9:30 p.m.: in the backseat of the cab dissolving three imodium under my tongue just in case.
Wow, remember when I used to be cool!
10:20 p.m.: i know the door guy!
Remember that opening scene in The Social Network where Mark Zuckerberg was trying to shame Rooney Mara for getting their underage asses into a Harvard bar by snarking, “the reason we’re able to sit here and drink right now is because you used to sleep with the door guy!” as if she was supposed to apologize for that shit?! Or, I don’t know, feel ashamed? Let me tell you about a little dream I have called “I Fucked All the Door Guys.” In that magical fantasy world, I never have to stand in an interminable line outside the Promontory while shifting my weight from foot to foot and puffing air into my mittened palms to try to stay warm, or shout “LOOK AT MY NECK” when I get stiff-armed and carded in the doorway at Hopleaf because that grunting ogre barring the entry of regular peasants FUCKED ME ONE TIME, and, sure, he was disappointed, but now he’s not going to make me catch hypothermia. I never tried to sneak into bars when I was an underage child because I never managed to find a fake ID featuring the photo of an unzipped body bag, but I have stood outside on a Thursday night in February in Chicago, huddled with other pigeons pecking around beneath an underperforming heat lamp, and that is an overrated experience. Anyway, that’s why I suggested my friends and I go to a place where I know a guy. We got out of the car, and I nodded at the imposing mountain of outerwear piled on a broken stool outside the door. He grunted and got up to wave us past the line, and I heard some little racist say, “Who the fuck is that bitch, Oprah?” and I yelled, “YES, BEFORE THE MEAT WAGON.”
10:30 p.m.: are there really not any chairs?
We split up: one of my ladies makes a beeline for the crowd surrounding the bar, the one who drank the most of that expensive filtered water goes to find a bathroom, and I start circling the room trying to stake out a seat because I have arthritis in my knees. I knew we should’ve skipped dinner and gotten here before it got dark to snag ourselves a table. Now we have to spend the next hour or two hours or six days hovering anxiously near a table crowded with People Who Look Like They Might Get Up. It may surprise you to know that the seats being occupied by your newly single dad and his middle-management pals are the least likely to become available, despite the fact that they look like they should’ve been in bed three beers ago; those boneheads are gonna be here all fucking night, risking it all (all = a duplex in Aurora with a bored wife and uninterested kids) for a bottle-service waitress with low standards. Better odds are to post up near the table of people screaming in one another’s faces the loudest and having the most visible fun, because there’s likely some cooler place with some hotter people that they have to get to so they’ll be leaving this one we found on our way in any minute now.
I know better. This is as good as it’s gonna get, because it’s at the only place I’m gonna go. Sure, the newest Bears draft pick is at this more exclusive spot I saw on a person’s Instagram, but even if I wanted to go there I would have to chase the bartender down to close my tab, get my coat out of coat check, feel bad because I don’t have paper money to tip the coat check attendant, be COLD and OUTSIDE again, then take my chances getting in somewhere else, only to circle another corner booth like a desperate vulture waiting for a seat that hopefully nobody barfed in. We’re staying.
10:42 p.m.: oh shit.
Those assholes finally left!!!!!!
*knocks half-empty vodka soda glasses onto the floor before sprawling across table*
11:05 p.m.: this music is too loud.
I’M SORRY, WHAT????
11:06 p.m.: i mean.
WAIT, WHAT DID YOU SAY??
11:07 p.m.: i just.
WHO? DID I SEE WHO????? I CAN’T.
11:08 p.m.: bitch, what?
WHISKEY. WHISKEY! YES, JUST GET ME ANY KIND THEY HAVE, IT DOESN’T—
11:15 p.m.: was i ever this young and tolerant?
