Perhaps.

we have rats. fucking rats, man. i’ve struck a horizontal line on the household pest bingo card. ants. that’s free space, everyone has ants at some point. bed bugs, fucking bed bugs. bed bugs are a kind of pest that change your personality long after they’re gone. they leave a scorch mark on your ancestral dna. 60 million years from now a scientist is going to point at a gene sequence on a hologram computer and go, “yeah right here is where it all started going wrong for this species, if you’ve ever wondered why you’re always scared of dark pieces of lint and your bed is 4 feet off the ground, this uh, this is why.” uh lizards and bats when i lived in florida, whatever, the point is that rats were always the end, the final frontier. the thing you only see on tv. now the only thing i have left is like, you ever hear about those stories that are like, “nanny cam footage reveals how an old japanese woman lived in this couple’s house undetected for 20 years!” that’s all i have left. haunted blonde twins with white eyes, that’s my new rats.

it all started, well i was at work, so like, already my soul was in a weakened state. like my spirit was extra susceptible to the universe fucking with it. i was at work and i got a text message from my girlfriend. it went something like, “i don’t want to freak you out, but i think i just saw a mouse in the apartment.”

and that text message, it marked the Before of my old life and the After that is my life trapped in rat crime city. my brain chemistry altered after reading those words. unknowingly it altered, because i was in denial at first, obviously. in fact my first reaction was to text back, “were you falling asleep at the time?” because sometimes when you’re falling asleep you’ll see weird, scary shit, right? like a demon sitting on your chest or something.

well whatever, i worked the rest of my shift in a daze and eventually, somehow, hours later found myself kneeling in an aisle of duane reade that i had only ever visited once before to buy fly traps. because i’ve had flies, and i bought a cute little fake apple to kill fruit flies. the apple of death, i was the purple witch to the fly sleeping beauty. whatever. i was kneeling because even in the aisle dedicated to killing the vermin of nyc, they put the rat stuff on the bottom shelf, not even the bottom shelf, like the space under the bottom shelf. because it’s so shameful. it’s rat killing merch and a dusty can of blueberry redbull that rolled under there five months ago. it was one step away from buying weapons from a guy in a dark alley. i was there kneeling, hunched over, like in prayer to the altar of the god of rat death. and the hovering, infinitely black orb flashed red and answered my prayers by unfurling like a rose and in the center of the strange petals was a poison trap.

so i bought the poison trap and here’s what i thought the poison trap did. i thought the rat walked inside of a little room, ate poison, and then somehow the door locked behind him and he just died in a shitty little poison rat studio apartment. upon getting home my girlfriend informed me that how it actually works is, the rat eats the poison disguised as delicious food, and then just goes and dies randomly some time later, probably in a hard to reach spot in the room where i live. 

side note. i pay too much money to live in a very small space because i feel aimless and lost and i’ll do things like move to a city to try and find meaning in my life, uh, rats have miles and miles of subway tunnels to live in. go, go be in them. get away from me.

so i returned to the altar of the god of rat death and prayed once more to the giant, hovering, infinitely black orb, and i said, “you fucking sold me- what is this trap for? give me the classic mouse traps, my god. i thought rat trap technology had evolved. just give me the regular cartoon thing made out of wood.”

they had two kinds of those, the classic retro wooden clap trap, and some more modern looking grey plastic one that looked like a building from command and conquer or some shit. i bought a bunch of both. i dropped mad stacks on rat traps.

i’d also like to comment on how the old fashioned traps, the wooden ones, they say on the package, “pre-baited” but when you look at them, at the spot where the bait would be, there’s nothing. like i looked at a couple and i was like, “where is the bait?” the little platform where you’re meant to put the bait is shaped like a tiny slice of swiss cheese, holes and all. that’s what they mean by “pre-baited. like what kind of acme logic is that? pre-baited with a cartoonish wedge of swiss cheese? rats don’t know what swiss cheese is! rats aren’t fucking born with an innate knowledge of swiss cheese. they don’t know that humans think they specifically like the cheese with the holes!! that’s not real. rats eat fucking glue and garbage and shit! by that logic an elephant trap would have a big plastic peanut on it. that’s not pre-baited!! bear traps don’t have pots of honey on them!!!

