The Many Uses of IcyHot

We’ve reached the final days before the big move. The final days of packing, unpacking, getting everything set up and hitting the beach one last time and yesterday morning I woke up with a sore neck. It was tight with the slightest movement causing me to wince in pain. I know I sound like a big baby but have you ever had to move six boxes of books to a moving truck?

Yesterday morning I went down to the beach with PA, Hollister and the New and improved non-Patron Saint of Sex (she’s doing this new thing now, “New Year new me.” Honey its March.) They were on spring break and I wasn’t but, lets get real, I’m on online school I’m always on break. We thought that by going early we could beat the old people and the GASP teenagers or the “High schooler’s” as PA called them.

We didn’t. They were out in full force with their little bathing suits covering barley nothing. And young. So young the poor things don’t even know what a college is it makes me so upset.

So were sitting, soaking up the golden sunshine, drinking our sodas and talking about the many uses of KY Warming Gel.

“I use it all the time.”

“But does it really warm?” I ask.

“For her it does I don’t really feel anything,” Hollister says.

“Wouldn’t it burn?”

“How hot does it get?”

“Can you use it as like… you know… when you’re by yourself?” I ask.

As we sat and thought about that last question I took out my IcyHot cream and rubbed some on my neck. PA looked over at me and asked, “Is that IcyHot?”

I nod.

“My parents use that all the time. One time I literally rubbed my face in it and I felt my skin literally peel away,” She said. She looked real good in her purple and black bathing suit set from Victoria’s Secret.

“Why can’t they use IcyHot on themselves?” New Non Patron Saint of Sex asked. “Wouldn’t it be like the same thing as the warming gel?”

“No because it gets cold and then hot,” I say.

“But some people like it numb. I mean…”

“But then we can’t feel anything,” Hollister said.

“Some times that’s a good thing,” PA said.

That night I went home and tried it. I squeezed out just a little handful onto my palms, the cold already starting to kick in. I then moved down to... you know. The cold was, well it was really cold at first. It felt like it was going numb. But then the heat kicked in and it felt really hot. Not like the temperature hot but really good hot. A new high for me I guess you can say. I finished what I had to do but the heat lingered and thats when it started to hurt. To burn. 

I showered, cleaned myself as bet I could and went to bed with a fourth degree burn on my schlong. Send help. 

The Big Move... Again

A couple of days ago I got my haircut and a phone call from my sister.

“Hey I found some jobs for you?”

“Jobs?” I asked.

“Yeah for when you move here. Mom didn’t tell you?”

“Noooo-”

Just as I said that the garage door opened and my Mom came into the living and saw me with this look of… well… shock, hate, a little surprise but mostly confusion. I hang up on my sister and waited for my mother to start talking. It was like an interrogation in my house; we had one light on and my mother sat before me in the dining room.

“I’m just tired, Joey. I go to work. I come home. I go to bed. I don’t do anything on the weekends because I’m tired both mentally and physically. At least in Texas I can work shorter days and do stuff. I miss your sister terribly.”

I got up and moved into the kitchen and made some day old Chinese food. I had to thinking about everything. I’m not nervous or scared about the move I’m just shocked… because when we both visited last year in August … we didn’t like it, it was too white picket fence, family small town perfect for raising babies and having babies.

The moment I finally realized it was when the real estate agent planted the for sale sign in front of the house. It’s been four days and we already sold the house. Well, we think we did.

But first lets back track. Monday morning I got called into work. It was my long shift, the eleven to eight and I was glad to do it. I had just got my haircut and I was looking so fleek. I call it the modified undercut because I didn’t get the sides of my head shaved completely off. I’ll save that for the lesbians and the hardcore gays.

Everyone at work loved my haircut and my manager said, “It really accents your face.” I think that means I have a fat face. I wore my black sweater and placed a lime green undershirt underneath as a pop of color Guliana Ranic says that’s the new thing to do now. My store director asked me why I did that and I said, “It’s a pop of color duh. Idiot.”

Yesterday morning we had our first showing. A couple came in from Ontario. At 9:30 in the goddamn morning. They looked around, commenting on such things as the floors, the make of the fridge and then, in something I’ve only seen in TV shows and movies, the wife drags her finger along the counter and brings it up to her face to check for dust. Then she brushes her fingers on her pants and whispers, “Dusty.”

Bitch…

The Gameplan

I was a firm believer that I didn’t need nice or expensive things to show who I really am. Or are. Or trying to be. But then I started working at Macy’s and the belief was shit on. I’m wearing Alfani sweaters and T-shirts that cost me about twenty dollars each (the sweaters were pushing sixty though.) I’m wearing closed toed shoes from Sketchers and Ralph Lauren. And I bought myself a brand new gold Iphone 6.

