03.15 NUMB THUMB

I don’t own a comb. In fact all that’s in my bathroom is a bar of soap and a $0.79 bottle of shampoo; you know, the cheap stuff that could probably dye your hair orange if you weren’t careful. I keep my hair short enough where I never have to use any hair products. You have to consider the ratio on time spent grooming your hair to getting laid. After five minutes it’s diminishing marginal utility, probably the only term I remember from college level Economics. The reason I sport a 1/8” long buzz cut is that I love to roll out of bed and look like a million bucks (well, maybe a thousand bucks). Anyone with a Mohawk is trying too hard. Once your mohawk gets longer than 10”, it becomes impractical. Every girl wants to touch it, you have to duck under door jams, and your hair gel expense report rivals my drinking tab.

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If there was a song that played when you walked into the room with your mohawk, it should be some Indian tribal shit in an effort to remind you that mohawk2back in the 1700’s, Native Americans didn’t have hair gel, they used cured fat from dead animals to lather in their hair. I mean why else do you think they lived in teepees? They needed to vent all that rotting smell upward towards the atmosphere.

I’ve been bitten by a dog twice. The first time isn’t really story-worthy, because my friend’s dog just plain bit me. That’s seriously the entirety of the story, there’s no potential for embellishing.

The second time I got bitten by a dog I watched a homeless guy get hit by a Nissan Sentra in front of the grocery store. I dragged him over to the curb and his mongrel quickly latched onto my forearm. After kicking it senseless in the head (solely for good measures) the firemen came and lawyers leaped out from the bushes unleashing a flurry of business cards. But they didn’t introduce themselves to me: apparently I wasn’t a victim. Looking back on that day, a lawsuit could only get me possession of his grocery cart full of bottles and cans for a grand total of $2.35. The firemen provided some alcohol swabs for my puncture wounds and a bottle of Aquafina (which they bottle in a smelly chemical plant in Latham, NY. I know this because I lived 5 minutes away from it).

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Even though I’ve been bitten twice, there’s just one dog I’m afraid of. The only truly vicious, heartless, brutal dog was in that Zelda GameBoy game. It was always chained to a fence and would lash out at you if you came within two button pushes of a carpel tunnel syndrome. zelda

That reminds me, what’s with all the DJ’s mixing fucking video game music into their tracks? Yea hearing Super Mario is going to get me some ass; I get flashbacks of blowing dust out from the back of a grey Nintendo cartridge in 9th grade thinking about that hot chick in Honors Math class. God I was a fucking loser in high school, I don’t think I got laid once. Then I went to college, grew some facial hair and “looked like that guy from Incubus.” What? Get the fuck out of here you acoustic-piece-of-groupie-shit. I resorted to carrying stray guitar picks and managed to sleep with a handful of sluts, but it wasn’t from going within 50 feet of a video game console, I can guarantee you that. The most intense video game mashup I heard recently is the theme song to Zelda: Link’s Awakening (OG GameBoy edition). It gave me painful memories of walking through the beginner level village with my dinky sword hacking away at the bushes and hoping to find some of those rupees to buy a bow and arrow from the general store. Of course I never had enough patience to accumulate a sufficient amount of rupees, but there was a secret glitch where if you tried walking out the door ~75 times, you could steal the bow and arrow, but forever be banned from the general store, get electrocuted the next time you walk in, or get maimed by the rabid dog.

The main character had an insane haircut. It resembled a blowout with a little green elf hat perched on top. How he never had to take a break during zelda2the middle of a battle sequence to maintain that perfectly groomed coif still escapes me.gel If Zelda lived in the real world, he’d spend all his rupees on hair gel, and become a kleptomaniac stealing shit from the drug store, ultimately leading into a downward spiral of drugs and alcohol; realistically he’d probably just drink the hair gel. How much alcohol content does that shit have? 1.5%? I just realized that by reliving my teenage glory years, I’ve been playing this fucking game for over 3 hours… I can’t feel my thumbs.

01.14 FISH FRY

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photographed by Ben DeCamp

12.14 FUCK FIESTA

All of a sudden using the word fuck is cool again. Popular websites like LookatThisFuckingHipster, TheFuckingWeather, and FuckMyLife are more rampant than The Salvation Army ringing bells and panhandling outside of department stores.

