Our fever dream was broken by a knock at the door. The enthusiastic grim reaper popped his head in, asking, “We all good here?” Helen dug her rear claws into my thigh, and I would’ve body-slammed her to the ground if homeboy hadn’t been watching. Instead, I shoved her as nicely as possible onto the chair next to me and smiled while cursing that asshole back to hell, all the while reaching for the clipboard so I could give him permission to send her there. A technician came in with a portable credit card machine, and we all stood around as the chip reader took approximately forty-seven awkward minutes to process my payment. The tech left, and Helen Keller gave me a sour look. “Thank you for being my Annie Sullivan, I guess,” she said as I put my wallet back in my bag and shrugged into my coat.
I helped her back into her carrier and lingered near the door. She had sneezed a huge glob of mucus onto my pants.
“You want me to, uh, read a few stanzas of ‘The Rainbow Bridge’ off my phone or something?” I asked, one hand on the doorknob.
Again with the eye rolling. “Well, you’re the lesbian…”
I snatched the door open. “LOL BYE.”
I cried all the way to the twenty-four-hour grocery store and ate half a rotisserie chicken in the parking lot. It was the tribute she would have wanted.
We Are Never Meeting in Real Life.
It’s a sweaty, balmy night circa 2002, probably definitely around 1:00 a.m. It’s the witching hour, with fifty-nine minutes until the lights come on and you can realize that you’re just not into the person you’ve spent the whole night shout-talking to. I’m in the basement at Sinibar, lurking next to the bar, trying to order myself another Jameson, because that’s what I like. Or maybe that’s what I want people to think I like. I’m not even sure I had a personality back then; I just tried to haphazardly arrange other people’s projections and shit I thought was cool into something captivating. Meeting people in public with the idea that they might want to get my underpants off has always been difficult, because I’m fat and bars are too loud and crowded and dark for me to just pull out 250 out-of-context-pages of the YA novel I’ve been working on for years to try to impress some dude I wanna fuck. I’ve spent a lifetime glaring at dance floors full of people who didn’t splash on cologne and pay twenty dollars to get into the club to meet someone “interesting.”
Jameson in hand, I tip the bartender and am about to drink the whole thing on the spot (I HATE GETTING BUMPED INTO AT THE CLUB) when I feel someone sidle up next to me and put a hand on my drinking arm. “Oh, hey, it’s you,” I say to this stranger, which is one of many reasons that I would rather die than make a person’s actual acquaintance, this need to fuck every human interaction up with a jolt of disconcerting awkwardness. It catches him off guard, I can tell. He recovers quickly and asks what I am drinking. He chokes back a laugh when I tell him, because no one wants to make a nine-dollar investment in a weird idiot who oozes discomfort and wore her dad’s New Balances to a nightclub. My dude is already in too deep to turn back now, however, so he orders one for me and another for himself and I reconsider my decision to pass on the bread basket at dinner. I have approximately six sips until I become relatively incoherent, but the music is loud, so I can blame it on the DJ. Homeboy ushers me to a secluded corner of the room and toasts the drink in my left hand while I drink from the one in my right before launching into a soliloquy about all the cool shit he does that makes him sexy. I am right there with him, I am almost ready to take home a copy of his mixtape and listen to it for real, when he says, “You came in with the girl in the purple, right?” Right. “Yo, that girl is beautiful. Do you know if she’s into slam poetry?” And since the tiny lime-slicing knives behind the bar are too dull to effectively cut my wrists open along the vein, I choose to attempt suicide the old-fashioned way: listening to a hot dude who doesn’t want to fuck me ask a bunch of questions about the friend I came here with. I chug my whiskey in the hopes that my death from alcohol poisoning will be immediate and painless.
This exchange typifies 98 percent of my former social life, and you know what I’ve realized? I spent too much time trying to mold myself to fit the romantic ideals of humans who proved themselves unworthy of that effort, and I regret it. Never again will I be with someone who is unwilling to accept me as I am, or who has any desire to mold me into something that makes me uncomfortable. Mostly this is because I’m too anxious and overwhelmed to meet new people and try to make my interests sound more fun. I have unsuccessfully tried to be a girl who is into obscure collage. I have unsuccessfully tried to be a girl who is into the electronic music that just sounds like a bunch of bleeps and bloops. I have unsuccessfully tried to be a girl who reads graphic novels. And experimental fiction. And David Foster Wallace. I have stayed up late watching bootleg kung fu movies on shitty laptops; I have grimaced through expensive meals that were little more than adorable art projects on a plate; I have shivered in an icy stadium seat cheering for a team I have no stake in, and I have cooked lobsters (which I don’t like) for someone who wouldn’t dare eat a burger from McDonald’s (which I do).
