Wow, No Thank You.

by Samantha Irby

  “The Love I Never Had,” Mary J. Blige

  I felt a kinship with Mary from the second I saw the “Real Love” video on the Box, and I immediately begged my mom to find a baseball jersey in my size, although at that point I definitely had not experienced the soul-crushing romantic pain that you could feel ripping through her vocal cords as she sang. But I aspired to! I grew up in an Al Green/Anita Baker/Teena Marie/Isley Brothers house, so I knew of heartbreak. I was steeped in unrequited desire, lost love, and romance gone bad. I performed Betty Wright’s “After the Pain,” a song about an abusive relationship, at my second-grade talent show. I’ve been riding with Mary from the jump, and Mary is her finest work. “All That I Can Say”? “Your Child”? “Let No Man Put Asunder”? The duet with Aretha Franklin, “Don’t Waste Your Time”?! ALL EXTREMELY GOOD. But “The Love I Never Had” is a real “scream-sing your sorrows in the car on the highway” kind of jam, and that is the true measure of a quality song.

  “You Got Me,” The Roots (the live version from

  The Roots Come Alive, duh!)

  Okay, so this was a tough one, because junior year, Tim Herman made me a tape of Do You Want More?!!!??! and I completely destroyed that thing rewinding “Mellow My Man” over and over and over again. But as much as I love that album and as much as it feels pedestrian to put a group’s most popular song on a mix (everyone knows that you’re only a true fan if you appreciate the deep cuts), I’m going to be basic and choose this one because I have a really good story that goes with it. After I dropped out of college and was wandering around aimlessly because all my friends had gone back to school, I started going to tons of shows because they were cheap and I was eighteen and I felt like ~interesting~ people Did Stuff At Night. At the very least, it gave me something to write about in the e-mails I sent from my freshly minted EarthLink dot net address. De La Soul and the Roots did a show at House of Blues, and I missed getting tickets because this was the old days, remember, when you had to stand in line all day and pay for a physical ticket to go to a show. But then, due to demand, they added a late show, the idea of which is against my religion, but I loved them so much that I copped a ticket anyway. Then I spent all afternoon the day of the show lying down before driving my Escort downtown at 10 p.m. and parking illegally next to Harry Caray’s because there’s nowhere to put your car down there that doesn’t cost a minimum of sixty bucks. Anyway, I’m at the show, alone, wearing an orange vest that I thought looked cool, packed like a sardine with all these dudes with sparse mustaches wearing backpacks and fitted caps. The Roots did their set and started “You Got Me,” which is a kind of sad love song that features Erykah Badu on the original. Of course, she was too famous to just tour with these dudes to accompany them on one song, so instead they brought out this relatively unknown singer named Jill Scott to sing her part, and I was blown THE FUCK AWAY by her voice. Just standing there, covered in other people’s sweat, breathing in their clouds of Cool Water cologne, dumbstruck by this woman and her incredible voice. It was one of the best nights of my life, despite the hefty parking ticket and having to drive home 75 percent asleep at 2 a.m. (Also, I would include a Jill Scott song or five on this mixtape, for sure, but Who Is Jill Scott didn’t come out until 2000, and I’m trying to stick to the rules here.)

  “No Surprises,” Radiohead

  I don’t know what I was doing before OK Computer found its way into my life. Every single song is the best song I’ve ever heard. Well, maybe this one is the best best.

  Flip the tape over. Play it again.

  love and marriage

  I got married, and now I am an expert on marriage and relationships. Here are the answers you so desperately need to your desperate questions.

  My wife and I are dear friends with a younger couple. They both have busy careers and text and e-mail incessantly for work. Recently the four of us dined out at a wonderful country inn, and they texted throughout the meal. I care very much about my relationship with them and do not wish to offend them, but this behavior bothered me. How can I nicely ask them to put their smartphones away?

