Scrappy Little Nobody

by Anna Kendrick

  The next forty-eight hours are a haze. We dance, we take the dinghy around the island, we drink more. We consume nothing but overcooked mystery meat and the bar’s signature drink: a mixture of Kahlúa, Baileys, banana liqueur, and whipped cream known as Buffalo Milk. The combination of sugar and alcohol is probably shutting down vital organs, but we feel invincible.

  On our last night, some of us go ashore for a last hurrah, but Whitney and Brian stay on the boat to call it an early night. Luke and I sneak away from the party and make out in the grass under the stars. It would be romantic if we weren’t dressed like off-brand theme park entertainers.

  I am drunk, and very young, and sharing a near-death experience makes me feel like I can say anything to Luke. I tell him that watching Whitney and Brian stay on the boat made me depressed. Then I say of course they stayed on the boat; why would they bother coming out? Just to hang out with each other? Once you’re married there’s no more excitement or possibility. I say settling down sounds like death. I say I feel sorry for them.

  I can’t imagine anything more important than chasing that “butterfly feeling.” I can’t imagine what would drive a person to get out of bed in the morning if you knew you’d never have that new-crush feeling again or ever dance on a table, or get so drunk you try to fight a stranger. To not come ashore on the last night of Buccaneer Days? It’s tantamount to giving up on life.

  Maybe because he’s a little older, or maybe because Whitney is his sister, Luke scoffs. He’s right; it’s stupid. I just don’t know it yet.

  We get back on the boat and go to sleep. I bunk with Luke but we don’t have sex after all because we haven’t known each other very long, and his family is on the boat, and I haven’t taken a shit since we left LA. The journey back is easy and beautiful. When we arrive in the marina everyone sets to work getting the boat back in order. Alex and I have no idea what to do but it seems like asking would slow the process down. We move objects around at random to give the appearance that we are helping. The second it becomes acceptable to say good-bye we run to my car, drive straight over a partition, and race home to the comfort of indoor plumbing. At home, we come out of our respective bathrooms, flop on the couch, and luxuriate in our freshly scrubbed bodies and vacant bowels.

  For the first time in almost four days, we are sober on land. Did you know that land sickness is a thing? Spend too much time on a boat, and your body adjusts. We hadn’t noticed it when we went ashore in Catalina because the only thing on that shore was alcohol. But now it starts to overtake us. I go to the kitchen thinking food will help and I am tossed about by invisible demons. My ten-foot walk to the refrigerator is perfectly flat but I flail and grab at the walls like I am traversing the galley of a sinking navy destroyer. Alex and I look at each other, terrified. Surely this is just a delayed hangover; it will be over in a few hours. But the ocean is an evil bitch and she intends to torture us for days. I crawl back to the bathroom and throw up.

  • • •

  Why would grown people do this?! These are adults with money—sailboat money! Which would imply they are functioning members of society! Why go to an island and dress up like a pirate? The work of it—the expense, the planning, the last-minute acquisition of stick-on Captain Jack Sparrow™ beards! All to come home and spend the next three days feeling miserable.

  While I was there, I found this all bewildering but harmless. Yet I was undone by the simple act of husband and wife staying “in” one night in lieu of participating in what was clearly a collective psychosis.

  Not long after that weekend, something started changing in me. I started to feel like I was just playing the part. The first time I noticed it I was in the middle of a herculean effort to enjoy dancing at a club in Vegas. Even while it was happening I thought, This will be one of those things I look back on that makes me glad I don’t do it anymore. Later that night, Buccaneer Days crossed my mind. I still didn’t know why anyone would want to go through all that trouble to behave like an idiot (to this day I behave like an idiot plenty and I don’t need a pirate costume to do it), but I realized: I’d want to stay on the boat. I’d want to stay on the boat, cook some mystery meat, and listen to a podcast.

  So many people I know who are in long-term relationships have made the same boring comment to me about how they wish Tinder had been around when they were single. Seriously, you wish you could be on Tinder? Tinder seems like a gateway to years of therapy or having your organs harvested. These comments are usually made by married men who feel that they would “clean up” if they could only get their incredible faces in front of the masses of younger women who “they’ve heard” are way more into anonymous sex.

