I Should Have Bought Better Friends

It was easy enough bandaging my kidney stab wound, but my nearly-severed nipple is proving a little more difficult. I know I need to get myself to the emergency room at some point, but for now I just need to lie on my own couch, in my own house, by my own self.

I could use a little alone time to recover from my ‘vacation.’ You can’t see me, but I air quoted ‘vacation’ to accentuate the irony, even though it feels like my heart and soul are trying to escape through my nipple wound every time I move my hand from it. That’s how shitty my vacation was, all thanks to my best buds.

I should have bought better friends. Says so right there in the title. And I could have bought better friends, too. Let’s just say that if I had sixty-two million dollars for every time I hit the lottery, I’d have $186 million. And I do. Have $186 million, that is. Because I did hit the lottery. Thrice. That’s three times, to the layperson. I know ‘thrice’ sounds a little pompous but, when you become a multi-millionaire, you start saying words like ‘thrice.’ I’ve also started saying things like ‘forthwith’ and ‘aforementioned’ and other such pompousy words. But not ‘heretofore.’ I draw the line at ‘heretofore.’ I’m not a total douche nozzle.

What I am is the only person to ever hit three multimillion-dollar jackpots in the history of life. Google that shit. I even have my own Wikipedia page. Anton Wiseaker, only person to win the lottery thrice. I go by Tony, but they have my legal name up on the site. I guess because that’s the name they put on my giant checks. People have told me that I can change any information on Wikipedia myself, but I’m kind of a lazy prick.

I did try once. I went on to Wikipedia and gave it a valiant effort. For about four seconds. Then I saw someone sent me a video of a song from an old Weezer concert on You Tube. Nine and a half hours later, I found myself watching a video on how to become a midwife for bottlenose dolphins. Seven hours after that, I woke up with the mirror image of two-thirds of the QWERTY keyboard imprinted on my forehead and a You Tube video on my screen on how to make your own tri-color rotini from scratch.

I have no idea how I got to that video. I won’t even boil pasta because it takes too much effort. I sure as hell ain’t making it from scratch. And if I did, through some miracle, set out to make my own pasta, it would be mono-color. As I said, I’m kind of a lazy prick.

I think some psychologist or psychiatrist or podiatrist should do a study on the progression of You Tube clicks. What combination of suggested videos got me from ‘Weezer concert’ to ‘Become a bottlenose dolphin midwife’ to ‘Make your own tri-color rotini’? And when I got to the video suggestion for ‘steps to becoming a bottlenose dolphin midwife,’ why did I click on it? What possibly could have been going through my mind at that moment? Morbid curiosity? Mind-numbing sleep deprivation? Must have been one of the two, right? Being a man, I haven’t the ability to be a midwife for my own species, let alone an aquatic one. Yet, there I sat for the entire hour and fourteen-minute video watching scene after disgusting scene of bottlenose dolphin births.

Why didn’t I turn it off? Surely, after the first thirty seconds of the video, I thought to myself, ‘No, thank you, You Tube. This activity is clearly not for me.’ What compelled me to watch the remaining seventy-three and a half minutes? These are questions only the brightest scientific and psychological minds are fit to answer.

But I digress. Point is, I should have bought better friends.