We Are Never Meeting in Real Life. Read online

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  Try not to feel too salty when going through your bank statements. (Or just be like me and never even open them.) Just keep in mind that eventually those kids will be old enough to drive you around and send you cards and look after your cats while you’re in Florida for the winter. And couplefriends with babyfriends are the best, because they always have extra stuff just lying around for your pitiful single ass to mooch off them. No way in hell I’m going to Sam’s Club; that’s why I keep smug marrieds around! I haven’t bought my own toilet paper in three years. I just wait until one of them is like, “Come eat dinner with us, you lonely piece of shit!” and while the fish sticks are heating up, Mom and Dad pack me suitcases full of two-ply extra-strong kid-proof toilet paper and economy-size bags of animal crackers. The friends with deep freezers and large pantries are even better, because you can walk out of there with nineteen individually wrapped chicken breasts, four bottles of toilet bowl cleaner, one-thousand-count boxes of Swiffer cloths, a ten-pound bag of frozen shrimp, and six pints of strawberries. Who needs Peapod? People with kids are so exhausted they don’t have time to notice that one of the forty-six boxes of Kleenex they just purchased is missing. They literally have no idea what is in their houses at any given moment. If something is gone or broken they’ll just assume one of the kids did it. You think I’m kidding, but the last time I bought Ziploc bags, Gladware containers, Handi Wipes, sponges, dish towels, and Q-tips was, ummm, never. That’s what (baby)friends are for.

  This year, on my days off, I’m trying stay up super late (it’s 10:37 at night right now—who am I, a rapper?!) and sleep as late as I possibly can. Now that a lot of my friends are having babies, the only recourse I have against feeling like a huge dork for still trying to maneuver my way through my first real romance is doing all the things those mother hens can’t do anymore: I curse at the top of my lungs in the solitude of my apartment! Eat pizza for breakfast! Take several long, uninterrupted showers every day! Turn my phone off! Watch R-rated movies! Poop in blissed-out peace! Buy unpasteurized cheese! And pointy furniture! Leave my vibrator in the dish drain after I wash it! Never ever watch public television! But also never turn the television OFF! Get some mercury-laden sushi! Spend an entire day reading under the covers! Go out for drinks! Throw away all of my bite-size foods! Make sand castles in the cat litter box! Never buy any fresh fruit! Use my outside voice inside! Take a bunch of Tylenol! And a bunch of Advil! And don’t forget: DRINK A SHITLOAD OF COLD MEDICINE!!!

  The Real Housewife of Kalamazoo

  The only time I fantasize about jettisoning my fast-paced, action-packed, exciting city for the Purell-ed, easy-to-park-your-oversized-vehicle embrace of the suburbs is when I think about how nice it would be to never have to race the motherfucking Zipcar from Target to the Whole Foods hot bar to the Laundromat in under three hours ever fucking again. Strip malls are boring and CHILDREN ARE SO FUCKING LOUD, but there is something to be said for the ability to deposit your car right in front of the window that you will be hawkishly staring out of for half the night to make sure no one so much as breathes on your windshield. I’ve owned four cars. All pieces of absolute garbage, and all purchased with whatever loose change I could scavenge from couch cushions and broken pay phones. They were all junked after a year or two of having been driven into the ground and destroyed by life on a crowded city neighborhood street. It’s totally the worst, and I want to finally own a car with power windows that doesn’t have a fucking tape deck.

  Every once in a while I get really tired of the city. It typically coincides with getting really tired of absorbing the projected rage of entitled assholes with purebred dogs, but occasionally I’ll see a horse or a flower through the grease-spotted window of a crawling Amtrak train and daydream longingly about a car I can park right up next to my front door and a pair of elastic-waisted jeans I can pull right up next to my tits as I crush potato chips to go on top of the tuna casserole I am making for dinner. This is not to suggest that I am cosmopolitan, by any means, but I do live in a bustling metropolis where dudes stand over you on a crowded bus with precariously gripped open containers of hot coffee and having cool hair is of primary importance. I am always on the lookout for signs that I am aging disgracefully, and my constant agitation at all of the congestion and noise and close proximity to other actively sweating humans is proof positive that I don’t have long for the Second City. BUT COULD I REALLY MAKE IT IN A SMALL TOWN?

  Pro: I would be rich.

  When I was hanging out in unincorporated Missouri with my friend Lara, I saw a house for rent for $500 a month. An entire house. For rent. For less than I paid for the glasses I’m wearing right now. Is this real life?! I pay almost twice that every month for a couple of rooms and a kitchen whose sum square footage is probably less than that of your garage. What I’m trying to say is that I could have a house, with a driveway and an upstairs, for the price of half an ounce of La Prairie neck cream. I weep thinking of how little I’d have to work to maintain my basic quality of life in a town like that. Fifty out of the 168 hours of my week are spent mad because work is interfering with all the Internet articles I’m trying to read, forty-nine are spent trying to get some sleep if I’m lucky, ten are spent suffering through some sort of commuting nightmare, eight are pure panicking, eleven are brooding, and the last forty are eating shitting writing reading watching wishing hoping and hating. What is it all worth?! Sure I have money to buy an iPhone, but no time to figure out how the hell to use the Passbook. If my rent was less, I could work less, and working less means I could shave a couple of hours off the time I have set aside for moping and sort out how to set a recurring alarm.

