Garbage Treasures! (And Happy Birthday to Deeks!)

As you may recall, Deeky collects and saves useless garbage like we're beyond Thunderdome and useless garbage is now a form of currency and he's a garbageaire. Then, instead of throwing it away, he throws pieces of his fancy detritus collection into an envelope and pays money to ship it to me, at which point I put them in plastic treasure chests and put them out by the curb every week to be collected by the "treasure man," who buries them at the "treasure dump" for me for safe keeping.

But not before taking a picture of the bounty so that I can post it, natch.


Clockwise from left: A pamphlet for the Mütter Museum, which is apparently "disturbingly informative"; an "I'm Ready for Hillary" bumper sticker, because Deeks knows how much I love Clinton pressure campaigns THEY ARE MY FAVORITE; an "I voted" sticker; an advertisement for erotic videos, which warns it should be only be opened by recipients interested in perusing a "sexually oriented advertisement," and has already been opened; and a brochure on fraud warning that "cheating the system" is illegal.

This is, by the way, only about half of the total contents of the envelope. Also: Here is what happened the first three times I tried to take the above picture, lol.

As you also may recall, Deeky loves sending me Guy Fieri garbage treasures, and this package arrived with Guy Fieri's trademark "Mop & Slop!" scrawled on its top in Deeky's handwriting.


Before I even opened it, I texted him: "There had better not be some Guy Fieri trash up in this box!" To which he replied: "LOL!!!"

Two minutes later...


Liss: GODDAMMIT I HATE YOU.

Deeks: Hahaha!!!!!!!

And then he texted me a picture of himself holding the bottle before he sent it, which he'd thoughtfully memed for me.


Finally, the package included a bright orange shark friend for me!


We are already having SO MUCH FUN together!
* * *

Whenever I'm having a day where I can't decide about what to write, I text Deeks and ask him, "What should I write about?" And every time, he replies, "Me!"

Since Sunday is his birthday—HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DEEKS!—I have decided to do just that.

One of the luckiest things that has ever happened to me because of this blog is meeting and becoming friends with Deeky W. Gashlycrumb.

We have made each other laugh, we have talked about the worst things that have happened to us, we have annoyed the shit out of each other, we have gotten tattooed together, we have watched terrible television via text, we have survived watching Heaven Is for Real together in his lovely Baltimore flat, we have sent each each other obnoxious gifts through the mail, we have eaten the best macaroni and cheese on the planet together, we have talked about movies and music and television shows and politics and culture and food and cats and dogs and love and sex and aging and family and surviving.

We celebrate when one of us has a success, and commiserate when one of us is hurting. Which, you know, is the basic job of being a friend, I guess.

But what makes a friend your family is the hard stuff. We worry about each other; we make sure the other is taking our meds and doing self-care. We always have each other's backs. We don't fucking disappear, and we carry each other's pain when the burden is too much to carry alone. We know when the right thing is to say, "What can I do?" and when the right thing is to make the grossest of jokes, to provide the space to think about something, anything, else.

Which, you know, is not actually the easiest thing for two people who are shy and awkward and selfish and guarded and a thousand miles apart. But Deeks is worth the effort, and I try to make myself worth the effort right back.

My life is better because Deeky is in it. To have a friend like that is a precious thing, and I am very lucky.

I love you, pal. Happy birthday.