Sprinkle Glitter on My Grave

by Jill Kargman

  Tapas bars: Yes, I know they’re trendy and somehow cool. But (a) I despise the phrase small plates (I’m hungry and also hate family style) and (b) it always sounds like topless bar! Without fail, when someone is saying they’re going to a tapas bar, I just think of greased boobs and girls jiggling their way through nursing school. I personally think it’s high time someone open a chainlet called Topless Tapas! Like Hooters but with better food and with stripper poles. Oh, and big portions! We could serve stuff like quesaDDillas and margari-tatas. Instant success.

  Tom Cruise’s middle tooth: My friend Konstantin pointed out that while most of us have two front teeth, Tom Cruise has three. Or one, I guess. Once you see it, you cannot unsee it. Look directly beneath his “angel press” (the divot under your nose that meets your lip, so called, as I was told when I was a kid, because an angel put its finger there when you left heaven to say shh). It’s so bizarre. Google dat shit, you’ll pee. If you just search for “Tom Cruise middle,” the tooth pops up. I still show friends and cry laughing at the images. It’s more fun than getting drunk and taunting Siri.

  Waiters who don’t write shit down: I’m sorry, you may be an actor trying to hone your memorization skills, but you stress my shit out. Inevitably the order gets fucked up and arrives with unwanted lardons, and all you had to do was get a fucking pad and a pen. I mean, really, do you think peeps’re like Oh my! All that food is in his head, let’s leave a 40 percent tip! Not happening.

  Pick my brain: You’re just asking to harvest a few tips from me, but all I can think of is Hannibal Lecter sawing at the top of Ray Liotta’s skull, flipping it open like a can of Campbell’s soup, and sautéing cerebellum chunks with garlic butter. Call me crazy, but I don’t really feel the need to take time out of my schedule or away from my family to let you do that. Talk about hemorrhaging time.

  Journey: Unless you are talking about the band, please shut up. Talking about your life’s “journey” smacks of SoCal cheesiness and spiritual gangsta narcissism. Or of wandering in the desert where the air is so hot it squiggles in the distance and you lose your mind and start talking to cacti and then when you eventually make it home you won’t shut up about your Life Lessons. As they said in the nineties, “Tell it to the hand.” Or as I say, “Tell it to the wrist ’cause the hand is pissed.”

  Pet peeve: I have so many pet peeves that the actual words pet peeve are a pet peeve.

  Roman numeral names: Shakespeare taught us many lessons, one of them being do not name your son after yourself. I am all for tradition, but this one blows, as I have personally seen people either rest on their laurels or collapse under the pressure of Daddy’s name. The way I see it, Roman numeral I sows it, II grows it, III blows it. IV and V, well, that’s just obnoxious at that point. To quote Sex and the City, “The higher the number, the worse the sex.” Or as I say, the higher the number, the smaller the dick.

  Thanksgiving is my kinda holiday: all food, no religion. Since my family elevates eating to an art, it’s fun to have a day that toasts not just the American stuffing of one’s gullet but the actual process, the smell of the food cooking, the setting of the table, the Norman Rockwell presentation of Tom the Turkey. When I was young, we stayed in New York City for the festivities, sometimes crossing the park to watch enormous Garfield and Smurfs float by. Inflatable Snoopys are a far cry from Indians sharing corn, but, hey, Matt Lauer commenting while Dora the Explorer’s butt is behind him has become its own tradition.

  When I hit high school, my parents got a house in Massachusetts, the original home of the Pilgrims, so we began the pilgrimage (so to speak) up there for our feast. Suddenly I felt so much more enmeshed in the vibe: flickering lanterns lined Nantucket’s quaint Main Street and our boots walked over hand-placed cobblestones rather than cement city sidewalks. The air crackled with the smell of the fire in our fireplace. The orange flames created a visual warmth, too, against the Tim Burtony cobalt fog that rolled through the tiny winding streets of antique houses. Those years were so special because I chowed like an animal and slept like a bum.

