You're a Horrible Person, But I Like You: The Believer Book of Advice (17 page)

Sarah

Paul F. Tompkins

Dear Paul:

When there’s food in my office, I’ll eat it all, regardless of how many cashews I ate on the way to work. How do I stop myself from compulsively overeating?

Doug Prentiss
Santa Fe, NM

Dear Doug:

Wait, wait, wait. How much food is in this office? How much could there be? Do you people work more than eight hours? Do you work on an oil rig? You’re very mysterious about the food and how it gets into the office. Are you eating your coworkers’ stuff? Not cool. Confess that you’ve been eating their Lean Pockets and the overeating will stop when they knock your teeth out. Do you work alone and suddenly food is just … there? Perhaps you are a sleepy cobbler and the industrious elves, in addition to doing your job, are leaving behind deli trays and pudding packs. I don’t know the situation. If you won’t be straight with me, the best I can do is advise you to give up on that cashew-as-appetite-suppressant plan. I think those nuts are just whetting your appetite for all the food that is contained in a building.

Paul

…

Dear Paul:

I’ve been infected with poison oak or ivy. Research and doctors have told me that there is no cure and I will suffer from constant itching, oozing, and blisters for the next two to three weeks. I don’t believe the doctors. I think they are hiding something just so those of us who are highly allergic to this evil plant can suffer. Do you know of home remedy that will make the pain go away?

Jennifer
Austin, TX

Dear Jennifer:

I fear for your safety now that you have revealed this conspiracy. Poison oak is the least of your problems. You’d better get out of the country and I mean now. Also, I’m mocking you. Stop being ridiculous! That’s what the doctor cabal picked as the official affliction they’re gonna fold their arms over and do nothing about? Do you know how many kinds of insane cancers there are out there that they’ve probably just given up on? Come on. Tough it out. Watch where you’re walking next time. Also, “Do you know of home remedy”? Did you think talking like a villager in an old
Wolfman
movie would make me cough up some secret Gypsy cure?

Paul

…

Dear Paul:

My roommates and I have trouble making friends. We recently moved to a new city and every time we go out and meet new people, we never hear from them again. We are getting tired of hanging out with each other. How do we get these people to be friends with us without coming across like stalkers or cult [sic]?

Peter Green
San Francisco, CA

Dear Peter:

Maybe these people are picking up on the obvious hatred you and your roommates have for each other. It seems like you all would be better off away from each other, finding your own individual pals instead of surrounding innocent people and forcing your gang-friendship down their throats. Divide and conquer. Give San Francisco a break.

Oh, and “coming across like stalkers or cult”—who are your roommates? Jennifer from Austin? Borat? Tonto?

Paul

…

Dear Paul:

Smoking marijuana makes me afraid of everything. I still love to joke about it, though, and talk about it all the time, and end up smoking it at every opportunity. How do I kick the habit?

Marsha Knesbitt
Colorado Springs, CO

Dear Marsha:

If I had to listen to you make a bunch of tired, unfunny pot jokes and endure endless hours of your yammering about pot and how great it is and how it needs to be legalized and how you can make clothes out of hemp and glaucoma blah blah blah, and then found out you didn’t even smoke pot anymore, I would murder you and then kill myself. Don’t kick the habit. For both our sakes.

Paul

…

Dear Paul:

I just moved into a new apartment and my room is right off of the living room. My roommates watch a lot of TV, always after midnight and always very, very loudly. I hate my new roommates. Should I just move out or sit down with them and try to defuse the situation?

Smiles
,
Greg Klondike
Dublin, CA

Dear Greg:

Ha! Are you talking about calling a “house meeting”? That is rich! Those never work! Never! You will only be left with the cold comfort afforded you by having taken the high road, while your roommates label you an uptight, patronizing old grandma. And they will start eating your organic peanut butter out of the communal fridge like a pack of Doug Prentisses.

If you can drive the thirty-six miles from Dublin to San Francisco, there is an awesome roommate situation waiting for you! Greg, you are just what those Moonies need to shake things up! Pack up your earplugs and persecution complex and hit the road!

Paul

Sarah Vowell

Dear Sarah:

Over the last few months, I’ve developed a crush on a librarian. He’s not exactly a hottie, but there’s something about him that I find irresistible. Maybe it’s the argyle sweater or the pear-shaped body. It just drives me wild. But I don’t have the guts to ask him out. Do you have any suggestions?

Kelly Lawson
Salt Lake City, UT

Dear Kelly:

Why not enlist his help on a research project explaining the etymology and implications of the phrase “Adlai Stevenson moment”? This might allow you (a) the hair-sniffingly close physical proximity involved with the presentation of research materials—and here I suggest, assuming his library has yet to transfer its analog collections to digital, that you “accidentally” drop a roll of microfilm, unspooling it across the room so the two of you, on all fours, can rewind it together—and (b) a casual way to assess his position on verbal bravery. Like, if he seems turned on by Stevenson’s rhetorical gumption toward Soviet ambassador Zorin in 1962, he might be similarly impressed if you ask him out in 2009. If he hesitates to answer, just bark, as Stevenson did so famously and so adorably, “Don’t wait for the translation—yes or no?” He will be very charmed by this, especially if you follow up with black-and-white aerial photographs of possible first-date locations. If you have limited helicopter access, you may simply type in the library’s ZIP code and order one of the U.S. Geological Survey’s photos taken from 20,000 feet (
www.usgs.gov
).

