667 Ways to F*ck Up My Life

by Lucy Woodhull

  I swallowed. “It’s Blade’s couch. He can take it with him. No—maybe I’ll keep the couch and have lots of nasty sex on it. I’ve never had nasty sex. I’ve had very polite, sensible sex because that’s what I learned from the book I was given about sex when I was thirteen.”

  She gasped as if I’d just admitted to wearing double-knit polyester.

  I leaped to my feet, fell down, and got up again (more slower-ly) to find my notebook, the one I usually used for grocery lists and reminders to collect dry cleaning.

  Notebook and pen in hand, I plopped next to her on the floor. I ripped out a page with a list of chores on it, and another with a packing list for Christmas.

  At the top of the fresh, new page, I scrawled Ways to Screw Up My Life.

  A giggle escaped Mel. “I like where this is going.”

  “Wait—girls who don’t care don’t say ‘screw.’ They say ‘fuck’ in a most unladylike fashion.” I scratched out the ‘screw’ and printed in all caps FUCK.

  “How many ways?” Mel asked. “You should aim high so you don’t quit.”

  “But aiming is for achievers, and I’m not doing that anymore. I’m giving up, Mel. I’m giving up.” I waved my notebook around. “I’m fucking giving up! No more shoes with sensible two-inch heels. No more washing my bras after only wearing them once!”

  “You actually do that?”

  I sniffed mournfully. “By hand.”

  “That’s madness!”

  She whooped, and I whooped, and we whooped. Then it came to me. “Six-hundred-sixty-six. I’m going to do six-hundred-sixty-six numbers of fuck-ups.”

  “Damn.” She placed her hand over her heart. “That’s a fuck ton of fuck-ups.”

  “It’s the devil’s number. If assholes always prosper, which they do—they always, damn it, do!—then I shall become one.”

  “Don’t sell your soul, though. Gotta leave room for a deathbed recant. Just in case.”

  “It’s what an asshole would do.”

  And we clinked Scotch glasses.

  I added my numerical goal to the top of the sheet so it read 666 Ways to Fuck Up My Life. Under this non-lofty title, I put the first item on my bad-girl list:

  1. Get shitty job I don’t care about

  I left the period off the sentence, because who cares about grammar and shit? Nobody else in the world did. They abused punctuation as if it were a hard-working underling.

  “Bang boss,” Mel reminded me.

  I added:

  2. Bang the boss

  3. Use him to get ahead

  “What’s the point of the sex if you’re not also taking advantage?” I said of number three.

  “That’s just good sense.” She grabbed the pad and scribbled a few words after number two. I turned the page and blinked until my drunky eyes focused. She’d put and have nasty orgasms in inappropriate places after bang the boss.

  I crooked my arm around her head. “That’s an excellent point.”

  “I have another one.” Her green eyes danced as she offered me the last of the spicy tuna rolls. “Let’s do what a dirty attention whore would do…what Carmichael Burns would do. I think you should start a blog.”

  4. Start attention-whore overshare blog

  What could go wrong?

  Chapter Two

  F*ck-Ups Five through Eleven

  A Hot Mess Requires Donuts and Leopard Print

  Tuesday morning came like a freight train from Hell No Station. My face had bloated to infinity from crying, my body hurt from throwing up, and my soul felt…achy, angry, determined.

  Determined.

  To not be so determined.

  (I’d have to work on it.)

  I sat up on the couch and reached out for my notebook to add my newest fuck-up:

  5. Tuesday morning hangover

  Auspicious start to my don’t-give-a-hoot palooza.

  A clank sounded from the kitchen, so I stumbled there to find my blessed Mel making hangover food of eggs, pancakes and sausage. “Bring your laptop in,” she ordered. “We’re gonna create that blog.”

  “Meh. Let’s get day-drunk and watch Netflix all day.” I came up behind her and stole a sausage before she put them in the oven to stay warm. “But wait—you have a job.”

  “You have bad breath.”

  I covered my gross mouth. If only Blade were here to kiss.

  She continued, “I called in sick. I agree to the Netflix, but I insist you set up a blog account. If I’m eventually going to sell the book of your blog, which I will, Momma needs that sweet commission as soon as possible.”

