“So, a few teaspoons, then?”
“At least.”
“Do you use the light mayonnaise or the regular?”
“I like the light, but not the ‘spread’—you have to get the one that actually says ‘light mayonnaise’ on the front. Don’t get the spread.”
Great, not the spread. Now we’ve had enough chicken-salad talk. Right?
Wrong.
“I’m doing the no-carb thing, though, so can I have that?”
“Mayonnaise? Sure. It’s, what? Oil? Protein?”
“But is milk a carb?”
“Milk? I think so. But there’s no milk in mayonnaise.”
“Mayonnaise is dairy-free?”
Jesus H. Christ on a low-fat Triscuit. I looked down at the picnicking couple on my napkin and wondered whether they had chicken salad in that basket, and if so, whether they were anywhere near this excited about it.
“So you’re saying shred the chicken, don’t chop it?”
“Shred it. Always shred it.”
Me: “Oh my God.”
Marge and the person beside her looked at me. Had I said that out loud? I hadn’t meant to be rude. But whatever mechanism I’d once had inside my brain that allowed me to tolerate small talk had broken. I couldn’t pretend to give a shit about chicken salad any more than I could find the right moment to jump in and add to the conversation or change the subject. And the longer I sat there, frozen, the more irritated I became. I had to concentrate to keep from shaking my head, no no no, to keep from yelling, SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP. The conversation shifted from chicken salad to organic soap, then to the best way to cut an apple. Fifteen minutes in, I wanted to scream, “Is anyone having some genuine feelings about something? Does anyone have something fascinating or funny or weird to discuss? Did anyone do anything today?”
John was already in bed when I got home. Taking off my shoes and earrings and flinging them on the floor, I whispered, “What is the point of having people over if you’re just going to sit there and talk about nothing the whole time?”
I raged on. These women were smart, I knew that. They’d grown up various places, gone to different schools, had all sorts of challenging, interesting jobs. They watched the news. We all did. We all existed on the same planet as Beyoncé, Bill Gates, J. K. Rowling, and a million other less famous but still fascinating humans who were doing and thinking and making things. There was endless conversation fodder available to us, but their talk had turned as bland as an unseasoned lump of chicken salad itself. What the hell? Had they all suffered head injuries?
Something had changed these women from how they’d been before to how they were now. I didn’t want to see it, but it was right there: They had become mothers. That was the connection that had brought us together—everyone had kids in preschool. I didn’t know most of these people very well, but I’d known of them for a long time, in that way you’re vaguely familiar with people your same age who live in the same place. I’d seen them over the years going to work, at coffee shops, at concerts, in the airport. Had they always been this obsessed with chicken salad, and were they just now seizing the moment to air their concerns? Or had starting their families caused them to shift their attention exclusively homeward, away from everything else?
No, I thought. I must be wrong. That can’t be it. I don’t want this cliché to be true. It’s too silly and old-fashioned, exactly the kind of stereotype that would get me riled up if someone else said it. This isn’t something I believe. I don’t believe women get less interesting once they have children. I don’t believe being part of a family means you’re not still part of the world. I don’t believe caring about what you put on the table means you don’t care about anything else. I don’t believe any of that, but I’m seeing it, and I hate it. C’MON, gals, I need you to fight this tired old narrative with me. Please don’t sink into the chicken salad. It’s like quicksand!
I delivered this soliloquy with my toothbrush in hand.
John cocked his head, unsure whether or not to laugh.
I heard myself ranting. I sounded insane. Who gets that pissed off about an evening of dinner chitchat? There’s absolutely nothing wrong with talking about chicken salad. Maybe there was something wrong with me.
