Has Anyone Seen My Pants?

by Sarah Colonna

  “I’ll find a hotel close to the venue and I’ll book our rooms.”

  “Rooms?” she repeated. “We aren’t sharing a room?”

  Coming off of my depression, I wasn’t sure sharing a hotel room with my mom in Tulsa was the way to go. I mean, I’m an adult! Aren’t adults supposed to have their own rooms? But I could hear the disappointment in her voice and knew I was going to have to suck it up again. Plus, if I was sharing a room with my mom I wouldn’t be able to come back after the concert and drink and chain-smoke. Without knowing it, she would be kind of like my sober companion.

  The day finally arrived and my mom and I headed to Tulsa. We checked into our hotel, my mom excitedly telling the girl at the registration desk that she was going to meet Luke Bryan that night.

  “Wow, that’s awesome.” The girl smiled.

  “Yep. My daughter here is on TV and she met Luke one day and told him I’m his biggest fan so he said he wanted to meet me.”

  The girl looked at me, either trying to place my face or figure out if my mom had Alzheimer’s.

  “That’s exactly how it happened,” I said as I took the hotel keys from her hand.

  Mom and I got ready; I put on my brand-new cowboy boots that I was uncomfortably excited about and she put on her Luke Bryan T-shirt that was about two sizes too big for her.

  “Mom, that shirt is kind of big,” I told her as I put on a final coat of mascara.

  “It’s a men’s medium,” she explained.

  “Well, tonight why don’t we get you a woman’s T-shirt? One that fits?”

  “I don’t like those. I’m sixty-three years old, I’m not going to wear a belly shirt.”

  “They aren’t belly shirts, Mom. We’ll just get you a large woman’s—”

  “I don’t like those shirts, they’re too tight in the tits.”

  That was the end of that discussion. Mainly because I was shocked to hear my mom say the word “tits.”

  The whole day, I was terrified that something would go wrong and we wouldn’t get to meet Luke Bryan. But minus a couple of instances of being sent to the wrong window to pick up passes, everything went smoothly, and before I knew it my mom and I were backstage, ready to meet Luke. It’s possible I was more excited than her.

  His tour manager pulled us to the side while the regular meet-and-greet went on. We weren’t there for that bullshit! We were getting one-on-one time. I started sweating. Seriously? This always happens when good-looking men are around! Must be that early menopause, I thought as I clenched my armpits.

  “Sarah?” I heard the voice of an angel (Luke Bryan) call out. “You got your momma with you?”

  I looked at my mom and she looked like she was going to pass out.

  “I sure do!” I said in a weird Beverly Hillbillies–type tone that I’d never heard come out of my mouth before.

  He called us into the room and went right to my mom for a hug, then to me. He talked to us for like twenty minutes, babbling nonstop about his tour, asking me how work was, and taking my mom’s advice on which songs from his album should be released first. At one point, he mentioned something about FM radio, and my mom interrupted:

  “AM, FM, XM, too . . .” She smiled, quoting his own song lyrics to his face.

  I wanted to be embarrassed, but I couldn’t be. It was adorable and he loved it. Plus, when I was in my early twenties I met Vince Neil at a restaurant. After politely saying hello, he excused himself to the “little boys’ room,” to which I responded by excitedly shouting the lyrics to “Smokin’ in the Boys Room” right to his face. At least now I knew where I got it.

  Luke’s tour manager reminded him that he had a show to do, so we took a photo with him and headed out to our seats. It’s slightly annoying that you can’t see my cowboy boots in this picture.

  The rest of the night was really fun; he put on an amazing show and my mom and I sang our hearts out. We have equally terrible voices.

  After the concert, my mom thought maybe I should text the tour manager to see if there was an after-party.

  “Did you just say after-party?” I asked. First she said “tits,” now, “after-party”? It was like the world as I knew it was ending.

  “Yeah, we are groupies now, you need to learn the lingo,” she explained.

  We opted against actually trying to track down an “after-party,” mostly because my mom had been so well behaved and I didn’t want to watch her go off the deep end. We went back to the hotel and checked to see if the bar was open for a nightcap, but it was closed. So we went back upstairs and got in bed.

  “Oh my God, Luke Bryan tweetered about me!” my mom yelled from the double bed next to me.

  “What? It’s tweeted. And . . . you have a Twitter account?”

  “Yeah but I don’t twat—”

  “TWEET.”

  “Well I don’t tweet, I just use it to follow you and Luke. But, look!”

  I had tweeted that we had a great time at Luke’s show and he wrote back, “Thanks, darlin’, your momma is the best.”

  “See! He tweetered about me!”

  “He called me darlin’,” I marveled.

  We both went to sleep with big smiles on our faces.

  The next morning, I drove my mom back to Arkansas, then boarded a plane home to Los Angeles. As the plane took off, I thought about the previous night. Of all the relationships that I worry have suffered because I haven’t been around to put the time into them, it had never occurred to me that my mom might be one of them. But spending time with her like that made me crave more of it, and I made a note to myself to remember the feeling I had that weekend. For the first time in a while, I’d had fun. I’d felt happy.