  So many people say they wish they could be young again. You couldn’t drag me back to twenty-one. All the hiding, all the pretending, all the hanging out with people you don’t actually like. Going out three nights in a row? RuPaul’s Drag Race is on. Making out in the grass? I own a perfectly good couch. Always fighting with your friends? I am no longer confused about what the word “friend” means. And to top it all off, if you woke up tomorrow and you were young again, you’d have to deal with creepy married dudes feeling entitled to easy sex with you because your generation is supposed to be “more liberated.” Pass.

  That new-crush feeling? It just makes me tired. I thought that urgency, that need for the new experience, always thinking the next one might be better than the last, and the terror of potentially missing out on one, would be there forever.

  These days, if my hair got fucked up in front of some cute boy I’d just think, Hey, at least we’re speeding up the inevitable. If you still want to spend some of your short time on earth with this whole situation, let me know, ’cause it’s what you’re gonna get at the end of the day.

  Pitying the couple who didn’t want to semi-ironically hobnob with strangers in pirate costumes was pretty childish of me. But I’m glad I have the memory of that feeling, because now I can fully appreciate how wonderful it is that it’s gone.

  I wonder how much of my hard-and-fast worldview will change as I get older. Surely I will always hate licorice, I will always love cheap scented candles, and my favorite movie will always be George Cukor’s The Women. Surely I will always put work before relationships, I will always think that children aren’t for me, I will always find Buccaneer Days baffling. Or maybe in a few years I’ll get the urge to sail to an island, spend the weekend getting hammered in a tricornered hat, and realize I was a fool for ever questioning it.

  the world’s most reluctant adult

  I was in a rush to grow up my whole childhood. Because I looked so young as a kid, I worked doubly hard to prove that I was independent and mature. I got called “precocious” A LOT. I did not know the word had pejorative connotations until I grew up and started using it as code to mean this kid is annoying . . . and the circle was complete.

  When I was nine, I bought a mini-fridge for my bedroom with my allowance money. It was fifty bucks at Walmart and I saved like a champ for my big purchase. I thought it would make me feel like I was living in a little apartment of my own. Instead, it sent me into a panic about all the things I would need to be a true adult: a microwave, a toaster, wooden hangers, a coffee table, coffee table books, a little jar for cotton balls, a bike with hand brakes even though the pedal-backward-brake seemed perfectly fine to me, and a mop. (For our wall-to-wall carpeting? What was wrong with me?)

  I returned the mini-fridge the next day. I felt like I either had to become a perfect adult human all at once, or give up and stay a kid. I let my anxiety get the better of me and chose to stick my head in the sand. I’m still doing battle with this anxiety and it’s left me as a bit of a man-child. I know I’m not a man, but “woman-child” doesn’t sound quite right. “Girl-baby”? “Lady-tyke”? I’m getting into creepy porno territory, so let’s stick with man-child. You know what I mean anyway.

  With every birthday, I have stupidly expected to feel different only to discover that I’m still me: tragical
ly lazy and childish. Every birthday, I think this is the year I won’t drown myself in store-bought cookie dough when I’m anxious about something. And every year I’m wrong.

  Even as I write this I’m thinking, Next year, though, it’ll be better. The book will be done, I won’t schedule myself so thin. I’ll have enough time off to teach myself not to get overwhelmed. And I really believe it! It’s pathetic!

  The truth is, I just want to be a man-child for another three months. Perpetually. Can you spot the tiny flaw in this mind-set? I have no doubt that I’ll need the help of a very skilled therapist to break this cycle, but I keep hoping it will correct itself. Every now and then I test the waters of self-improvement with some practical changes to see how far I can go without succumbing to anxiety. Just small things at first.

