Don't Worry, It Gets Worse

by Alida Nugent

  “I hate this apartment,” I would say, and then remembering the parties we hosted, the good times laughing with the roommates, the idea that this place was my home, I’d take it back.

  * * *

  Amanda, Adam, and I are sitting in a Venezuelan bar that is twenty minutes from home. We have all met up after work and our feet are tired from walking in shoes that pinch our toes or don’t support our heels, because we are young and stupid and think about form over function. We are here to eat mini sandwiches and drink margaritas and talk about the apartment.

  On sunny, nice days, we had talked about checking out different neighborhoods, but on nice, sunny days, the last thing we wanted to do was look for apartments. Deep in their brains, there is one thing every city dweller knows. If you actually are serious about apartment hunting, you have to do it before your lease dries up, or else you’ll end up in a wall-less, closetless apartment with a roommate who has a Wii Fit and insomnia.

  We think of the mice and the cockroaches and the fact that sometimes our whole place smells like mold. Balance out the positives and negatives.

  “I think we should stay another year.” I don’t remember who said it. We all sighed.

  Adam takes out the lease, and I take out a pen from my purse to sign it.

  This time, we cheer to remaining the same. Another year of breaking things and no windows. A closet on the outside, in the living room. We are relieved not to have to experience change again so soon. There will be time to do that later, when the idea of moving seems exciting and affordable, not scary and impossible.

  “You know,” I say, a mouth full of black beans, “we should probably go to IKEA.”

  Thoughts on Being Dragged to a Bar by Your Friends Who Are Concerned for Your Well-Being

  When you’re in your twenties and you want to do something on a Saturday night, you pretty much have two options. You either go out drinking or you sit in your pajamas and stay at home. I don’t have a problem with sitting at home. It’s something I’ve completely mastered—you make yourself some fried eggs, dance alone to music, and imagine you are an elf from The Lord of the Rings as you shoot imaginary arrows into the air. It’s basic slothing 101, elementary, my dear Watsons.

  I have been known to stay in many a night. I find consecutive nights out tiring, and eating cereal while standing up so goddamn appealing. Apparently, too much of this behavior can come off as “kind of sad” to people. “Come out, Alida,” my friends say. “You live in this beautiful city!” I know, I know. Lord knows I like drinking enough, it’s just that sometimes drinking in public seems so boring. Sure, there are people out there I could meet who have interesting and provocative things to say, but sometimes I think I’d prefer to do something stupid, like buy a hermit crab and feed it stuff, rather than listen to some guy yammer on about his feelings on socialized health care. What can I say? I have low expectations for what social situations can bring.

  I blame television for all of this, mostly because I like to sit at home and watch it instead of doing anything else. I trust television, because I know what to expect from it. I like that I can turn it on and there will be a show that portrays high school as a place where beautiful twenty-five-year-olds with amazing clothes have sex all the time or a festering hellhole where everybody gets harassed online. For girls to wear sparkle dresses and get into awkward situations with men. For girls with glasses to make jokes. For Asians to be underrepresented. For cops to throw away the book. For AMC to be the best.

  It should come as no surprise, then, that I’d rather stay in and turn on the ole tube than go out and meet folks. I know at least forty-five people. This feels like enough for me. Not so, says society! Go out there and get drunk and have an okay time, but do it because it’s expected of you and your youthful liver!

  To make myself feel a little better about the decrepit, degenerate life I lead, I’m going to describe it to you imagined in the form of entertainment that I love so much. Given that I am an underemployed college graduate who has a little bit of experience in screenwriting, I thought I’d try my hand on a little script for you. A night out in the eyes of me.

  What the fuck else am I supposed to be doing with my time? My hair is mousy brown and I’m four feet, eleven inches; I’m certainly not going to go out there and model. The funny monkey will make funny monkey jokes for you, because there are lots of girls making jokes on television and I deserve to have my chance, too.

  Here we go! You might be surprised! Or disgusted! You’ll probably be disgusted.

  An Anatomy of a Night Out or: The Slightly Dissatisfied Generation

  SCENE: A small room in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, on a Saturday night. The bed remains unmade, and on that bed sits ALIDA in pajamas, hair almost dry as she furiously scrunches it with drugstore mousse, over her computer. She is engrossed in Facebook, growling over the fact that somebody else has gotten engaged. JIM and JANE look nauseatingly happy, and it’s enough to make her scratch at both her own arms and the computer. She growls like a rabid but harmless lapdog as she stares at the timeline of the last guy who rejected her, a complete asshole she’d be willing to take back if he just stopped RUNNING FROM “US.”

