Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns)

by Mindy Kaling

  I think Irish exits should actually be de rigueur, except the drunk part. Slipping away is basically all I do now at large parties. My version of an Irish exit has an air of deception to it, because it includes my asking loudly, “Where’s the bathroom?” and making theatrical looking-around gestures like a lost foreign tourist. But then, instead of finding the bathroom, I sneakily grab my coat and leave. Other times I say, “Oh, I think I left my lights on in my car!” or “Oh my gosh, I think I left my car unlocked.” Cars make great pretexts for Irish exits. People never doubt weird issues you have with your car, because it’s extremely boring to listen to.

  The reason I pull Irish exits is not because I think I’m too busy and cool to be bothered with pleasantries. It’s that when there is a gathering of more than thirty people I don’t want to waste your time with hellos and good-byes. I think it’s actually the more polite thing to do, because I’m not coercing partygoers into some big farewell moment with me. Then other people feel like they have to stop what they’re doing and hug me, too. It’s time-wasting dominoes.

  Irish exits are supposed to be subtle, a way to leave without creating a disruption, and yes, on occasion, a way to perhaps escape notice for epic drunkenness. The only snag is you have to be comfortable lying directly to the faces of people you like. There has really been only one time when someone actually busted me on it. It occurred at my friend Louisa’s birthday, on the roof of the Downtown Standard Hotel in L.A. when I was twenty-seven. I was having a crummy time because I was supposed to go with my friend Diana but she couldn’t make it at the last minute because she was going to Burning Man.* Diana was going to be my wingwoman because I knew my ex-boyfriend was coming to the party with his new girlfriend, Chloe.

  A word about Chloe: Chloe was so young (or young-looking) she’d actually played the daughter of an actress four years older than me on a TV show. But the worst thing about Chloe is that she was sweet.

  Chloe approached me.

  CHLOE (shyly): Can I just say you’re my hero? I took the Long Island Rail Road out to see Matt & Ben when I was in middle school.

  Don’t you dare, Chloe. Don’t you dare make it impossible to hate you. Quit looking at me, all earnest, with those Bambi eyes. Also, I’m your “hero”? What am I, ten thousand years old? I quickly said something weird like “Bless you, child,” excused myself, and walked briskly away. I went over to Louisa, who was standing with my friend Pete when I began to initiate an Irish exit.

  ME: Oh man, you know what? I think I left my glove compartment open when I parked here. I’d better go check on it.

  PETE: Just say you’re leaving. We know you’re not coming back.

  Pete read my mind. At that moment, I was actually thinking about which twenty-four-hour taco stand on the drive back home would conceivably accept credit cards.

  A word about Pete: Pete is a very funny, direct, mildly pessimistic guy who’s a great friend because it’s like Larry David is your pal. He’s also one of those guys whose plainspokenness is charming when used on other people, but super irritating when used on you.

  ME: I’m not leaving. Just need to check my car and maybe use the bathroom. Just drinking so much water these days. Health. Ha ha.

  I mimed drinking a long gulp of water to sell the point.

  PETE: Why must you always tell us why you’re going to the bathroom?

  Pete had a point. No one has ever been curious about what people do when they go to the bathroom. It was a sure sign of guilt: giving too much information about my cover story was such an amateur move.

  Ugh! That stupid Chloe threw me off, with her hot youngness and surprising sweetness. Why not just be a total bitch to me like I would’ve been if I had been the hot and young one? Damn it, Chloe!

  Then I got an idea.

  ME: So am I trying to sneak out or am I using the bathroom, Pete? Get your idea of my motivations straight before you accuse me of something.

  I looked around to see if anyone else had noticed my Rainmaker-level-closing-arguments rebuttal. Nope.

  PETE (not budging): You’re obviously leaving.

  ME: Well, would someone who is sneaking out leave their coat here?

  I slowly took off my jacket and, with a flourish, hurled it on a sofa. I looked at Pete triumphantly as I marched out of the room. I was still marching triumphantly as I walked down the hall, past the women’s bathroom, into the elevator, across the lobby of the Standard to the street, where I got into my car and drove off.