  I gave her a hug from behind then went to slump at the tiny Formica table and chairs in our four square feet of corner billed as a ‘nook.’ “Fine. But I will get drunk first.”

  “Hair of the dog.” She set an orange juice in front of me and added a shot of vodka. We clinked glasses and began my first day as a ne’er-do-well. Although ne’er-do-wells probably do not use words like ‘ne’er do well’.

  “Can I just say”—she just said as she began the pancakes—“that I’ve been itching to tell you for two years that the name Blade is horrible, and it really should have given you a clue.”

  I snorfed my vodka juice. “I know. I detested his name.”

  “Blade.”

  “His mother actually spelled it with a Y—B-l-a-y-d-e—on his birth certificate.”

  “That’s so much more awful!”

  “I know!” I laughed so hard it hurt my head, but then everything hurt my head today. Time for more drinking. Sluuuuuurp. Aaaaah. “He would always ask me to call it out during sex. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t say, ‘Oh, Blade!’”

  Mel pumped her hips as she flipped a pancake. “Give me the blade, Blade!”

  “It’s a romance novel name for a very non-romance-novel fellow.”

  She turned around, spatula high in thought. “Blade definitely did not live up to his romance novel hero name. He was an aloof alpha male, but he never made the transition into loving duke husband. He stayed peacock-y. I mean, it seemed to work for you, but I never thought he treated you well enough, honestly. You forgave a lot of dick behavior as…something else.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut against the truth. “You mean I’ve let my boyfriend and my boss walk all over me.”

  She made a sad trombone noise but didn’t answer. She didn’t have to—it was true.

  How was I such a moron? My whole twenty-eight years, I ignored the trees and lifted my chin toward the glorious paper forest. On paper, my life just a day ago had been perfect. Coveted position with the city’s flashiest editor. Gorgeous doctor boyfriend. And the self-will to concentrate only on the good, never the bad.

  But now…

  I found the wherewithal to fetch my laptop from the bedroom. The apartment was bathed in late morning glow. A light snow fell outside—the pretty kind. The kind that reminds of childhood and snow angels.

  My dad had always made me shovel too. Never Vanessa, for she had delicate wrists.

  At my bedroom window, I closed my eyes and embraced the quiet, punctuated only by the joyous smell of breakfast food. Glorious quiet. Blade had loved watching cable news, so a screaming pundit was usually our roommate. I wouldn’t miss that one bit.

  I hurried back into the kitchen and blurted, “I don’t miss him. I-I’m not really sad. Shouldn’t I be sad that he’s moving across the country? Mostly…” I sat down and opened my computer. “Mostly I feel relief that I don’t have to play girlfriend anymore. The messes will be mine, the space will be mine.” I ran a hand over my dirty, makeupped face. “Until I’m forced to get a roommate, I suppose.”

  A plate of delicious placed itself magically in front of me. “That’s not a great sign for your former relationship,” saith my smart friend.

  I shook my head. No. What had I been doing all this time? Checking off life bingo boxes instead of just…living. Bingo, bingo, bingo! If I checked off enough boxes, someone would finally love me!

  I
was this bizarre combination of rebelling against my family’s wishes in pursuing a career in the arts, yet also conforming to the boyfriend they liked for approval. Because my father had adored Blade. A doctor, are you kidding? He could ‘take care of me’ if only I’d let him.

  We gorged on breakfast as if calories didn’t exist, because they didn’t. Not during a hangover from booze and hard knocks, nope.

  After the initial rush of so many pancakes I thought I might barf, we crowded around my laptop screen. I let Mel do most of the work since she was the mastermind. She set up a blog for me, and a Twitter to match. At first, I didn’t want to put my face on it, but she got me with the argument, “What do you have to lose?”

  I had lost all the big stuff already.