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The first and definitely last time my mother heard me say fuck, we were in the parking lot of the San Diego Zoo. I didn’t want to see the zoo because I was hungry and the caged elephant made me sad. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no advocate for animal rights by any means; I consume meat like it’s going out of style. I just hate the smell of stale urine in a cramped environment while little kids on a sugar high bump into my legs. Take that same swarm of children in India, and I would’ve had my wallet stolen and succumbed to identity theft before I even got out of the car.

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More so than losing a credit card, I have an irrational fear of losing a winning lottery ticket. In Lake George, NY during the summer of 2002, a man won the Powerball jackpot of an unprecedented $389 million at the same convenience store my Dad and I bought a ticket 20 minutes prior. Clearly ours was not the winner because I wouldn’t be writing this blog and I’d be living on some island in the fucking Mediterranean Sea while dark-haired sluts fed me aged cheese and performed fellatio at predetermined intervals. Dad was always pissed off about that, not the lack of aged cheese, but about not winning the lotto. “We came so close!” He vowed to never gamble again.

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I used to collect and save my fortunes from fortune cookies. You know those one-liners that are more obscure than an astrology reading in the newspaper? Yea, those. I tried playing the digits on the back as my lotto numbers for several years. I would rarely hit two or three numbers, but nothing more. I think the distribution company closed because on the back of the fortune the writing changed from my lucky numbers to, “Learn how to Speak Chinese.” Where’s my lucky numbers? FUCK YOU FORTUNE COOKIE WRITER YOU MOTHERFUCKER does it look like I’m travelling to Beijing to try to seduce some well-mannered and docile Asian chick with the ass of a 10-yr old boy?!? NO.

pam36-23-36. At first glance that seems like a random 3-digit combo that might win big in that quick play 3 number game. Actually they’re the measurements of a recent girl I slept with, or should I say “fucked” in Manhattan. Yea, that sounds cooler, might earn 5 bonus street cred/hipster points by writing fuck. The only reason these digits are relevant is because Pamela Anderson’s body measurements in her prime were 36-24-36, so basically this girl had a 1” skinnier waist which made her ass look an inch bigger than Pam’s. Her face wasn’t that great, but once I realized the mathematical similarities there was no turning back. It was as close as I was ever going to get to having sex with Pamela Anderson. I tried to get her to wear a red bathing suit, but she wasn’t having it. Pam’s ass was pretty good, but the TV show was always about her bouncing tits. Baywatch rarely featured her running down the beach away from the camera, just towards it. I heard she recently auctioned off that red buoy she carried around on set. Not that I’d buy it, but shouldn’t it be donated to the National Lifeguarding Museum?

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Besides reminiscing about my delusional sex life and a near decade of losing the lottery, next time I’ll talk more about going to the zoo with Mom and the tortoise who threw up a piece of banana. Maybe I’ll touch upon the fact that I sported khakis and collared shirts in public school till I was a teenager because I aspired to be successful like my father. By the way, that trip to the San Diego zoo… was when I was 4 years old and I just learned how to swear. Mom spanked me so hard, even she cried. But c’mon give me a break, at that age I just wanted to dress and talk like Dad, help him rake leaves, wash the car, mow the lawn, and do everything and anything that he did because it was cool. By the time I reached high school, I remember saying to myself, “Fuck that.”

12.12 LEMON PLEDGE

img_7234LIZ on her apartment floor photographed by Ben DeCamp

11.13 BUFF AND SHINE

twinsLast summer in San Diego, twin #1 gave me her phone number along with twin #2’s within several minutes of each other. Neither will go on a date with me now; I think it’s because after they both realized the extent to which I “shoot models, check out my portfolio sometime,” they realized what they were in for.

But in hindsight, I would never date a girl that drives an Audi; yet alone twin Audis. I mean it’s for dogsobvious reasons…they just scream poor gas mileage. My father is an orthopedic surgeon, it’s obvious he makes a decent living, but he taught me everything I know about being frugal. He drove a piece of shit Nissan Sentra for years that I wet my pants in it when I was 5 and fucked up the rear seat upholstery. He never got the seats fixed. Why? Well, he knew I had to sit in that seat for the next 6 years and reflect on the mistake I made. My childhood friends would ask me what the huge stain was and I’d make up something like he once used his car as an ambulance and took someone to the hospital. It would only take a momentary glance in the rear view mirror to remind me I was talking out of my ass.  That day I wet my pants though, I think my father and I both learned an important lesson that resonates to this day: that giving a coca-cola to a young child with an unpredictable bladder before a road trip is a bad idea for any family vehicle.

