grocery store meet cute? Because, let me tell you something, gay meet cutes don’t happen in grocery stores. You want to know how gay meet cutes happen? You see a hot boy on the street, pull up grindr, and look to see which faceless torso is going, “51 feet away, 52 feet away, 53 feet away…” You definitely do not approach them in a grocery store. And you don’t meet them in laundromats either. The one place we have is gay bars, and even there you can’t meet cute. You can meet drunk, you can meet messy, or you can meet their boyfriend. And sometimes you can do all three!
The problem with running into this beautiful, beautiful man was that when I turned the corner I saw that he was there shopping with another hot guy. And they had a shopping cart. Which means they’re locked down. Shopping carts in the city mean commitment. Or homelessness. If you need an entire shopping cart for your trip to the grocery store in the city, you are fully prepared to stick with this person and apartment for at least another year, and that’s just a fact.
His boyfriend was cute too, though. (He was a soccer twink.) And, realistically, if I wanted, I probably could have approached them for a threesome, because one of them was wearing a sleeveless shirt so they were definitely in an open relationship. If you’re gonna wear a sleeveless shirt to the grocery store with your boyfriend you might as well just have a neon sign that says, “LOOKING FOR A THIRD.” It’s like how wearing a baseball henley means that you’re vers, but you prefer to bottom. Honestly, gay guys communicate half through their clothing. We’re very advanced in that way. It’s like how chameleons communicate through changing their skin color. (I’m pretty sure blue means “looking for fun but can’t host” in chameleon. I’d have to urbandictionary it to be sure, though.)
When I was 5 I had my first date with a girl at Rugrats Live and I peed my pants in front of her entire family, Reptar, and god. Up until that moment everything had gone super smooth. When we first met in kindergarten and got seated next to each other (which 5 year old Ryan thought was fate and 25 year old Ryan now realizes was alphabetical order) I told her that I almost ran out of the classroom when she sat down because I realized I was sharing my table with the prettiest girl in town. Looking back I came from a no-Starbucks small Long Island town that was most famous for being the heroin capital of the United States, so… probably not the huge compliment I thought it was at the time. When we got to the musical (is it technically illegal to call it that? It might be. No one tell Prime Minister Idina) I was so excited to be on a date with Jessica A that I refused to get up for anything, even to use the bathroom. Which is an okay plan if you have great bladder control and aren’t a 5-year-old. (It’s also important that I specify that it was Jessica A, the girl I had a crush on, and not Jessica S, the girl that lived down the block from me, or Jessica W, the girl that lived down the block from Jessica S, or Jessica M, the other girl that I had a crush on, or Jessica C, my sister whom I suggested we name Jessica because I thought it was a really unique name.) That relationship ended as quickly as it began. Not necessarily because of the pants-peeing, more so because we were five and between the two of us had the attention span of a single moth.
In middle school I was pretty void of any real romantic connections, but I did have a one-sided torrid love affair with this witch named Amanda. And by one-sided I mean that she started crying and freaking out about me to all of her friends because she was pretty sure she was cursed at a young age and so if she ever laid hands on her true love she would turn him to stone. And she was like, “how am I gonna explain to Ryan that we can never be together?” And I was like, “how am I gonna explain to Amanda that this is all a non-issue because I am very very gay?”
To be fair I didn’t judge her for any of the witch stuff because in my previous middle school relationship I totally screwed things up by accidentally helping the demon queen Rymekilb regain dominion over the seventh layer of hell from Satan himself and basically spoiled season 3 of Supernatural for myself before it was even written. So, really, who was I to judge? (It was a whole thing, it’s a long story.)
When I grew up a bit more I narrowed down my dating preferences a lot as I thought about the kind of guy I could really make it work with. I wanted someone like me. Someone that understood my humor and my anxiety. Someone that I could joke around with and compete with. I wanted a cuter, more motivated version of myself. And most of all I wanted someone with a lot of drive that also knew how to drive. Knowledge of which pedal does what was super valuable to me at this point in my life. After all, every Payless in the tri-state area still flinches when they see me pass by.
You’d think that once I figured that out my dating life would get easier, but that didn’t really seem to happen. The only thing that changed was I was able to weed out catfishers and demons at a more proficient rate. Although for my first real date with a guy we hooked up in the parking lot of a Burger King and then he made fun of my outfit with his friend before making me buy a whole new one at the Aeropostale in the mall. So I guess maybe I didn’t weed out all the demons. Hmm.
