Life As I Blow It

by Sarah Colonna

  Jackie decided that I needed to cleanse Nico from my system. She believed that he was holding me back from moving on with my life. She insisted that I get rid of anything in my apartment that reminded me of him, take it over to the park I lived next to, and burn it in the garbage. He wasn’t really my boyfriend so I didn’t have that many things that belonged to him, which depressed me even more. If we’d had a real relationship, I would have had plenty of stuff to burn. We would have had photos together or I would have gone home one morning in one of his T-shirts.

  I scrounged up a shirt and jeans that I remembered I had worn on that one date we went on to that one bar. I also grabbed a DVD that Jackie and I had rented and not returned of a bad Jesus movie he was in. We set the jeans and the movie on fire, but I couldn’t bring myself to burn the shirt. It was really cute. We stood and watched the flames for what felt like hours.

  “How long does it take for a pair of jeans to burn?” I asked Jackie.

  “I dunno. I guess a while.”

  We stood there a while longer.

  “Maybe it’s bad luck that we’re destroying a movie about Jesus,” I suggested.

  “You’re just trying to go back inside. Shut up and be patient.”

  “My legs are starting to hurt,” I complained. “How burned does this stuff have to get?”

  “It has to burn beyond recognition, so that you no longer recognize the relationship.”

  “You made that up. Can we just go in?”

  “Shut up. It’s almost done. I want you to see this through. You need to let go of this asshole.”

  “Fine.”

  We stood there for another hour until the last flame went out, then went back into my apartment to drink the rest of the gallon of wine that was responsible for fueling the whole “burn your stuff” idea in the first place.

  I guess I didn’t get cleansed by the garbage fire, because I still felt sad. About four drunk nights later, I decided that I would call him. I picked up my home phone, punched in *67 to block my number from showing up on his caller ID, then dialed his number. He answered. I hung up.

  Seconds later my phone rang. I got excited that someone was calling me. I was getting kind of bored at home. Oh, maybe it’s Jackie and she’ll want to hang out!

  “Hello?” I answered.

  “Sarah?” the deep voice asked.

  “Yeah?” Shit. “Nico?” My legs went numb. Or I was just so drunk I couldn’t feel them. The realization that he was calling me because I just called him and hung up on him crept in. I guess *69 trumps *67. I fucking hate AT&T.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  “What do you mean? You called me.”

  “Didn’t you just call me and hang up?”

  “Nope,” I answered with confidence.

  “I think you did.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “You did. It’s fine. Just tell me what you wanted.”

  “Tell me what you want. You called me.”

  “Sarah. I just got a call and they hung up. I hit star sixty-nine and you answered. So, you must have called me.”

  “I did not,” I slurred.

  “You mean to tell me that someone else just called and hung up on me but when I hit star sixty-nine somehow it dialed your number?”

  “Yes. You should definitely call the phone company to get that worked out. Now forgive me for being rude, but I gotta hit the sack.” With that I hung up the phone.

  I didn’t see him around much after that. I think he stopped drinking and got his shit together because the next time I saw him was on a pretty successful TV show. I was sitting on my couch alone—drinking wine with no pants on in the shirt that I had refused to burn—when suddenly I heard his voice. I looked up and saw his face, then jumped up to call Jackie and tell her that I hated myself, but I fumbled and fell face-first off the couch. Even through a television he managed to turn me into a klutz.

  DIRTY THIRTY

  Like most women who are single, have no money, and haven’t achieved many goals outside of having gotten really good at Beer Pong, the closer I got to thirty, the more I started to freak out. It was similar to when I turned twenty-five but much, much more similar to a nervous breakdown.

  My career was still moving forward, but it was a slow progression. I didn’t want to give up on my dream, but I couldn’t figure out what the trick was to making it happen. I worked hard at getting auditions, at performing, at trying to figure it all out. I was getting some work, but at night I still clocked in at the bar. I was going on twelve years in the restaurant business and my head was about to explode.