  The jacket was from Forever 21. Sorry, Pete, you don’t know the freedom of the seventeen-dollar coat when caught at a party with an ex-boyfriend and his new hot girlfriend. And that, my friends, is how to execute an Irish exit. Thank you, Forever 21!

  *I feel like I’m constantly being ditched for the Burning Man Festival. The Burning Man Festival is an annual festival that is an “experiment in human expression.” Only something reprehensible would be so vague. There are only a few things that I’ve never actually done that I can say I categorically hate. One is Burning Man. The others are sky-diving, ménage à trois, and when parents tell stories about their babies and incorporate impressions of their babies’ voices. I love hearing about your kid! Just use your normal voice!

  Guys Need to Do Almost Nothing to Be Great

  FORGIVE ME, but being a guy is so easy. A little Kiehl’s, a little Bumble and Bumble, a peacoat, and Chuck Taylors, and you’re hot.

  Here’s my incredibly presumptuous guide to being an awesome guy, inside and out. Mostly out, for who am I to instruct you on inner improvement? Let me say here that if you’re some kind of iconoclastic dude who goes by the beat of your own drum, you will find this insufferable. I totally understand this. But why are you even reading this book at all? Shouldn’t you be hiking the Appalachian Trail right now or something?

  1. Buy a well-fitting peacoat from J.Crew.

  Or wait until Christmas sales are raging and buy a designer one, like John Varvatos or something. Black looks good on everyone (Obvious Cops) and matches everything (Duh Police), but charcoal gray is good, too. You can always look like a put-together Obama speechwriter with a classy peacoat. Oh, and get it cleaned once a year. Sounds prissy, but a good cleaning can return a peacoat to its true-black luster, and make you look as snappy as you did on the first day you wore it.

  2. Have a signature drink like James Bond.

  It’s silly, but I’m always so impressed if a guy has a cool go-to drink. Obviously, if it has a ton of fancy ingredients, like puréed berries or whatever, you can look a little bit like a high-maintenance weirdo, so don’t do that. If you like Scotch, have a favorite brand. It makes you look all self-actualized and grown-up. (You don’t have to say your drink order with the theatrical panache of James Bond. That’s for close-ups.)

  3. Own several pairs of dark-wash straight-leg jeans.

  Don’t get bootcut, don’t get skinny—just a nice pair of Levi’s, without any embellishments on the pockets. No embellishments anywhere. At all. Nothing. Oh my God.

  4. Wait until all the women have gotten on or off an elevator before you get on or off.

  Look, I’m not some chivalry nut or anything, but this small act of politeness is very visual and memorable.

  5. When you think a girl looks pretty, say it.

  But don’t reference the thing that might reveal you are aware of the backstage process: e.g., say, “You look gorgeous tonight,” not “I like how you did your makeup tonight.” Also, a compliment means less if you compliment the thing and not the way the girl is carrying it off. So say, “You look so sexy in those boots,” rather than “Those boots are really cool.” I didn’t make the boots! I don’t care if you like the boots’ design! We are magic to you: you have no idea how we got to look as good as we do.

  6. Avoid asking if someone needs help in a kitchen or at a party, just start helping.

  Same goes with dishes. (Actually, if you don’t want to help, you should ask them if they need help. No self-respecting host or hostess
will say yes to that question.)

  7. Have one great cologne that’s not from the drugstore.

  Just one. Wear very little of it, all the time. I cannot tell you how sexy it is to be enveloped in a hug by a man whose smell you remember. Then, anytime I smell that cologne, I think of you. Way to invade my psyche, guy! Shivers down spine central!

  8. Your girlfriend’s sibling or parents might be totally nuts, but always defend them.

  Always. All a girl wants to do is to get along with her family, and if you are on the side of making it easy, you will be loved eternally. It might be easier to condemn them—especially if she’s doing that already—but, remarkably, even if they are murderers, she will find the good in them, especially if you start trashing them. Be the guy who says: “Hey, let’s go visit your brother in prison on prison visiting day.” Most likely she’ll never make you actually do it, and she will always remember you offered.