  A VOICE, urgent. Are you READY to go yet?

  ALIDA, annoyed. Yes! I am almost completely ready, but you cannot come in because I am putting on underwear! Do not enter my room, because you will see me naked or at the very least, expose my egregious lie of being almost ready. (She gets up from her computer chair, lazily putting on deodorant and deciding which one of her twenty-dollar dresses she should wear. She shoves on her “base coat,” which is cleanish underwear and the least ripped of her black tights. She picks up some clothes and throws them on the floor. A Pitbull song can be heard from the living room, hoping to lure the siren ALIDA from her safety cave of wonders.)

  ALIDA. God DAMN it! (Alida is stuck in one of her dresses. It is over her head and she is waving her arms like one of those wavy blow-up men that are used outside electronic stores and car dealerships. She has accidentally gotten deodorant marks all over the front, and finally, she rips it off and is now sweating profusely. Dress #2 has something tacky like leopard print on it, a trend that is popular with both cougars and the youth they try to steal life energy from. She stares at herself sideways in the mirror and realizes she has taco gut, not surprising, considering she has just eaten a lot of tacos.)

  ALIDA, to herself. If I stand precisely like this with my hands on my hips the ENTIRE night and never sit down and never breathe, I look pretty good in this dress. Pret-ty, Pret-ty good. (She feels sad she doesn’t know Larry David.)

  VOICE. Come on! We’re doing shots! (While the sweet nectar of alcohol does tempt her, ALIDA must put her makeup on first. She loads up on her drugstore eye shadow, vigorously applying it until she gets her eyes as smoky and cheap as a dive bar in Philadelphia. She looks like a fourteen-year-old experimenting with makeup, which she decides might work for some people. A leather jacket will make this whole thing cool, she decides. She emerges from the bedroom and does a spin.)

  FRIEND 1. You look great! (Friend looks way better.)

  FRIEND 2. You’re going to be cold. (Friend looks way colder.)

  Alida. Pass me the whiskey. I am way too sober to be leaving this house right now. I am worried about real things, like how I will never be in the Olympics and how the hole in my heart is expanding relentlessly. I would like to be bombed to the point where I might believe I could have fun tonight.

  FRIEND 1. It’ll be a good time. I just need to forget about work. I need to forget about the five days a week I slave away to pay my exorbitant rent in this town full of plaid-wearing assholes who don’t notice me. I am miserable because I am living an exciting, interesting, urban life.

  FRIEND 2. Miserable looks GREAT on you. LADDDDIESS!

  ALIDA. There once was a time I used my brain for things like reading and expanding my brain. I just thought I’d throw that out there before I put on the television and get absorbed in somethi
ng like P.S. I Love You.

  FRIEND 2. We should take a shot to the Internet! It keeps our brains so fresh!

  FRIEND 1. How youthful of you to say! Thank god for your youth! We should take a shot to our youth! It allows us to be snappy and fresh and do things like wear high-waisted pants and make pop-culture references.

  ALIDA. Despair at leaving the house peppered with a Daria or Dr. Who reference. (Audience goes wild, they love the joke.)

  FRIEND 1, a hopelessly optimistic idiotic tone. Maybe you’ll meet somebody tonight!

  FRIEND 2. Yeah. I bet there’s probably some guy out there who smirks a lot and enjoys the same movies as you or something. Something NICE could happen!! (Hysterical laughter, uncontrollable with the slightest tinge of sadness. A cruel inside joke that everybody is in on. The audience gives a knowing sigh of “Oh THIS won’t go well,” kind of like whenever Tim Allen picks up a tool in Home Improvement. He NEVER improved his home! EVER!)

  ALL. To nice things! (All the ladies take a shot to “nice things,” which none of them believe, and they choke on the alcohol and sputter because it’s bottom-shelf poison.)

  ALIDA. Should we cheers to something like SEX? We’re modern women! Don’t we have a lot of SEX or something? (The audience LOSES THEIR MIND IN LAUGHTER.)

  FRIEND 1. Oh, Alida. I forgot to tell you. (She looks nervous.) We’re leaving the BK womb tonight. We’re going into Manhattan.

