by Kari Lizer
“Why do you cry all the time?” he wanted to know.
“Because it’s sad to be poor!” I told him.
It wasn’t long before I could tell my soon-to-be-famous boyfriend was cooling on me. He didn’t think I was that funny anymore, and my constant life dramas were bringing him down. I think he thought dating me would be exotic, like dating a coal miner, but he didn’t enjoy knowing about my car problems and nuzzling up to hair that smelled like happy hour taquitos. The reason I knew this is because I read his diary one weekend when he was off gallivanting with the Breakfast Club. Yes, I did. And what I read in that diary was that he was gracefully trying to get rid of me so he could take up with the costar of the movie he had just started rehearsals for.
No, what I read in that diary was this: “I wish I could run away with soon-to-be-famous actress and just go to a mountain cabin and stay there forever.” It was a long time before I stopped wishing that he and soon-to-be-famous actress would be found mauled by bears in a cabin in Lake Arrowhead.
Listen, I know. I shouldn’t have read his diary. That was wrong. A diary is private, and that was a violation. No good can ever come from reading another person’s diary. I also know that if fifty-year-old me was there, she would have placed her arm around twenty-one-year-old me’s pitiful shoulder and walked her gently away saying, “Hey, Kari. Why do you want to be with a person who doesn’t want to be with you? Come on. Let’s get out of here. You’re not a terrible person. You make some really bad choices, but you’ll grow out of that. Eventually. Embarrassingly late. But it will happen.” But fifty-year-old me wasn’t there. The only person who was there was twenty-one-year-old likely-never-to-be-famous me, so instead of walking away from soon-to-be-famous boyfriend, who no longer wanted to be with likely-never-to-be-famous me, I came up with a really solid plan. I saw a shirt on a rack outside a groovy Venice clothing boutique, and twenty-one-year-old likely-never-to-be-famous me thought, Hey. If I buy that shirt and I look really great in it, maybe soon-to-be-famous boyfriend will like me again! Oof.
It was pink velvet, with gold and silver paint splashed across the front, Jackson Pollock style. The neck was oversized so that it would casually fall off one shoulder, like Flashdance—this was the 1980s, after all. And I decided that piece of clothing would help me belong. The price was $110, more than I’d ever spent on a piece of clothing in my life.
Everything I owned came from a thrift store, and I had a feeling that was exactly my problem. I stuck out like a sore thumb in that group of winners, and my soon-to-be-famous boyfriend needed to believe I was one of them. And to be one of them, I either needed to get famous really fast—which seemed like a long shot, even though Larry Hagman promised to introduce me to his agent—or at the very least, I needed to dress like one of them. If I had this shirt, this fantastic and stylish shirt, it would elevate me to the fantastic and stylish level of the people I was keeping company with; it would be the beginning of my own upward spiral. So I spent $110 of my rent, rat, bird, dog, and cat food money on my new prized possession.
That night I rode my bike slowly over to his house, so as not to sweat. I took a moment to run my fingers through my too-blonde hair and positioned the shirt so that it was hanging off my shoulder, hoping to create the illusion that “I’m such a waif, I can’t keep clothes from falling off my body” (shrunken bird women never go out of style). Living at the beach and spending all that time on my bike would eventually give me squamous cell carcinoma behind my left ear, but at twenty-one, it just left me with an unnaturally awesome tan. Tight white jeans and low white Converse All Stars—I believe I probably peaked physically that night. I rang his doorbell. My soon-to-be-famous boyfriend opened the door, took a beat staring at me, then laughed out loud. “Oh my God. Who threw up on your shirt?”
I sucked in my breath, and then, because I couldn’t do anything else, I laughed too. “I know. Isn’t it funny?” I had to think fast, so I said, “I made it. Today. Art therapy.”
Then he really laughed hard. “You made that ugly thing? You’re insane,” he said.
And then he kissed me. And I thought, Hey. I’ll take it. Ask any comedian. Laughs are almost as good as love.