You have to understand I had my Iphone 4 for about four years. Try saying THAT three times fast. And I was perfectly happy with getting the Iphone 5 because, in my view, the Iphone 6 was a little too big. But the Verizon Guy was very pushy and was like, “You know Apple’s coming out with a brand new update in about three weeks so you might as well get the 6.” And I agreed. Stupid me.

He was like, “The 5 is dead anyway.”

And I thought so is my love life I’ll take the 6.

It’s been four weeks and still no update. Bastard just wanted me to spend more money. But that’s not the point, the point of this story is… its nice to have your own money. Its nice to have your brand new phone in your hands with all the pictures, songs and contacts that you stored in your cloud… even the ones your thought were gone forever.

There he was. The one I thought I had deleted. The one, for those of you who don’t know, took me on a date (read the post My First Date: Part Uno for a name.) I, in all honesty, forgot about him. He was gone from my phone, my Facebook and life and he never came back until I found his contact in my phone. I deleted it pretty fast but… for some reason I’m still thinking about him.

I haven’t been on a date since, let alone a dating site, let alone the dating site where we met. Its been what… two months? And I think I’m ready to do it all over again.

I’ve been thinking I’ve been thinking about telling you guys about this guy at work but I already started so I guess I’ll tell you. I barely know his first name and I defiantly don’t know his last name.

Actually lets backtrack a few weeks. I’ve been growing a beard. Well trying to grow a beard. It’s like growing and everything but there’s this one like spot on my chin that has no hair like what the hell? And I read in Cosmo that girls are attracted to men with beards and they’re called… LUMBERSEXUALS. And I thought, “Hey I like men with beards… what happens if I grow one?”

Okay back to that guy. So I walk into work one day and he comes up to me and is like, “I like men with beards.” And I said, “I like men with more than three comas in their banks accounts.*”

He has a really good sense of style and everything and he seems funny and he’s nice and tall. And the next time I see him I’m gonna ask for his Facebook and put my number in his phone next to the piece of shit emoji so that he has to text me.

*Walks away listening to Fancy*

My Broken Computer...

There are many fears in the world, for instance, people are afraid of heights, of darkness and spiders. Fears of tight spaces, elevators and, in some cases, staircases (though I’m not sure what is so scary about them?) I have two fears and one of them is breaking my computer. The other is heights but who cares.

So this morning I’m sitting and typing away and making progress on my personal project, my play called “The Rainbow Monologues.”

Side note. I have two playwriting books and no formal education in playwriting format. I searched and found the author of one of my books and emailed him. I asked if he could read the first two pages of it to check for any formatting issues and everything. He emailed back and said, “I read through the first two pages and skimmed through the rest and the format is superb. Its clean and easy to read and actually very enjoyable.” He would’ve read the rest if I paid him to. I’m still thinking about that though.

So I’m typing and I get hungry so I walk into the kitchen and TRIP over my COMPUTER CORD AND MY COMPUTER FALLS ON THE HARDWOOD FLOOR OF MY LIVING. I’m writing in caps because it broke my heart! I picked it up like a little child, crying my freaking eyes out, and the screen is BLACK. I’m crying harder now and place it on the couch, wrapped in a little blanket like a newborn baby.

I call my mother and she doesn’t answer and I leave her a voicemail of me crying for a full minute. I race back to my broken baby wrapped in a sheer blue blanket and cry. I yell at my dog to get out for some reason and she just looks at me. I turn on the computer…

AND IT WORKS. Oh I nearly threw up. I was so excited. I took it out of its blanket and held it for a brief minute. I put it back on its charger, I was afraid you see, that I crushed the charger port whatever the hell its called, and I didn’t then I went to Taco Bell to refresh my mind.

I have a love/hate relationship with the Taco Bell near my house because they never have the shit I want. Today I went for a Strawberry Freeze and they didn’t have it, like what the hell. The girl was like, “We ran out of the mix.” How the fuck do you run out the mix? Like what the hell.

I love Taco Bell cause every time I go to the drive through they ask, “How are you doing?” and I’m like, “I’m good how are you?” and they answer back, this is great, “I’m TACO-TASTIC.” Classic.