  I walked into my apartment and went right to bed—that night, I didn’t need a cigarette or a glass of wine to get me to sleep.

  Reverse Catfishing

  To celebrate my upcoming thirty-ninth birthday (which everyone would be out of town for), I went out to dinner with three of my closest girlfriends: Jackie, Tilley, and Erika, the same three girls who came over when I had to have my cat murdered—see, we do fun things together, too! I’ve known all of them for a very long time, so it’s interesting to look around the table at that point in our lives and see how each person’s life has changed.

  Jackie and I met when we were both bartending. She got married once, on a whim in Mexico, way too quickly, and ended up sleeping on my couch for a while during the divorce—which wasn’t really a divorce because their marriage wasn’t even legal in the United States. She was always attracted to the kinds of guys who don’t make great boyfriends (no car or job or the ability to fill out proper paperwork to get married in Mexico). But she grew out of that and is now with the man who I believe is her soul mate. They even have this whole sappy romantic story about how they dated many years ago and found each other again. It’s pretty gross. But it’s also pretty great.

  Tilley has had a few serious relationships but none that were ever quite the right fit. She came close a couple times, but there was usually something that kept the relationship from being “the one.” But she’s now married to “the one” and happy as can be. Her husband is truly her partner and best friend in every way. They have great conversations, they have great sex (from what she tells me; I haven’t watched or anything), and they even take spin classes together, which I do like to make fun of because I think that couples who work out together are assholes.

  And Erika has been single for quite a while but has recently started dating someone she has known for many, many years and is happier than I’ve seen her in any previous relationship. He also seems very happy and he seems to worship her, which I approve of wholeheartedly.

  So, at this table full of close friends, I was the odd one out with no husband, no boyfriend, and no prospect in the wings. I don’t mind being the single friend most of the time, I really don’t. It
only bothers me occasionally, when a voice creeps into my head and says, “What if you just never meet anyone ever again?”

  That exact thought ran through my mind as we sat, sipping cocktails, celebrating the final year of my ability to turn an age that begins with the number “three,” when the subject of my dating life inevitably came up.

  “It’s just impossible for me to meet people,” I explained to my three friends as if they hadn’t heard this speech before. “Seriously. Impossible.”

  “I don’t think it’s impossible,” Tilley replied.

  “It is,” I said, hoping to put an end to this particular conversation.

  “I think you could meet someone if you wanted to,” Jackie chimed in.

  “Me too,” Tilley agreed.

  “Where?” I asked, annoyed. “At a comedy club? When I’m working? That’s not the way to meet people. It’s work.”

  “Well, you met that one guy in Florida who told you to get his dick,” Jackie said.

  “Yes. And that little romp scarred me for life. Sometimes when I go to sleep I hear that weird voice in my head saying, ‘Get that dick, get that dick,’ and I break out into a cold sweat.”

  “There have to be places where you can meet someone,” Tilley said, pressing me.

  “Okay, where? On the plane on my way home from a gig? That only happens in movies with Meg Ryan and her previous face.”

  “I agree with Colonna,” Erika interjected. “I was not meeting anyone anywhere. The only reason Derek and I worked out is because we’ve known each other for years.”

  “You’re both wrong,” Tilley said as she sipped her white wine. “I bet you could meet someone if you wanted to. I think you’re just closed off to it.”

  It occurred to me that Jackie said basically the same thing to me in Cabo. But I wasn’t about to bring that up. So instead I said: “I’m not closed off to it! I just don’t want to date another comic or an audience member or a gay male flight attendant. And for the past three years or so, those are the only people I meet.”

  “Because you’re closed off to it,” Jackie threw in.

  “Isn’t this supposed to be my birthday dinner? Can we change the subject?”

  “What about online dating?” Tilley asked.

  “Okay, I guess we can’t change the subject,” I sighed.

  “Seriously,” Tilley went on, “lots of girls I know at work meet guys online all the time.”

  “It’s too much work. I don’t have time to sit on my computer and make fucking pen pals.”

  “Then let me do it for you,” Tilley offered.

  “Yeah right,” I laughed.

  “I’m dead serious.”

  “You want to go online and pretend to be me? Isn’t that ‘catfishing’? I’ve seen that shit on MTV and it never works out well.”

  “Well, it’s not really catfishing because you’d actually show up on the dates. When people catfish they’re pretending to be someone that doesn’t exist,” Erika explained, sort of.

  “So it’s reverse catfishing,” I said.

  “I think so,” Jackie said. We were all confused.

  “Call it whatever you want, just let me do it,” Tilley demanded. “For three months, let me run your dating life. I’m going to use online dating sites, talk to matchmakers, find out about social events where you can meet people . . .”

  “Wow, it sounds like you’ve thought about this for a while,” I told her. “Which is both sweet and creepy.”

  “I have thought about it; I just didn’t think you’d let me do it.”

  “Well, I haven’t said yes yet,” I reminded her.

  “It’s easy! I’ll do everything. You just have to show up on the dates I set up and you have to do what I tell you to do. You have to be open to different things that are out of your comfort zone. For six months, just let me—”

  “Wait, a minute ago you said three months!”

