{"id":4333,"date":"2018-04-05T09:40:51","date_gmt":"2018-04-05T07:40:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=4333"},"modified":"2018-04-05T09:40:51","modified_gmt":"2018-04-05T07:40:51","slug":"no-witnesses-please","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=4333","title":{"rendered":"No Witnesses, Please"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>We all have guilty pleasures. A pleasure is only guilty when you don\u2019t want other people to see you enjoying that pleasure. So the guy who says “My guilty pleasure is hanging out on the back of my truck drinking Jack Daniels and listening to Johnny Cash\u201d is full of crap.<\/p>\n

That guy’s guilty pleasure is dancing around in a towel lip-syncing to Taylor Swift\u2019s Blank Space<\/em> (this is said with absolutely no experience of having done this).<\/p>\n

So let\u2019s just be clear what we\u2019re talking about. Things that you love to do that you don’t want anyone seeing or knowing you do.<\/p>\n

Dropping Everything to Excrete<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is more about being 43 years old than a guilty pleasure, but it\u2019s something I don\u2019t want people to see me doing. It all boils down to a window of opportunity consideration. Something has to come out of your (mostly) exit only portals and you go somewhere and let your body do its own yoga.<\/p>\n

Trust me. Embrace this. One day you will, nonetheless.<\/p>\n

Emotional YouTube<\/strong><\/p>\n

I will not go into details. But with a few drinks under my belt, I am not watching intellectual conversations between Dick Cavett and Gore Vidal.<\/p>\n

Singing Songs in French<\/strong><\/p>\n

…which is a language I do not speak. So I just sing gibberish in what I sort of gather is a French accent. Which, again, is not accurate in any way.<\/p>\n

My Interview with Conan O\u2019Brien<\/strong><\/p>\n

He was a big fan of my book. We had lattes.<\/p>\n

Nightshirts<\/strong><\/p>\n

At bedtime in movies and television, women wear a T-shirt and nothing else and guys wear pajama pants and maybe a T-shirt. It\u2019s masculine and suggests that he\u2019s ready for any emergencies that might occur during the night.<\/p>\n

For years I wore pajama pants. And while I slept everything below my waist would become the temperature and humidity of the Amazon. Invariably I\u2019d wake up in the middle of the night and chuck my pants across the room.<\/p>\n

I finally came to terms with the fact that I\u2019d rather be comfortable and look feminine than uncomfortable and look masculine. And so I simply wear a longish T-shirt and nothing else. And while you might suggest that is girly, I remind you that Ebenezer Scrooge navigated his way through three Christmas ghosts wearing a nightshirt, and my below-waist sleepy time climate is mild.<\/p>\n

Exercise Bands<\/strong><\/p>\n

Effective? Check. Ridiculous looking while in use? Double Check.<\/p>\n

Baby Hair<\/strong><\/p>\n

I am a rather vocal advocate of my baby-free lifestyle. I don\u2019t really like spending time with them and I don\u2019t want one in my life. However, lots of my friends have babies, so I find myself near them on occasion. While I will bite my tongue or inwardly roll my eyes when they are acting up, I always find a chance to lightly rub their hair (in a non-creepy way). Baby hair is the softest substance on earth outside of a cat\u2019s belly hair. But since babies will typically not reward a traipse in their hair by tearing off chunks of my skin, I save it for babies.<\/p>\n

Telling people to read Open Culture articles I haven\u2019t read, but which make me look smart<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2026and…<\/p>\n

Not telling people to take the “Which Harry Potter Character Are You?” Buzzfeed quiz that I have taken four times in order to get Dumbledore<\/strong><\/p>\n

British English<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2026but only in front of ESL students who won\u2019t give me shit about it. There are some good juicy British English phrases out there and since most of the shows I watch are from the UK, it\u2019s only natural that I bloody well use one here and there.<\/p>\n

Processed American Cheese \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

To be fair, this isn\u2019t guilty. I don\u2019t care what people think about this one. I buy it with open glee. Take your froufrou cheeses and stuff \u2018em.<\/p>\n

Tons of Hot Water<\/strong><\/p>\n

I know. I know. And I swear that I care about the environment. I recycle. I try to avoid plastic. I cut down on meat consumption.<\/p>\n

But in the morning when I\u2019m standing in a stream of scalding hot glorious orgasmic H2-motherfucking-O, well, I don\u2019t care then. Which leads me to\u2026<\/p>\n

Wasting water on a Sunday Night Bath that never fully matriculates.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I have always found baths far greater in concept than in execution. Lounging in a pot of hot water, relaxing tense muscles, and reading sounds absolutely glorious. So glorious, in fact, that I still trick myself into thinking that I really enjoy it. The reality is that after ten minutes, I am sweating, bored, and yearning for the comfort of my couch.<\/p>\n

I am bad with water.<\/p>\n

Facebook<\/strong><\/p>\n

I know.<\/p>\n

Four words: John. Lewis. Christmas. Ads. \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Three words: Sainsbury\u2019s. Christmas. Ads.<\/strong><\/p>\n

For the love of Je\u017e\u00ed\u0161ek<\/span>, why on Earth do these decide that Christmas should be celebrated by creating adverts that make people dissipate into emotional, tear-logged sacks of skin?<\/p>\n

I have never since yearned to purchase a good from either of these places, so I don’t know if sales are their motivation is. But I am collapsing into a ball of liquid each Christmas time, so mission accomplished.<\/p>\n

I would love it if you\u2019d share one of your guilty pleasures with me. But only a real one. If you put out a BS one, I will call you on it. \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We all have guilty pleasures. A pleasure is only guilty when you don\u2019t want other people to see you enjoying that pleasure. So the guy who says “My guilty pleasure is hanging out on the back of my truck drinking Jack Daniels and listening to Johnny Cash\u201d is full of crap. That guy’s guilty pleasure […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4334,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/damiengaleone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/nightshirt.jpg?fit=1177%2C1646&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1EvEu-17T","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4333"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4335,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4333\/revisions\/4335"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}