I ordered a whiskey because you can take the tiniest, most imperceptible sip in front of your friends to prove you aren’t a party pooper and then set that shit down somewhere when they aren’t looking and switch to water for the rest of the goddamn night without these bitches hassling you. “Yeah, I’m partying! I’m having fun! I mean, sure, I’m drinking this eight-dollar Aquafina now, but remember when I had that Jameson?” If you get a High Life, you have to drink the whole damn thing, and even then people will be nudging the next two into your hands before you can catch your breath. The dope shit about being forty at the club is that you and your friends are old enough to have credit cards to open tabs with, but the thing that sucks about that is your body can no longer handle the after-effects of those seemingly unlimited drinks! I love to hand my credit-building, secured Indigo MasterCard to a man with a mustache and a leather bar apron and wave in the general direction of the four people I came with. That is an incredibly powerful feeling. But if I have more than half a beer and two wines, girl, I gotta go sit down somewhere. This is why I love a lounge, because you can sink into a plush banquette in the corner and not move your sloshing stomach around.
11:35 p.m.: oh my goddddd, are you roxane gay??!!??!?!!!?!?!!??!
Yes, I am, sweetie. Get on in here and let’s take this selfie!!
12:15 a.m.: it’s officially the next day.
This is an accomplishment. I was never really a get-home-at-sunrise kind of guy; the minute the sky turns to slate, which is darker than dawn but lighter than dusk and right before the sun starts coming up and you can see how horribly your lipstick aged throughout the night any time your horrifying visage flashes across a reflective surface, despair sets in. And what’s left of the day feels like it’s already lost. What can I reasonably expect to accomplish if I’m going to bed at 7 a.m.? But, for a fleeting moment, hitting midnight is a great fucking feeling: I’m not at home in bed in a sweatshirt, under the covers with a package of Oreos, but it’s also not so late that I feel like I’m going to die.
12:55 a.m.: i’m ready to go.
At this point in the evening, the liquor fairy alights gently upon my shoulder and coos sweetly in my ear, “BITCH, YOU CAN’T AFFORD TO PARTY LIKE THIS,” and the gears in my brain slowly grind into motion, trying to recall exactly how many drinks I’ve had, and how much those drinks cost apiece, and whether or not anyone would notice if I tried to squeeze myself out of the tiny bathroom window and hitchhike home. I don’t feel stupid until I’m locked in a bathroom stall doing drunk calculus on a paper towel to determine if I can pay both my bar tab and my card payment that month. It was cute to throw that flimsy piece of plastic with 67% APR at the bartender two hours ago, but now I can’t find my friends and I know they’ve been running up my bill all night. What if I actually get my cell phone shut off because these bitches are too stuck up for well liquor?
“Three vodkas divided by the light bill times the minimum payment plus cab fare back to my hotel—shit, I gotta go!!”
12:56 a.m.: oh, hey, there’s that baked cheese from earlier.
Seriously, what is my problem? And thank God I’m already in the bathroom.
1:10 a.m.: watching people flirt makes me nervous.
Another side effect of getting older is caring about things. I get emotionally invested right from the jump in whether or not a real love connection is being made, and my skin is crawling with anxiety over whether or not I’m about to suffer vicariously through an awkward rejection. This dude has tried to get this woman’s attention three different times after she’s gotten distracted by someone cuter, and I can’t tell from here if he’s just dumb or a predator, but he clearly thinks they had something and could have something again if she would only turn her face back in his direction and wow my heart is breaking for him. My shoulders have crept up to my earlobes, and there’s a knot of fear (or fennel salad!) in my stomach. Why doesn’t he just leave and swipe an app? She is having a very animated discussion with that new guy, and I’m so sorry, but I am going to have a fu
ll panic attack in this place if he reaches out to tap her on the shoulder again, I can feel it. Everyone thinks I’m going to eventually die of a heart attack, but joke’s on y’all—it’s definitely going to be of secondhand embarrassment.
1:15 a.m.: she left with that guy.
And now I have to sit here and commit the rejected dude’s face to memory in case I have to describe it to police later. Why am I here?!