  But then…it was time to grow up. I got married and had a child, and travel became difficult, so we were back to balloon mode on Central Park West. My mom cooked every ounce of food, even though my dad, brother, and I begged her to supplement with some store-bought butternut squash soup or Zabar’s stuffing rather than taking it all on herself. But no. She had to hand grind the chestnuts and roast the pumpkin and create everything just right. And it was ambrosia. Every year. I popped out two more nuggets so I could help in the kitchen even less. I felt guilty but I didn’t want my kids to smash shit in their apartment, so I was on wrangler and doodie duty while my mom did all the hard work.

  Four years ago, the pendulum swung in the opposite direction. My brother and Drew were living in Los Angeles with their little kids, and couldn’t fly as easily as we could with our preteens and teenager. So we tried a new tradition: the California Thanksgiving. It sounds surreal, and it was, ’cause gone were the chilly winds and early nightfall that justify all that comfort food. Instead, it was all palm trees and blinding sunshine. It’s not exactly that hunker-down vibe, stoking fires and chowing sweet potato soup, but it’s a lovely reminder that the backdrop is merely a superficial construct and that family around that table is what it’s all about. And now that I’m an adult I understand that the perfect, eager faces of that Rockwell iconic illustration are only that—an illustration. The real thing has fidgety kids, squeaky baby toys, and spilled cranberry sauce. And whether your family is blood related or a circle of friends, whether you watch football or parades or old movies, it’s a sublime bubble of a day where you don’t have to do anything (unless you’re cooking!). We have a tradition where we all go around and say what we are thankful for, and this year I’m more grateful than ever to have moments to press the pause button and just float. Like a giant SpongeBob hovering over the park I love.

  Chico’s roulette: A game to be played solitaire (in your mind) or with friends (out loud) in front of storefronts like Chico’s or Ann Taylor Loft. The window displays are so damn hid, you force yourself or your friend to pick which outfit you’d wear if there were a gun to your head.

  Ghost of fat past: When someone is thin but used to be obe and you just can’t forget it. Ex: He can get super skinny, but I’m always gonna be haunted by his ghost of fat past.

  Real estate boner: When you see a living space that is so amazing you get turned on. Ex: Whenever I walk between Ninth and Thirteenth streets between Fifth and Sixth avenues and peer into those townhouses, I get such a real estate boner.

  Trip treat: Fellatio at the wheel. Sometimes known as a road job. Ex: OMG, I totally heard that dad in Greenwich crashed his car ’cause he was getting a trip treat from his kid’s teacher. Never do this. I mean, while the car is moving.

  The zacklies: Massive, unbearable halitosis worthy of gas masks. A case of the zacklies is when yo’ breath smells zackly like yo’ ass.

  Zach Galifiknock-offs: Heavyset hipster men with thick beards who are so psyched to finally have a cool and hilarious patron saint. Often spotted in Williamsburg or at seed-to-table circle-jerk microbrewery-type establishments.

  I spent my wedding night with Russell Crowe.

  Harry and I had just “consummated” (gag) the marriage. I gag at the terminology there, not the act. Because it’s not that I didn’t want to—I did! But isn’t there some medieval edict that says you have to bang and seal the deal? Isn’t that just whatcha do? I know no one would show up, asking to see the flag-of-Japan bedsheet—proof, had I been a virgin, that we’d gotten busy—in order to wave it in the town square, but I felt the need to start the marriage off on the right foot. So we dealt with our exhaustion and focused on the candlelit dream wedding we’d just been through and…got that out of the way.

  Allegedly, it’s male biology to pass out after sex (and/or after a whirlwind night of partying and promises), and Harry was no exception, leaving me staring at the ceiling, playing
the night’s twinkling, romantic moments in my head. I looked down at my hand, manicured and decked out with new ice. I looked like someone chopped off the hand of some older lady and glued it to my wrist stump. Surreal.

  So there I was, wide awake, with the remote control. Flip, flip…home shopping, flip, flip…Full House, flip, flip…Gladiator. Bingo. I lay back and somehow this hundredth viewing was so much more emotional. A welling sadness rose within my chest until I burst into tears with full-on audible sobs. They fucking killed his kid? And raped his wife and fucking told him about it?! I wanted to bash Joaquin’s harelippy face in. And this was before he got all psycho on Letterman. There was no way someone could be that talented an actor and master evil so perfectly without actually being the apex of douchebaggery in real life (at least that’s what they all said about Brenda on 90210 back in the day: beeyotch on screen, satanic in life). By the time Russell bites it to allegedly join his dead fam in A Better Place, I was a rocking snotball of a mess.