  There should be a support group for people in the restaurant service industry. Food and cocktail ordering brings out the worst in people, and I’m not talking about the ones doing the serving.

  Although I never talked much about marriage, I thought I wanted to do it one day.

  I didn’t think I wanted kids, but I did close my eyes sometimes and think about my wedding day, just like every other asshole does. As happens to most women at that age, my friends started getting married.

  Jen Stewart was a girl I’d known for years. She became roommates with Tilley after she and I had moved out of our two-bedroom. She was a ton of fun. I spent many nights drinking with her and Tilley at a hole in the wall across the street from their place called the Starlight Room. Jen and I were terrible influences on each other. We both liked to try new drinks, so we’d always have at least three different types of liquor a night. I’d forgotten my own rule of not mixing. When I finally figured out that that was why we kept waking up with headaches, we opted to stick to our new favorite drink: the White Russian. That phase also ended when one day Jen and I were complaining about our weight gain and Tilley piped up.

  “Maybe it’s because you’re drinking heavy cream every night, assholes.”

  We both switched to vodka and soda and never looked back.

  Jen also worked at Formosa. She was probably how I got the job, which I didn’t figure out until later, when she told me that she was secretly dating the owner, Vince.

  Jen had kept her relationship with Vince quiet so that nobody would know why she had the better shifts. Up until she finally told us, everyone at work had just assumed that she had the better shifts because she and Vince were secretly dating.

  Jen and Vince got married the fall that I was turning thirty. The wedding was in Santa Barbara, and since I didn’t have a “plus one,” I opted to share a hotel room with another good friend from work, Joanna. She had just turned thirty, and was also handling it terribly. She was the perfect person to go to a wedding dateless with.

  Vince had a really hot friend named Scotty. He was ridiculous-looking, one of those guys that you look at and just think, Well done, God. Well done. I think he wanted to be an actor, but it wasn’t working out. He was getting some modeling work, but he’d gotten sick of trying and had moved to Florida to become a firefighter. I know. Now that’s what a firefighter is supposed to look like, I thought when I heard he had become one. I imagine that women all over Orlando were committing arson just to get an in-home visit from him.

  I joked to Joanna that I was going to have dirty, dirty sex with Scotty at the wedding. I guess I’d joked about it so much that I manifested it, because the night of the wedding I had dirty, dirty sex with Scotty.

  I had borrowed a dress from Joanna. I’m not going to lie, I looked fucking good. Scotty told me the second he saw me that he couldn’t believe how beautiful I looked.

  Perfect. He wants to hook up with me. He’s already throwing bad lines at me.

  I didn’t own any thongs yet—I found them highly uncomfortable—but the dress called for one so Joanna was kind enough to lend me a pair of her underwear. Halfway through the night I drunkenly stumbled to the bathroom. I managed to get my dress up high enough to use the restroom, then halfway through peeing I realized that I still had the underwear on. Those thongs are tricky, you forget they’re there. I didn’t feel like walking around
in wet underwear, and I was too old to tell anybody that I’d peed on myself. So I wiggled out of the thong and threw it away.

  I stumbled back out to the reception and found Joanna.

  “Have you seen Scotty?” I asked her.

  “Yeah, he’s over there dancing with his sunglasses on.”

  “Great. I’m going to go tell him I’m not wearing panties and see if that can speed up him putting it in me.”

  “What do you mean you aren’t wearing panties?”

  “Oh, so funny. I peed on them, so I had to throw them away. Don’t tell anybody!”

  “Sarah, those were my underwear.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “Don’t worry,” she laughed. “I wasn’t going to accept them back from you anyway. I saw you doing the electric slide earlier. I decided then that I’d never, ever want to wear them again.”

  I wandered over to Scotty to try to tell him that I wasn’t wearing underwear. He was involved in a pretty unwatchable version of the chicken dance, so I walked back to find Joanna. I figured the panty conversation could wait.

  Eventually Joanna and I took off to a bar with Scotty and another friend of Vince’s. We were pretty intoxicated already, got more intoxicated at the bar, and decided to go back to our hotel to get in the hot tub. Joanna and the other guy excused themselves from said hot tub when it became pretty apparent that Scotty and I were going to have sex in it.