  Everything is boring. You’re boring. There’s a 95 percent chance your wife is pretty boring, and going to a “wonderful country inn” is probably, definitely Totally Fucking Boring. I’m boring, too! This is something that I have had to come to terms with as I am now staring middle age right in its sensible orthopedic inserts. I have to get over myself and let go of young-person shit that is irritating to me. If I’m too old for it, I don’t give a shit about it. And that’s not to say that it shouldn’t exist, which is an old person thing I really don’t understand. Jesus God, the stuff kids are into is literally too exhausting to get pissed off about. WHO CARES. Let them do whatever they want. My lady and I aren’t friends with any young couples because I don’t want to have to learn what the fuck “no cap” means. I want to eat my sensibly balanced meals and spend my days listening to jangly guitar music that came out in the years before I graduated high school.

  There are two types of awful old people. There are (1) the silently awful who grind their rear molars into stumps and pray for sudden death as some teenager tries to record them for their story and (2) the “put your phone away, young lady, and pretend to be interested in this New York Times article about charter schools I am misquoting” awful. My favorite thing is to spend my old-person money on expensive electronics for the babies in my life, because I will actually die if I have to figure out interesting things to say to a Gen Z-er that might make them think I’m not as cool as my tattoos (how do I say “tattoo” in a cool way? “Ink”? “Body art”?!) would lead them to believe. And they most certainly don’t care about listening to all my ancient leisure activities. What the fuck do I even talk about all day, 1099s and full-coverage underpants? LIKE, FOR REAL, WHO EVEN CARES? JUST POINT ME TOWARD THE SUN AND WATER ME OCCASIONALLY.

  I can’t tell you about the first time I thought I was in love (yes, I can, it was Wil Wheaton on Star Trek: The Next Generation, and it was devastating), but I can tell you each and every time some adult tried to bully me into a conversation about low interest rates or whatever seniors with rain-indicating knees and hip problems talk about, while I plucked out my eyelashes one by one in despair. I don’t want to sit at the kids’ table, because, truth be told, I can’t sit with my legs at a ninety-degree angle for more than forty-five minutes, but if they sit at mine, I need to know that these dudes are for sure texting the entire time while pretending they care about that foreign film I saw at eleven thirty Sunday morning. Whether I like it or not, and despite my having neither a mortgage nor a dedicated gynecologist, as the bitch with the SEP-IRA, I am absolutely going to be stuck paying for that wonderful country meal.

  I have been living with a man for more than a year. We get along perfectly, and he says he loves me. The problem is he will not make a commitment to get married. I do everything a wife would do to make a comfortable home for us. I am approaching middle age, and I want the security of marriage. Should I wait for him, hoping he will change his mind, or should I move on and find someone who would like to make a commitment?

  What does “get along perfectly” mean if there’s a big glaring blockade like “I want to get married and he doesn’t” in the way? Why do people willfully ignore these giant logs scattered across their roads to domesticated bliss? Oh, I know, sex. But seriously, though, why??

  I feel like just reframing how you see your relationship would shift your entire perspective. What if you just said, “He says he loves me but the problem is he won’t commit and I need that”? Then you’re done, right? You can easily walk away! I have been accused of being cold and unromantic, but this isn’t that, I promise. I have often listened to the words a person I was in love with said to me and ignored what they actually meant, to instead project onto them what I wanted it to mean. That shit will keep you in a weird emotional death spiral for the rest of your relationship until you shake yourself out of it, and you don’t deserve that. I know that self-del
usion can feel protective, but, ultimately, you’re going to do what we all do at some point: cycle through all that old shit he said, and all those red flags you ignored, while chuckling softly at your naïvety. You believed you could change a person who was telling you exactly what they didn’t want, and now the reality is setting in that you can’t. Don’t feel dumb; it happens to the best of us.

  There are dozens of anecdotes to illustrate this in my own interpersonal-relationship canon, but the first is always the worst: my first real relationship, at twenty-one, was with a man ten years older. We met at a house party where he was, OF FUCKING COURSE, the DJ. I didn’t know anyone except the friend who’d brought me along, and I hovered in the kitchen like a creep, watching other people have fun. To this day, this is my preferred approach to partying. Anyway, later in the evening, the DJ came over and pointed out that I didn’t look like I was having a good time, and in a panic to prove him wrong I drank a tumbler of gin in one gulp and went home with him. (Other stuff happened also, but you get my point.) The next morning, when he dropped me off, he said, very spe-ci-fi-cal-ly, “This was fun. I’ll call you. I don’t want to get into anything serious,” and pulled off in a haze of SUV exhaust before I could even close the passenger-side door all the way. I proceeded to spend an entire calendar year convinced I was in a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship with a not-serious person, who then did everything he could to prove that he was even less serious about me than he’d initially warned.

