Today is Zac’s forty-third birthday. We met on the eve of his thirty-second. That totally blows my mind. Like how can I be this old? How could this have all gone down a decade ago? And how are the scars lurking under the surface of my skin still so easy to find? I remember the first time I ran into him in public after we’d broken up: my friend Julia and I were at the Silver Room block party, withering under the blistering July sun, when I heard a familiar laugh behind me and my stomach fell right out of my butt. I turned around and made eye contact, then immediately started to cry, but all cool-like behind giant sunglasses. It felt like all the wind had been sucked out of my lungs, an acute pain that I could feel radiating through my whole body. I clutched Julia’s arm, tears streaming down my cheeks, and was like, “Yo, I gotta go. Right now.” And then we pushed our way through the crowd of sweaty, gyrating bodies to get a cab home. It had been, I don’t know, six or seven months? And I thought I was fine after we broke up. I didn’t fall apart like I thought I would.
But when I saw him again something cracked open inside me, and I went home to my new apartment (this time just one room, big enough for a full-size bed, a bookcase, a kitchen big enough to wedge a little writing desk under the window, and a bathroom the size of a closet, perfect for the three boxes I’d moved in with) and called a friend to say that I thought I might be dying for real and played Portishead records in the dark for the rest of the night. Reminded, again, that love feels like a fucking dumpster fire in the pit of your stomach.
I saw the little gift icon on my iPhone calendar this morning and immediately texted him, which I have not done in literal years. But this is a sign, right, randomly digging up all these fucking feelings on the anniversary of his birth without even having realized it? I have never written about him, and I never planned to. I like to make fun of people, especially myself, but I’ve always felt so protective of that twenty-five-year-old idiot moping around those barren rooms with her barren womb feeling so grateful for the hope that came attached to this person. I had no idea whether he had the same number, but I wrote “happy happy day, champ!” and pressed send. He wrote back within minutes, which never happened when we were together. How you doing blah blah what are you up to blah blah how is your family blah blah blah are you seeing anyone and then he said:
I regret how we ended our relationship, because I really thought something permanent would have come about with you, but I see now that it was bad timing. We had a lot of laughs together. Your soul is always with me and I always keep you close to me, and yes, I know it was hard as hell but one thing you should know is that I really loved you and I never stopped.
Eight years ago reading that would have melted the stalactites hanging from his space in my heart, formed by ice that thickened every time I changed my outgoing voice mail message so it would sound like it belonged to a carefree person who obviously had missed his call because she was too busy out having fun; the ice that had grown thicker still with every evening spent cleaning the top of the refrigerator and polishing the faucets and all the other pointless shit you do when you think your boyfriend is coming over and you want him to know how clean and put together you are. Eight years ago, I would have poured myself a drink and put on some red lipstick and rented a hotel room in the hopes of seeing whether our bodies still fit together the way they used to. I sat with that text for a minute before responding with this: “I really loved you, my man. We could’ve been a good thing.” Which is probably lies? But it doesn’t even matter, because this is now, and I’m totally fucking bored.
A Bomb, Probably
Everyone I know is having a goddamned baby and what that means is you can’t just stop by your homegirl’s house unannounced with a bottle of Carménère and a couple of tubes of Pringles to watch hours of makeup tutorial videos on YouTube anymore. Because that baby might be sleeping or eating or doing its taxes, and you are going to mess it all up with your loud, single-person bullshit. That baby does not have time to listen to an in-depth analysis of the string of unanswered text messages you recently sent to your latest unrequited crush. Nor does it have time to deconstruct the most recent episode of The Bachelorette. Unless you’re coming over armed with a bowl of creamed peas and a cardboard book for that kid to chew on, just stay in your tragic one-person dwelling and hope like hell that the next person they hire at work will be someone not stupid to whom you can relate.
I am in a relationship now with a woman who has children, and let me just say that most certainly was not how I was expecting my destiny to knit itself together. I thought for sure I would be spending my stress-incontinence years picking moist dog food crumbs out of my aging shih tzu’s slobbery beard while earnestly considering circuit court judicial endorsements in my local newspaper, but now it looks like I really do have to learn what molly is and how to know if your kid is on it. Being in a relationship has turned me into a total asshole. Hold up, not that kind; I still don’t vote regularly or eat rutabaga or use words like “plethora” in regular conversation. But I do do lame stuff like “thinking about my future” and putting money away “just in case.”
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Right now I’m “babysitting” and here’s what that looks like: the girl child is in the sunroom gobbling high-fructose corn syrup by the handful, watching irritatingly loud cartoons, and building a bomb, probably, and I’m in the dining room paralyzed with fear that she might ask me to tell her a story or cook her something nutritious or—God forbid—help her with her homework. These kids are going to find out real quick that my perceived intelligence is a web of lies built on a crumbling foundation of charm and quick wit. The other night, the boy child was working on his algebra homework at the dinner table, and when he asked me to look over a problem, I was like LOL and pretended to be choking on a brussels sprout. I was doing some long division by hand yesterday and dude blurted, “Is that even math?!” while squinting at the numbers and turning the paper upside down and shit. “I think it’s hieroglyphics,” murmured the girl. Bitch, I don’t know new math! I don’t even know how to figure out a 20 percent tip on an odd-numbered check!
