Read The Douchebag Bible Online
Authors: TJ Kirk
more security than I have now. The rest I spend
making sure that my family—my wife and my
brother—are taken care of. I’m not nominating
myself for sainthood here. I’m just trying to make
something clear to you: I’m a working man. I don’t
get endless respect for minimal effort. I work 7 days
a week trying to ensure that me and my loved ones
have a future.
And in the process I’ve helped others (people
who are like me). And I’ve made money. But what
have I done to myself? I’ve stunted my growth as a
person to keep myself entertaining. I’ve trained
myself to feel constant anger because that’s what
sells. I’ve lived so publicly that I can’t even have a
private thought anymore. Everything is Tumblred,
Tweeted, Facebooked or YouTubed. I used to just
look at my wall or ceiling and think about life. Now
all I do is stare at my phone or my computer,
wondering what I should tweet next. What little real
thinking I do is geared towards being entertaining.
Every idea I have is boiled down to it’s most basic
essence so that it can be easily digested by a mass
audience. I’m the reverse Pinocchio! I went from
being a real boy to being a puppet—which truly is
counterproductive to the emotional journey that is
my life's ultimate goal: find an ideal, and find a
reason to care about the world and everyone in it.
Find some way to reconnect with your humanity.
Shed this aloofness.
How long can I do it? How long can I make
videos for you and for all the others? Well, I will
continue to do it until I no longer have the fire in my
belly to say what I have to say. My passion ebbs and
flows, but it’s never receded entirely into
nothingness. If that happens, I’ll stop and find
something else to do.
4. HUSBAND
I'd say I was a total failure in that regard if not
for my wife, Holly. I have very bad social anxiety,
especially when it comes to crowds, but oddly I
wasn’t nervous in the days leading up to our
wedding. We had a small guest list compared to
some (about 100 people) but it was still big enough
to warrant a small panic attack. Yet, I wasn’t nervous.
My stomach felt fine. My pulse was normal. I didn’t
feel stressed.
But about five minutes before I walked down
the aisle to take my position, my stomach felt like it
shrank to the size of a dime. My lungs stopped
working. My heart began throbbing. My legs got so
tense they were hard to bend at the knee. I guess my
nerves caught up to me.
Galen, a good friend of mine, saw my distress
and pulled me aside for a quick pep talk that
consisted of this: “No one looks at the men at these
things. No one gives a fuck about you. Everyone’s
looking at the women and their colorful dresses.
You’re just some piece of shit they don’t care about.”
This calmed me down enough to get me out there.
And before long, my shyness melted away through
the sheer socializing power of booze.
Holly and I are a good team. I don’t really know
how to write about our relationship. I feel that it
could be a book unto itself if I wanted it to be. I will
say that she is the only person who stands by me for
all that I am. Everyone else backs away from certain
aspects of my personality, no matter how charmed
they are by others. She’s the only person that accepts
every facet of my being. And I accept all of her.
She has trouble being herself around other
people. She puts up a front, and most people like
that front. But I know the real Holly—and I’m glad I
do. She has a great sense of humor, a great sense of
play and is very devoted to me and to us. I like the
fact that even after four years with me, she is still
very attached, still gives me a lot of affection, still
accepts a lot of affection from me. I have done a lot
of things wrong in my life, but making Holly my life-
mate was not one of them. She is, I think, the best
decision of my life—the only decision I've ever made
that
truly
improved the quality of my existence.
A lot of people seem curious about my
marriage, particularly due to my staunch atheism,
but I would say that just because I recognize no gods
doesn't mean I can't appreciate ceremonies and
their real world significance to flesh and blood
human beings. Marriage is a ritual. It’s an act of
consecration that goes beyond the mere “religious.”
It’s a set of regimented behaviors and legal bindings
designed to make a declaration to yourself, your
friends and family, and above all to your partner,
that you dedicate your existence to them.
It’s not all about love. Love is just part of it. It’s
about an alliance of two people. It’s the statement
that you and your partner vow to put the interests of
the couple above the interests of the individual. It
says to the world, “We are each other’s property, and
so we are both owners of a new joint entity, an
amalgam of two people, now brought together and
made one.”
That’s how I view it, anyway.
It's funny, because for a long time I let other
people convince me that I couldn't love. I’d been told
before that I’m not capable of loving someone. That
I am like a reptile. Cold. Unfeeling. Dark and
unsympathetic. There is truth to some of that, but I
am capable of love. Perhaps I am too capable of love.
I have a wife, and I love her. I also have another girl,