we decided to use the modern-y, plastic-y clap traps. you bait these in a little hatch and then when the rat lifts up the lid, it snaps down and breaks their neck. like if i opened my fridge and inside there was a spring-loaded metal bar that just swung out and clothes lined me to death. we baited them with peanut butter. which uh, marked the jar in my head as “rat peanut butter.” like it was new and i opened it for the traps and i don’t think i’ll use it now. like i can’t put a dollop of jif into a plastic death trap and then spread it on some ritz crackers. not appetizing. but hey, only the best name brands for my rat buds, eh? choosy daniels choose jif. you think they’d prefer crunchy over smooth? you think rats keep their peanut butter in the fridge?

side note again. my girlfriend pointed something out to me that was apparently rat droppings. a little black like, bit of dirt behind the sink. i was like, “that’s what that is? i’ve seen that every day, i just thought it was like, crud? you know? like schmutz, like just dirt that builds up from being alive and walkin around and shit. that’s what that is?” it blew my mind.

three days passed, alright? every day i woke up and went to go check the traps like some kind of fucked up easter egg hunt. four little sections of my tiny apartment where i can’t go anymore. my girlfriend had since gone home for vacation. i was alone, i was convinced there was no rat.

on the fourth day i woke up. rat in the trap. big fucking rat. not really a rat, it was a mouse, but like i said, well, to me, a rat. i froze. i knew i was going to be late for work. once i was late for work because i had to psych myself up to pick up a dead roach. a rat? that has a spine and an immune system and shit. i thought i was just gonna call and quit. here’s the real twist though. i looked over at the other trap and did a fucking double take. there was another rat. two, i caught two in one night. it really looked like a mom and a baby. everyone i’ve told this to, at this point they get sad thinking about a mom and a baby, but it just freaks me out more. rats don’t have one baby, they have a bunch. for all i know my apartment is a poorly staffed rat daycare right now. 

me picking up the traps with the rigid dead rat bodies isn’t important, just gross, but it’s something i had to do that i didn’t think i’d ever do, so there’s that. add that to my wheelhouse.

how did we even get rats? we’re clean, don’t leave out food, no british ships had docked in my fucking living room. (why isn’t there a stereotype of the arrival of british people coinciding with the arrival of rats? isn’t that how rats got to hawaii?) the only thing i can pin it to is construction they were doing down a manhole on our street. maybe that displaced them. would i have preferred to have four ninja turtles crashing on my couch? no, i don’t want anything from the sewer being displaced refugees in my apartment.

but now we’re all caught up. because this is where i am. i live in fear. when the sun sets i just go to bed because rats are nocturnal and i figure i’d better give them enough night time hours to kill themselves in my traps. like i just don’t stay up anymore and then i dread going out into the living room in the morning. 

is there even a sleazier way to talk about boobs? sweater meat? it’s practically the middle of summer, no one’s wearing sweaters. your creepiness isn’t even seasonally appropriate. i know you’re not from another hemisphere, buddy. it doesn’t even make sense. i wish his friend had been like, “but wait, nick, if boobs are sweater meat because when girls wear sweaters, they’re in them. what about when we wear sweaters? are we the meat inside the sweaters?”

that’s just, the nature…of the beast. i said that twice within 10 minutes of meeting someone. that’s just the nature of the beast? like i’m a veteran cop who’s been on the force for 25 years and i’m training a rookie to try and walk the straight and narrow and risk his life to save a community that always seems to be eating itself from the inside out. “that’s just the nature of the beast, boot.”

except i’m just like some idiot going, “yeah sometimes you’ll need to get change, but, like, it’ll be sunday and the bank’ll be closed…but that’s just the nature of the beast, man.”

this fly kept landing on my stove and hovering around my radiator. like it thinks i’m going to spray flammable oil, because that’s pretty much what the poison is, it’s like oil that fucks up their wings and shit, all over my stove top and then light my whole place on fire the next time i try and be fancy and use conventional heating instructions on my can of chef boyardee ravioli. like it takes a lot of nerve to do that to me. to stand right there and try and get me to sabotage my whole life.

