TWENTIETH POST

July 29, 2026 · 4:39 PM

I hit my head over the weekend.

Rather, a microwave door hit me in the eye. It happened to hit me hard enough that I was pretty woozy for the rest of the day. I woke up the next day throwing up, and had a very strong headache. The headache did not subside over the next day, and thus I found myself in a "Freestanding ER" on Tuesday afternoon.

I do not have a brain bleed. I do, however, have a concussion. I am light and sound sensitive, I am a little more confused than normal, and I can't look at a computer for more than 6-10 minutes before I feel like I am being stabbed behind my left ear.

It's very painful, and as such, I have taken a few days off from writing. I did not take a few days off from life, and there is much to report on.

For example, on Saturday David threw a party. By that I mean that first I went to my friend David's party. Then, I went to a joint different-David-And-also-different-David party at a second location. The protein VC brand or whatever, David, also threw a popop. At this second party, I hung out with my other friend David, and introduced him to yet another friend named David.... and my friend who was there with their boyfriend -- you guessed it -- also named David.

And that's before the concussion!

There are many things I could report on from Saturday: there was ridiculously good salmon (and I'm a salmon hater), people giving me dirty looks that I didn't actually notice but other people did and asked about, staking bags for bags and other various puzzles, an investigative squad dedicated to finding out the truth of something none of us will publicly admit we're even questioning a little bit.

Sunday was a little bit lower key. A friend is leaving for a few months, and we had some orange wine and went for a bike ride in the park. I got back to the house and microwaved myself after this.

I could spend some time naming all the archetypes of type of guy and girl encountered at these two parties, which definitely included various micro-niche internet celebrities, political actors, ex-friends, ex-lovers, ex-friends-avoiding-ex-lovers, bag fiends, psychic women, cryptocurrency brethren who very much so did not understand that seeing me in a different context did not mean we were at a cryptocurrency party, beautiful women of all varieties, friends of friends, a host of people who told me way more information about themselves than they meant to, a girl we totally lied to about my friend having complete memetic and financial control over the color green (you know, like vantablack? it's that but for all greens) and so on.

I'm not going to do that. Instead, I'm going to talk about one specific interaction I had, and a bigger beef I'm kind of just mad at the world about. I have a concussion, so fuck you, I'm writing what I want.

I'll start by saying this: I'm pretty cheery and outgoing IRL. I have been called gregarious, vivacious, bubbly, the life of the party. I'm asked if I do standup by strangers regularly. My job for a while was essentially to party with rich people, so I can make fairly good conversation with just about anyone. It's not hard for me.

I am hypersensitive in almost every dimension you can think of. This is not said as a brag. Not only is it not said as a brag, I am actually a little bit complaining, because I live in New York. Keep that in mind as I describe this next part to you.

My sense of smell is ridiculously overpowered, for most smells. There are certain things (florals, gasoline) that I cannot smell at all. What I can smell, I can smell intensely. I can smell when someone is cutting a tomato or cucumber in the next room. If you're cooking, I can smell specific ingredients inside what's being cooked from two rooms away. I like to play games where I guess, and I am pretty fucking accurate. I am happy that cannabis is legal in New York, because I much prefer the smell of loud to the smell of piss. Especially in the heat, when it turns acrid and steamy.

My hearing is much better than most people's. I am unable to tune this out most of the time. I have to manually filter noises away from my brain. If you make it loud, I will be unable to think. Sometimes, this is an environment I very much so enjoy being in. It's nice to turn my brain off (or lower), and feel music, feel the ambient vibrations of sounds through space, feel the echoes of words off of ceilings. I can hear things bouncing around. I will hear snippets of conversation from much further away than anyone thinks... I hear more secrets, more personal information, more farts, more swallowing, more chewing, and I feel beeps and boops and electronic dinging and car horns and --

You'll notice that I said I can feel a few of the things I have described as sounds. I do hear sounds so intensely that it as if they are physical to me. This extends to my sense of touch as well: I am extremely sensitive to all of it, from the way my clothing rubs against my stomach, to fluctuations in air movement and temperature. I can probably tell if it's going to rain before you can, and it's not because I'm magic, it's because I felt the downdraft and the temperature drop and the humidity change well before you.

Essentially, aside from sight, my entire sensorium is overly sensitive. I am like a highly tuned instrument. For what? I have no idea. But, as someone who has to live in this stinky, heavy cacophony, all the time, I try to find ways to amuse myself. Otherwise, I would live in overstimulated hell. I mean, I really do not get a break from this. I can't say I enjoy living like this a lot of the time, and wish I could filter these things more autonomically.

One thing that brings me a little bit of joy is to interject into conversations as I pass. I don't really mean to join in, I don't mean to do anything but comment on whatever it is two other people are talking about as I walk by them. I could hear them, I can smell them, and honestly, sometimes my comment or joke is really good and I get some laughs and recognition that I am also a human who likes to participate in social interaction.

This Saturday, at David's, I walked by two or three people who were totally fucking blocking the way to the kitchen. There was no real room or quiet way around them, as this is in the middle of a long, narrow hallway. And so as I approached, I started listening to what they were saying, looking for a natural way through.

They were talking about the stairs.

The stairs at David's are honestly a little scary. He's at the top of a walkup, no elevator, and the stairs are steep. Half the reason I do not partake in anything stronger than an edible at David's is that frankly I'm scared of the stairs.

As I passed, they said something, and in order to draw attention to myself, I said the stairs were... "scary!" and I maybe said one full sentence to that regard. My plan worked, they noticed me, and shifted so that I could walk by.