2:47 a.m.: what the—I
feel the fangs break through my gums and a sharp prickle as hair sprouts from behind my ears and the backs of my hands. I cross my hands under the table and nod as my one friend gives me her “bitch, are you okay?” eyes, and the other flags down the waitress (is she actually our waitress?) with the universal club signal for “one of us is either going to vomit or fall asleep,” and we begin the process of collecting all our things so we can go. Where’s the charger cord for my spare battery? Whose lip gloss is this? Why is my left shoe in the farthest corner underneath this table? My vision sharpens, and I can smell every bead of sweat in the room: I am up five hours, forty-seven minutes, and nineteen seconds past my bedtime, and that is a dangerous place for me to be, awake at rat o’clock, in uncomfortable shoes and itchy eye makeup. I hear the seams of my shirt ripping as my chest broadens, tufts of coarse hair forcing their way out of the collar of my shirt. I bolt from my seat as I feel my claws split my shoes open. My flank is totally about to burst through my threadbare pants. People throw themselves out of my way as I launch myself at the coatroom, nosing through the hanging fabric until I locate my jacket (no, it won’t comfortably fit over my lycan form, but that shit was expensive so I’m taking it). I yank it free with my teeth, then rip the door to the club off its hinges and stalk through River North swatting junior partners and finance bros out of my path with my massive paws. I pause briefly to consider eating a stray dog, but honestly, it’s skinny and I don’t feel like chasing it, so I keep running until I reach my hotel. Up on my hind legs to fool the dozing doorman, then I’m back in my room where I can—muzzle retracting and haunches reverting to their gelatinous state—lie prone on the shower floor as hot water rains down on me and I eat those Sun Chips I bought this morning at Union Station.
3:30 a.m.: how embarrassing would it be to order a bowl of room-service oatmeal right now?
GOOD NIGHT.
Maybe I should try my gnarled old hand at horror instead?
I’m Awake after Ten on a Weeknight *shivers*
Margaret Brought a New Person to Book Club *shudders*
Vacation Constipation! *chills*
hung up!
I once starred in a horror movie called I Was Caught Waiting, Alone, in a Public Place, without My Fucking Cellular Phone. I didn’t have a book or a magazine or a newspaper to distract me from the clanking glasses and hushed conversations in a hotel coffee shop, but even if I had, none of those things could hold a candle to my beloved mobile cellular radio system. My iPhone is my constant companion in this dull and irritating world.
Man, I love my phone. I love its faintly cracked screen and lightly buttered handfeel, its dodgy Bluetooth connectivity and sliver of available storage space. I wish I could pretend it has been some torrid, complicated courtship between us, or that after much cat and mouse, the two of us succumbed to our mutual attraction and decided to settle down and make an honest go of it, but I can’t. I remain in breathless pursuit, hustling to keep her both updated and paid for, connecting it to the fastest Wi-Fi speeds available, wooing her with exorbitantly priced protective cases and as many off-brand charging cords as there are outlets in my home. Yet my phone barely acknowledges that I’m alive—and that only makes me want her even more.
I was late to the technology game. I’m staring down the barrel of my fortieth year, and I bought my computer six or seven years ago. I didn’t get my first iPhone until they’d been around for years, partially because I thought, “Who needs that? I prefer to live in the real world!” Mostly, I was skeptical because the idea of walking around with a five-hundred-dollar computer in my pocket seemed ridiculous and dangerous to me. And the idea that I could somehow scrape together the money to purchase said pocket computer while also maintaining a roof over my head (read: partying all the time and paying for basic cable) was hilarious and unrealistic. I was the last dinosaur at the club sending multi-tap texts on an analog Nokia E51 with no camera.
When I finally upgraded to a smartphone several years after unsolicited selfies had taken hold of the nation, my exhausted thumbs cracked and bleeding from a decade of repeatedly jamming down the 2 key to make a letter C, I didn’t get what all the fuss was about. Okay, sure, this glowing rectangle in my bag can tell me the weather anywhere in the world at this exact moment, but who cares? But, wait, it could also figure out precisely what wrong street I’m turning down and steer me back in the right direction? And it can count how many steps I took today while saving for me all the passwords I can never remember? Please excuse me while I build a shrine to the new most important thing in my life!