  I’m pretty sure I’ve never felt so proud of having sex with someone I didn’t know that well. When I woke up in the morning and he was in my hotel bed, I thought to myself: Well done, Sarah. Well done.

  Scotty was supposed to go back to Florida the day after the wedding, but some sort of hurricane emergency kept him in L.A. He asked me if he could stay at my place for a couple of days, until he could get home. I casually said, “Sure,” then called and made an appointment for a bikini wax.

  I was very much enjoying having Scotty as a sleepover guest. We had lots of sex, and in the morning I’d wake up to find him doing crunches on my living room floor. Makes sense, I thought to myself.

  The only time we had a tiff in our four-day romance was when he was on the phone with Vince and told him that he was at my place.

  “What were you thinking!” I yelled after he hung up. “I don’t want him to know we’re doing it! Gross!”

  “Uh, he’s my best friend. He knew we did it the night of his wedding.”

  “Oh my God, he’s my BOSS! Did you tell him about the hot tub?”

  “Yes, and the elevator.”

  “Oh my GOD. This is so humiliating. How can I ever look at him again?”

  “He thinks it’s awesome. He loves you,” Scotty said nonchalantly.

  “Oh, that’s really …” I stopped talking, grabbed his hand, and took him right back to my bedroom.

  The night before he was going to get to go back to Florida was his birthday. He had plans with some guys, but before he left for the night I surprised him with a cake that I had made. Yes, I am a horrible cook, but I was feeling very sweet that week, probably because I’d been getting laid every hour on the hour. He cut himself a piece and ate it like it was the greatest thing in the world. Right after he left I tried a piece. It was repulsive.

  Scotty went back to his normal life and I went back to mine. I was sad I didn’t have any pictures of him to show people who would never get a chance to see him, like Michele. One day I was in a Verizon store and noticed that he was on the brochure. A little something left over from his modeling days. I took about twenty and mailed them out to girlfriends with a little note that said, “Yep. I hit that.” I also kept one for myself.

  I was still panicked about my upcoming birthday, and it was starting to get me down. When you aren’t feeling great about yourself, you make poor choices in men. I have definitely made some poor choices even when feeling good about myself, but the ones I made the last couple of years of my twenties were certainly the worst.

  Jackie had left Mirabelle before me. In between us getting other jobs, we had a brief stint working together at another bar. The owner was the best. He was one of the funniest people I’d ever met. He could make me laugh like nobody else, which is probably why I was crazy about him. We became pretty close friends. And we all know how good I am at not falling for a close friend.

  I can’t say for sure that Patrick had a drinking problem, but I can say for sure that he used to mix vodka with Pedialyte so that he would automatically rehydrate as he got drunk. Bad sign? Maybe. Genius? Definitely.

  I didn’t date Patrick when I worked at his bar. I loved hanging out with him, but he had an intense love for strip bars and the girls who worked in them. He later claimed that he liked me then but had a strict rule about not dating employees. That may have been true, but if I had been an employee who also gave lap dances, my guess is he would have made an exception.

  A few weeks after I quit working for him, we went out for drinks. Since I was no longer his employee, we had sex that night—or something similar to sex. We were both pretty drunk. I was now feeling very much like I wanted a boyfriend, and since he was in absolutely no place or condition to offer me that, I tried to make it happen.

  Patrick and I always had a blast together. For the most part, we just got drunk, stayed up late singing country songs to each other, and repeatedly watched our mutual favorite movie, Arthur. If you think I’m talking about the Russell Brand remake, shame on you.

  I can’t call what we had a “relationship.” I guess it wasn’t much different than it was with Nico. If I tried to move it toward anything else, it didn’t take. One day I realized we had never even been on a date. So I suggested that we go have a nice day at the beach, maybe even stay for a romantic dinner, like a real couple might do. He told me we could just get Bloody Marys, he’d throw celery salt at me, and that I could pretend it was sand. It made me laugh, but it also left me feeling pretty shitty. I pretended to be fine with where we were and what we were doing, but I wasn’t. I was falling for him.