  I’m big on high-budget Hollywood flicks—extra credit for period shit—but the jeering crowds in the Colosseum coaxed some kind of new sadness out of me and a golf ball–size lump into my throat. Why was I being such a drama queen, so hysterical? Was I channeling my own crossing over—marriage means a new chapter, after all—and letting the swirling amorphous sea of my own feelings bubble over into a reaction to Russell’s tragic journey? I was so, so, so elated to be married to Harry. And yet I have to admit that I felt a slight melancholy about flushing my maiden name, Kopelman. I had agreed I’d gladly take his name, Kargman—I wanted the same name as my future litter of little nuggets. I didn’t know why now I was a lip quiverer; for crying out loud, it wasn’t some whole new identity with fifty unpronounceable consonants jammed together or something! It was the same Jewy-Jewstein vibe and identical towel initials and notepaper monogram—JK. It was almost the exact same name, just with the opel swapped out for arg. Not a BFD. I was more than thrilled to see Alison, my so-seventies middle moniker, swirl down the bowl forever, but my last-name change somehow felt like I was leaving my parents behind. I decided I couldn’t lie there in bed. I got up and walked through the long marble hallway of my Jay Z suite.

  Did I mention the Jay Z suite? Let me back up.

  The day before the wedding, I’d checked into the St. Regis hotel, where my parents were married in 1971. We were having a smaller, less fancy wedding, but wanted to stay there for good vibes, since their marriage is so strong and they spent their wedding night there after rolling down from the ballroom. The room I was brought to had a nice setup—one bedroom and a little living room area so that my bridesmaids could get their makeup done while we all sipped some champers from room service before the big event. After the rehearsal dinner, a few of my gals and my gay BFF, Trip, came over to tuck me in. We had a drink and hugged and they left at about 2 A.M., so we could all get down to a little beauty rest.

  I turned out the lights, and as I started to melt into the zillion-thread-count sheets and yummy hotel pillowfest, I heard a loud scratching sound from the wall. Someone trying to get in or out? No, I’m a New Yorker and I knew that sound. It was very clearly some hair ball moving around in the wall. Great. Really great.

  I called downstairs and tried to calmly explain, in the most antibridezilla, pleasant voice I could conjure, that I was very sorry to bother them, but there was beclawed rodentia burrowing near me and did I mention that I was getting married tomorrow and needed to sleep? They sent up a dude, who calmly put his ear to the wall, listened to the mystery menace, and casually walked to the phone and dialed downstairs.

  “Yeah, hi, we got a code eleven.”

  No clue what that was, but I inferred from his tone it was approaching DEFCON 1. I wondered, Is that the technical term for Emergency, this lady is about to lose her shit and we are about to get a Yelp review saying we are infested?

  The next thing I knew, three butlers in tails (à la morning coats, not wall rats) carried all my belongings—including my wedding dress, which was stuffed with tissue paper and stiff like a dead body—to my new room: the Fifth Avenue Imperial Suite. The joint would have made the late great Michael Jackson (and his entourage of nannies, kids, handlers, and the Elephant Man’s bones) gasp. It was insane. Ten rooms, a sprawling marble kitchen, a dining table for twelve, a bed fit for a princess (1,000 thread-count bedding, enormous headboard, ten thousand pillows, the works), and a gilded rococo writing desk worthy of signing bills into laws with a quill pen. Score!

  So back to the wedding night, where we left me wandering the grand suite alone. I walked to the desk and opened the drawers, retrieving a piece of engraved, watermarked hotel stationery. I sat down to write.

  Dear Mom and Dad, I began.

  My tears flowed into the ink as I thanked them for the most enchanting of weddings. It was all so ethereal and sublime—during my toast of gratitude on the dance floor I had morphed into Halle Berry at the Oscars: moved beyond measure and sporting mascara cataracts. I know I was not a blactress breaking boundaries. I was just a bride. Who loved everyone in the room.

  I wrote them that even though my name was changing, nothing else would. I would always be their BG (baby girl). I wept for twenty minutes straight until I signed dotter (tradition). And then something happened. I stopped crying. I folded the paper into thirds and stuck it in the envelope and, as I sealed it, I also closed the flap on my worries. I was Mrs. Harry Kargman now. And I was so glad.