anyways i have a fly strip too, which i’ve talked about before because i’m glamorous, and right after i got dressed i came out i saw it on there, trapped. and i felt bad for it because it was still moving around like it had no clue what was going on. i actually felt bad for this fly. so i sprayed it point blank on the strip. will spraying my fly strip with roach poison ruin its effectiveness? i don’t know, but right after i did it i saw another fly. a second fly. that always gets me, when there are two of them, because they fuck and make babies. even if they don’t like each other i bet. just to spite me. two flies who hate each other start a family just to annoy me. i don’t know where it goes on, but knowing two flies are going at it somewhere in my apartment drives me insane. 

i think i’m being ghosted by this school i applied to. i didn’t want to go back to school, but i don’t know what i’m doing. i’m really directionless right now. i’m trying to extend my stay in young adulthood for as long as possible. just in the middle of the ocean jumping from driftwood to driftwood. i applied to this program, a one year degree, and i had to go through all the paces. i had to write a peppy application essay where i had to come across as this guy who’s got a biiig appetite for life and oh opportunities give me a major hard on and i always don’t feel defeated. i couldn’t check a box and then go, “i am not a bad guy, let me pay you to put a semblance of purpose back in my day-to-day. a little hope. put a few more watts in the light at the end of the tunnel there, for me.”

everything was going great, i met all the deadlines, my transcripts were good, here’s what i think screwed or is screwing me. i did a special program in high school that gave me college credits. i got an email from a woman at the school i applied to that said my college credit exemptions from high school weren’t valid unless i had records sent from my high school. i went online to the program’s website to order the documents directly. they asked for a login/password combo i was given in 2009 and of course had tattooed to my forearm for easy reference.

i had to call my high school. i had to pick up my phone, my phone that the technology for didn’t even exist when i was in high school, and i had to call them. it was like calling another dimension. it was like trying to find my way back to oz from kansas without the help of a tornado. the line was all static-y and shit like i was breaking the space-time continuum by even attempting it. i don’t want to even imagine what my high school is like. all the metal picnic tables are all probably new and some weird color. there’s probably some new ugly mural or something, i don’t know.

i had to talk to a man and explain to him that almost eight years ago, before he even started working at the school, there was a woman who had his job whose name has been lost to the annals of time. this woman ran a program that a little boy was in, and that little boy was now a little older boy who needed evidence that it all really even happened. the program was european and the boy had to get codes for an online portal so he could have some server farm in fucking sweden or something send his dusty ass decade old latin scores across the atlantic. somehow this took three weeks and probably lost the boy his spot and the 75 dollars it cost to apply.

I will argue that he was just as if not more on theme than her. He’s so far one of only a few men to actually wear a period appropriate suit that is to the dress code required!!

White tie events are the most formal events in Western/British culture and you bet ur ass the Met Gala is a white tie event— yet men rarely dress to this level because it isn’t what the general public wants or is aware of.

Not only that but his suit is mid-gilded age. The styling of the waistcoat with the pocket watch, the lapel and shoulder cut, the only modern aspects of it are the collar of his shirt and the lack of buttons on his jacket (but then again he’s allowed some personal taste).

In accordance with white tie formal, his suit is black but the material adds even more glamour, black velvet. Most men do just the front of the jacket and some silk or wool on the back/lapel with maybe their pants being the same (often cheaper). But his WHOLE SUIT is black velvet. Of course this prevents a nice front pleat that’s common in white tie suits, but due to the luxurious nature of velvet it is worth it because it comes off as even more extravagant and tasteful, a seamless transition from top to bottom (which a lot of suits struggle with)

And finally, a semi gloss black saddle boot with a tasteful gold wrist watch add enough luxury in a whispering way— making a lovely contrast to Blakes outfit.

the Met Gala funds the Met Costume Institute. meaning, basically, the Met’s clothing collection

from what I’ve read, it is the main source of funding for the Institute, which houses over 31,000 garments and accessories from the 17th century onwards

as for why the Costume Institute needs a separate fundraiser from the rest of this vast world-class museum with many high-profile donors…I have often wondered that myself. in the same breath as wondering why the Met has so few and sparse costume exhibits in any given year, and why some pieces on their collections website are outright misdated

but that’s the situation, so. that’s what the Met Gala is for. it’s not just rich people parading around in couture for fun. it keeps a huge museum collection of historical clothing preserved, so people can learn from and be inspired by those garments for years to come