I hung on for another few weeks, but when a friend accidentally revealed that I lied about making the ugly paint-splattered shirt, soon-to-be-famous boyfriend used that as the excuse for breaking up with me. He gave me a very high-minded speech about not tolerating dishonesty. He said it as though there was a camera on him and this was his Oscar moment. He was noble and self-righteous. Sure, I fibbed about a shirt; he was cheating on me with his costar, and I could have busted him on it. I would have been well within my rights to scream, “How dare you lecture me about dishonesty when you’re plotting your mountain cabin escape with soon-to-be-famous actress, you lying sack of shit!” But I didn’t. I let him be better than me. I let him walk away believing in the character he cast himself as.
I was tired of trying to fit into that group anyway. All that fake laughing was exhausting. I wasn’t even sure I really liked any of them. I don’t think I even liked soon-to-be-famous boyfriend all that much. And the fake orgasms were killing me. I think I was getting vocal nodes from my performances. But at twenty-one, I was only concerned with whether people liked me, not the other way around. Thankfully, I grew out of that. Eventually. Embarrassingly late. I was an embarrassingly late bloomer, which at the time seemed like a terrible tragedy to me. Until now, in my fiftysomethings, when a lot of people are spending time looking in their rearview mirror. I think at the rate I’m going, I should be coming into my own right around sixty, so I’m nothing but grateful.
The road to ninth grade is long and winding, fellow graduates. It’s a road littered with stop signs and potholes and tears.
That would have been a great speech.
Inked
I recently decided the time was right to get a second tattoo. I got my first one when I was younger, at fifty years old. I don’t know why I started inking myself up in my fifties; I never had the urge to do anything particularly daring when I was actually young. I was never the person to dye my hair pink or pierce my nose or sport a Mohawk. My previous rebellions were limited to smoking cigarettes and dating unemployed people.
My first tattoo happened in Las Vegas. I was taking my daughter, Annabel, and a few friends to a Maroon 5 concert for her fifteenth birthday at the Palms Hotel. I didn’t want to venture too far away while the girls were inside, given the unsavory atmosphere outside the concert. There were the usual casino riffraff, people smoking while hooked up to their oxygen tanks, desperate make-out sessions on the seats in front of the video poker machines. I thought maybe I would just have some dinner, but the Palms was also home to the Playboy Club, and for me, the combo of Playboy bunnies being leered at by horny old men and all-you-could-eat sushi left me without an appetite. I didn’t dare drink. I needed to stay vigilant in the event that I had to run to the rescue of my innocent young charges. I don’t like to gamble—it feels like setting money on fire, and I’ve never seen the fun in that. So I wandered around the perimeter of the casino looking for something, anything, to entertain me for the next three hours.
I first stopped in to a psychic who charged me fifty dollars to read my palm. She said my boyfriend and I would soon enter a more serious phase of our relationship and my career would take me to a new city where I would make friends easily.
I certainly hoped she was right about my boyfriend and me; since he didn’t exist, it was definitely time to take things to the next level. As far as my career taking me to that new city, that was going to be a hassle with the three kids in school, but maybe my boyfriend could help scope out some good schools in the area since I was going to be busy with all my new friends. Before I left, she warned me to double up on my birth control—she saw an unwanted pregnancy in the very near future. The drunk at the Wheel of Fortune slot machine could have predicted my future better than that lady, given my sweaty palms from my premenopausal hot flash
and the fact that I was wearing my “nice sweatshirt”—both pretty reliable indicators that I was nobody’s girlfriend and rampant fertility wasn’t really my issue.
Next door to the psychic was a tattoo parlor. I stopped at the window and surveyed the choices of tattoos available. Then, even though I’d never in my life had the slightest interest in a tattoo, I walked inside and asked the young guy sitting at the counter if he could tattoo a peace sign on the inside of my wrist that looked like I’d drawn it on myself with a ballpoint pen.
“Why?” he asked.
“When I was in junior high, I used to draw one on every morning before I went to school, and I told people it was a real tattoo. I think it would be kind of funny to actually have a tattoo that looked like that, you know?”
“No,” he said, obviously not a fan of irony. Or me.
“Well, could you do it?”
“If you want,” he said, as if it were the dumbest request anyone had ever made.