Can we talk? I came home with my NORMAL Baja Blast, bastards, and watched Cupcake Wars. Have you ever seen that show? It’s fabulous. So these assholes are baking cupcakes and shit and the challenges are ridiculous. “You have ten minutes to bake for thirty-thousand people have fun.” And all the cooks are like, “We’re never gonna make it” or they mess up but they ALWAYS HAVE THE CUPCAKES DONE. I don’t understand!

I want a recount!

The Bad News

They say that hearing the bad news always makes the good news sound so much better but I don’t believe that. A couple of weeks ago my brother-in-law was diagnosed with stage four cancer, a word that already has horrible opinions in my family. I wrote a blog awhile back about my father and his own fight with cancer and I wont get into any specifics about it but we’ll say that it changed everything.

When my sister heard that her husband has stage four cancer her mind shut down and all she could see were the same events already played through with our father. They always say that the bad news can’t really hurt anyone but I think the phone call waiting for the bad news can.

She called me at work, on my long day, eleven to eight, at three-thirty and said what’s going on. I wanted to call her, to text even, but I couldn’t, not in the middle of work. I tried to play through the rest of the day with a smile and act like myself but how could I when this was in the back of my mind? I would say where it started but I don’t want to disclose that kind of information for you all to read. Unless he approves.

That was the bad news. The good news is that my brother-in-law will be OKAY! He’ll start chemo and everything should be in tip-top shape. He’ll still lose his hair and it will still be a little painful but he’ll make it through it. Trust me, if he can stand my sister going through wedding details he can stand chemo.

So. Okay. Moving on from sober, sad stuff… I hung out with a lesbian four days ago. A lesbian! I haven’t hung out with a lesbian since high school. And can we just say that their hairstyles are getting shorter every damn time I see one. Damn.

A quick note on the Golden Globes. Amy and Tina were as funny as ever and Jennifer Lopez’s slit on her dress ran all the way up to her clit, I mean my God. One flash to the camera and it would’ve been Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct.

The Oscar nominations came out this morning and when I found out that Gone Girl, one of my favorite movies EVER, WASN’T nominated I cried. No Best Picture, no Adapted Screenplay. Nothing!

I also started a diet. No soda, bread, pasta, rice, or sweets. It’s been a week and half and I’m getting withdrawals from having no soda. Literally I woke up last night sweating and a little dizzy. This diet is trying to kill me.

Diet:1

Joe:0

Please if you have time visit this link and read about my sister and her husband. But please, only if you have the time. Thanks! 

http://www.gofundme.com/helpsebastianfight

Joe. 

The Homo Whisperer's Silence....BROKEN

I know. I know. “Look who’s finally back.” I know. I did take a little blog break to focus on my own personal projects for a bit, not to mention catching up on reading, watching movies and getting to that long awaiting schoolwork that NEEDED to be done. In a way I become the Homo Silencer and not the Homo Whisperer.

Homo Silencer makes me sound like I’m spy. He’s tough, he’s a spy, he wears last years Gucci, and he’s the Homo Silencer. TM by Joe Russo.

But I'm back and I'm ready for the New Year to bring some great surprises. But first lets talk about you guys?! How were your holidays? Mine were quiet, food and family filled.

Christmas eve my sisters surprised us by coming home! She came in the morning of and me, still sound asleep, only awoke to the sound of the front door latch turning footsteps. I slipped out of my bed, getting ready for what I wasn’t sure but still I was ready to fight. I opened my bedroom door and almost gave my sister a left hook. Has she not learned anything living with us the past twenty-two years? Shit. Can’t just come up and scare a brother like that. Brother. Ha-ha. Get it.

Christmas Day gave me twenty three new screenplays, all used of course, a set of Spark Plugs for my car (it stopped working on me one day just turned off right in the turning lane), thirteen new DVD's (nine of them belong to the great Woody Allen) and new clothes bought, of course, at Macy's (the one day sales are great. I got four Alfani shirts for a dollar. A DOLLAR.) 

Let me see what else happened. Well, New Year’s Eve I went bowling with some friends (dollar games are my shit even though I was horrible. My high score was a fifty-nine), came home and got drunk with my mother and passed out, roughly, at twelve-fifteen.

I started 2014, fuck, 2015, don’t even start with me I know about half of you made the same mistake AT LEAST once these eight days, with a real bang and got offered a full time position at Macy’s! They called me in real early, eight A.M to be exact, and my store director waited for me outside her office. I wondered if this was a bad meeting or good? “Are you a good with or a bad witch?” I went with bad because the store director wore her leopard print high heel boots that went up to the knee. Talk about fierce girl, damn. The last time she wore those a co-worker left crying.

We walked into her office and there, smiling, was my manager. The store director took her seat, clasped her hands in front of her and asked, “Joe do you have a full time job?”

