SelfAbsorbed.ME : ‘It’s Your Life, We Just Write it Funnier’

While MMB was lucky enough to escape the trenches of the family vacation, the extended fam drafted me to come up to New England for the week, an order I could not avoid due to my current state of unemployment.

So as she gets ready to go live it up in the Hamptons for the long weekend, I find myself banished to the back-woods of New England, surrounded by trees, water, and 16 family members. Essentially, I’ve died and gone to the next season of Survivor.

The first day started out pleasantly enough with a swim in the ocean. New York stripped me of a summer tan so I was happy to spend some time in the sun. By the time I got into a piping hot shower, I felt myself approaching an unfamiliar state of being: relaxation.

Then the bathroom door jerked open:

Get out! Get out of the shower now! The toilet in the basement is overflowing!

They didn’t have to tell me twice. I’m staying in the basement bedroom. Upon hearing my living space was being invaded by sewage, I leapt out of the shower covered in shampoo and soap and finished my bathing under the hose of freezing water in the backyard.

For the next 20 hours, we had to rough it: no running water, no working toilets. And yet we had wireless internet and the unrated version of Harold and Kumar Escape Guantanamo Bay. Life is strange.

Harold and Kumar Escape Guantanamo Bay: the Unrated Version is perhaps the worst possible movie to watch with your extended family, the only exception being a full blown porno. An entire scene consists of hot females milling about at a no-pants party. Bikini wax preferences of all shapes and sizes filled the screen.

I sat there squirming next to my fifty-something year-old uncle.

I spent the next 24-hours painting.

How refined and cultured of me, no?

I’ve been creating a lovely lighthouse with red and white stripes, a perfect New England scene. And who exactly is commissioning such a piece? Well, it’s for my cousin’s college beirut table. Everyone is oo-ing and ah-ing over it as if it was going up at the Met, when really it will simply be a board game of under-age alcoholism and hedonistic debauchery.

The highlight of the week: definitely my dad’s cutting-edge fashion sense.

Dad now wears his jeans in the same style as the likes of Katie Holmes and Rachel Bilson.

Who wore it best?

My father: intuitive trend-setter or unintentional cross-dresser? You decide.

While deer ticks swarm the premises, family tensions lay like land-mines. No one is safe from themselves or each other. And while the younger cousins slink off to take bong rips in the back woods, I’ve been perpetually inhaling nothing but ragweed. The result: I’ve taken on the appearance of a huge stoner and the burden of battling constant allergy attacks.

There’s nothing like a weekend with the family to make me realize how functional my daily life is. In New York, I perpetually feel like I’m in over my head, but at least my head is on straight.