Which was a little interesting, considering the guy had a huge Super Mario covering his right bicep. He told me to fill out the paperwork and he would be able to do it in about thirty minutes. While I was filling out my paperwork, initialing that I understood all the ways in which my tattoo could lead to my death, I eavesdropped on a grungy-looking dude in his early twenties who was perfecting the design for the abstract grid that was going to be inked onto his scrotum. I’m not kidding. He was still unsure whether it would look better placed as a square or tilted so it was oriented more diamondesque if you were looking at it straight on. I couldn’t help it; I had to give him my two cents. I blurted that square or diamond, there was never going to be a person that thought his scrotum looked beautiful, tattooed or not, with the exception of his mother, because she loved all things about him, and I guaranteed if she knew what he was about to do to the sacred space that was carrying her future grandchildren, she would be horrified. My opinion was not appreciated. My tattoo artist quickly rushed over and got going on my peace sign just to get me the hell out of there. As he began, I quickly asked, “If I don’t like it, it’s pretty easy to get these things lasered off these days, right?”
My guy said, “If you’re already talking about getting it lasered off, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it.” But too late. My peace sign took all of about twenty seconds, after which he spread some antibacterial goo on it, wrapped it in Saran wrap, and told me to stay out of Jacuzzis for three weeks. I walked back out into the casino, feeling like a new woman, rubbing the Saran wrap that covered the mark that was so specifically my own.
I never regretted that silly little tattoo. I rub it for good luck, and I like the story that goes with it. Most people don’t even notice that it’s there.
But a lot has happened since then. And while that tattoo was a lark, the one I’m contemplating now is coming from a place of restless discontent. A need to make myself known. The world has changed since my dopey little peace sign, and I don’t feel like keeping quiet or unseen. With this tattoo I must decide upon the word, picture, or symbol I want to show the world that represents what I’m all about. And it’s important because it’s forever. So I started looking on Pinterest to see who I am. I entered the search term female empowerment tattoos. The most obvious things came up: fists in the air, girl power with various spellings, encased in everything from candy hearts to lightning bolts. There were boxing gloves, bloody daggers, and more than anything else, the word pussy worked into a variety of designs and symbols. I have just recently embraced the word pussy—an ironic consequence to a man’s grotesque abuse of the word that created a backlash where we all took the word back for ourselves. So now that I’ve made peace with pussy, I don’t want to subject it to a future where it will someday morph into a greenish-black blob like the Marine Corps tattoo on my dad’s forearm. I’d like to give her a brighter future than that. Also, even though this is an angry time, I have to believe it will pass. It has to. It can’t be sustained. So it feels right to place something hopeful on my body. I want my tattoo to represent my positivity in the world. So I re-searched, adding the words gentle, positive, female empowerment tattoos. This time I got images that seemed closer to the mark: a bird sitting on a wire that spelled out believe. The outline of a cat holding up her little paw and the word persist. I sent these images to Annabel, asking her what she thought.
“Are you really doing this?” she asked. “Is this the time I’ve heard about when the child becomes the parent?”
“Not yet. And yes, I’m doing it,” I replied.
“Okay,” she said. “But keep thinking. Those tattoos are a little basic, you know?”
I did know. Only because not long ago I was sitting with her brother Elias and a couple of his friends, visiting him at school in Boston, when they used the word basic about a girl they all were friends with. I asked what they meant by it. “It’s nothing bad. It’s just, you know, like a twenty-year-old in Starbucks who wears UGGs and Lululemon yoga pants and drinks pumpkin lattes. Basic.” I still wasn’t really getting it because, honestly, that all sounded great to me. I only understood the full meaning later when I was back at my hotel. I went down to the bar, where the clientele was too young for me not to be noticed. When the bartender asked what she could get me, I ordered a chardonnay and a kale salad with grilled chicken, which I then took up to my room so I wouldn’t miss Rachel Maddow—it was then I realized for a white woman in her fifties, I was as basic as basic gets.
Maybe that’s my tattoo: a tramp stamp that just says basic.
I could do something for my children, a nest with three little eggs. Or an empty nest. No, too sad. And enough about them. Not everything has to be for them. I’m a person separate from them, aren’t I? Am I?