  I couldn’t be mad at anyone but myself when it finally dawned on me what an idiot I was being. (Okay, yes, I was bitter and I blamed him, too, but this is not the time to deconstruct my immaturity.) My problem was that I had hoped that I could do enough stuff to convince him I was worth his undivided attention. I mean, I wasn’t doing “wife stuff” like you are, but I was making him cool mix CDs and lathering myself in the finest Bath & Body Works scented lotions before he came over for sex. So, yeah, pick up what he’s putting down. He’s probably not your future husband, and that’s okay.

  Also, what does “a wife do”? You know what my wife does? Asks me three times in a row if I’ve e-mailed the HVAC company yet, and moves my shoes to places where I can’t find them and then calls that “cleaning.” If that’s what you’re doing, I understand his hesitation. I’m kidding, I’m kidding. Anyway, he’s not a bus—stop waiting for him. Catch the next one!

  I am twenty-five and have been with my boyfriend on and off for five years. I love him very much. I often overthink things, and a constant frustration of mine is that he makes no romantic gestures at all. I worry that when we get married, over time I will grow bored or no longer be attracted to him because he is so unromantic. Am I just overthinking this?

  I wasn’t in an actual romantic relationship until I was 137 years old, but doesn’t the idea of being with someone you met when you were twenty weird y’all out? I was so stupid when I was twenty. On December 31, 1999, I was nineteen years old, and terrified (more than I feel comfortable admitting) that Y2K was going to kill us all before I had been kissed properly. My sister convinced me that rather than propping up our tits and going to a glamorous party, at the end of which someone would feel compelled to passionately kiss us, that we should instead put on our nicest long-sleeved cotton shirts and sensible close-toed shoes to spend New Year’s Eve at church. I conceded that, sure, maybe the safest place to be when the Lord Almighty plunged us all into everlasting darkness was with a tambourine in my hand, surrounded by sinners who cheated God out of their tithes but clearly had a better shot at heaven than the drunks vomiting next to me on the train. I’m not saying that it wasn’t surprisingly fun or that riding a wave of brimstone and gospel music into the apocalypse wasn’t thrilling. I’m just saying that maybe the person hunched over in that pew, her eyes squeezed shut in an effort to seal out the impending rapture, that naive idiot screaming, “WE MADE IT! WE MADE IT!” when the clock struck midnight and literally nothing happened and not even one computer malfunctioned … I’m just saying that maybe the teenager who had unplugged the clocks at home and filled her cabinets with indestructible cans of kidney beans probably would not have made the wisest decision about with whom she should spend the remainder of her days.

  “Over time I will grow bored”—yikes!—“or no longer be attracted to him”—yikes!!—“because he is so unromantic”—okay, come on, am I the only one who sees what’s happening here? What the fuck, and also, BITCH, YIKES. Before I got married I made a list of all the reasons I might have to eventually bail on the union, but it was full of stuff like “if her kid pulls a knife on me” and “if she reprograms my radio stations in the car.” You know, hypothetical shit that probably wouldn’t happen, but, if it did, we could probably work it out. I don’t know why you’d attach your credit score to someone you can already imagine being bored and repulsed by, especially when you don’t have to. And I don’t understand why people won’t just say “listen, babe, I am not going to get better once I legally saddle myself to you,” because, for real, he won’t. If he’s not sending flowers now, there’s no way you’re going to get them after his years of listening to the slimy squelch of your DivaCup extraction. He should! But he won’t! I know being in love fills us with a blinding false optimism, but listen to me: he will not change. I didn’t! As a matter of fact, all my bad behavior is heightened, because where is this bitch I’m married to gonna go? She’s stuck with me now.