“No.”

“Would you like to work for us full time?”

“Sure! I love you guys! And your boots,” I say.

“You like? Im trying them for the first time,” my store director says.

“I really like. I wish I can wear shoes like that but if I did my hip would be dislocated.”

Gosh I feel like so much has happened but, really, nothing has happened. I started a new play called “The Rainbow Monologues”, finished the first act and SHOULD be starting the second act tomorrow. I got another poem published, my sixth publication (why am I still working at Macy’s?), and its called “Marilyn Monroe.”

But I do have to say… I missed you guys. Kisses and hugs… have a great year…

Joe.

The Middle Class Starving Artist

My mother once said that there were only two joys in life and they were her own two kids. She said giving birth was the other greatest joy but I’m not so sure about that one… am I right mothers? I feel that there are two more joys in life, at least they are for me and they are meeting old friends for a quick bite to eat and watching a brand new movie, never before seen.

I worked till five thirty today and met my friends at Panera mainly because, one, we finally had our own money to spend and two, because it was the closest to our places of work (my friend and I both work at the mall, he at Hollister and me at Macy’s.) My other friend goes to school in Pennsylvania and comes home for the holidays and I was so excited to see her because, in all reality, I miss her! I miss us, the squad, our inside jokes, our talks, us, before moving away, before college.

So we all met at Panera and instantly our talk turned from catching up to sex, like it always does.

“Tell me something… who do you think would work at the strip club?”

“Who wouldn’t?” PA says.

“Like for real. In thirty years, say, at our reunion will be the girl-”

“Or guy,” I chipped in.

“Girl, guy whatever, who stayed in town, lived off welfare and did nothing with her life?” Hollister asked.

“You should be talking you’re basically a starving artist yourself,” I say.

“Okay yes, so I sleep on a cot whatever I need space for my studio,” Hollister said.

“But you aren’t starving… you’re like a middle class starving artist," I put in my two cents again. 

“So… who would it be?”

We couldn’t come up with an answer not because it was hard, no, it was because we honestly didn’t know. Our class, in itself, was so different. Some are married, some have kids, some have three kids, some are pretty successful and others…

“Who do you think was the biggest?”

“The what?”

“The biggest… you know…”

“I’ve always wondered that!” I said, “I always thought it was that tall guy, you know, the lurch.”

“No the taller you are the smaller you are,” Hollister said.

“Is that why all the skinny guys have huge…?” PA said.

“And all the bigger guys, one tug and done,” Hollister said.

Remember how I said there were two new joys in life? I lied. There are three and the third is opening a new book and taking a really big whiff of that new book smell.

Am I right?

The Rainbow Monologues

Oh, hello my darlings, my dear readers how I missed you so. It’s been too long, a week but whose counting, and I have nothing to tell you. I’ve been working like crazy; six days last week, five days this week but I really shouldn’t be complaining because I’ve been getting some really good Christmas presents for everyone! Myself including.

I always tell everyone at work to buy gifts for themselves first and then gifts for everyone else after that way you get what you really want. I got myself sixteen Agatha Christie books (all used and bought for a penny on Amazon), five screenplays and a Woody Allen DVD collection that I fought for on EBay.

Can we talk about EBay? What the hell is it? I bid forty-five dollars on the DVD collection last Monday and literally no one else bid on it. So I waited and waited for the seller to just give it to me when some asshole bid, get this, forty-five dollars and fifty cents. The war was started. Mr. T***1990 (I’m not trying to hide his identity or anything that’s literally all EBay gave me for a name) and I went back and forth for three days when I finally gave up and stopped bidding and fifty dollars and nineteen cents.

But I eventually won anyway because I found the same collection from another seller at the low price of thirty-eight dollars and fifty-eight cents.

I haven’t written anything since the last week in November. November people! I feel like I’m writhing away from you all and you all are powerless to stop it…. unless-

I bought myself a book called The Vagina Monologues and read it in a day it was so good. A monologue is a spoken piece by one person but then again I guess you all knew that. The book is composed of about fifteen, maybe more, monologues about, you guessed it, vaginas. Its funny, true and real and, at one point, made me question, “Why are vaginas so cool?”

The Vagina Monologues gave me an idea, an idea to tell our stories, our coming out stories and the people it affected, the way it made us feel, laugh or cry. And we’ll call it, drum roll please, The Rainbow Monologues…

Working title of course. But I’ll need your help. I’ll need to know your stories so that I could get a real sense of how everyone came out. I know it seems like a lot of work and it is, trust me, but if you want and only if you want, you can email your story to me, comment your story below or hit me up on Facebook or Twitter.