Want to know the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do? Not yell a string of offensive curse words when I banged my finger in a kitchen drawer with an impressionable child in the room. I’ve had colonoscopies that were easier than holding my pulsating hand in a dish towel and looking into those wide, blue child eyes and simply saying, “Ouch!” In my mind I was kicking every stupid pot and pan in that motherfucker while howling “SHIT FUCK YOU SON OF A BITCHING DICK!!!” and foaming at the mouth, but kids don’t need to hear that, so I just took a handful of aspirin and ground my molars into stumps as pain radiated up my arm.
Five years ago, at a cozy, sunlit corner table at our favorite breakfast spot, my friend Anna looked up at me from her bowl of chia porridge with tears shining in her eyes and said, “Samantha, I’m pregnant!” And I started crying, because she’s been my friend since we were ten years old and I love her more than anything. Then she said, “It’s two babies! They’re the size of lentils!!!” and by that point we were both sobbing and hugging and curious onlookers shot us scathing deathlooks because the brunch line at that place is always bananas. I made a concerted effort not to reach out and put my hands on her belly because I read somewhere that that’s rude, and please somebody give me a medal for that restraint. I couldn’t believe that this jerk who wore hemp necklaces and put Ben Harper on every single mixtape she made in high school was about to be somebody’s mother. Technically two somebodies. Horrifying.
I became an aunt to my sister’s kid when I was six, but that was way different. My niece was never going to look across the backseat of Mom’s Chevy at where I was buckled into the booster seat and wonder why I hadn’t put a down payment on any property yet. She never questioned why her Adult Aunt was sneaking her lunch of neon-orange mac and cheese directly from the pot it had dried in because she didn’t have any food at home and her direct deposit hadn’t cleared the bank yet. I’m sure that Anna and
her fine-ass Canadian husband had already started setting aside money for those lentils to go to college, but shouldn’t they have asked me if I was ready for kids? If I had enough Fun-Aunt money set aside for regular trips to the American Girl store? If I had the energy to pack up my apartment and move into a place someone had already childproofed? If I was ready to stop shouting swear words all the time?!
I am hCG-challenged and at an age when all my late nights and drunken partying is dangerously toeing the line between “fabulous and exciting” and “sad as a motherfucker.” The age at which the sluts I used to drink too much and cry with are all dressed like Kohl’s ads, driving sport utility vehicles with roof racks affixed to them, and having stable relationships with men who wear sensible shoes and make wise investments with their beer money. Goddamn it, is there anyone left who wants to be drunk at three in the afternoon and go get manicures?! I see you, potential new friend: banging terrible dudes, drinking backwashed beers some stranger just left on the bar, and basically whiling away your early thirties pretending that your life is an extended episode of Sex and the City when all of a sudden, BOOM. Every vagina within a ten-mile radius is pushing out an eight-pound screaming red ball of human who will eventually need braces and many winter coats. And you and I are still eating cheese fries and jelly beans for dinner.
I swear, now that I am finally beginning to come to terms with being that special kind of pigperson who is barely treading water while being neck-deep in a frothy sea of embossed wedding invitations heaved at me by my so-called friends, it seems others have come up with a whole new way to make me feel like an emotionally stunted teenage boy: THEY ARE CREATING NEW PEOPLE. No big deal, right? Yes, everybody knows somebody who was pushing a stroller to class in the ninth grade. But back then it was like, “Too bad you have to take your baby to gym class, I’ll just be over here wearing my velvet choker and sobbing to Liz Phair.” Now it’s like, “Girl, you are making me feel like a lesser human being.” My dead parents aren’t around to harp on me about my slow grandchild production, and while I am grateful for that little bit of orphan silver lining, no one told me that, having already survived a series of teenage years during which bodysuits were the rage, my thirties would be another unimaginable assault on my very low self-esteem.
The twins started kindergarten last fall, and every year, I am still one day early or two days late for their birthday. I forget when they’re within earshot and say mean things about dead people or recount in excruciating detail the highlights of my most recent gynecological exam. My friends and frenemies all have little ones now, and I’m not any smarter or feeling any more put together, plus when I visit them I can’t set my bag down anywhere for fear of dropping a metal flask onto some tiny soft skull. If “it gets better,” I’ma need to know when. I suppose I could just wait for all their children to drop out of dental school and stab a convenience-store employee while trying to steal a box of real Sudafed before I feel haughty and superior about my choice to let everyone else do the breeding, but with my luck these little dudes are going to grow up to be, like, funny and charming Instagram models who automatically take my arm when we’re walking in the snow. I hate them already.