  9. Kiehl’s for your skin, Bumble and Bumble for your hair.

  Maybe a comb. That is all you need. And when girls look in your medicine cabinet (which they will obviously do within the first five minutes of coming to your place), you’ll look all classily self-restrained because you’ll have only two beauty products. You’re basically a cowboy.

  10. I really think guys only need two pairs of shoes.

  A nice pair of black shoes and a pair of Chuck Taylors. The key, of course, is that you need to replace your Chuck Taylors every single year. You cannot be lax about this. Those shoes start to stink like hell. They cost forty dollars. You can afford a new pair every year. And if you can’t, why can’t you? You have much bigger problems. Stop reading this and go deal with them.

  11. Bring wine or chocolate to everything.

  People love when guys do that. Not just because of the gift, but because it is endearing to imagine you standing in line at Trader Joe’s before the party.

  12. Get a little jealous now and again, even if you’re not strictly a jealous guy.

  Too much, and it’s frightening, but a possessive hand on her back at a party when your girlfriend looks super hot is awesome.

  Non-Traumatic Things That Have Made Me Cry

  I FEEL LIKE WE know each other pretty well by now. You’ve read about African kids bullying me, Broadway plays rejecting me, and my boss throwing me out of my place of employment. When I’ve cried about these things, the pain was real. So I guess I should actually feel grateful for all the times I cried from something that did not scar me emotionally. Isn’t that what makes us wiser, or more interesting, or something? Nietzsche did a whole thing about this. Anyway, in addition to crying at typical girl cry-bait, like The Notebook, I also have been moved to tears by some other stuff, which I’ve listed in no particular order:

  THE PROMISE OF EVAN LIEBERMAN

  Just before Christmastime, when I was twenty-six, I met a really cool guy. I’ll call him Evan. He was in finance and had been the college roommate of my friend Jeff, who worked on a sitcom I loved. Evan was smart, financially stable, and he loved comedy, even though he wasn’t in comedy. We had roughly the same job description, which was that we both worked long hours at jobs we loved. Most notably, Evan was cheerful. It sounds odd, but cheerful is very hard to find in Los Angeles. I think sometimes people think cheerful is a synonym for dumb, so no one is ever cheerful. At that time I remember thinking, I just want to meet a guy who has not been, at one point in his life, diagnosed with clinical depression. That was my only criterion. Oh, and that he wouldn’t make me convert religions if things got serious. (One thing you should know about me: I absolutely refuse to stop being a culturally Hindu, deeply superstitious Christmas tree have-r.) Evan was very exciting. For our first date, he took me to a really cool Korean BBQ place in K-Town he had clearly researched and driven by beforehand. That kind of apparent effort slays me. Over dinner Evan told lots of slightly embarrassing and funny stories about himself. He loved The Office and had seen exactly half the episodes, which was the perfect amount to me, for some reason. He was funny in a natural way. Plus he was super cute, in a “handsomest guy in the AP calculus class” kind of way, if that makes sense.

  Do guys have any real idea how much time girls spend getting ready for a promising date? For my second date with Evan, I spent the afternoon getting my eyebrows waxed and my nails done, and spent a fortune at Fred Segal on a new skirt and even more time making the salespeople all weigh in on it. I honestly don’t understand how people go on dates on weeknights; don’t they want all that fun time before to get ready? I had kept all my best friends updated about my upcoming date in a long and exhaustively detailed e-mail chain with the subject heading: “HOLY SHIT YOU GUYS, MAY NOT TURN INTO A CRAZY JANE EYRE ATTIC LADY AFTER ALL.” I really enjoy all these rituals; it’s part of the fun of having a good date to look forward to. But it takes a lot of time and effort.

  At six-thirty that night, I was standing in my bathroom with my hair in curlers—it’s true: pink curlers, like in a Doris Day movie—when Evan texted (texted!) to cancel dinner because he wasn’t “feeling well.” No details of his sickness, no apologetic eagerness to set a new date, nothing. Just a vague and short text that ended with a . It was less than an hour before he was supposed to pick me up.