* * *
Look, I don’t want to have heart-to-hearts with everybody all the time. Anyone with even an ounce of introversion would agree that constant, deep conversation would become exhausting. Small talk has a function: to pass a short span of time with pleasant sounds instead of awkward silence. It would be unsettling and off-putting if someone you didn’t know looked at you over their phone in line at Starbucks and said, out of nowhere, “Greatest joys and deepest disappointments of your past year, go!” or, “Here’s a hilarious yet touching story about my parents that reveals my true apprehensions about growing old.” You shouldn’t do that any more than you should walk into a party and yell, “I’M ALLERGIC TO LATEX—GUESS HOW I KNOW?” or “ONE OF MY NIPPLES IS ALWAYS LOOKING SIDEWAYS.”
People who are good at small talk have a handy knack for greasing the gears of social interaction among strangers, and that’s useful. I wish I were better at it, truthfully. But when small talk starts replacing real talk, you start to feel like you’re among strangers even when you’re among friends. I was in a phase of life that required a certain amount of socializing, floating around in blobs of people waving and smiling courteously. I needed my other interactions to balance those out. To offer some real connection, some meaning.
More so than ever before, I missed my college friends. Whenever I could, I schemed to go visit them or get them to come visit in Atlanta, so we could stay up and hash out life in brutal detail. I missed the debates in class and confessions in the dorms and dreams in the dining hall—and not because I missed being in college. I missed feeling known. I missed knowing what the people around me thought, wanted, needed. Whenever we got together, we clicked back into that gear, and our conversations hummed and sparkled.
I knew college was over. I knew that one of the reasons we talked so much when we were younger was that we needed to figure out who we were and what we believed—we needed to hear it out loud, change it a little, hear it again. I knew time was at a premium and life was more complicated nowadays; there was less time available for talking. But didn’t the very fact that life was more complicated now mean we had more to talk about, not less?
* * *
I don’t know that I’ve ever liked small talk, but I do know I used to be capable of it. I used to be able to mm-hmmm and oh, really? my way through anything. But now it made me want to knock over tables. It made me feel like the world around me was tuned to sports radio, and everyone but me knew what it all meant.
Rock You Like a Hurricane
Existential spending doesn’t really cure anything, but it’s an enjoyable—if expensive—way to dilly-dally on the way to doing what you really have to do.
Having just finished a couple of big writing jobs and a volunteer project, I suddenly had more time on my hands than I was used to. The kids were getting older, too, spending more time at school, not depending on me as much. I felt like vapor in need of a shape to contain me. Who was I if I wasn’t that person busy with a hundred tasks and a dozen phone calls to return every day? Who was I if no one needed me to make their lunch anymore? And what good was I—what quantifiable measurement could there be of my worth—without these value systems to calculate it?
These questions didn’t excite me. They terrified me.
But rather than face that terror, I tried to ignore it. I told myself I felt antsy because I was bored. I probably just wanted to have some fun. I deserve a break! I thought. This is what people do after a big job ends! And because I am a relaxation-challenged soul who doesn’t know how to simply unwind, I chose a mode of fun that also felt a bit like work: learning a new instrument.
I bought a guitar.
In another version of this story, the guitar-acquiring narrator might be a guy who’d be
en in a band in high school but then became an accountant who always dreamed of the parallel life he might have lived if he had followed his ambitions, so to reclaim his youth he goes and buys a Stratocaster and sets up speakers and amps in his garage, and now he plays “Come Sail Away” in there and cries. This is not that story. I had no rock-band past. My love of music has always been from the outside, as a fan. The only music I had ever produced growing up was as a classical pianist, and I’m sorry to say that I hated it. If I never play another piano scale in my life, I’ll be damn glad. But I have always loved the feel of guitar sound vibrating in my bones at a concert. I craved the ability to make that sound myself.