Before I gave up on life and meeting people in public, I used to let my friends set me up on blind dates, mostly because I hate myself. I don’t really feel alive unless I’m actively wishing I was dead. This is how your friend, who loves you, sets you up on a blind date: first, she browbeats her boyfriend into exhaustively scrolling through the mental Rolodex of every man he’s ever worked for, talked to, or shared an elevator with until he can come up with one who has a job, isn’t married, and might be convinced to eat dinner across from a woman she’s only willing to describe as “very smart” and “super funny” with “an amazing personality.” Then, she forces you to cannonball into the middle of the dating ocean holding an inner tube with no flippers or oxygen tank. And I appreciated the consideration, I really did. It warmed my cold, dead heart every single time I got blindsided by people who had no idea what they were in for and had a difficult time masking their disappointment. I really did want to tug on a Spanx and sit awkwardly across from that dude your husband met in the grocery store parking lot after he backed into your guy’s Volvo who just broke off his engagement and blather on about television shows he pretends to never have heard of over a plate of midpriced pasta. Yes, please. Sign me right up. Oh how I love to fatfish the unsuspecting!
This is why the Internet is a miracle. I mean, I don’t care about watching real-life murders on the dark Web or angrily tweeting at CNN anchors, but it is a magical thing that I can just open up my computer and cultivate superficial relationships with people who may or may not have stolen their profile picture from an Instagram model without having to pluck my mustache hairs first.
You can just take your tiny robot out of your pocket and see that, no, I don’t really have an interest in modern architecture. Or, if I’m pretending to, I can take twenty seconds to figure out which buildings I like best from the googles and impress you with my ability to deftly copy and paste. Don’t get me wrong, I am horrified by most of the Internet, but I am happy it’s there. Because having a beer with some kid you met on the Internet isn’t really a blind date. I mean, you’ve seen some blurry, faraway, dimly lit pictures, haven’t you?! And you know she likes foreign films and quiet evenings cooking together at home, don’t you?! Well, then that asshole who won’t text you back next week is not a stranger. Or is maybe less of one. At least you know that when you jump out of the Uber they’re not going to be like, “OH, HAI. Are you the person the girl I’m supposed to be meeting brought along as her bodyguard?”
I know my blog is hilarious, but I’m not that smart in real life! If you run up on me in the grocery store, YOU ARE GOING TO BE DISAPPOINTED because (1) there is probably diet peanut butter in my cart, and (2) it sometimes takes a lot of staring at the wall in contemplative silence to come up with these jokes and my off-the-cuff stand-up could use some work. And I’m pretty funny on Facebook, but you can erase and edit shit on the computer, then read it out loud to make su
re you aren’t embarrassing yourself before you post it, and if there is a machine that does this for you within casual friend gatherings, I will give you all my money to pick one up for me and leave it on the back deck and go the fuck away.
I just wanna Gchat about the hidden messages buried in the 160 misspelled characters that new dude you’re dating just texted you, not rub a palmful of almond oil into my skin at the end of the evening to loosen up all the silicones I piled on my enlarged nasal pores so you wouldn’t know the toll thirty-six tumultuous years on this earth actually take on a human face after you make me talk about it at a restaurant. I just want to fast-forward to the part of the relationship when I don’t have to buy fancy bottled water in an attempt to trick you into thinking I really care about myself or peel my body out of the overpriced underwear with an extra panel I bought to make this poorly chosen sweater dress look more appealing. At what point in this nascent friendship can I let my eyebrows grow back in and admit that I regularly cry to the animated version of Beauty and the Beast? Forget figuring out how many dates until it’s appropriate to have sex—I want to know how many we have to get through before it’s acceptable to stop.
I don’t wanna talk on the phone, I just want you to text me. That way I can look at it and answer your question when my show is over. I once dated an asshole who, every single time I called, would immediately text, “Are you in a burning building?” Um, no? If I were, and I still had the ability to breathe and see the numbers on my phone while choking to death on smoke, my first call would most certainly not be to a dude who says LIE-BARRY and is afraid to try artichokes.