  Patick had a dog that was really, really mean. Anytime he had company she had to be put in another room so that she wouldn’t attack. Apparently she wasn’t always like that, but as she got older she got bitter, just like a human.

  One night at his apartment, he was in bed and I was up watching SoapNet, which I couldn’t afford to have at my own place. Once General Hospital ended, I decided to go to bed. I stripped down, thinking it would be a real turn-on to Patrick if I sauntered into his bedroom fully nude and ready for action. As usual when at his place, I wasn’t completely sober. Unfortunately I forgot to knock first so that he could put his dog in the bathroom. The second I opened the door, I heard a loud growl and the sound of angry paws rushing me. Then I felt myself being knocked down to the ground. A few seconds later, the lights came on and the dog was nowhere in sight.

  “She’s in the bathroom. I have quick reflexes,” Patrick explained.

  Apparently when he heard the growl he shot out of bed and grabbed the dog. In the process he had also hip-checked me to the ground in order to save me. I looked up at him, naked, drunk, and in a ball on the floor. At least I’m not wearing a choker.

  “I was trying to be sexy. Did it work?”

  He laughed, scooped me up, and we went to sleep.

  I don’t know if the naked humiliation, the fact that I couldn’t get along with his dog, or the fact that I could tell I was on my way to getting my heart ripped out was the tipping point, but things fizzled out between us. His lack of reaction to me not coming around anymore pretty much sealed my suspicion that I made the right call. I continued to carry a torch for a while, but that’s nothing out of the ordinary.

  For a few months after that I dated a guy who had a teenage son. He lived with the mother of his child but they were just friends. He explained it was best for the son that they all three live together. I’m sure that probably is best for a kid if you’re hoping he’ll one day rack up a huge bill with a therapist.

  Adam was nice
. He seemed to have a good job and some stability, if I didn’t count his living situation. He was running some construction company and had the biceps to go with it. I liked the idea of being with someone who was not at all trying to be in the entertainment industry. A construction guy with a grown child was about as far off the mark of who I had dated in the past as I could get.

  Adam had a steel plate in his mouth but I never really got the story as to why. He told me a couple of times, but it was so long and boring that I tuned out halfway through and just said things like “ouch, sounds awful” to give the illusion that I gave a shit. Unfortunately, as we dated, his real state of living started to reveal itself. The economy was taking its toll on his company. He always stayed at my apartment since I didn’t want to stay at his house with his fucked-up family. He snored like an animal, which he said had something to do with the steel plate. He was impossible to wake up. Once while I was in Vegas working on the hidden-camera show, he fell asleep on my couch, directly on the remote control. He somehow managed to get his head to lay perfectly on the volume button and my TV went up so loud that my neighbor had to go into the basement and turn off the electricity to my entire apartment building so that she could get a decent night’s sleep.

  One day Adam suggested that we take his son to Magic Mountain. I tried everything I could think of to get out of it. I had my period, I felt a cold coming on, I shouldn’t get on a roller coaster in case I was pregnant. Nothing got me out of it; it’s not easy to win an argument with a man who lives every day sporting a metal jaw. I reluctantly agreed to the amusement park but forced my friend Casey to come with me. Her nephew was visiting her from out of town, and I figured two teenagers were better than one. I was wrong.

  I hadn’t met Adam’s son yet so I tried to be open to the whole thing. I was pretty sure the relationship was going nowhere, but for some reason I still thought I needed to give it more effort. I was glad I had dragged Casey with me, but now I was with two teenagers at Magic Mountain. Did I mention it was July? I don’t know if it was the heat or just the reality of the situation, but it was extremely unpleasant. I don’t even like amusement parks in the first place. And I really don’t like teenagers. (Note to my nephew, Nicholas: I’m not talking about you. I like you.) That day pretty much sealed the fate of my relationship with Adam, along with my desire to ever procreate.