by Jenny Lawson
ME: OR? IF YOU PUT A CAT SUIT ON A SMALL MANATEE.
MAILE: I think you’re looking for clues that aren’t there.
ME: I HAVE A BAG FULL OF DEAD CATS. I CAN’T BE EXPECTED TO THINK LOGICALLY. Do you think that woman was thinking logically when she sent me a box of dead cats? You’ve got to think like a serial killer to catch a serial killer, Maile.
MAILE: You think she’s a serial killer?
ME: No. It was a bad analogy. I just meant you have to think like a cat skinner to figure out why you have three cat skins in your garage.
MAILE: Why are they in your garage?
ME: I should keep them in the house? Way to scare the shit out of my cats, bad cat mom. That would be like if you brought home the skins of young children and let your kids see them. Although the cats might take me more seriously when I tell them to stop peeing on the couch if they saw a skinned cat lying around. OH MY GOD, I could totally put one on the couch that Ferris Mewler keeps peeing on and then I’d be like, “YEAH, FERRIS. THAT’S WHAT HAPPENED TO THE LAST CAT WHO PEED HERE.”
MAILE: Is that why your cat keeps glaring at me? Am I sitting on the pee couch?
ME: Just because you mark it doesn’t mean that you own it, Ferris. Stop with the glaring.
MAILE: Ew.
ME: Don’t worry. It’s been cleaned. And I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that Ferris would be like, “All the cats are accounted for and I’ve lived here since the beginning of time. I’m not falling for that,” but here’s the deal: cats have terrible memories. Ferris can’t even remember where the litter box is. Apparently.
MAILE: Actually I’m just thinking that I’d like to move to another couch.
PS: I just went into the garage to find the dead-cat skins so I could include a photo in the book but now I CAN’T FIND THEM. I told Victor I lost some cats in the garage and he was all, “You lost our cats in the garage?” and I was like, “Of course not. How could I lose all three of our cats in the garage? That would make me an irresponsible mother. These cats are already dead.” Then Victor and I had a fight about whether it was more or less irresponsible to lose dead cats, and I won because THESE MOTHERFUCKERS AREN’T GETTING ANY LESS DEAD, VICTOR. Then I called our maid service and told them that instead of cleaning the bathrooms this month I’d prefer for them to just go through our garage and look for dead cats and then the manager called me to tell me that “Merry Maids doesn’t look for dead cats.” They also don’t do windows. I’m not even sure why we have maid service anymore.
Things I May Have Accidentally Said During Uncomfortable Silences
When I worked in human resources we used a technique to get people to admit when they’d fucked up, and it worked so well that people would often confess to things that might not even have been true.
Here’s how it works:
You invite the person in, and after having them sit down you just stare at them expectantly and force yourself to say nothing. Most non-sociopaths have problems with awkward silences and they will fill those silences with incriminating details about whatever it is they assume they’re in HR for. I’m not sure if this technique has a name but I called it “Making-out-with-Alan-Rickman-in-my-mind” because that’s what I usually did during the awkward silences. Regardless, Alan Rickman and I solved a lot of cold cases in HR.
This same technique is used in homicide investigations and by a number of psychiatrists, including my own. I suspect my shrink uses it to get me to admit repressed memories or abuse, but I’m just naturally mentally ill and so instead I end up with rambling non sequiturs that do nothing but affirm that I am not in a psychiatrist’s office by accident.
Things I May Have Found Myself Saying to My Psychiatrist After Brief Awkward Pauses
“I’m having one of those weeks where I just want to rip off my clothes and lie in the street. Is that a medical condition? Because it feels like it.”
“I can taste things with my eyes. Stuff like eye ointment, I mean. I don’t taste solid food with my eyeballs. That would be crazy. But I probably could if I wanted to. Shit. What a terrible superpower.”
“I need to find a skilled arsonist. I don’t necessarily want to burn anything down. I just want to have the option. I need an arsonist on retainer. I’m pretty sure that’s legal as long as I don’t use it.”
“Yesterday I found out that Barack Obama isn’t actually on Twitter. Honestly, I feel betrayed. This is like when Clinton fucked that girl with a cigar. Except worse.”
