You Are a Badass at Making Mone - Jen Sincero
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CHAPTER 5<br />
THE HOLLERING OF YOUR HEART<br />
I<br />
wrote the first <strong>You</strong> <strong>Are</strong> a <strong>Badass</strong> book while I was staying on a farm in northern California. The deal<br />
was I could have the entire seventeen-acre paradise, complete with beautiful sunny house and views<br />
in all directions, if I took care of their horse and two go<strong>at</strong>s. I’m a little scared of horses (and don’t<br />
you need a special license or degree or something to take care of an animal th<strong>at</strong> large?) and knew<br />
nothing about go<strong>at</strong>s other than th<strong>at</strong> they can chew through cans, but I loved the place, and I love<br />
animals, and staying there ended up being one of my favorite chunks of time ever.<br />
I’d spend my days sitting on the couch in front of the giant windows, typing on my laptop while<br />
gazing out <strong>at</strong> Diablo Mountain. The go<strong>at</strong>s spent their days sitting on the porch in front of the sliding<br />
glass door, gazing <strong>at</strong> me, waiting in vain to be let inside. Sometimes they’d get up and chase the horse<br />
around the yard or run full speed into each other’s heads, but for the most part they’d just glare <strong>at</strong> me<br />
with their weird go<strong>at</strong>ly eyes, aggressively chewing their cud, insulted and unamused by their outdooronly<br />
st<strong>at</strong>us. Every so often, when they just could not believe I still hadn’t gotten up and invited them<br />
in, they’d take m<strong>at</strong>ters into their own hands and hurl themselves against the glass or get up on their<br />
hind legs and pound it with their hooves.<br />
One day while I was off in town shopping, I returned home after about five hours to find the horse<br />
standing in the driveway by himself. Although he was truly one of the biggest horses I’d ever laid<br />
eyes on, he was also one of the neediest, and was rarely, if ever, more than twenty feet away from his<br />
go<strong>at</strong>s.<br />
“Wh<strong>at</strong> are you doing out here all by yourself?” I asked him as I got out of the car, pausing to listen<br />
to the familiar sound of go<strong>at</strong> hooves banging against a glass door. My first thought was how strange it<br />
was th<strong>at</strong> they’d be trying to get in when I wasn’t home (they were equally as needy about me as the<br />
horse was about them). My second thought was Holy. Fucking. Shit.<br />
I realized they weren’t trying to get in. They were trying to get out.<br />
In a slow-motion sprint, I ran up to the house, let myself in, shoved the go<strong>at</strong>s out, and did my best<br />
to shut and barricade the newly compromised door. I then proceeded to stand frozen, with my hands<br />
over my mouth, uttering “Oh my God” over and over and over as I took in the sight before me. It was<br />
like witnessing the afterm<strong>at</strong>h of a particularly debauched fr<strong>at</strong>ernity party full of am<strong>at</strong>eur drinkers—<br />
epic, shocking, and so staggeringly horrible you can’t help but look even though you really don’t want<br />
to.<br />
The go<strong>at</strong>s had finally made the impossible dream come true by knocking the sliding glass door off<br />
its track and bursting through the screen, which subsequently closed on its own, trapping them inside
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