In middle school I was pretty void of any real romantic connections, but I did have a one-sided torrid love affair with this witch named Amanda. And by one-sided I mean that she started crying and freaking out about me to all of her friends because she was pretty sure she was cursed at a young age and so if she ever laid hands on her true love she would turn him to stone. And she was like, “how am I gonna explain to Ryan that we can never be together?” And I was like, “how am I gonna explain to Amanda that this is all a non-issue because I am very very gay?”
To be fair I didn’t judge her for any of the witch stuff because in my previous middle school relationship I totally screwed things up by accidentally helping the demon queen Rymekilb regain dominion over the seventh layer of hell from Satan himself and basically spoiled season 3 of Supernatural for myself before it was even written. So, really, who was I to judge? (It was a whole thing, it’s a long story.)
When I grew up a bit more I narrowed down my dating preferences a lot as I thought about the kind of guy I could really make it work with. I wanted someone like me. Someone that understood my humor and my anxiety. Someone that I could joke around with and compete with. I wanted a cuter, more motivated version of myself. And most of all I wanted someone with a lot of drive that also knew how to drive. Knowledge of which pedal does what was super valuable to me at this point in my life. After all, every Payless in the tri-state area still flinches when they see me pass by.
You’d think that once I figured that out my dating life would get easier, but that didn’t really seem to happen. The only thing that changed was I was able to weed out catfishers and demons at a more proficient rate. Although for my first real date with a guy we hooked up in the parking lot of a Burger King and then he made fun of my outfit with his friend before making me buy a whole new one at the Aeropostale in the mall. So I guess maybe I didn’t weed out all the demons. Hmm.
I’m terrible at saying goodbye, and so when the time came for me to move from Long Island to the city and say goodbye to my friends, I mostly didn’t. I had a great last day with my best friend Kate, told Yeliz, Gulsah, and Isabel that I was moving, packed up and left. I’m bad with change unless I just Fortnite dive into it with no parachute, and so that’s how I had to go.
Here’s the thing people don’t tell you about moving: even if you own nothing you own way too much for when you have to move. Packing is the absolute worst, especially if you’re a hoarder like, uh… my... friend. Because not only does packing already take way too long, but then you end up spending hours just staring at each individual paper you uncover, reading and rereading it as you rediscover its relevance at whatever point in your life it came to exist. And then you go through it all over again as you unpack in your new temporary home. And a shard of your life scratches the floor of your current self. A hole in your lungs sucking the air out as you remember a friend you didn’t tell you were leaving, who has now wrongly decided she was unimportant to you and doesn’t take your texts seriously. And the mirror has a shard missing and your lungs have a hole and your floor is scratched, and they’re all linked. And you unpack. But unpacking takes way too long when you’re alone. And each box is twenty feet tall, as high as your new ceilings, too tall to trust and to reach. Taller than it ever needed to be. And you can see that now. So you stay still. Afraid to move. Afraid to make your presence known before a twenty foot door.
You spend four long years never fully unpacking. Moving from space to space and door to door. And you lose more and more connections as you say less to less people each time you leave. Because you feel less every time you leave. Until the one day you hope for, when everything falls into place and you can text and it will feel real. When you can make plans that happen. When you can say your home is solid and your mirror is clean. When you are no longer still.
And you are moving again.
Here’s the thing people don’t tell you about moving: even if you own nothing you own way too much for when you have to move. Packing is the absolute worst, especially if you’re a hoarder like, uh… my... friend. Because not only does packing already take way too long, but then you end up spending hours just staring at each individual paper you uncover, reading and rereading it as you rediscover its relevance at whatever point in your life it came to exist. And then you go through it all over again as you unpack in your new temporary home. And a shard of your life scratches the floor of your current self. A hole in your lungs sucking the air out as you remember a friend you didn’t tell you were leaving, who has now wrongly decided she was unimportant to you and doesn’t take your texts seriously. And the mirror has a shard missing and your lungs have a hole and your floor is scratched, and they’re all linked. And you unpack. But unpacking takes way too long when you’re alone. And each box is twenty feet tall, as high as your new ceilings, too tall to trust and to reach. Taller than it ever needed to be. And you can see that now. So you stay still. Afraid to move. Afraid to make your presence known before a twenty foot door.
You spend four long years never fully unpacking. Moving from space to space and door to door. And you lose more and more connections as you say less to less people each time you leave. Because you feel less every time you leave. Until the one day you hope for, when everything falls into place and you can text and it will feel real. When you can make plans that happen. When you can say your home is solid and your mirror is clean. When you are no longer still.
And you are moving again.
Ryan C. Robert
Ryan C. Robert is the writer of multiple comedy blogs, most of which are satirical and self-deprecating. He writes about his life in his personal essay series "Before Color," parodies cooking blogs in "Trish's Dishes" and posts writing prompts every single day.
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