Okay, I admit I did have fantasies. Not that I would be famous, more that I would discover some latent talent that would propel me into the social circle of the bands I listened to on the radio. I imagined Brandi Carlile, one of my favorite singer-songwriters. The first time I saw her play live, she wore a red bandana tied around her bicep and a black leather vest, and she had the voice of an angel who had just washed down a handful of gravel with a shot of whiskey. She was the human embodiment of cool, a model of courageous self-expression. So sometimes, when I envisioned playing my own guitar, I liked to imagine that if Brandi and I met, we’d find that we had similar artistic sensibilities. She would probably decide we should be a traveling folk-rocker-chick duo and I’d start wearing a red bandana around my bicep just like she does, and we’d be gritty yet melodic and everyone would love us and wonder why we hadn’t paired up sooner. And we’d say, “Hey, it’s like we were climbing two sides of the same mountain and we just met at the top.” We’d write lyrics together, and Brandi would tell audiences how, while my guitar skills are indeed passable, what really makes this whole thing click is how I’ve helped her grow as a storyteller. And I’d say, “Oh, please. It’s nothing.” Everyone would chuckle and be enthralled.
That wasn’t my dream, though. It was only a daydream. I really just wanted to see if I could play a few chords.
* * *
I did a lot of research in choosing my guitar. I didn’t want some dinky thing that would fall apart, because I was sure that as poorly as I’d play it in the beginning, I’d probably break it if it could be broken. I also didn’t want a pre-owned instrument, because the germophobe in me couldn’t stand the thought of strumming strings encrusted with layers upon microscopic layers of someone else’s skin flakes. So I quizzed my dude friends from college who were known to occasionally cry over their amps in their garages, and settled on a no-frills Martin acoustic. A review online billed it as “popular and affordable” with “classy looks.” That made it sound like a homecoming queen, but the price was right.
The first time I lifted it out of the green felt lining of its case, I knew I’d done something slightly insane. I did not know how to play this instrument. I did not know how to tune or clean or even hold it. I hoisted it into my lap with my left hand, uncertain where to place my fingertips, resting my right arm along the smooth mahogany of its body. Was I supposed to cross my legs or leave my thighs flat? I inhaled and smelled vanilla, confused. Had I accidentally bought a scented guitar? I later learned that it’s common for new guitar cases to be held together with vanilla-scented glue. At the time, I thought its strange sweetness smelled like a rum drink or old pipe tobacco. It didn’t make sense, but it gave the whole experience an additional exotic allure.
* * *
After picking it up, smelling it, and putting it down for a few days, I finally packed the guitar into my car and drove to the music store where I had gotten it. I walked in, set my case on the floor, and pointed to it. “I need a teacher,” I said, “and I don’t even know how to hold this thing.” That’s how I found Robert.
* * *
Robert sported sandy stubble and a permanent case of bedhead, and his wardrobe comprised of jeans that looked like he’d worn them to dig a trench and a rotating array of Hawaiian-print shirts. To this day, I couldn’t tell you his age. He might have been anywhere between forty and seventy, depending on how much of his facial creasing was due to age and how much to windburn and sun damage. When Robert wasn’t working in the guitar store, he was driving his restored Trans Am—which I knew, because he often made reference to it and pointed out where it was parked outside. I suspect he fixed up that old sports car for some of the same reasons I bought my guitar.
We spent each thirty-minute lesson together in a sound-proofed practice room about the size of a large refrigerator. The first lesson was boring, a guitar anatomy lecture. I learned the names of all the parts—neck, bridge, frets—and how a written chord looked like dots on paper. At the second lesson, Robert handed me a page of music. This was the first song he wanted me to learn: “Rock You Like a Hurricane.”
I laughed.
I don’t rock anything like a hurricane. I can’t wrangle a supersize roll of paper towels without hurting myself. In fact, one reason I chose a guitar is that deep down, I really wanted to learn the cello, but I was afraid if the cello fell over, it would crush me and I’d die. This is what “irony” means, kids: wimpy me, a mild tropical depression at most, Rocking You Like a Hurricane.
But that was my assignment, and I applied myself to it. As I clamped the fingers of my left hand awkwardly on the strings and thumbed the chords with my right, the sound started to come together. This was no Brandi Carlile folk ballad—it was an ’80s metal anthem by a hair band called Scorpions—but still. I was playing guitar!