Sarah

…

Dear Sarah:

I have an abundance of dryer lint in all different shades of grays and whites. I usually fashion baby wigs with the stuff. Can you suggest other creative uses for my fuzzy matter?

Gary Brewer
Mesa, AZ

Dear Gary:

I cannot. However, I would caution you to remember it’s not the destination but the journey where dryer lint, like so many things in life, is concerned. According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, there are more than fifteen thousand dryer fires every year in the United States, causing tens of millions of dollars in damages. So your seemingly stupid hobby turns out to be quite civic-minded and safety-firsty. Way to go, you!

Sarah

…

Dear Sarah:

I’ve found lately that the hints I read from Heloise every Sunday in the newspaper are becoming less funny and more useful. Am I getting old, or just more practical?

Jamie Spears
Aspen, CO

Dear Jamie:

I wouldn’t know. My hometown newspaper, a little old rag called the
New York Times
, does not stoop to publishing comic strips or ladylike advice columns, unless you count the op-ed pages under the current reign of editorial page editor Ms. Gail Collins. At press time, Ms. Collins’s page counsels our president to dissuade his visiting Nigerian colleague Olusegun Obasanjo from amending the Nigerian constitution to allow for a third presidential term, a “foolhardy” tactic the
Times
fears will spark a civil war. Advice which, to answer your question, is both practical and hilarious, except for the glaring omission of how club soda might also help.

Sarah

…

Dear Sarah:

As a sales representative for a large pharmaceutical concern, I spend a considerable portion of my day behind the wheel and have taken to preparing hot meals on the engine block of my company-issued automobile. The meats and shellfish come out just fine, but I’m having trouble with the grilled asparagus. I’m not sure if I’m wrapping the foil too tightly, or if my choice of olive oil is to blame. Please help
.

Thomas Mullen
Washington, DC

Dear Thomas:

Gee, that’s terrific that you can take time out of your busy schedule of turning America’s elderly into Canadian drug smugglers while further guzzling the gas that ensures our dependence on foreign oil and simultaneously contributes to the global warming that will eventually drown the entire tristate area so as to Alice Waters up your otherwise Willy Loman existence. According to Ms. Waters’s
Chez Panisse Vegetables
, she parboils asparagus spears in boiling salt water for one minute before throwing them onto a grill.

Sarah

…

Dear Sarah:

I am an Orthodox Christian and have always dated Orthodox guys until now. I met a wonderful man at Trader Joe’s and am now head over heels in love. My family won’t accept our relationship, however, and now I don’t know what to do. Should I break up with him in order to please my family?

Kate Mobley
Portland, OR

Dear Kate:

A Trader Joe’s just opened here in Manhattan! What are their snacks you recommend? I remember enjoying some of their cheddar soy crisps in the Bay Area a couple of book tours ago, thanks to a thoughtful media escort who uses the phrase “socially conscious” more than one hears back east, but lately I have more of a thing for sweet potatoes.

Sarah

…

Dear Sarah:

I recently celebrated a milestone birthday (the big four-oh!) and I’m suddenly plagued with self-doubt. I guess you could say that I’m part of the so-called intellectual elite. I read several books a day, I’m fluent in five languages, and I regularly attend the opera. But since my birthday, I’ve become acutely aware of my shortcomings. I don’t know how to change the oil in my car, for instance. And I don’t enjoy professional sports. Is this something I should be concerned about?

Jason Sanders
New York, NY

Dear Jason:

Is one of the languages you speak pussy? I ask you: What requires more masculine stamina, lollygagging on a couch in one’s pajamas during the NBA play-offs while receiving constant noisy sustenance from the good people of Frito-Lay, or sitting in a stiff seat wearing a stiff tuxedo suffering through two straight nights of Wagner’s eleventy-hour Ring Cycle and getting the evil eye from stout divas in horned helmets if you so much as unwrap a cough drop? And if you really want to learn how to change the oil in your (lemme guess) Saab, I’m thinking a guy who’s managed to effortlessly conjugate five kinds of subjunctive verbs can speed-read
Auto Repair for Dummies
, for crying out loud. Plus, according to Camus’s
The Myth of Sisyphus (Le Mythe de Sisyphe
to you), “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.” Hope that cheers you up—if you’ll pardon my split infinitive.

Sarah

David Wain

Dear David:

Lately my wife has been withdrawn and pretty bummed out. When I ask her what’s wrong, she says, “For no particular reason.” Is she mad at me?

Eric Fetterman
New York, NY

Dear Eric:

You have obviously not yet learned the fine art of “reading” women. A woman is a creature that can be studied. It took me years, both in the United States and in Sun City, but now I know—I mean
really know
—women. The benefits of this knowledge are endless: hours of achingly lurid sex; meals cooked at the snap of a finger any time of day or night (and I’m not just talking about the standard meat loaf. Try these sample dishes on for size: caramelized beef au jus in a blazed reduction of rice and cream; tuna à la king; Moroccan noodle surprise; chocolate cake—and that’s only a sampling). In your case, the read could not be easier: Your wife’s refrain of “For no particular reason” is a thinly veiled signal that she wants you to take her to a rodeo. I promise you, after one afternoon of ridin’ and ropin’ (and barrel racing), your wife will be chipper, horny, and ready to pork.

David

…

Dear David:

I’ve got a group of friends I really love. Unfortunately, some of them can end up playing mind games with each other and with me. How should I handle their aggressive or patronizing behavior?

Ian
San Francisco, CA