Now, reader. I kept it moving. I walked into the kitchen. I didn't linger, didn't stick around to annoy, just said my little comment and moved on.

And then I heard one of them mumble (quite rudely), sarcastically, and unpleasantly, no hint of joy or whimsy or even niceness in their voice "thank you birb".

Now, I am honestly a little sick of this treatment, so I replied "you're welcome!"

They obviously had not expected me to hear. They even then said "you heard that?" and I went "well how else would I be replying?" and then I finished filling up my cup with water, walked past them, and went back out into the rest of the party.

About 20 minutes later, the tall one came up to where I was talking to some of my other friends. I'm still not sure who this person was, but they approached me a little sheepishly. My friend starts talking to them, shakes their hand, and says "nice to meet you, Jack Antonoff". It's not actually him, but it does look like him.

Anyway, he looks at me and he says "that was incredible" and I went "what, that I heard you?" and he goes "yeah, I mean, it was designed to not be heard."

No kidding.

So I smile and laugh and say yes, I am aware. I understand I can be a little annoying, I understand I'm a little strange with my interactions, a little out of the ordinary. But I'm "like that" because I'm "like this" -- that is, I am so consistently living a very different life, having a very different experience than most people, of course I'm not going to be "normal". I'm not "normal" at just about anything! Different, worse, sure! But within distribution? That's not really something anyone has ever said about me.

Anyway, this guy doesn't really know what to say to that, and kind of gives me this like, half-pitying, half-sheepish look, and I walk off. I'm not in the mood to punish him in particular, but it did get me thinking. I really don't understand why some people have such a hard time with me, and are so outwardly rude both to and about me.

I didn't do anything to deserve a sarcastic comment. I didn't do anything to deserve being made the butt of a joke between you and your buddies because I made a milquetoast comment about some stairs. God forbid you had to interact with me for three seconds! That must be terrible for you! Did you have to engage with another human for a moment who you hadn't expected to, and said something outside of what you normally dialogue about? Jesus, what a nightmare. You should be given a medal.

I know these comments are very small, and don't even read as "that bad" to you. What you are probably failing to consider here is that I am naming a very small example of something I heard that someone didn't expect me to. I am not outing every single time this has happened. I am just saying that when you mumble something "under your breath", like, I do hear that. It adds up over time. and it Hurts.

I don't deserve the treatment people give me in many ways. I know I am quite a destabilizing experience. This is why I limit my exposure to others, why I don't show up at literally everything. One of my friends says that inviting me to things was a political act. It's true, and I understand this. I'm opinionated, I'm loud, I'm sort of all over the place.

But at the same time, people really seem to love to hold special places in their heart for me to be some sort of evil creature that I'm not.

I wrote some things here. I'm deleting them. I was providing another example of someone holding deep resentment for me, and how terrible it must have been for them to have to deal with the truly traumatizing and profoundly painful horror of seeing me post 20-25 photos over a 3-month period of my garden that I was building by hand, very proud of, and worked very hard on. That must have been such a huge lift for you as a friend to me.

When I say I am sensitive, that extends to my feelings as well. People love to treat me like something other than a person. I often say that they tend to treat me like a concept, and I think that is very true.

I am a complex and flawed person, just like you. I have hopes, dreams, things I replay in my head for years, things that don't stick no matter how many times you tell them to me, a lot of intense feelings and opinions about things no one else does, anxieties (both realistic and unrealistic), inconsistencies, and so on.

One thing I do not have a finely-tuned, sharp, well-0iled machine version of is a brain. This is what I mean by "I am like that because I'm like this": my memory is like a sieve. I cannot possibly hold everything in here. I am able to think differently, able to work differently, able to do the stuff I do well, because there is a bunch of stuff I very much so do not do well. I have maxed out my skill tree in some weird places. This requires minning it in others.

For example, I am faceblind. Very, very faceblind. If you approach me without giving me any context on who you are, or how we've met before, the chances are extremely high that I will be confused until I can figure it out. I'm like, pretty good at hiding this most of the time.

I'm also extremely embarrassed every time this is called out, because it is something shameful to me. I am not trying to purposefully forget anyone. If I could, I would never forget anyone, I would remember every detail they told me, and I would do that because I really do care. It's just that it doesn't always stick for me.

It never really did, but I honestly have a ton of stuff going on all the time. I've forgotten my own zip code before (I had to google my own address, which I also forgot). It would be nice if anyone showed me as much grace as I show them.

After all, do you want me to start telling you about all your shortcomings and failings that I notice? Your BO in particular smells like you need a serious dietary change, I can hear you licking your lips from across the room (just get some fucking chapstick or some water bro), I can tell that shirt is on it's fourth wear, and your breath is hot and stinky.

Oh, and since I'm down here? I can see up your nose. You might want to wipe it a little bit better. I know exactly what drugs you just did, and more than that, I know that you were sloppy about doing them.

So you can see how that would get old and no one would like me if I did that constantly, but people do in fact do this to me constantly. It's just that the things I fail at are not the ones that are impolite to mention, I guess. It's not like I'm not doing my best! I even started this report in part because I wanted to take better notes on the really cool and interesting people I meet, so I can remember them better!

There are charming parts to this: you can tell me the same joke every time we meet up, and I'll probably find it just as funny. You can tell me a secret, like your real name, and I will absolutely forget it, as a matter of professional courtesy and respect. I spent five years in an ecosystem where real names were an opsec issue, the best way to make sure I don't accidentally doxx someone is simply for me to forget the real name to begin with. This mostly holds for other kinds of secrets as well.

The trick is to be so loudmouthed about some stuff that no one ever realizes that you never talk about other stuff.