  I stopped buying fancy underwear. Easy. I’ve bought so much of it in my life, and it turns out guys are way more excited about naked boobs than they are about boobs in a lacy red bra. Fancy bras are uncomfortable and look lumpy under anything I’d want to wear on a date anyway. Also, every time I’ve worn fancy lingerie, an awkward dance ensues where I try to pause in between the removal of the shirt and the removal of the bra, so that the gentleman might admire me. It’s even worse with jeans and underwear. Trying to keep your adorable knickers on when peeling off skinny jeans is like trying to get a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup out of the wrapper without the bottom layer of chocolate coming off. I’ve come to my senses and it’s white cotton comfort all the way. Bam. That wasn’t so bad.

  I’m also working on becoming the kind of adult who does not engage in stupid, dangerous situations, even if that makes me look uncool. You know those videos on YouTube of a flash flood where someone is way too close to the water and they’re standing there like, Wow, that water is rising fast. I’ll just take a few more pictures and I’ll totally be able to get out of here before I’m in any jeopardy, and then they’re DEAD! I want to be the person who runs away from the flash flood like a little bitch and lives to tell the tale. I am not going to be the person who shows off by leaning too far into the dolphin enclosure and then gets raped to death by dolphins (Google it, nerds). I’m going to be the person who tells her friends not to get too close to the dolphins, gets made fun of, and says “I told you so” at their funerals. I used to be the idiot who would climb to the fifth floor of a construction site at two a.m. just for the story. Now the most reckless thing I do is ignore emails marked urgent. It’s a real rush.

  I’m trying to make big decisions without asking “an adult.” Because that’s me. I’m the adult. For ten years I drove Charlie, my scrappy little used Toyota. When it came time to buy a new car, I decided to do it on my own. I’m financially stable, I am a homeowner, I vote, but I’ll admit, it felt weird not consulting my parents. I’d bought Charlie when I was a teenager—I’d used my own money, but my mom was with me the whole time. I had no idea how to buy a car completely on my own. So I brought Aubrey Plaza. Aubrey’s got kind of a father-figure vibe, so she gave me a certain confidence walking into the dealership.

  Aubrey was accidentally helpful in the negotiation process, because she’s batshit crazy. I was getting frustrated with the cliché trappings of the process and kept asking, “Do we really need to do this? You’re going through the motions of being a sleazy used-car salesman, but couldn’t we just talk like two normal humans?” Aubrey sat in the corner and occasionally interjected, “My uncle owns a dealership across town and we could just go there. He’s also in the mafia,” without looking up from her phone. We were less “good cop/bad cop” and more “cop who hates negotiating/cop having a psychotic break.” The technique was effective regardless.

  I went home and called my mom to tell her I’d bought a car. Maybe that kind of thing is newsworthy enough to warrant a call to your mom anyway, but my motivation was that of a child who’d learned to tie her shoe. What’s the point of being so independent if you don’t get a gold star from your mother for being such a big girl! Maybe the next time I buy a car I’ll wait a week to call her. If my current track record holds up, I have until 2024 to develop that kind of restraint.

  The further I get into self-improvement, the more I hope I’ll grow some new part of my brain that makes me take care of my responsibilities automatically. Like highway blindness. If I grabbed my keys for a Krispy Kreme run in my sweatpants, I’d come to twenty minutes later, wearing pleated khakis and getting my oil changed. Sadly, I am conscious through every excruciating moment of paying my parking tickets on the DMV website and cleaning a little bit each day so it doesn’t pile up on me. I expected to take an interest in my retirement plan, understanding general car maintenance, and doing my laundry on a schedule instead of three days after I ran out of underwear. But just thinking about that stuff makes me want to lie on the floor and eat packets of Easy Mac until I feel too swollen and turgid to do anything but dream up elaborate ways to murder everyone who says “life hack.” I power through. I’m still an embarrassment to civilized society, but now I change the toilet paper roll instead of resting it vertically on top of the old one. There’s hope.