  ALIDA. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! (The camera pans out to her being rained on, staring at the mad gods in the sky before she calms down.) It’s fine, really. Different day, same shit. I only get indignant about Manhattan because it feels good to have a staunch opinion on something. Huzzah! (All three look down sadly at their shoes and drink chasers and repeat this at least four times before they put on their coats and go out into the terrifying night. They spend twenty minutes trying to find a cab before resigning to the subway.)

  ANNOUNCER. The L train to Manhattan will depart in the next 834 minutes. (The girls sit on the train while a crackhead sits on a baby, a couple simulates oral sex, and a group of drunk teenagers throw Mountain Dew at old women.)

  SCENE: A bar in Manhattan, but it’s not one of those trendy cool bars you’ve seen on television. It’s a sticky, crowded bar filled with more people than a Boston University stadium, which is ironic because most of these men went to Boston University. Men with hair gel are making gorilla noises. The bouncer wants so badly to be put out of his misery, he’s stopped stamping people’s hands and just gives them copies of his suicide note. The bar is a hot plate of bodies looking to do it or to smoke cigarettes in public and spend too much money on beer. It’s gross and smells like Heineken-y piss. (The three ladies enter.)

  FRIEND 1. Glad I wore this tight dress that everybody can see in this horrifyingly red light. The red light makes me feel like a hooker.

  FRIEND 2. With a heart of gold? (All silently praise Julia Roberts as they push past a sea of girls in crop tops and a bunch of guys constantly high-fiving each other over poon jokes.)

  ALIDA, to the bartender who looks miserable and endlessly cool. I’ll take a DRINK, please. I’ll pay with my credit card because I have no money. (Listens to bartender.) Yes. I have almost NO money. Yes, I’m aware of the irony of this.(Listens.) Mhmmm. I AM a worthless, floating entity. Thanks for the beverage. (Takes a victory sip like an asshole.)

  FRIEND 1. If you’d like, we could get into an entirely drunken political discussion where I could pepper in anecdotes about my college classes. That might be fun and stimulating because I can hear almost nothing in this place except my own thoughts.

  ALIDA. I get that. My education makes me entirely qualified to discuss a bunch of important things—take my three papers devoted to the racial other in Jane Eyre.

  FRIEND 2. Oh, that’s weird. I wrote almost fourteen papers on the feminist perspective in Jane Eyre.

  FRIEND 1. I love discussing feminism. Or the economic upswing. Or Taylor Swift. I could go on.

  ALIDA. I’m so worried my mind is going away and melting and disappearing.

  ALL. That’s because it IS! (Clink their drinks together in unison. The sounds of Dubstep makes them all have an instant panic attack.)

  FRIEND 1. How often do you think about things like VACATION homes?

  ALIDA. We are the future 1 percent! (Audience groans.) No. NO. I’m an artist. I’ll start a zine or something. Let’s sit here on this bench and discuss future art projects.

  ENTIRE BAR. Three cheers for blogs! (At this point, a beautiful man approaches them. His smile holds secrets and a million sunsets. He is wearing great shoes. Everybody’s heart stops. He walks past them and goes to his girlfriend. Behind him appears a great orangutan of a man—sweaty and sleazy and dripping. He goes straight to Friend 1, and then his even grosser friend, a great SLUG of a man, approaches ALIDA.

  SLUG. I WAS going to say something about your butt, maybe.

  ALIDA. Interesting. Tell me MORE, please.

  SLUG. Oh. You’re one of those FUNNY girls. You make jokes?

  ALIDA. Yes. Isn’t it amazing? Women can joke nowadays!

  SLUG. Do your glasses mean I can’t bone you? Will you take them off during “doin’ it?”

  ALIDA. Oddly, sometimes I keep them on. I’m going to look really bored now in the hopes that somebody will throw salt on you and you explode.

  SLUG. You got quite the wall up there, kid. Can’t some guy at a bar just come up to you and try to get you to make out? (He begins to secrete slime. Will any girl ever write a touching acoustic guitar song about him? The world might never know.)

  ALIDA. I have to pee. Please don’t ask for my number. (Alida waits on the line for twenty minutes while her bladder stages a full-on rebellion against the rest of her body. She begins to pull out her phone to text because she’s a self-harming moron.)

  TEXT 1, emotionally unavailable guy she flirts with. So b00red at bar. Please like me. PLEASE?

  TEXT 2, crush she hopes to one day make out with in the corner of some dark Spanish restaurant. I H8 people. Doesn’t the fact that I hate people make me so interesting and attractive in my cynicism? Please want to kiss me.