Joerusso8writer@aim.com

Joseph Russo (for both Facebook and Twitter)

Hugs and Kisses.

Oh, P.S everyone should watch American Horror Story: Coven on Netflix its fabulous. I finished it in three days.

Guest Blog: Unicorns & Where to Find Them

Nothing bothers me more than when people say they don’t believe in same-sex marriage. It’s not that they’re against it (okay, it’s like 10% because they’re against it), it’s the wording. They don’t believe in it. It makes me want to laugh and wring their necks all at once. 

Same-sex marriage isn’t a unicorn. It’s not a myth. It’s not some urban legend passed down from generation to generation like Big Foot or whatever curse will follow you if you wear white after Labor Day.  It’s an actual thing. People do it every day. It’s real.

You can’t not believe in something that already exists. You can oppose it, disagree with it, throw a tantrum and rant about it, set up protests, shame/blame/bully/abuse the people who agree/partake in it. You can make it your life’s goal to ensure that someone else’s happiness that literally has zero to do with you is denied because your religious views- which you’re granted because of our country’s constitution that gives you freedom to practice whatever religion you want- don’t agree with it. You can do all of these things, but you can’t say you don’t believe in something that already exists.

Speaking of phrases that bother me- when people say they want ‘their America to be run from the bible’ I just want to quit life. You want to live in a place where we all adhere to the bible? Cool. Do it somewhere else. Live on a commune, create a cult, gather in New Mexico and succeed from the U.S.-have at it. 

The ENTIRE POINT of America is freedom. Freedom of speech, to assemble, of the press, to petition the government, and- wait for it- freedom of religion. That means that if good ole ‘Murica made it’s laws and values on a specific religion it would be forcing a religion on it’s people, and therefore would be denying it’s citizens a basic human right. 

I believe in God. I have a relationship with him. I go to church, I’m involved in it, and I invite people to visit my church all the time in an effort to show them how great and important said relationship is. I do not, however, condemn people who don’t agree with my faith. I don’t push my views on people. I would never want to live in a place where people felt cornered and shameful and oppressed because they don’t agree with me, and I think it’s really selfish for people to say they want to live in a country that is run by the bible, because they’d be forcing their friends and family who practice other faiths to feel that way. WRITTEN BY TORI STAMBAUGH. 

I received this post this morning and I am blown away. My friend, the one who wrote this, is right and her words speak the truth. I had to re-read some of her points because they were SO FREAKING GOOD. Re-read the second paragraph for an example. XOXO- JOE. 

Reflections of a Single Man

“Tistheseasontistheseasontistheseaon,” I whispered to myself knowing that with each chant the season was getting shitter. I woke up early this morning to get ready for work and checked my “morning papers” which just so happens to be Facebook and Twitter. And there, after three scrolls down (I checked it on my phone this morning which was my first mistake), I saw something that took my breath away.

Remember the guy I went out on a date with? Guess who just got into a relationship? That’s right. I stared at it for just a few seconds, thinking it was a dream, a horrible nightmare but there it was… staring back at me. His boyfriend wrapped in a scarf and I have since dubbed him that “scarf wearing cunt.”

I just wanted to know a few things. Why couldn’t he tell me that it didn’t work out? Why couldn’t he just send me a text instead of ignoring me and me, feeling like Drew Barrymore in Never Been Kissed waiting for Billy Loomis. Was it something I did? Was it because I didn’t kiss him goodnight? Maybe I didn’t hold his hand hard enough. Maybe he wanted something more… and I never caught on to his advances. I wondered how long he talking to this cunt scarf wearing asshole? Was it during our date? Was I, for the briefest of moments, the other guy? A test piece to see which one he liked more? 

But on the flip side I wondered if we would’ve even worked. We came from different backgrounds, had different interests, and had our own lives to life. He had the personality like a limp dick and my personality is all over the place. He liked video games and I liked film. He was twenty-three; I was nineteen.

I went to work with this laying heavy on my mind. I decided, after a few rants to GBF and my work partner, Miss Chanel, that I was going to be the bigger person, the ADULT, and move on. I had a fabulous day with this asshole, saw a fabulous movie and went out of my comfort zone to meet him. I came. I conquered.

I deleted him from my phone and my memory and unfriended him Facebook. This is the last mention of him from here on. I hope he’s happy with that polka dotted, scarf wearing cunt rainbow.

And breathe. Tis the season. Tis the season. Tis the season.