  I started crying almost immediately. A remarkable thing about me is that the time that elapses between a sad thought and a flood of tears is three or four seconds. I felt so foolish, having spent so much time (and money!) getting ready. Besides the pain of the rejection, he was also robbing me of a fun evening, getting taken out, a good-night kiss, and of updating my “HOLY SHIT YOU GUYS, MAY NOT TURN INTO A CRAZY JANE EYRE ATTIC LADY AFTER ALL.” correspondence with an exuberant reply-all. It sounds trite, and it is, but it is so hard to meet anyone I would even consider spending time alone with, so it was a painful blow that it was over as quickly as it had begun. I sent a new e-mail to my friends, by only changing the subject heading to “HE BAILED VIA TEXT. CONSIDERING MORPHINE ADDICTION TO EASE PAIN.” My friends all called and texted within minutes with the appropriate “Fuck that guy!” messages.

  As for Evan, I texted back a breezy “No worries! Feel better.” text to save face. Evan thanked me for being cool about it, and I never heard from him again.

  VALET GUYS WHO ARE MY DAD’S AGE

  I can’t even deal with this. When I see a man who is around my father’s age running down the street to get a car, it breaks my heart.

  THE ALBUM GRACELAND

  In 2004, when I started working at The Office and had no friends, I would listen to Graceland and just weep. On the way to work, on the way home. And not just the more ballad-y songs about loss, like “Graceland.” I even cried to “You Can Call Me Al.”

  The secret I learned is that albums that remind me of my childhood happiness make me incredibly sad now. I only have perfect memories of singing along to Graceland with my parents on long car rides to Virginia Beach to visit my parents’ friends. It’s sort of my go-to stock image of my childhood, actually. I think it has something to do with knowing I’ll never be able to go back to that time that makes me cry every time I listen to it.

  DEPRESSING ZEITGEISTY MAGAZINE ARTICLES ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS

  Every couple months or so, some boundary-breaking article comes out in a nationally published magazine. The article makes a big thesis statement about relationships, like, say, how women don’t need men anymore, or how if you’re a woman over thirty-five you should just settle with whatever guy is halfway nice to you, or how monogamy is not feasible or plausible or enjoyable for any human and we should all be swingers, or a study is released that says you don’t have to love your kids anymore or something. They’re the kind of articles that are e-mailed everywhere, and I get them forwarded to me about eight times.

  I’ll read one of these articles, and immediately after I’m so swept up in it that I can’t help but think, Yes, yes, that is 100 percent right. Finally! Someone has confirmed that little voice in the back of my mind that has always not loved my kids!
Or I’m so happy I’m this much closer to that swinging lifestyle I’ve been secretly craving! I’m normal! And now it’s a national discussion, so others agree, and I can feel normal now. But then, a week later, I’m thinking, I hate this. I feel awful. This wretched little magazine article has helped convince more open-minded liberal arts graduates that the nuclear family doesn’t exist without some hideous twist, like the dad is allowed to go to an S&M dungeon once a week or something. It makes me cry because it means that fewer and fewer people are believing it’s cool to want what I want, which is to be married and have kids and love each other in a monogamous, long-lasting relationship.

  MARK DARCY

  All women love Colin Firth: Mr. Darcy, Mark Darcy, George VI—at this point he could play the Craigslist Killer and people would be like, “Oh my God, the Craigslist Killer has the most boyish smile!” I love Colin Firth in everything, even as the obsessed, miffed, tortured non-Ralph Fiennes husband in The English Patient. But the role that makes me cry is Mark Darcy, from Bridget Jones’s Diary.

  When we first meet Mark, he’s kind of a, well, dick. He’s arrogant and judgmental and seems to take himself so seriously. But he is secretly wonderful (and not so secretly gorgeous). There is a part in the movie—I’ve seen it six or seven times, and I swear to God, every time I see it coming, I start tearing up in anticipation—when we first see that Mark Darcy is not a bad guy. In fact, we see that he is the best guy ever.