I remembered my friend, a hospice chaplain, saying everyone should have DNR tattooed on their chests so the paramedics know you don’t wish to have extraordinary lifesaving measures performed should you keel over in your kitchen and not have anyone around to make your wishes known. Good sensible idea, but no. No. This tattoo was about identity, not death. How about a typewriter? A pen. The state of California. A dog paw. Comedy and tragedy masks. A chicken. How about the sun? Everyone likes the sun. But skin cancer. The moon. Who am I?
Okay, so maybe not a picture. Maybe a word. If there were one word that summed me up it would be… hungry. Hot—not as in sexy, just overheated. How about cranky? This is why I never got a personalized license plate. You see those ones that make you want to rear end someone, like LV2ACT, HTBLND, BSTMMY, FACEDR, or SXYMRS. My tattoo can’t be braggy or nerdy or punny or pompous. Maybe it should be aspirational. The person I want to be. Warrior. Or Zen. Desperado. Maybe something in a foreign language. A haiku. Or the Sanskrit word for justice. Because I’m all about justice. How about just not do it? But it was too late. I already had the appointment. And more than that, the challenge of finding my word or picture or phrase felt suddenly necessary. I must stand for something. I wanted to ask someone who really knew me what they thought I stood for, but I was afraid of what they might say. Most people are not very self-aware, and I suddenly wasn’t sure if I fell into that category as well.
I have a friend who’s always saying, “You know me; I hate confrontation.” This is someone who on any given day is feuding with the majority of her friend pool from elementary school through the present. There is no person I have had more conflict with in my entire life than this person who hates confrontation.
I have a sickly friend who swears every time she comes down with something that “it’s so weird; I’m never sick.” Or the several raging narcissists in my family who are “just sick of doing everything for everybody else all the time.” Which leads me to wonder what delusions I’m harboring.
Also, I was going to have to think very seriously about placement. Getting a tattoo in your fifties is very different from getting one in your twenties. I had to avoid loose and crepey skin, which left me with only a few choice locations these days: my nose, the back of my neck, top of my foot, my
shin, the palm of my hand, the side of my butt, the front of my thigh, the inside of my forearm, or my forehead.
Finally, the day of my appointment arrived, and I still hadn’t landed on the perfect tattoo. Dayton, my youngest son, had some friends over. As I was leaving the house, he told them, “My mom’s getting a tattoo today.”
One of the girls said, “Oh. That’s cool. What’s it going to say?”
I said, “I’m thinking of a heart.”
“Why?” another one of them asked.
“Because, you know, love,” I said, lamely. They stared at me.
“Cool,” the first girl said again. I could tell I was blushing, so I left. I certainly didn’t need to explain myself to them. I certainly couldn’t explain myself to them.
In the end, I went through with it. I decided on a tree. With my lucky number underneath. Because, you know, nature… and my lucky number. It’s on the back of my neck, where I can’t see it. I have to stand with my back to the bathroom mirror and take a picture with my phone, which I then have to zoom in on to see a blurry backward image of my new tattoo. It’s not great. Most of the time nobody else will see it either because my hair will cover it, but I’ll know it’s there.
I sent the final result to Annabel, who wrote back, “You are a badass, Mom.” I could not have asked for anything better than that. Except this, she wants to get a matching tattoo when she comes home for the summer.
My reaction was, “Absolutely not. Tattoos are trashy,” exposing one of my delusions about myself. I would never have described myself as a hypocrite, but there you go.
I Don’t Know Why I Say Hello
I’ve started to realize that my life has become a series of endless endings. My children’s infrequent homecomings are all quickly followed by a relentless series of leavings. Their lives are about hellos right now, so they can’t wait to untangle themselves from my octopus-like grasp and run out into the world that’s so eager to greet them. Hello, love! Hello, Europe! Hello, career! Hello, world! For them it’s all a beginning… and for me, it’s nothing but goodbyes. Goodbye, bread. Goodbye, two-piece bathing suits. Goodbye, fried food, sleeveless shirts, skinny jeans, loud rock concerts, sun exposure, pregnancy scares, driving at night, eating at night, sleeping at night. Goodbye.