I suppose I’ve moved on from these two,  but there are still two underlying questions that I haven’t resolved:

1) Is the gigantic red bow factory feeling the pressures of the poor economy?

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2) If my family owned a Lear jet, what would my dogs do at 33,000 feet? Would we take Facebook/MySpace/Twitter photos together? Would we cuddle up and take a nap? Or would I just let them shit in the cabin aisle and have the stewardess pick it up with the airsick bag?

11.4 GONE FISHIN’

tracksfish4fish3FISHING WITH WEEN photographed by Ben DeCamp

10.9 GIDDY UP GIDEON

I’ll be completely honest. My name isn’t Ben, it’s George. It just sounds so tacky: George Bush, King George, George Foreman grill, Curious George. It was one of those legacy names that was tagged onto what my parents really wanted to call me as if I ever met my great-great-grandfather and that naming me as such should remind me of what standing in a bread line was like during the Great Depression. Fuck that. As soon as I tell girls that Ben is my middle name, they say, “So you’re name is Ben Ben DeCamp?” No you fuckwit, unlike yours, my mother wasn’t on meth when I shot out into the delivery room while my irresponsible father nursed a hangover and avoided the gaze of anyone resembling a police officer.

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I thought I was in the clear with Benjamin, a pretty standard and respectable name by anyone’s standards. I was raped over and over throughout grade school; that’s a pretty strong metaphor, but really my ass got kicked so many times it felt like sodomy. Benjamin Franklin, Ben Dover, Bengay…the names didn’t stop. It’s one thing to be made fun of for having the same name as a notable historical figure, but any likeness to a pain relieving ointment is the epitome of potential ridicule. This irrelevant photo of a gigantic fucking sandwich is a reminder to never eat at Route 66 roadside delis, otherwise known as lessons in food poisoning.

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On weekends, I volunteered at the local soup kitchen downtown. It wasn’t an attempt to clear my conscience of all the fucked up revenge ideas I had for those bullies. I had 100 mandatory hours to fulfill in order to get confirmed by my local church; something I was forced to do by my parents or else they’d revoke any money put towards the college fund. I obliged, mumbled a bunch of bullshit songs and ate some stale crackers while avoiding the pneumonia-laden boxed wine during the holidays. The soup kitchen was full of homeless and other unfortunate souls like myself serving their time. Sometimes I’d suck on a beef barley cube and listen to the stories of those passing through, or merely trying to avoid the blizzard conditions of another harsh Northeast winter.

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He knew a victim when he saw one… “Benjamin…ahh…a strong biblical name. Have you read Psalms 35:16? Well it all starts…” I wanted to shank Brother Joseph with that golden crucifix dangling from his scrawny neck. He knew I had to listen to his gospel and make pleasant conversation; an easy target. He wasn’t homeless. He was one of those fucking Gideons that places free bibles in Vegas hotel rooms; the last place I want to think about anything holy while digging around for a condom at 4am, when there’s a girl in black lingerie sprawled across my bed and confusing the sheets for a Halloween ghost costume.

10.6 GHOST RIDE THE WHIP

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I LOVE ME

There is no one else in the world I would rather be. I wouldn’t let you walk a mile in my shoes, because I’d probably become jealous. They were $149.99 hi-tops that I only wore twice on my carpet and then put behind Plexiglas because they’re the collectors edition and I’m gonna pawn them on EBay in several years. My parents front me an exorbitant amount of funds so I can live in a condo downtown, have sporadic dance parties on Tuesday nights, be happily unemployed, and live 300 feet from the club entrance. But I take a cab because my friends and I hate walking. I have no responsibilities. Sometimes I’ll buy a little baggie of “Do you like to party?” and offer it to any important people in the club. That being relevant DJ’s (only gracing national music blogs), any photographer who could make me 5% more famous, and the girl wearing the tightest American Apparel leggings I can find.
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200469034-001 Actually I decided I’m only wearing body mesh suits now. They deceive the viewer to what is really underneath. Skin blemishes, bruises, and cuts are all covered up. I’m not this pale in real life, but the black micro mesh gives me a darker skin appearance, kinda like going tanning on a budget. It’s an optical illusion; very similar to shopping for bulk fruit and buying a dozen oranges bagged with the orange mesh only to discover that 11 of them are rotten.