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You can’t tell by looking, but I was a nanny for a while in high school and through my early twenties. It was just like The Help except swap in liberal white guilt and Land Rovers for Jim Crow and cotton gins. The most important thing I learned was the difference between the boxed-macaroni-and-cheese parents and the holistic-kale-anti-vaccination parents. Macaroni moms are the easiest to be around, obviously. Because, duh, you can totally let their kids zombie out in front of the TV and order a sausage pizza. I am not good enough to be around my no-screens-in-the-house flaxseed friends. For real, I can’t be having your kid in our adult conversation because you don’t want him to get high on Sesame Street and fruit snacks. GO AWAY, BABY. And I have neither the intelligence nor the patience to navigate the kid aisle at Whole Foods while trying to find the gluten-free, carob-sweetened, agave soy organic vegan oxygenated wheatgrass bites or whatever so that my newest nephew has something to snack on while trying to stay alive for two hours in my apartment. I might put my knives away and hide the porn, but educational toys and petroleum-free jellies are not within my purview.
You need to know all this stuff, of course, because some of these new moms will lose their impacted shit on you if they catch you pouring anything other than Hawaiian volcanic water into their child’s bath. Yes, that same person you watched pull a disgusting dollar bill from between a stripper’s ass cheeks with her teeth will now try to break your jaw for serving her kid some cheese with hormones in it. And she’s not wrong, she just needs to understand that I don’t know what the fuck a heart of palm even is, Katy. That’s why I took the boy to McDonald’s. THEY SERVE APPLES NOW, SHIT. And I’ve changed plenty of cloth diapers in my day, but it is not humanly possible for me to stay on top of all the ways I might be destroying your young offspring. There’s only so much reading and interacting I can do, parents!
I have come to find out that the only leverage you can get on a kid is doing something that he’s too young to do, and since ten-year-olds these days are already refinancing their second mortgages and maintaining better 401(k)s than I do, the best way to stay ahead of the game is to do things that they legally can’t, like going under the needle and drinking a High Life with your breakfast. You have to find a way in with kids, and if they’re old enough to figure out what a total loser you are, you have to do it immediately. Danger and contraband are the currency of youth, and the less similar to their responsible, bill-paying parents you seem, the better you’ll get along with your surrogate children. That’s why when Auntie Sam comes over to babysit she brings dirty needles and a ComEdison disconnect notice in her purse; they’re putty in my hands after I tell them what it’s like to run out of toilet paper and how to disguise your voice when you accidentally answer a collections call. The fact that I live somewhere else and am not fussing at them to clean up their Legos is usually enough to hit the cool-points jackpot, but when I need a boost, I tell them about the one time I got into a bar brawl. Or that time I got shot. (I never got shot.)
If your idiot friends start procreating while you’re still trying to get on the VIP list at the club every week, you definitely have to learn baby talk. Not “goo goo, gah gah,” you asshole, you need to learn what “Montessori” means. Seriously, you better verse yourself in home births and butt paste, because gone are the days when your girl has time to listen to you whine about that one dude with the nice car who never called you after he teabagged you in the parking lot behind a bowling alley. You are going to be talking about baby poop. All the time. Its smell, its consistency, its color, its length, its taste, whatever. Prepare to let your life be taken over by infant diarrhea. And while we’re at it, you better get accustomed to looking at some giant, lactating boobs, because your breastfeeding friends will have zero qualms about unhooking their flesh-colored front-loading bras right in the middle of your dinner. And don’t worry about being a pervert for staring, because it might be the least sexual event you will ever see in your life. All that rooting around and the squishing noises. When Anna was in town when the girls were six weeks old, she was partially naked half the time and like 80 percent disoriented, and I had to learn quick how to conduct a conversation without trying to gauge the size and shape of my best friend’s exposed areolas. But even if public boobs freak you out, you won’t even care, because every time that tiny alien screams its little head off demanding food or a diaper or a change of scenery, all you’ll want is for her to get those jugs out and shut that noise up.
OH MY GOD THE MONEY. You thought what you had to spend when the parents got married was bad? Well, hold on to your prepaid Visa card, friend, because that was only the beginning. At least weddings happen only one time. Babies have birthdays every year. Three times a month I’m standing in Target squinting to read the instructions on some inappropriate toy or a
nother, trying to figure out whether it makes too much noise or requires too much skill or comes equipped with too many parts a little kid could choke on and die from. Only to then fuck up the wrapping paper and spill vodka on the card the kid can’t even read yet when I get home. You will need to take out a monster loan. Or if your credit is messed up, you better start waiting tables during all your single-person free time.
You won’t mind, though, because your exhausted BFF will smile so hard and be so grateful that you picked up a pack of onesies on your way over to regale her with stories from your super-exciting, STD-dodging single-girl life. By the end of the first month, you will be seriously considering signing up for the Babies “R” Us e-mail list. Because baby stuff is cute, and seeing a little diarrhea-soaked human being dressed in a perfectly matched outfit that you bought for him is an incredible feeling, especially if he is too young to tell you how much he hates it and how all the other kids at school get their bibs from Gucci. You won’t be able to walk by a pastel display at Walmart without dumping half of it into your cart. You’ll coo at little monkeys and bears and marvel at the tininess of little frilly socks, spending your way to eviction because the asshole you sat next to in US history junior year couldn’t figure out how to properly use a condom, and you will love it.
We Are Never Meeting in Real Life. Page 18