  So I posed with a dirty face, sunglasses, hair in a high, tangled ponytail and a middle finger in the foreground. It actually turned out amazing with the proper filter—I looked unrecognizable and pretty! Like a cokehead starlet. It gave me number six on my fuck-up list:

  6. Flip off the world

  We called the blog, naturally, ‘666 Ways to Fuck Up My Life’, and explained the purpose in the inaugural post. I ended it with this:

  It should be an idea familiar to any millennial reading—that all the hard work in the world hasn’t meant shit. Student loans are impossible to pay off, even though everyone screamed “Go to college!” in an unceasing wail. There are no jobs, and the ones you do get are underpaid and underwhelming. My boss fired me for not screwing him, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it except to not give anyone power over me anymore.

  If the low road is the true path, then I will crawl on it. I’m tired of trying. I’m tired of the fear of failure. I’m embracing failure. I’m going to fuck up, big time. And have a damn hell of a good time doing it. And now I’m done with writing this, so I’m going to day-drink with my best friend and watch Netflix. Arrested Development seems a good choice.

  I’m going to Bluth this bitch.

  I hit Publish and we clinked screwdrivers in celebration. We pushed the post to Twitter, and Mel jumped on hers to tell her followers to follow me. Whatever. I told Mel I didn’t want to hear about social media strategy. I wasn’t going to try for followers or readers.

  I wasn’t going to try for anything anymore.

  My first day of terrifying, amazing freedumb flew by in a stupor. TV was hilarious. Leftover Chinese was delish. And the look on Blade’s face when Mel deigned to let him in was priceless. I flipped him off, drunk as a skunk, and refused to leave while he gathered his stuff. I figured he’d rob me blind if I did. Guess he hadn’t yet noticed that I’d wiped out the bank account.

  He didn’t take too much time in throwing his shit into suitcases. The lovely dear said he’d leave me all the furniture, which was nice, since seventy-five percent of it had been mine in the first place.

  As he wheeled out the last of his stuff, Mel asked him where he was going to stay.

  “I don’t care!” I yelled from my new home, the couch.

  Blade turned at the door and rolled his eyes. “I’m staying with Amy until I leave next week. Guess I don’t have to hide her from you anymore.”

  Mel gasped.

  I didn’t gasp. I didn’t care enough to gasp, really, except in that I hoped Amy was disease-free. Ugh, I’d have to get STD tested. I lumbered to my feet and went to the kitchen. At the back of the refrigerator sat his month-old container of miso soup. I’d asked him to throw it out for weeks. Good thing he’d kept it—I had a real use for it now.

  I carried it into the living room and stood at the open door. In the hall, he turned amongst his suitcases and said, “Well, babe. We had some good times, huh?”

  I smiled and nodded while brushing a lock of hair from his blue eyes. “Eat shit and die,” I whispered lovingly as I poured moldy miso soup down his trousers.

  He screamed and jumped backward, going ass-over-head across his enormous designer trunk. The soup wasn’t quite finished, so I sprayed it on his bags.

  Without another word, I yanked the house keys from his fist and slammed the door in his face, which gave me my next item:

  7. Embrace my inner vindictiveness

  “Oh, hell yes!” Mel jumped up and down, her phone pointed toward me. “I got all that on film!”

  I yawned. “Do you want a coffee? I need a coffee if I’m drinking for two.”

  “Two?”

  “Me and my failure.”

  “I’ll get my coat.”

  * * * *

  I hadn’t brushed my hair in a day, still sported day-old Diorshow mascara, and fairly reeked of booze. For the first time in my life, I was the kind of woman SUV-stroller moms ushered their precious darlings away from.

  It was amazing.

  I imagined my sister clutching her double-strand pearls (a ‘push’ gift for nieceling number one), so I let loose with a string of language in line at the coffee shop that actually embarrassed Mel for half a second until she gave me a hug.

  8. Do not think of the children

  We got to the head of the line and I ordered a huge, caffeinated coffee full of enough caramel to kill a rhino. The insanely hot bro-ista, name tag Hunter, grinned at my double-extra-sugar ridiculousness with a side of donut. He had the widest, sunniest smile—like an advertisement for toothpaste at the beach—deep brown skin, and amber eyes. His dreadlocks were bleached blond and tied into a man bun on top of his head. He was a Benetton ad come to life.

  “I like a girl that enjoys her treats,” he said.

  “Who enjoys her treats. And I don’t care what you like,” I replied.