  —

  Neither Russell nor the lump in my throat returned. The next few months brought bliss and some travels—first our honeymoon in Italy and then ten days in Tokyo, a business trip for Harry’s work that I managed to tag along on by pitching a travel magazine piece on Tokyo’s then up-and-coming Cat Street.

  Gone for good were my qualms about my name change; I loved seeing Kargman on my passport. I loved us being a unit. It was as if our first three months of marriage had shampoo-bottle-simple directions: Eat. Drink. Have sex. Sleep late. Repeat.

  We settled in. We enjoyed fun dinners with friends and many weekends away for other people’s weddings, which always seemed to reinforce our vows and make us reminisce about our own ceremony. Harry was working round the clock, but I was busy as well, and we were cocooned in a sweet bubble of self-indulgence and fun times, grinning with a newlywed glow.

  And then one day I was sitting by the computer, when I started to feel my boobs like…buzzing. I put my hands on my chest and m’knockers felt tender and firmer than usual. Like all unsuspecting, head-in-the-sand, potential moms-to-be, I figured I was PMSing.

  And then it suddenly dawned on me…Oh boy…

  …or girl!

  I ran downstairs and over to Zitomer’s Department Store (read: glorified pharmacy, but I love it anyway) with my heart pounding like a timpani played by a cracked-out six-year-old. There they were: the pregnancy tests. How many times had I passed them by and idly thought how loaded the decision to buy one must be. You’re either praying for a yes or bargaining with the devil for a no. What did I want?

  I bought First Response because they had the most commercials, so their media buyer won my arm-reach to their product. I paid the cashier with what I’m sure was a weird face on, like the smiley face with a squiggly line for a mouth like it might barf. I went upstairs and pulled down the Calvins and peed on the stick. Leaving the stick in my stream for five seconds was gross, but okay, done. Then the instruction said to give it a couple of minutes to marinate in pee. I decided to rest it on the cappy thing it came in and paced in the hall. After two minutes I busted back in and there it was, clear as a nose job on a Horace Mann girl: two pink lines. Holy shit. Knocked up. Bun in the oven. Casting my own Mini-Me. Child star waiting in the green womb. With child (how archaic).

  Despite that positive sign screaming at me like the Bat signal in the Gotham night sky, I went back down to Zitomer’s and bought three more tests, all different brands. As my bladder is roughly the size of a lima bean, there’s always pee at the read
y. I dropped trou and covered the three tips. Shwing! Shwing! Shwing! All three pos. I thought I was going to explode. I didn’t know what to do. So I put my coat back on, and went back to Zitomer’s. The cashier must’ve thought I was a recent escapee from the loony bin.

  This time to the kids’ “department” (read: shelves). I looked at the shrunken clothes and footie pajamas and diapers and bottles and was reeling. Then I spied two tiny booties with lions on them. My jaw dropped. Eureka! Because of his fluffy mane of curly hair, I’d begun calling Harry LC, for Lion Cub, back when we had first started dating. And here I was, with a tinier cub in my tummy. I bought the booties and had them gift wrapped. This time the cashier gave a slight smile, knowing the pee had yielded plus signs. And then I sauntered home and paced, waiting for my Big Lion Cub to come home.

  When he texted me he was out of the subway and walking back to our apartment, I couldn’t contain myself. I ran down the block and met him on the corner. He looked surprised to see me, especially since I was holding a bow-covered box.

  “Hi! What’re you doing here? What’s this?” he asked.

  “Open it!”

  It had originally crossed my mind that I could put all the various pregnancy tests in a box with ribbon to tell him that way, but sanity prevailed—it was grody and creepsville to hand him my urine.

  His eyes widened as he pulled the booties out.

  “NO!”

  “Yes!”

  We hadn’t been trying to get pregnant. But if you must know, we were lazy asses, so it wasn’t a total shock. I wasn’t into jimmy jackets and neither was he. I called the condies—even his allegedly imperceptible lambskin ones—raincoats. So we bagged whenever I was riding the crimson wave. Or had just finished it. Or didn’t feel like schlepping with a boner to the drawer to rifle through it for a dickhat.