  My boyfriend and I have been together for over two years, but I’ve met his parents only a few times. As he has told me, they have deemed me unworthy due to my age (I’m four years older than he is) and my health (I had a case of sinusitis on one occasion). They do not want me in their house or at any of their social events—even at my boyfriend’s birthday dinner. As a result, things are pretty awkward, even though my boyfriend has confronted them about it. What can I do to get them to accept me?

  Acceptance is overrated! So are birthday dinners, good health, and, frankly, having parents. I killed mine while I was still a teen, because I knew that if I didn’t, my adult life would be ceaselessly tormented by the insurmountable demands of my overbearing mom and dad, people who couldn’t be bothered to teach me how to balance a checkbook but would nevertheless feel entitled to weigh in on my choice of career and life mate and Internet service provider. Neither of them lived long enough to suffer through the indignity of an introductory meal with someone I was sleeping with, and thank goodness for that. My parents have been dead for twenty-two years and even now my insides churn at the very thought of my father scowling at my wife over his leather-tough tri tip at the Sizzler like, “You’re a what now? A teacher? Do you make any money doing that? Who’s gonna pay for that rib eye?!” as I burn with white-hot shame while eating directly from the all-you-can-eat salad bar. FUCK THAT SHIT, YOU GOTTA DIE. *makes stabbing motions*

  Back when I had feelings, my self-esteem was a toilet. It caused me actual physical pain to know that someone didn’t like me. I mean, it still does, but I’m better insulated by drugs these days. A handy trick is to think long and hard about what the person who hates you would realistically add to your life if they were to actually be a part of it. Most people really do have absolutely nothing to offer you. Pull out the abacus and make a pros and cons list if you have to—I’ll wait. If you require a push to get started, here’s an example from a recent entry in my diary about some asshole I don’t miss anymore:

  pro: once made me laugh at a dad joke

  con: EVERYTHING FUCKING ELSE LOL BYE BITCH

  Okay, okay, now let’s do yours:

  pro: made a son that you like

  con: weird about a four-year age difference between you and that son. I mean, come on, have they never seen any celebrities?

  con: obvs do not understand basic tenets of healthcare and infectious disease

  con: insist upon hosting “social events” in their home

  con: They suck. It’s pretty obvious.

  Once you make your list, frame it inside your he
art and refer back to it every time you hear these dudes are having a backyard luau or whatever kind of garbage party regular people throw. Come on now, do you really want to sit on the edge of a hard-backed chair clutching some Costco Chardonnay while Bob and Janice regale you with stories about the Alaskan cruise they took last fall? No, you want to be blowing your nose on the sleeve of your sweatshirt and watching Billions while you and the cat share a bowl of ice cream. WIN, WIN.

  It seems I will never meet my “Mr. Right.” Every person I’m attracted to is either in a relationship or doesn’t like me. When is it okay to just “settle”?

  Honestly, you can settle whenever the hell you want. I think it’s just a matter of deciding what you want and what’s important to you, and if you find it, lasso that bull and drag him into the stable. But first you have to recognize that there being one right, perfect person is a fallacy sold to you by romantic comedies. Dismantle the lie that finding said person is an achievable goal for someone who is not a bland actress in one of those Netflix movies you keep scrolling past. I’m not mad at it—I love the lie—but I also understand that it’s a fantasy.

  Maybe this is the upside of being ugly, but when men throw shit at you and scream lewd shit at you from passing cars on the street when you’re just trying to get to the bus stop after school, the idea of there being one in a bespoke suit descending from a carriage to escort you to a fancy party doesn’t seem like a thing that could happen in real life. Oh, really, Prince Charming is going to find a glass slipper to awkwardly slide onto this elephantine size 11 foot? Hollywood won’t sell me that dream! Television forced me to look at romantic relationships from a practical perspective; I would be like Mabel, waddling through the door after an endless shift at work to yell at my fatherless children, Raj and Dee, about whatever hijinks they’d gotten into while I was out cleaning houses or whatever. Or my fate would be Shirley, a closeted lesbian forced to wisecrack with disrespectful teens while making two dollars an hour.