  He grinned even bigger at that.

  I hadn’t even considered the words before they had blustered themselves out of my mouth. But that was a huge part of the puzzle, right? How many of my achievements had been strictly for me, and how many for other people, so that they might approve of me? Part of fucking up my life had to be not caring what other people wanted me to be… But that was also a life improvement, was it not?

  Wow, I was deep when Tuesday drunk.

  I said to adorable Hunter, “If you dig it so much, buy it for me.”

  His mouth dropped…but he reached into his pocket and pulled out a wadded-up ten dollar bill. Behind me, Mel said, “Well, shit, honey.”

  Well, shit, honey.

  Maybe I’d been possessed by the spirit of Jazmine. Maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. Maybe I just really wanted to see what I could get away with. I was a cute girl, not gorgeous, but with a good face I had no right to be angry about. Dark brown hair, olive skin from my Greek heritage, almost-black eyes. Dudes had a tendency to ask me “What are you?” which might get them a slap from now on. Heh—bro-ista Hunter probably got the same question.

  Maybe it was about time to pursue more fun in the way I looked. Doing my best to be a pretend WASP hadn’t helped me much.

  I smiled at Hunter and stood there, as if accepting my due, as if men bought me things all the time just because I demanded them.

  9. Make them pay

  “Uh, I’m the manager here,” said hot Hunter by way of brag, and I knew what I had to do.

  He was tall, he was buff, and he had to be an out-of-work actor. I leaned over the counter, pushed out my ass, unzipped the top of my sweater, and said, “Give me an application.”

  He ran to the back while the other barista dude gaped. I winked at him and sauntered away to await my (free) coffee and donut.

  Near the milk and sugar station, I started giggling, and Mel came up behind me. “You’re going to work in a coffee shop?”

  I shrugged. “I need money.”

  “But publishing.”

  “But nothing.” I turned around. “I’m going to work in a coffee shop. And if I lose that job, do I care? You don’t seem to be embracing the spirit of fucking up.”

  She flashed a wry smile. “Very well.”

  Hunter hurried up to us, all earnest eyes and shy smile. “Uh, here is the application. I’m in tomorrow
from six a.m. to one p.m., if you want to bring it back then.”

  I grabbed the paper and let it flop to one side. “Yeah, morning doesn’t really work for me. That’s when I sleep it off.”

  “Oh! Okay, sure. On Thursday, I, uh, work close.”

  “When do you close?”

  “Ten.”

  They called out my coffee, so I went to get it. He followed behind like a puppy. I’d never had a man slobber over me this way. It was as if the less I cared, the harder his boner grew. I took a sip of my confection and deigned to pay attention to my new toy. “I’ll be in at ten on Thursday then. Probably. Where’s my donut?”

  “Uh…” He nodded and ran to fetch my first donut in a decade.

  Mel folded in half laughing. “That’s when I sleep it off?”

  “What does he expect from a drunk girl applying to work? Geesh!” I licked foam off my lip. “Wait! That’s number ten.” I whipped out my phone and posted it to Twitter.

  10. Apply for entry-level job while drunk

  11. Also: Get free donut

  Within three minutes, it had been retweeted fifteen times. I had seven hundred followers since this morning. Everyone loved a train wreck!

  Instead of Netflix (which was a perfectly valid life choice), Mel and I decided to see a movie about sexy male strippers. We sneaked in a second lunch of McDonald’s and had a grand old time mixing rum into our movie theater Cokes. My application for the coffee shop, JaVaVaVoom, got special sauce on it. Oops.

  We took a late afternoon nap until about eight, then cleaned up to go out. Mel insisted that my life fuck-ups not include being too dirty. Personally, I thought there was a whole wide world of greasy hair to explore before I could truly say I didn’t care… But then again, vanity was a wonderful sin. I was well and truly torn.

  My goal for the evening was to bypass the line to get into a club, and then not pay for a single drink all night. I had worked my whole life to pay my own way—taken pride in it almost as a rebellion against my dad. Vanessa had never worked a day in her life. There was nothing wrong with being a Connecticut SAHM—she was terrifyingly good at it—but I’d yearned for so long to work with books in the big city…