Life is a game, they say. And in the context of any game, its ok to make mistakes, because it’s a game after all, and at the end of a game you count your fake money, put away your little plastic pieces, fold up the board and go back to wishing you had something better to do on a Saturday night in your real life than play Monopoly with your parents. I think this is why they say it-to make you feel better about fucking up.

Perhaps they should change the metaphor. If you prescribe to this notion that life is a game, then who makes the rules..?..Parker Brothers..?..God..?..you..? Maybe it is a game, maybe not. I think life is about fashion, particularly winter fashion–sweaters. Life is a sweater, sort of like the Weezer song. Your mom crochets your first couple sweaters for you, fixes the holes and the frays to keep the whole thing from unraveling and to keep you from winding up weird and in a special needs school. Eventually you have to learn to make your own sweaters. There are different sweaters for different times. For example, I wore a green, corduroy sweater during my first two years of college that stank like bong-water. Some people’s sweaters look exactly the same as other people’s, some fit perfect, some are too big, some people never take off the sweater their parents made for them, some look totally zany, but that’s fashion, right?

My first sweater over here in Austria, didn’t fit. It was a turtleneck. But I figured it’s a cold place, people need turtlenecks to stay warm. You can try and look smooth and winning in a turtleneck, but you just wind up looking like a jerk in a turtleneck, and they’re hard to dance in. Lately, I’ve been wearing my new European sweater. Its form-fitting, black, with trendy little frays (deconstructed) is the term, I think. Its looks really used and cool, but really its only two months old. If I had to give it a brand it would be, “Egal” which over here in Austria means “Whatever, or “I don’t give a shit”. I crocheted this sweater because I discovered that I don’t really have to give a shit about much over here in Vienna, I mean, it isn’t real. Reality is back home, in San Francisco.

Things have been going great in my new sweater. I go out to clubs, tell girls I’m a motivational speaker, a professional surfer, a writer for VICE magazine, a professor, a producer for MTV, who cares. Its amazing how much of a blunt instrument the bullshit meter becomes when it has to translate, people actually trust you. Or maybe Austrians aren’t used to the opportunism that drives “scoring with chicks” in my memories of the American-single-guy ethos. Or who knows, maybe they want to believe they met me, Lance Strongbow, pro surfer, and that I was a great lay. Sometimes you get called on it, actually most times. Sometimes I tell the truth, but that’s no fun. And that’s what new sweater is all about, fun.

Anyway things had been going great in my new sweater until this morning where I found myself, out of my sweater, sitting at my computer in my underwear, unwashed, booze-stinky, fuzzy and fragile from the previous night writing an email to Lea:

“Dear Lea. How are you, I’m fine. So, I sort of have this enormous favor to ask you. At a bar last night I met the editor of an art and fashion magazine here in Vienna. He told me he’s looking for writers and wants me to send him my “portfolio.” He asked me this after I told him that I indeed have a “portfolio” (Lie #1), and that I had been recently published in VICE magazine (Lie #2). Ummmm, how do you do a portfolio, and what should I do about lying to him? I don’t think I should have, but I was wearing my new sweater last night, and got confused, (inside joke between me).We were both pretty drunk, maybe he forgot. Oh yeah, and could you send me that thing I helped you do for Lonely Planet, that’s something that should go in a portfolio, isn’t it?

Yours,
Shaan

I then spent the remainder of the day picking away at the trendy little frays of my new sweater and almost unraveling the whole thing. Maybe I could actually write something for VICE, have it published in the next 24 hours and have the whole thing ready to go by Friday morning. Maybe I could just write something and say it was published in VICE-VERSA magazine, “Oh, I’m sorry, did you think I said VICE? No, no, no VICE-VERSA, its an industry mag, small-circulation, probably not even published in Europe.” “It was published in NICE magazine, it’s a San Diego fashion-philosophy mag, mostly musings on sweaters. I wrote a quirky little editorial on Existentialism, men’s fashion, and lying.”

“What if I blew it, “ I thought, “why couldn’t I have just told the truth…stoopid sweater.” I mean, how much fun would that be, writing for a magazine, I probably could even stop lying to girls and get a nice tweed sweater. I kept unraveling until I suspected that I might be completely wrong about the whole sweater thing altogether. They told me it’s a game. Them might be right. Life is a game, in which we wear a sweater. Yes!, It isn’t just about fashion, or friggin’ sweaters. I decided to sew it back together. I didn’t come here to write for a fashion magazine, I came here to have fun–a working holiday. They’ll either give me the job or they won’t. They probably won’t even pay me, anyway. And besides, Lea says everyone lies to get a job in this business. Maybe they’ll have a good sense of humor about it, maybe they’ll think I’m a jerk. Life goes on. And before I know it I’m playing Monopoly back at my parent’s house on a Saturday night, drinking cocoa in a disgusting red and white holiday turtleneck that my grandma got me for Christmas.

“Did you ever go to sleep with Bo Derek, and wake up next to Bo Diddley?” Yes, yes, we’ve all done it—eyes on the prize, your friends whispering subtly into your ear, “Shaan, she looks like she’s an extra in a hobbit movie, run!” Me–drunk-determined and rationalizing, “I need affection” “Man needs woman” “She has nice teeth” “Cash in your chips, dude, while you can still salvage a bumbling level of whit and charm”–back to your place to listen to some music, naked wrestling, sleep, wake up in the morning, errrrrrr, awkward.