“My primary thoughts during the holidays are ‘Stab. Stab. Stab. Run away.’”
“I’m mad at everyone who never told me about House of Pies.”
“I spent last night cleaning up nine-year-old vomit. The vomit of a nine-year-old, that is. Not vomit that’s nine years old. I’m not that bad at housekeeping.”
“I’m having one of those rare days where I love people and all of the amazing wonder they’re capable of and if someone fucks that up for me I will stab them right in the face.”
“Victor hates Christmas. He says that the problem with nativity scenes is that there aren’t enough samurais in them.”
“I finished the Bible last night. Spoiler alert: Jesus doesn’t make it. Or maybe he does, now that I think about it. I may have stopped reading too soon. In my defense though it was getting really depressing. Honestly, that book is my Waterloo. But I guess technically Jesus didn’t die. He just faked it. Or maybe it was a dream sequence. Or possibly he’s a zombie or something? But it’s confusing because Jesus died for our sins but God didn’t accept his death, so does that mean that our sins are still all outstanding? And when I say ‘outstanding’ I mean that they’re like … still on the books. Not like ‘AWESOME! THOSE SINS ARE OUTSTANDING!’ Some people think stuff like that is sacrilegious but I’m pretty sure Jesus would think this shit was hilarious. Plus we could bond over how shitty it is to have your birthday so close to Christmas.”
“I hate it when it’s too hot for a blanket because I have this phobia that I’ll float up onto the ceiling without it and then I’ll get chopped up by the ceiling fan. That’s totally normal, right?”
“I mispronounced my own middle name until I was twenty-two. It’s Leigh. I pronounced it ‘Leia.’ Like the princess. I also purposely mispronounced my last name from sixth grade on because it was Dusek and the Czech pronunciation had it start with ‘Douche.’ I might “have gotten away with it but my sister and my mom (the lunch lady) pronounced it correctly. I told everyone at school that they just had lisps.”
“I saw Anne Frank trending on Twitter and I thought she’d died. Again. Turns out it was the person who found her diary that died. She’s fine. And by ‘fine’ I mean ‘still dead.’ Not that I think that it’s fine that she’s dead. I just think it’s fine that she’s not back from the dead. No one needs an Anne Frank zombie.”
“On the way in here I saw a cloud that looked like a skull. My first thought? Death Eaters.”
“How am I feeling? I’m sort of in the mood to feel righteously indignant but I don’t have anything worth getting indignant about. I guess I’m mad that people aren’t stupider when I need them to be.”
“Is it normal to regret not making a sex tape back when you were younger and your boobs still pointed vaguely at the ceiling when you were lying on your back? Because I feel like no one ever talks about that.”
“Why do they call them ‘map colors’ instead of ‘colored pencils’? Who colors maps? Who buys black-and-white maps? Why doesn’t anyone ever answer my questions?”
To her credit, my psychiatrist almost never seems shocked or surprised and usually just follows up with a calm “And how does that make you feel?” or “Tell me more.” To her discredit, she’s probably just thinking about making out with Alan Rickman and isn’t paying any attention to what I’m saying at all. I’ve considered testing this by admitting to murdering my neighbors and burying them in my basement, but I haven’t actually done this because a tiny part of my mind is worried that ma
ybe I have murdered my neighbors and buried them in my basement. It’s doubtful though because I don’t even have a basement, so it would be easy to prove my innocence if my doctor was actually listening. Unless I really do have a basement and I’ve just repressed it to save my brain from remembering all the dead people I’ve buried there. So basically I can’t test my doctor to see if she’s imagining Alan Rickman naked because it’s possible that the basement I don’t have is filled with people I don’t remember murdering. And this is exactly the kind of thing that I should bring up in therapy. Right after I make sure we don’t have a basement.
My Skeleton Is Potaterrific
When I was in junior high most of the girls in my class were focused on the Three P’s: popular, pretty, and petite. It was obvious I had no chance at succeeding at any of these so I considered creating my own Three P’s. I’d inadvertently cornered the market on “peculiar” but I couldn’t think of any other good “P” words.