  The trickiest areas to improve are my fitness habits. When I work on them, it’s great for a while because I don’t feel so sluggish and I have fewer mood swings, but shitty because healthy food tastes gross. Naturally luminous, perfectly proportioned people are always full of helpful tips to set me on the right path. Oh, aloe vera water is the new chia seed? Cool, I’ll just work up the reserve of self-loathing I’ll need to choke down that spit-flavored miracle drink. Why don’t I just eat powdered egg whites until I pass out? (Eesh, add “food issues” to the therapy list.)

  When it comes to exercise, I’ll start out slow—just an easy hike. The next day I’ll be too sore to move but I’ll say the reason I can’t hike again for a few days is because my allergies (to sunlight and pain) are acting up. I don’t know who I’m “saying” that to—obviously I don’t invite anyone to witness these feeble attempts at physical activity. Being healthy is testing my commitment, but I’m feeling pretty good about my monthly dose of seeing-the-sky.

  Then I have to make the bed, and that’s where it all falls apart. I hate making the bed so much. Way more than I should. I can’t make my bed without collapsing into a full-on existential crisis. So you made the bed. It looks nice. But . . . you are just going to get BACK into bed tonight. Then you’ll have to make it again tomorrow, and on and on and on and then you’ll be dead. And then I’ll start thinking, Well, why do any housework? Why do the dishes? You’re just going to get them dirty again. Maybe you should start eating every meal with your hands, bent over the trash can. Why work to improve any area of your life when everything good that happens is going to require more and more maintenance?!

  Maybe giving up on this adulthood thing wouldn’t be so bad. In movies and TV the man-child always has a moment of clarity and gets his act together for his wife or his baby, but what if I just didn’t? What if I just kept returning the proverbial mini-fridge?

  When I’m in full man-child mode, I sleep until ten, dopey and sweating, my only motivation to stand the promise of an ice-cream sandwich to start the day. The mid-morning sugar crash isn’t a problem when my only objective is to sit as still as possible while watching Naked and Afraid. People might roll their eyes at me, but they’re just jealous because their hearts-of-palm ceviche sucks. Sure, my muscles are atrophied, but stacking my dirty dishes in the sink and leaving them there has become a veritable game of high-stakes Jenga, so my physical dexterity really isn’t in question at this point.

  Food and housework aren’t the real problem. The real problem is that I let anxiety cripple my relationships. I blame this paralysis on different things. It started as a money issue: I was too broke to go out. I didn’t want to spend money I didn’t have on dinners and drinks and the movies. I didn’t want to invite anyone over, because my place was gross. Once I had an income, it became a time issue: I’m working too much to go out. Even when I do have a free day or tw
o, there’s this overwhelming guilt about planning anything recreational. I haven’t been to the dentist in a year and a half, but I’m gonna go to Lacy’s party? Out of the question. I mean, I still won’t go to the dentist, but making fun plans would force me to acknowledge that I’m not going to go to the dentist.

  I get that it’s not a money issue or a time issue, it’s just a me-being-a-malfunctioning-life-form issue. I think I need to become perfect all at once, so I keep getting overwhelmed and putting it off. I can’t remember the last time that I didn’t have something hanging over my head. There are usually about thirty to eighty things. Is that normal? Don’t tell me. If it’s not, I’m a jerk. If it is, that’s super-depressing, and I know I’ll just use “this is normal” as an excuse to procrastinate even more.

  I know that feeling isn’t unique to me. Yes, I’m away from home a lot and keep the hours of a meth-addicted puzzle enthusiast (it takes as long as it takes, okay?!), but everyone in the world feels like their inbox is growing faster than they can keep up, right? If there was just a little more time, or a little more money, or if you could just get through this one last rough patch, it would all be clear, it would all fall into place. It’s an insatiable trap.

  And YET, I always think, This is my year. This year I’m going to get my shit SO together that I’ll always be able to see the solution to my problems. I’m going to get it so together that I’ll never have to “get it together” again. It’s like this Tyler Durden–style feeling that I’m so close. I’m so close to being a real person. I’m so close to making time for friends and family. I’m so close to being able to take out the trash without checking that none of my neighbors are outside because small talk makes me feel like the world is on fire. I’m so close to being wonderful.