Usually, on such a morning, you’re just left with a headache, a single earring and her gum left on your nightstand, a funny story, apologies to your friends for “pulling a runner” on them and disappearing with your new friend, an apology to your roommate for drinking his amaretto, (the only booze left in the house) and another glorious notch on the libido belt.

Yesterday morning, however, I woke up next to Janeanne Garofalo. Well, not exactly next to, more-like on top of–sort of digging into my hipbone. If only I had a camera to capture the look of utter confusion and bewilderment on my face as I palmed my discovery, a one-inch tall Janeanne Garofalo figurine.

The cunundrum is thus: I recently broke up with my girlfriend. After my initial week of tears and manhugs, I lept into a month-long rebound of emotionally-distractrive sexual catharsis, the week prior to the Garofalo discovery being the zenith of this rebound month. Not bragging, just providing background. The numbers for this week are somewhere between one and ten–with half points assigned for dance floor makeouts.

(Garafolo figurine in the foreground. Chapstick and Family of Warthogs Snowglobe, used for perspective)

Now, had I actually shared my bed with a woman the night prior to my discovery, the breadcrumbs of mystery wouldn’t be too hard to follow and would make my decision to call this girl afterwards a lot easier–definitely not. I’m into quirkiness, and little personality spikes, but a girl who leaves toys in your bed as a calling card, is not somebody I could really imagine a future with. And lets not forget the fact that it was a Janeanne Garofalo doll. Had it been a Barbara Bush doll, I would have thought, “finally, a girl with a sense of humor, who gives a shit what she looks like.”

So, the fact that multiple partners, stretched over a very hazy one-week period, with two nights prior being last bed visitor, the Garofalo mystery factor is so enormous that any string of logical ifs and whens disappears and all you’re left with is secretive character assessments.

Developing a strategy to solve this caper proved to be very difficult, on multiple levels. I suppose the easiest thing to do, would have been to call each of these girls and simply ask them if they did it or not, but, things of this nature don’t come very easy to me. Some of these bed visitors I’d like to see again, some not at all. What if one of the girls I want to see again is the Garafalodropper? Years later, after kids and shared bank accounts, I ask her, “hey, remember when we met at that club in Vienna, and came back to my place and drank all of Olaf’s amaretto, did you…..”– a “yes” response could be disastrous, both financially and emotionally, for me and Shaan Jr. What if one of the girls I want to see again, retorts to my interrogation, “No I didn’t leave it, what are you talking about? How many girls did you have in your bed this week?” I answer cleverly, “Between one and ten.” “Click.” What if one of the girls I want to see again stops returning my phone calls because I keep asking her thoughts on Reality Bites and The Truth About Cats and Dogs.

One alternative that came to mind would be to invite all of these girls individually to coffee or beer, show up a few minutes early and place the Garafolo figurine in plain sight, and wait and see what they say about it. “What is that?” “I don’t know.” I respond, with raised eyebrows, “Why don’t you tell me.” But then the whole thing stinks like a Seinfeld episode, and I feel weird about that.

The only possible solution was to end all relations with said suspects, and move on. Morally, I’m ok with this. Rebounds never last-long, and who really wants to say to your parents that you met so and so at an Austian disco. In the end, I laid little-Janenane and the whole debacle to rest on my shelf. A trophy of sorts, commemorating concentrated promiscuity, achieving personal goals, and not waking up to find gonorrhea in your bed.

Last summer, in Prague, my ex-girlfriend and I started this little inside joke. After walking around and looking at cathedrals and statues and palaces and stuff we began to notice a peculiar little trend. Most of these famous sites, if not all, were in one-way or another, undergoing some form of renovation or construction. Pretty annoying, but we sucked it up for the good of the common tourist, and accepted that these things had to be done. This would become our joke, that all of Europe, or at least the parts we saw together, would inevitably be under construction. A week or so into the trip, we went to Cesky Krumlov, a gorgeous town, three hours by train from Prague. The castle there–under construction. Then we went to Budapest. The bathhouses there–being renovated. Parliament there–closed for renovation. Then we went to Bucharest. Well, lets face it, if you’ve ever been to Bucharest, the whole city looks like a construction site, and could use a little renovation. Then Dubrovnik, in Croatia…ok Dubrovnik was the exception, absolutely beautiful and no renovation. Then Berlin–under construction for the last sixty years. Then, eight months later we were in Nice and Marseilles, in the South of France…both cities–under construction. New tram, apparently. Then this summer, I was in Sevilla, Spain, for two months–under construction, also a new tram.

In October, I moved here to Vienna. After a month of living at the clubhouse with my ex-girlfriend and her three, 20 year old, girl flat mates (shudder), I found a wonderful apartment in the 8th district. My room has two huge windows that offer me a breathtaking, unobstructed vista of the Old Lerchenfelder Church, directly across the street. “Ill take it.” I said to my soon-to-be flat mate, and moved in 10 days later.

The day I moved in to the new apartment became the punch line of our long-running joke, apparently. I arrived at 9am, began unpacking, and wondered what all that silly noise from across the street was. Oh, it’s the construction crew, putting up scaffolding on the church. So, for the last 110 days, this has been my breathtaking vista:

So, yes. Living here, directly acroos the street, under fucking construction.
Welcome to Europe, Shaan….sucker!…mwahahahaha!