  TEXT 3, friend who will definitely text her back so she can at least feel the comfortable buzz of the phone in her pocket. I l9ve you! Please let me feel loved. (Alida squats in the river of toilet paper and STDs. The mirror reveals a face she does not recognize, and she realizes she is due for another eight drinks. Hopefully, this time, the despair won’t immediately kick in. Hopefully a television character will be real in this bar and love her.)

  GIRL CRYING AT BAR. I’m sad because of a guy!

  ALIDA, shakes her. You’re sad because this is your life!!

  ADORABLE GAY MAN. Yay!

  ALIDA. I don’t want to marginalize you or anything, but FINALLY, somebody I can talk to!

  GIRL WHO GETS MAD BECAUSE ALIDA BUMPED INTO HER. EGGGHHH.

  BARTENDER. Fifteen-dollar minimum!

  ALIDA. Thirty more drinks, please! (She generously buys a Yuengling for a friend in need. A brief sadness fills her as she walks back to her friends. Is this what makes people happy now? She notices all of the people laughing and losing their debit cards. It’s a sea of people who LOOK happy, at least. Let’s not get Plath on this shit, she thinks. Maybe she should smile or something.)

  FRIEND 2. You wanna go outside and smoke?

  ALIDA. Do you want to talk about EMOTIONS or something? It seems like you might want to talk about feelings.(Friend 2 vigorously nods as Friend 1 is absorbed in a conversation with a male who seems not like an ax murderer, because some ladies have all the luck.)

  FRIEND 2. I miss him/it/something! I have these big emotions and they are making my eyes fill up with tears. (The audience does not know where to go with this stunning show of realness. This was supposed to be a FUN NIGHT!)

  ALIDA. A little bit of alcohol makes me feel good and happy. A lot makes me FEEL THINGS. You wanna cry over something now?

  FRIEND 2. It’s like real ta
lk! I’ll reveal this big secret, and then I’ll cry. It’ll be great.

  ALIDA. I will reveal that I have a human heart. Let’s do this. (The two hug it out, kind of like Entourage, but with more words and less grunting.)

  FRIEND 2. Will we ever be satisfied?

  ALIDA. Spoiler alert: No. But it will get better. And it’s also supposed to NOT GET ANY BETTER THAN THIS. (Gestures to the big world of bars.)

  FRIEND 2. That’s sad.

  ALIDA. I know. I know. (And so the night goes, with drinks and texts and stares at various men who will never talk to her. The lone memory of some guy Alida wishes were there surfaces, and at least one more discussion about feelings occurs before she heads to the subway. At home, barely removes her makeup, has a sip or two of the leftover mixed drink, and goes to bed. She wakes up at 2:30 P.M. the next day to a text.)

  ALIDA. Yeah. Sure. I’ll go out tonight, I guess. (She shuts her phone and gets up to take a shower. This will be the only episode of the entire series, save for two or three episodes where she meets somebody who eats her heart/gets a head cold/stays in to watch four seasons of Curb Your Enthusiasm.)

  END SCENE.

  The day will sneak up on me when I will miss this, when I have settled into an older, more mature life where I have grown in a real, tangible way. When I have joined a book club, or I am dating somebody in a way that involves real trust and real teamwork, when I have work responsibilities I am excited to tackle. When I own a pair of slacks, and whoa, now I’m just exaggerating. There will never be slacks. But I will find that other things will take precedence over Saturday nights out. They will become less frequent, and when they happen they will be in wine bars or places where people speak in normal voices. One night, wiser and older and ready to spend some of my hard-earned, well-managed cash, I’ll pass a bar with a cover and look inside and see the young crowd it drew. I’ll pause. I’ll smile. I’ll look at my companion and in one nostalgic breath, I’ll speak. “Man, being younger sucked. Those nights were the worst. Sure, sometimes it was fun to go Girls Gone Wild with a couple of plastic shot glasses, but really, how much money could I have saved if I just stayed home? Learned about the stock market? These kids will drink themselves to smithereens. Shit, I need a cab out of this neighborhood and a ’96 Pinot. I feel an episode coming on, and my psychiatrist is off in Florida.” And then, if just for a moment, I’ll remember the Alida of my youth, standing in the corner. Marginally miserable, if not just tired. Then I’ll think to myself, Damn. I was one smart son of a bitch back in the day. And that will be good enough.