My mom suggested “papillose,” which means “possessing nipples,” but I thought this was aiming rather low, even for me. She offered up “palmiped” (web-footed) and said if my dad glued my toes together in his taxidermy shop no one would ever suspect it was fake. Probably because most people don’t intentionally fake having webbed toes. She also offered “pecorous” (full of cows) and “potaterrific,” which isn’t even a real word but “is great fun to say.” (And it is. Say it. Potaterrific. It’s awesome.) Then I gave up, but not before making a mental note that my mom is fairly unhelpful at superficial popularity advice, and incredibly dangerous at Scrabble.
When I was in eighth grade all of the popular girls in my class had an exclusive slumber party weekend, and a few weeks later they all ended up with scabies. If you don’t know what scabies are you should just stop reading here because it’s so gross you’re going to want to burn your house down. Scabies are tiny creatures that burrow under your skin, lay eggs, and set up camp inside your flesh. They make lice look like a summer breeze, and the same infection in animals causes mange. You’d think all the cool kids getting infested with flesh-eating parasites would be a great equalizer, but most of them wore it as an outward sign of having attended an exclusive event where the party favors happened to be real-life cooties. Suddenly bug infestations were the new friendship bracelet and some people even took to pretending to have scabies in order to fit in with the cool kids. People were literally bragging about internal bug infestations THAT THEY DIDN’T. EVEN. HAVE.
And that’s when I realized that popularity is a big bunch of bullshit.
Recognizing that popularity is sometimes the equivalent of human mange sort of cured me from wanting it. But I still struggled with the other P’s: petite and pretty. I’m okay to look at but there’s nothing particularly striking about me. Growing up, my little sister was golden haired and blue eyed, and perfect strangers always said she looked “angelic” and jokingly threatened to kidnap her. (Which is a weird joke and one that you people need to stop making. It’s on par with “I just want to eat you up,” which is a lot like “Just looking at you is turning me into a raging cannibal.” Please stop that. It’s creepy.) I, on the other hand, was continually being told, “You look just like your father” (a large, intimidating, and heavily bearded man usually covered in blood).
The thing I hear most often now is “Don’t I know you?”
You don’t.
I just have that kind of face. This was especially shitty in college when I was forever being mistaken for another girl on campus who apparently looked just like me and had a similar first name. I never met her but she was apparently quite well-known, and strangers would smile and wave and ask me if I had a cigarette. I’d explain, “That’s not me. I don’t even smoke. You’re thinking of another girl who looks just like me,” and then the stranger would think I was fucking with him or was just really selfish with my cigarettes. I was sometimes a little jealous of this other, more dangerous me who was always getting high fives for stealing frat mascots and winning at drinking games while the real me was buried deep in the library. But then the other me started sleeping with married men and selling drugs. I wanted to find other-me, shake her, and say, “You have to stop this. This isn’t us,” but I never ran into her. I did, however, run into several angry, accusing people whom she’d wronged and who never believed that I wasn’t me, and I sort of resented my doppelgänger for pulling me into her mess. Eventually I decided to take matters into my own hands, telling strangers who insisted they’d had a drunken hookup with me that they should get tested for a particularly virulent strain of herpes. Random people would stop me on the sidewalk to quietly ask if I was “holding” and I’d tell them that new regulations stated that I had to inform them that I may or may not be an undercover cop and then I’d ask them exactly what they wanted. “YOU HAVE TO TALK LOUDLY SO THAT THE MICROPHONE PICKS IT UP,” I’d enunciate slowly, pointing to my chest as they quickly walked away. I heard that the other me moved the next semester (possibly because of those baffling herpes/undercover cop rumors she may have kept hearing about herself) and I never saw her, which was sad because it would have been interesting to see if the other me looked as nondescript as I do. Although now that I think about it, I probably saw other-me all the time and just never even noticed her.