There was a brief period in the mid- to late nineties when all I ever wanted to do was call people on the phone. But, like the periwinkle stirrup leggings and snap-crotch bodysuits I preferred at the time, dialing a person’s telephone number in an attempt to have an actual conversation with him is now horribly outdated. I will never harass your ears with a list of the mundaneness of my day, nor will I expect you to pause The Walking Dead to try to string an interesting sentence together for my benefit. Before we were able to bore each other in person every day, Mavis used to call me at the end of each night. I would break out in a cold sweat trying to come up with a way to make Wednesday distinguishable from Tuesday; it was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life. I mean, I just don’t do that many things. I was living the same unremarkable life every single day, and trying to put a new outfit on Friday when it was exactly the same as Thursday was exhausting. How many times can I say “Brooke and I ordered hot dogs for lunch, and I read another chapter of [enter the title of any John Grisham novel] on the toilet”?
And I don’t wanna talk face-to-face, either—that might even be worse. I can’t play games on my phone if you are watching me. Tell me, when was the last time you had some soul-draining emotional talk with someone and came away from it feeling happy and secure and wanting to spend more time with the person who just berated you for forty-five minutes about something you couldn’t give a fuck about? Wait, scratch that. When was the last time someone came at you suggesting a “talk” and it turned out to be anything other than forty-five minutes of being berated about something you couldn’t give a fuck about?!
I have never, in any of my interpersonal relationships, with women or men, proposed to sit down somewhere and have a talk. No one ever wants to sit you down and talk about something good, like how he or she should buy you more stuff; people want to trap you in an uncomfortable chair so they can go through the laundry list of your perceived crimes. And all you can do is sit there like a scolded child, nodding sadly in agreement that yes, you are the literal worst.
I’m not doing any of that. You’d have to trick me into a talk. If I was lucky enough to get a warning text, you would never see me again in your life. That is not a joke. The minute you say, “Hey, Irby, we need to have a talk later,” you can guarantee that my phone number will be changed by the end of the business day. Send me a follow-up e-mail to reiterate that a conversation must absolutely take place and I will be in witness protection by the end of the week. Can’t I just apologize before you work yourself into a lather and save us all a bunch of nervous sweating? I swear to God, I’m really sorry for that thing I did, and I promise I will never ever do that thing again as long as you promise not to leave me any more anxiety-inducing voice mails.
I’m depressed, man! Please don’t ever leave me a voice mail! Lexapro has yet to cure the existentialist horror that is modern telecommunications! I see the voice mail notification pop up and am instantly consumed by dread. I mean, I didn’t pick up, so you should know I’m not emotionally prepared to say words into a phone right now. Why make it worse by saying “Dude, call me back” without specifying why or whether this is time-sensitive information?! Like, literally, someone better be dead, or even better, the caller better be dead and calling from the grave to give me the info I’ll need to collect that insurance. THIS IS HOW MURDERERS ARE MADE.
I am a simple person. Kind of. I mean, I don’t really have any dreams beyond comfortable pants and unlimited sparkling water. When I was little, I was never brave enough to declare what I wanted to be or what I wanted to do, because I grew up in the kind of situation where you just wanted to make it to the end of the week, or the next school day, or to graduation, or to work, or to the next paycheck, or to Red Lobster every once in a while to celebrate. I don’t like to think more than a few weeks ahead; I just ride the least choppy wave and see where it takes me. I like to sit at home in mild terror as the world rages outside without me, hoping that no one is going to drop by and expect me to come up with a humorous anecdote or ask me to have an opinion on something. I like to get in the car and turn some funeral music up real loud (King Krule, Mazzy Star, anything dark and brooding) and drive around looking at all the nature I don’t want to get on me. I want to go to Walgreens and have the cashier pretend I wasn’t just in there yesterday, buying the same exact shit. All I want is for the self-checkout at Target to be open—is that a crime? I also just want to pay whatever the fuck things cost, without question, even if I think it might be wrong and especially if there’s a line forming behind me, because arguing with someone who can smell you is embarrassing. I can feel my organs shutting down whenever I’m forced to stand behind a woman demanding forty cents off a bottle of ketchup despite the fact that she forgot her coupon at home. As if she is red-faced and raging at Mr. Heinz himself, rather than Jonathan, who has to ride his bike home and write a book report after this.