I’ve read (on my phone) that we, as a nation, as a species, have a problem with cell phones. [Insert facts about the harms of cell phone usage that I am never going to research because I do not enjoy feeling like an underachiever.] But do we really? Is there actually a problem with rescuing our brains from the doldrums of sitting at a red light or from the malaise caused by having even a single second to sit alone with one’s terrible thoughts? I don’t have children; therefore I don’t have any opinions on whether electronic devices are a bad influence on the mental growth and development of a child. If you tell me they are, then I believe you. I’m sure there’s scientific evidence to prove it. And I’m positive there are doctors and licensed professionals who would attest to the deleterious effect modern technology has on the brains and interpersonal skills of adults, but hear me out. Maybe it’s worth it.
A terrible thing happened to me when I went to dinner with the kind of pretentious know-it-alls whose idea of fun is to condescend to you about wine and make fun of you for pronouncing “Niçoise” incorrectly. One of these smug assholes boldly suggested that we all put our phones facedown in the center of the table for the entirety of the meal and the needlessly lingering discussion afterward. They did it. Grudgingly, I did it, too. I placed my phone facedown next to a twee mason jar with a plant in it and ordered an Aperol spritz and a focaccia to start, which is a dangerous choice because I can never tell from the menu description whether I’ll receive a piece of pre-meal snack-bread or if the waiter is going to wheel out a whole fucking pizza. When a modest board with a perfectly reasonable slab of rosemary-crusted bread was placed in front of me, the first thing I thought was “I wish I knew what everyone else on Earth was doing at this exact moment. I wonder if there is a device nearby that could tell me.”
We talked during dinner because my companions wanted to connect to one another. Everyone talked and talked and talked, but it was the kind of talking where you know every single person at the table is low-key wondering what they’re missing on Twitter. The only thing I’d done that had been more excruciating was the meditation I tried to take up but had to stop because I kept falling asleep. Now, okay, I didn’t die during dinner. But I also didn’t know what time it was or if anyone had texted me. I’m not really a post-a-picture-of-my-fancy-meal kind of person, but I could tell that other people wanted to. The air in that extremely Instagrammable restaurant was heavy with missed opportunity. Do you know what we talked about while cringing internally as the carafe of tap water we actually had to pay for came perilously close to splashing on our helpless devices every time it was passed? TV shows, which you can watch on a phone. Books, which, if your eyes haven’t already burned through the back of your skull from being on your phone all the time, you can read on it. Murder podcasts, which are specifically designed to be listened to on a phone in the shower or during a nightmare commute. Okay, fine, maybe you listen to podcasts on your computer while you’re working, but can’t we admit that your la
ptop is little more than a giant, foldable phone?
It’s annoying when someone bumps into you on the street because they’re looking down at a screen instead of paying attention to where they are going. I have had a handful of close calls in which I accidentally almost pinned a pedestrian under my front tires because they’d stepped into the street without glancing up from a phone. I bristle when the peaceful darkness of a movie theater is interrupted by a rude cell phone light, or worse, when a Parks and Recreation ringtone blasts through a tense, quiet moment from inside the pocket of a whimsical cherry-printed dress. I saw Dave Chappelle do a stand-up set one night in Nashville, and there were signs posted everywhere yelling at us in bold font that phones and cameras weren’t allowed in the theater. We would be ejected by security if we tried to record any part of the evening’s festivities, and I did a silent but enthusiastic cheer as a handful of people were escorted out as they tried to Snapchat parts of the act. Just be present, Gabe! Laugh along with the rest of us! You paid sixty-plus dollars for the ticket to this once-in-a-lifetime experience!
Wow, No Thank You. Page 3