I try not to get caught up in appearance issues though because my grandmother always used to say, “It’s what’s inside that counts.” And that’s probably true because with my luck my best feature would be hidden deep, deep inside my body. I suspect my best feature is my skeleton, which is a shame because it might be the most elegant and hauntingly graceful skeleton ever but I’ll never get complimented on it while I’m still fleshy enough to appreciate it. That’s why I’d like people to say “Nice skeleton” to me now. Just give me the benefit of the doubt, you know?
I’ve started handing out similar compliments to strangers, but not about their skeletons, because that would seem disingenuous or even sarcastic since I’m already pretty sure I have the sexiest skeleton ever. It’s dead sexy. See what I just did there? I credit my skeleton with that joke. Clever and beautiful. No, instead I say things like “I’d wager you have an exquisite pancreas.” Or “I bet your tendons are fantastic.” People are usually so overwhelmed that they move away very quickly or tell me they don’t have any money on them. No one is ever prepared to accept compliments from strangers about their internal organs, which just goes to show how seldom we compliment them.
Souls are sort of the exception to the rule here. People are always complimenting “old souls” or “beautiful souls” or “unblemished souls,” but that seems like a cop-out because souls are totally invisible and never end up in bathing suit competitions. Still, people are super-focused on souls, always trying to win them over for their particular god or sacrificing them to volcanoes or gambling them to win golden fiddles from the devil. I mean, souls are fine but they’re a bit overrated. Like clavicles. Or the ability to roll your tongue. They’re important but we’re ignoring a lot of other parts that are probably just as compliment-worthy and sexy because we’re too busy complimenting firm pecs and thin waists and untarnished souls. Branch out a little, is all I’m saying. It couldn’t hurt. I bet your small intestines are adorable.
Of course, now that I’ve written about how awesome my insides are I realize I’ve just made my eventual skeleton incredibly tantalizing to grave robbers and so now I’m going to have to make booby traps to protect my dead body. Like maybe I should plan to get buried in a coffin full of glitter because that way if anyone in the future digs me up they’ll be like, “What the fuck? Is that glitter? That shit never goes away. Fuck that noise. Let’s just rob the guy next to her.” (Sorry, Victor.) That’s how I’d keep grave robbers out. And if I get cremated I’ll have the undertaker leave my ashes way at the bottom of my glitter-filled coffin so even if someone does decide to dig in they won’t find me until they’re beard-deep in glitter. And then there’ll be a note in my ashes that says, “AND THAT’S WHAT
HAPPENS WHEN YOU ROB GRAVES, MOTHERFUCKER.” Or maybe I’ll put a smaller coffin in my coffin and a smaller one in there and it’ll keep going like Russian nesting dolls and in the smallest coffin would be a sealed envelope covered in tiny specks and a slip of paper that says, “Congratulations. Now you’ve got scabies.” It’ll be like when your parents give you the biggest present at Christmas but you unwrap it and there’s a smaller present inside and that keeps happening until you have a mountain of wrapping paper, some new socks, and a lot of unresolved anger. And that’s exactly what it’s going to be like when people try to disturb my corpse. Except instead of new socks they’ll get glitter and scabies. Worst. Christmas. Ever.
* * *
I’ve tried many torturous techniques to make my outsides fit the ridiculous standards society has set but it never ends well because my body lives in reality and it’s a reality that has too much cheese in it.
“I blame Photoshop,” my friend Maile once told me. “I use Photoshop to make my waist smaller and my neck longer and then I feel like I need to make those things happen in real life so that people on the Internet don’t see me tagged in a non-touched-up picture and say, ‘Oh my God, what happened to you?’ And then I have to pretend I’ve been in a fire or something.”
“Photoshop is a terrible enabler,” I agreed. “I always make myself thinner and my hair less awful if I publish my picture online. And then I want to Photoshop someone else’s upper arms over mine, and soften my knee cellulite, and Photoshop a less-covered-in-cat-fur outfit onto me. It would be easier to just say ‘Fuck it’ and Photoshop a cat falling out of a window on top of my body and then be like, ‘Yep. Perfect selfie. This shit is done. PUBLISH.’”
I shared my grandmother’s platitude about what’s inside counting more than what’s outside and Maile raised her eyebrows in appraisal. “I never thought of it that way,” she said. “Maybe my uterus is stunning.”