bruno stratmann

Shortly after I moved to New York, I reconnected with a girl I’d briefly met in college who remains to this day one of the most beautiful girls I’ve ever been with. She was in the elite category of women who are so close to physical perfection they’re painful to look at without possessing completely. Full lips, dark features. Her image chipped away at my self-control and encouraged the less-evolved parts of my mind to break containment. She was also dumber than a sun-bleached rock. When I’d return home on certain weekends, I’d make plans with her and we’d road trip around the south. To spark conversation, I would say things like: “I underestimated the challenge of making friends in a place without built-in social connections. Your whole life, you grow up with effortless friendships because people are always around: school, sports, church, whatever. But now I realize how much work you have to put into socializing in adulthood and it can be exhausting, you know?” Then she would say things like: “Hehe, I like apples.” And a part of me slowly died as I realized that despite any physical desire I might have for this woman there was no possible way we were ever going to truly know each other, and our time together wasn’t long for this world. So we’d drive on as I writhed in frustration, intensely longing to actually like her and quietly cursing the universe for the hollow victory I’d achieved, while she prattled on with nonsense fit for the Road Trip Retard Olympics. In those moments, I’d have thoughts like: Maybe if I drank just the right amount of bleach it would kill roughly half my brain cells, but I could survive it and then we would bond deeply and the rest of my stupid, pathetic life would be nothing but pure, drunk-in-love bliss, and we could live out our days as a couple of worthless idiots, gleefully ignorant of our burden on everyone else –– eternally protected and assuaged by our inability to comprehend our own meaningless existence. Then she’d shout “Road stop! Gotta pee!” and I’d pull off, jaw clenched, temples pulsing, reminding myself of the idyllic moment when I’d first seen her but hadn’t yet heard her speak. When we finally made it to where we were going, I’d drink until I could barely function so that we could enjoy one moment of understanding each other before it all went black. And that, fellas, is the trouble with dating the bartenders you meet in college.

the greatest pleasure of being home is being a bum

SAUER: We're in a new world where 8 billion people are one plane ride away from having a child who's a US citizen. JOHN ROBERTS: It's a new world. It's the same Constitution.