houseofholland_americanapparel_sheermeshdress In fact, I love Me so much, that I will do anything to make myself look sexier/hotter/hipster-er-er. I will even fulfill my lifelong model aspirations in an alleyway while there are homeless women trying to collect cans to pay for baby food/hotel room/meth/sharpie markers for their cardboard signs. i_heart_nyBeen wondering where this generation of self-entitlement is headed… Let’s be honest, I was only worrying about Me. Now you can broadcast your every thought to the world; and even when you think you’re completely and utterly alone, don’t off yourself just yet. There’s surely some lonely man living in a rural Montana shack who understands you. img_5752He’s probably on various social networking sites and knows you’re kinda famous; he holds you up on a pedestal (or at least beats off to these photos while they are scotch-taped above his computer desk.) His name is probably Leopold, Horace, or the Unabomber. It sounds like this one man who emailed me and “Fully supports my feet photography and wants to fund my efforts for his private collection.” I don’t love my boyfriend/dog/parents/religious figure anymore. I don’t even love LA, NY, or that touristy t-shirt I bought. I don’t love you; I love Me.

HOOK LINE & SINKER

I interviewed a Central American prostitute to learn more about Latin culture, women’s suffrage, and questionable off-brand condoms. For anonymity purposes, she preferred to wear sunglasses during the interview and her name has been replaced with that of a popular chocolate beverage often consumed at breakfast in Spanish-speaking households.

bendy: How long have you been working in this brothel?
milo: 2 days.

bendy: What!!! 2 days? Are you fucking serious?
milo: Yea I’m the new girl, it’s kinda weird, but I like it. My best friend over there, the cute one in the pink shirt told me it was fun, so I figured I’d try it out.

bendy: How many times have you had sex?
milo: 5 times today.

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bendy: Jesus Christ, no no, I meant like in your entire lifetime.
milo: Oh, quite a bit; I love sex. We have 6 clients each day, once you reach 6 you can go home. We make a flat rate per day even if no one chooses us.

bendy: Which is better, the sex or the money?
milo: Mostly we have to sleep with old fat guys, when we see them we run into the other room. But sometimes guys like you come in and we get excited so we all come out for the presentation… “Rico papi, sabes que eres muy muy caliente?”

bendy: Yea there were about 15-17 of you girls standing in front of me and my friend Lobster, it was kinda bizarre.

bendy: Let’s talk about something else. How much do you make per week?
milo: About $500, the best girls make $1000. I drive a Ford Mustang and my friend drives a Mercedes.

[opens the window shade and points out]

milo: Can you see that red one over on the corner? Yea, that one’s mine.

bendy: Who’s the guy with the shotgun next to it?
milo: Oh that’s the security guard, he makes sure we get to our cars safely after work.

bendy: What time did you get here anyways?
milo: 7am

bendy: Damn. Are there dudes here that early?
milo: Yea of course, and we close at 730pm. Pretty early, but it’s because the owner doesn’t want a bunch of drunk guys coming in after the bars close and causing problems.

bendy: So you’re pretty rich compared to most people who earn $7/day in this city.
milo: Yea I guess so, how do you say that in English?

bendy: You’d be “ballin’.”
milo: Like a ball you play sports with?

bendy: Yea kinda, but you’d be in a rap video wearing gold chains and and pouring champagne on people instead of drinking it.
milo: That sounds fun!

bendy: So how torn up are you down there?
milo: What do you mean?

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bendy: Never mind, it’s irrelevant, do your parents know you work here?
milo: Haha no way! They think I work in an office downtown.

bendy: An office with a bartender?
milo: Haha yea, I’m kinda buzzed. Can you buy me a cerveza?

bendy: No, we need to finish the interview! You’re too drunk for another beer.
milo: Ok, what else do you want to know? Who is this for anyways?

bendy: It’s kinda like Maxim Magazine, but on the Internet. It’s cool, trust me. What’s your favorite position?
milo: Doggy-style. I don’t like it in the ass though.

bendy: Why not?
milo: It hurts a lot.

bendy: When was the last time you tried it?
milo: Oh I’ve never done it, but my girlfriends say it hurts.

bendy: Well Christ, do you believe everything they say? Some of the other girls here look like drug addicts. I wouldn’t trust them.
milo: Well, I guess I wouldn’t mind trying it…Where do you live anyways?

bendy: At a resort hotel on the beach. It’s got two big pools. You should swing by and we’ll take some photos this week.
milo: Oh sweet! Actually I get off work soon, here’s my #. Call me later tonight and we’ll hang out!