Suddenly there was so much I wanted to know: Where could I get a book of more guitar music? What was the next song I’d learn? How long until I’d be able to play the guitar while also playing a harmonica strapped to my face like orthodontic headgear?
Robert said it just depended on how much I practiced.
So I practiced. Sitting out on the front steps of our house, I kept my feet supported at exactly the right angle. The sound, instead of bouncing off our kitchen walls, drifted away under the hum of Atlanta traffic. I whispered the lyrics along as I played, like I was in an old-school MTV video:
HERE I AM [strum strum, strum strum strum strum strum] ROCK YOU LIKE A HUR-RI-CANE
I can only imagine what this looked and sounded like to passersby.
At the next lesson, I sat down to show Robert my progress. When I finished playing, he said: “Now do it again, but sit up straight and look up and out. You gotta stop looking down at your hands all the time.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because if you look down, all anyone will see when you’re onstage is the top of your head,” he said.
I loved how he bought into my daydream.
* * *
And I loved having a new hobby to pour my energy into. Maybe playing guitar could be what I needed to settle my anxious brain. Maybe if I had a skill to practice every day I wouldn’t wake up wondering, What now? At the very least, if you only get to live once, you might as well acquire some new skills as you go. Learn an instrument. Add some grapes to the chicken salad, one might say. Try on a new persona. I’ve always loved doing that.
* * *
When I was eight, I begged my mother for one of those premade, all-in-one clown costumes you step into and zip up. This cheap-ass polyester number was garish, shiny, and came complete with a jaunty little hat and a palette of face paint from the seasonal aisle of the drugstore. I honestly can’t believe my mom bought it, because typically when I begged for some flimsy store-bought thing she didn’t go for it. But this time, my dreams came true.
At trick-or-treat time—that most holy of occasions when candy is allowed in massive quantities—I ran from house to house like a maniac. As is my way when I am on foot for any period of time, I tripped. But because it was dark, I didn’t notice that my costume had ripped open at the knees when I fell. And because I was high on mini Snickers, I didn’t realize there was blood streaming from both my kneecaps and splattering all over my shoes. I did sense that something on my legs felt funny, which is why I must have reached down t
o touch them a few times, which is how I managed to cover myself in bloody handprints.
I couldn’t see myself, though, so I didn’t know what I looked like. The only people who did were the ones who could see me—the adults who opened their doors and saw a tiny, tattered, gory, chocolate-toothed clown, standing under their front porch light, grinning and holding out two bloody hands. Good evening, folks. I’ve come to eat you alive.
When I was eleven, I dressed as Muammar Gaddafi. I made the costume out of a khaki outfit, aviator sunglasses, black boots, a liberal dusting of bronzing powder, and a very real-looking fake gun . . . which I carried with me to the festivities at school.
What was I thinking? I don’t know. I remember deciding that the irony of scrawny little me going as an anti-imperialist, militant revolutionary with ties to terrorists was riotously funny. And I know it fit my habit at the time to base a good bit of my elementary-school comedy routine on current events I saw on NBC Nightly News, which I watched religiously because I was in love with Tom Brokaw.
Anyway, I decided that’s what I would be, and nobody suggested it was a bad idea. Not parents, not teachers, no one pointed out that my costume was about a dozen kinds of offensive and totally inappropriate for an eleven-year-old and for school. It was a different time, what can I say.
* * *
My first Halloween in Nashville working at the bookstore, just a few years ago, I dressed as the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I wore black leather and dark lipstick and moto boots and generally channeled investigator/assassin Lisbeth Salander impeccably, right down to the giant black, red, and green dragon an artistic friend drew across my shoulders. I felt dangerous, sexy, and completely unlike myself until the next day, when the semi-permanent markers ran in the shower and left me looking like the Girl with the Terrible Bruise for the rest of the week.
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