I will never be snappy with a waitress or lose my mind on the phone with customer support or make small talk with someone else’s kid, because, honest to God, I would rather eat my own teeth than suffer any more humiliating human contact. I promise you that I will never ask the woman at the wine shop about her shiny new engagement ring or wonder aloud about whether the pizza delivery man caught that flu that’s been going around. I will smile politely at people walking their dogs, but I will never grab them by the arm and say, “Hey, what breed is that?” while they struggle to decide how to courteously answer my question with a steaming bag of shit in their hands. While I do appreciate a succinct elevator pitch, I am balls at delivering one effectively. Joanna, who owns the indie bookstore down the street from our crib, asked me the other day to give her the name of a good book I’d read recently, and because I value her opinion, I stood in front of her for, like, three real minutes cycling through every book I’ve rated on Goodreads in the last three months trying to determine which one would be the most impressive. I just stood there with my ears on fire wondering if I should just say A Little Life because no one would think you were dumb if you made it all the way through a seven-hundred-plus-page book. And I didn’t; I did not make it through that book, because a quarter of the way in, this other book about teenagers in love that I wanted to read came out, so I abandoned the smart shit to spend an afternoon sobbing over a story about children I could have given birth to having sex.
I went to a book lect
ure earlier tonight, and it took me forty-five minutes of bewildering indecision to figure out what to wear just to sit in an audience in an indie bookstore next to your aunt Jill and her second husband, Craig. Craig took copious notes the entire time, filling his battered Moleskine with scribbles about how to structure a piece of short fiction, while I squirmed in a folding chair and wondered if the leave-in conditioner I’d used made my hair look dusty. Or was it too crunchy? I have a very specific textured look that I hope to achieve whenever I let my hair grow out, and maybe this new stuff I tried isn’t working right, but now I’m stuck in a place where pulling out a mirror would definitely draw an inescapable number of eyes. Plus, it wouldn’t be appropriate, and I pride myself on knowing things like when and when not to use the reverse camera in your phone to make sure your curls are poppin’ (but not poppin’ too much, because you’re going for a natural kind of thing). Frankly, none of the middle-aged white people in this room could explain what a C4 curl pattern is, but when you spend your life in a near-constant state of unease, details like that don’t matter.
This is the particular prison my anxiety has created: I can go and do the thing, and say the other things, but I gotta spend an hour wrecked because the only clean daytime pajamas I have available to me are the ones that don’t do enough to conceal that crease in the upper arm fat under which my triceps are buried. Or trying to preemptively answer any question I might be asked, by anyone. Or worrying that this is the kind of place where you have to actually interact with a person to get the key to the bathroom. A person who will be counting the minutes it takes for you to return with that key, a person with whom, once you cross the six-minute mark, you will definitely have to construct an awkward joke to deflect from the fact that you just took a shit in their bathroom. My mind is a never-ending series of shame spirals. Do I have to go to that? And if I do agree to go to that, who else is going? In what capacity do these people know me? As an Internet joke person, or as a sad real-life person who sometimes makes jokes? Sad people make not-sad people uncomfortable, so I better think about smiling. Or will that be off-putting? If someone asks me a question while I have food in my mouth, how am I going to deal with that? Should I answer and cover my mouth and gross everybody out, or sit there chewing for an eternity while they expectantly wait? Are the chairs sturdy at the restaurant? I better look the place up on Google images. If they don’t look sturdy, how do I tactfully suggest someplace else? OMG, remember that time I broke a chair? I wonder if anyone who was there still thinks about that time I broke a chair? When they get together, and no one is paying attention to how much is on their plates because they are thin, do they ever bring up that time they got to watch as a cartoon fat person had to get up from the floor after she— I’m not going. I’m just not going to go. My nice clothes are not nice enough for this place and I’m not sure whether there is enough money in my bank account to cover a dinner this extravagant and what if my card gets declined? What if my card is rejected because I never signed up for overdraft protection? I thought you had to pay more and I’m sure one of these people with good credit will cover it, but how will I be able to get up and walk out of that fancy restaurant since my face will be melted down the front of my shirt? Why do I feel so embarrassed all the time, and why can’t I figure out how to not do the things that embarrass me? Like pick good shirts I actually like and sign up for overdraft protection and look people in the eye when I talk to them and just get over whatever is holding me back and ask the lady at the M•A•C counter in the mall how to correctly use concealer instead of walking around looking like a trash panda?!
We Are Never Meeting in Real Life. Page 24