Check out my fiction serial in Talk Vomit.
I’ve been lucky enough this year to have been given my own fiction serial, ‘What Happened When Frank Died’ in the e-zine Talk Vomit. If you like my brand of humor in my nonfiction, I’m sure you’ll love these too.
Everything you need to know is down below. Thank you for checking it out!
Here are the basics:
Welcome to “What Happened When Frank Died.” In this column, for as long as I’m allowed, I’m going to kill Frank. Like — a lot. Worse, every two weeks, he will then be subjected to a multiverse of afterlives: absurd, funny, brutal…
How I almost died after developing a perineal abscess
I was working as a journalist in Saint Petersburg when the butt pain started. The doctor’s heavy Russian accent made me believe I had “gemroids,” which sounded like asteroids made of gemstones, which seemed a lot better than what I actually had: hemorrhoids. More than a month later, it had all gotten much, much worse.
I sat across from the doctor. He was very Russian. His English wasn’t excellent. He smiled.
“So, you have problem with the anus, yes?”
“Mhm.”
He gave my midsection a concerned look. “What?”
“Well,” I told him, “it is excruciating in my — well, my…
My looks have been declining in increments of celebrity look-alikes.
My date watched me from behind her vegan banh-mi and said, “You look like Bradley Cooper.”
“Thank — “
“But, like Bradley Cooper in A Star Is Born. Have you seen it?”
“Yeah — Lady Gaga was great.”
“She was.”
“So, I look like an alcoholic Bradley Cooper?”
She nodded, took a bite, and said, “Don’t watch me chew.”
I waited. She swallowed and said, “Yeah, maybe not alcohol, though.”
“So I look like a heroin-addicted Bradley Cooper?” I joked.
“Yes!” she cried, placing her banh-mi back on her plate.
“Oh.”
“But,” she clarified, “not like you’re on heroin, but…
Lived Through This
My internal struggle as men at the gym keep trying to adopt me
I fit in at the gym about as well as a Disney Princess in a BDSM studio. I don’t get the culture: running, lifting, grunting, groaning, flexing. I’ve never understood the axioms of “power through” or “feel the burn” or “do three more.” The only times that “power through,” “do three more,” or “feel the burn” apply to my life is over a plate of chicken wings. I don’t feel a need to get stronger or run faster. Who do I have to run from? Who is trying to hurt me? …
Swipe right if you’d like to meet my mother.
No one is coy about Tinder anymore. On the night I met my girlfriend, I asked why she agreed to meet me and she said, “I wanted to have sex, obviously.” The few Tinder dates before my relationship began, it was the same deal. They went something like:
“Hi, my name is — “
“Shut up and put your face on my face.”
“Well, okay then.”
I felt like a pizza that had been ordered because I just happened to be open when they were hungry. They didn’t even ask for my star sign.
When I started on Tinder seven-ish…
Welcome to a life of itchiness and ingrown hairs. It sucks.
If you’ve got a lot of body hair, you know the drill: wash, dry, realize you didn’t get the soap fully out, wash again, dry again, wait until you’re actually dry, clothe, itch, sweat, rinse repeat. Some of you may have even made the mistake of thinking it was a good idea to shave some of it. Don’t worry, you’re not alone.
I have been at war with my body hair for thirty years. As a teenager, my parents granted me a Christmas wish and bought me a body razor. My mother, to this day, tells anyone who’ll listen:
“We…
And reminded me why cryptocurrency isn’t the future. Yet.
Eight years ago, I bought XRP. I’d been living in China for a while. When you live abroad, especially in China, it can be hard to move money back and forth to the states. So, lamenting about it in a bar one night, some guys told me about Bitcoin. They showed me their wallets and told me I should buy some to transfer money back home. The next day I looked it up, saw that one Bitcoin was $5, and thought: “what the fuck is this? Hell no.”
I forgot about it. Then, in 2013 Bitcoin started getting into the…
I love it but I wish I didn’t
Cigarettes are my best friend. We live together, work together, look up at the stars, walk along the beach, sit through sunsets, stay up late watching movies, and escape the world when we are alone. When I am sad, cigarettes pick me up. When I am happy, they never harsh my buzz. When things go wrong, they are where I turn first, and they’ve never abandoned me in a time of need. When I need to think, they help me formulate my thoughts. On hard days, no one bothers us if we need to take some time together away from…
The things I overlook when my friends and I talk about how “adult” we’ve become.
My friend bought a couch.
The next time we hung out, he said, “I bought a couch. I feel so adult.”
Then we and my other friend talked about the couches we bought this year. This progressed, as these conversations often do among thirty-year-olds, into a conversation about just how impressively “adult” we’ve all become.
I said, “These days, I spend more money on comfy pillows than beer!” and my friend said, “Yeah, and I drink smoothies now. Not with fruit and sugar either, with veggies.”
We continued on like this, patting ourselves on the back until my girlfriend, bored…
This Is Us
The eternal struggle between ‘reward people’ and ‘punishment people’
My brother Kevin had a baby, a beautiful little girl who cries, stress vomits, and has too much gas. I never thought I’d have so much in common with a baby. My brother was prepared for her arrival. He’d been prepared years in advance: wife, house, car, job, money, pets, crib. The last time my girlfriend’s period was late, my life flashed before my eyes like a freight train barreling down on a toothpick castle.
I am a stick person. Kevin is a carrot person. He sees a reward, prepares, does the work, gets it. I see a temptation, run…
Benjamin Davis
Columnist and author. My writing is like a bunch of people at a party trying to tell different jokes at the same time. benjamindaviswriter.com