  “I know, but I’m going to need six months. It’s going to be a process,” she said. She had switched into Business Tilley, the organized, strategic Tilley who has a huge job in a giant corporation—the Tilley whom none of us see that often.

  “Is this what you’re like at work?” Jackie asked.

  “I guess so,” Tilley laughed.

  “No wonder you have such a good job. You’re scary,” I told her.

  “So are you in?” she demanded.

  “I think you should let The Advisor do this,” Erika suggested, referring to Tilley’s nickname.

  “The Advisor” was a name we came up with for her during a girls’ weekend in Palm Springs. Tilley, always very careful to protect her face from the sun, walked out to the pool at the house we were renting wearing one of those giant visors I’ve only ever seen gardeners and little old Asian ladies wearing. We all made fun of her while she delicately climbed onto a raft and floated around with her face well shaded.

  “Whatever, laugh all you want. We’ll see who still looks good in twenty years,” she said, unfazed by our teasing.

  Later that afternoon, we sat by the pool discussing one of the other girls’ relationship problems. Tilley got very serious at one point and began breaking down the reasons behind the girl’s current issues, and as usual, she was spot-on. By the time she was finished, the girl was on the phone with her boyfriend and they were having a great, honest conversation.

  “You’re really good at giving advice,” Jackie marveled.

  “Seriously, you’re a really good ad-visor,” Erika laughed. “Get it? Ad-visor !”

  We all thought this was the funniest thing in the world, immediately dismantling Tilley’s hard work and insight, going right back to making fun of her hat and suggesting she open up a little booth with a sign that said THE ADVISOR on it.

  But I agreed with Erika. If anybody could find the right guy for me, it was The Advisor.

  “Okay, fine. I’m in,” I promised her. “But only because your neck veins are kind of bulging right now and I’m afraid to say no.”

  “Ha ha, very funny,” she said as she signaled the waiter to bring us another round of drinks. “This is going to be great. You have to do what I say, though. Promise?”

  “I promise,” I laughed. I actually kind of liked the idea of someone doing all that work for me and just telling me where to be and who I’d be meeting. Plus, what did I have to lose?

  “Awesome,” Tilley said, pleased. “I’m going to need your credit card information.”

  “Wait, why?”

  “To join a couple of dating websites, dumbass. We aren’t going the ‘free profile’ route—you’ll never meet anyone that way.”

  “Okay. Just don’t put me on FarmersOnly or anything weird like that.”

  “If I was single I would totally be on FarmersOnly,” Erika interjected. “I wouldn’t mind dating a farmer. You’d always have nice vegetables.”

  “But you’re not a farmer,” I explained.

  “You have to be a farmer to be on that website?” Erika asked.

  “Yeah. That’s why it’s called FarmersOnly,” I explained, “because it’s for farmers. Only.”

  “Ohhhhh, I just thought it was a place you could meet farmers if you wanted to,” Erika went on.

  “You’re thinking of JDate. You don’t have to be Jewish to find a Jew on that site; farmers are clearly more exclusive,” explained Jackie.

  “Don’t worry, I won’t put you on there. I’m going to research the ones with the best success rates and go from there.”

  “How’ll you have time to do all of this?” I asked.

  “I’ll do it at night. I’m going to get Thomas”—Thomas is Tilley’s husband—“involved. He loves this kind of shit. We’ll drink wine and look at guys’ profiles for you.”

  “That sounds romantic,” I said.

  “It’ll be nice bonding t
ime for us.”

  The night rounded out with the four of us going to our favorite old local spot in Hollywood and getting really drunk. You know, like adults.

  A couple of days later, Tilley e-mailed me. “What is the last book you read? And don’t ask any questions, just answer.”

  Geez, she is really bossy. And I like it.

  “Home Front by Kristin Hannah,” I wrote back. “I would ask how you’re doing but you told me not to ask any questions.”

  “I forgot to put ‘smart-ass’ in your ‘About Me’ section.”

  About a week later, Tilley called me. Since she’s well aware I’m not a phone person, I figured she had news.

  “What’s up?” I answered.

  “Okay, we’ve got a couple of things brewing here: a couple of guys who seem pretty awesome. One of them is going to text you. I’ll send you all of your correspondence with him so far so you know what you guys have talked about.”

  “This is so weird but also amazing.”

  “I know. I’ll also send you a picture of him now that you’ve agreed to go out with him. Remember to keep an open mind,” she warned me.

  “Well, that doesn’t sound good.”

  “That’s not what I mean. He’s cute, he’s just not your typical type, but that’s good because your typical type usually turn out to be assholes.”

  “Ugh, okay. Can you just tell me what you mean by ‘cute’?” I asked.

  “I just sent you the picture. Look at your e-mail.”

  “Okay, stay on the phone with me,” I said as I walked over to my computer and opened the e-mail.

  “Well?” she asked impatiently.

  “Hmmmm. I don’t know. I mean, I guess he’s kind of cute? But he looks like he might be pretty chubby. Is there a full-body photo on his profile?”

  “No.”

  “Exactly. He’s hiding something. And that something is his body.”

  “Well, he might be a little chubby but that’s okay. You’re branching out. No more athletes. No more guys with six-packs.”