  Con: I don’t know how to fix small engines or any other worthwhile small-town shit.

  Where would I work out in the middle of the heartland?! I whine and complain about my job a lot, but let’s be real: I graduated high school almost twenty years ago and since then, I have had a lot of jobs and not a lot of higher education. And I can’t go to any more school. That ship has sailed, and I am thrilled to be left standing in its wake. I didn’t like school when it wasn’t weird that I was there, so the thought of sitting next to your daughter in Intro to Psychology makes me want to die for real. I can do fractions, but not when your son, that smug little bastard, is smirking at my gray hairs. Maybe I could go $100,000 into insurmountable debt at one of those quick colleges they advertise on television during Days of Our Lives (I could be a medical assistant, I guess? If I tried real hard?) but I would rather mop a hundred fast-food floors than ever awkwardly try to make friends in another goddamned cafeteria.

  Pro: Everyone seems so dang nice.

  The first time a Michigan person gave me an enthusiastic “Hello there!” at the co-op, I spent the next five real minutes hiding in the natural-soap aisle checking to make sure I didn’t have watercress in my teeth or a bloody nose or something else to incur such sarcasm from this otherwise pleasant-seeming human on a random Thursday afternoon. Chicago is in the Midwest, and yes, we’re probably way nicer than New Yorkers, but don’t get it twisted—we are still not making eye contact and saying hi to you while you measure out your buckwheat groats in the bulk section of the health food store. Lots of people are theoretically nice, but when you need them to jump your car’s dead battery they act like the text didn’t go through. And that’s fine. We big-city folk understand that “Call me if you need help moving next week” loosely translates to “BITCH, I DARE YOU.” But I might need a hand getting my firewood into the house, and it would be amazing to shout over the fence for Bill and his unironic cargo shorts to come over and give me one.

  Con: I can’t be 100 percent sure these people won’t call me a nigger to my face.

  Hey, remember that time I stopped in West Virginia in the borrowed Subaru my homegirl and I were driving across the country and a little white child no older than eight amusing himself with a length of wire and an old flat tire wiped the mayonnaise from the corners of his mouth just long enough to cal
l me and my friend “dirty nigger lesbians” as we minded our own business filling up our gas tank? That tiny guy lived in a small town! I was pretty shocked, since the last time I’d let her finger me had been in DC and I’m pretty sure she’d washed her hands after, so how could he possibly know what we’d been up to three states ago?! Also I had showered in Baltimore, so “dirty” might have been overstating it a bit; disheveled I can handle, but dirty?! GIVE ME A BREAK, CALEB. I’ve never had a fistfight with a baby before, but I briefly considered it before reminding myself that (1) jail is real, and (2) in ten years the coal mine would introduce him to karmic retribution better than I ever could.

  Pro: Frito casseroles.

  I didn’t eat for two days so that I could spend all my Weight Watchers points for the week last night on a nineteen-dollar octopus salad from Longman & Eagle. WOULD DO AGAIN. I grew up eating the kind of boxed trash you heat up and pour milk in for dinner: macaroni and cheese, Hamburger Helper, imitation Trix. Poor people food is my food; banging a couple of cans together over a shallow Pyrex dish before sprinkling some noodles and cheese on it then baking it for twenty minutes at 350 degrees is like tugging a threadbare thrift-store sweater onto my stomach, a warm comestible hug. I love all that homestyle shit: casseroles and bundts and cobblers and sheet cakes and rolls; recipes that require Crisco and food coloring and have oxymoronic names like “cheeseburger pie” and “lasagna soup,” recipes that cost eight dollars to make and last for a week.

  Con: What if I forget what ramps and garlic scapes and morels are?!

  If I had to pick a favorite food to eat while sobbing over the kitchen sink, it would probably most definitely be beanie weenies. There is no greater sad joy than cutting up a dollar-store hot dog and putting it in a simmering saucepan of Bush’s honey baked beans. To further illustrate the direness of my current situation, I should disclose that I am writing this while eating a frozen bean burrito that might not really be cooked all the way through. I can count the number of fancy meals I have in a month on one hand, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want the option of rejecting your invitation to go to them. Living in Chicago spoils you, because there are hundreds of places fifteen minutes from wherever you happen to be at any given moment where you can find locally sourced farm-to-table organic meals made by a chef who’s probably been on TV. I might not take advantage of them as often as I do, say, Pizza Hut’s two mediums for $6.99 deal, but the point is that if I wanted to I could stick up a bank, steal an outfit from a person who doesn’t wear pajamas as regular clothes, and order the lily bulb/rambutan/distillation of caviar lime at Alinea any time I want. (Yeah right, I could never get in there.)

  Pro: Life would be so simple.

  I could wake up to the sound of crowing roosters or methheads at sunrise, consume a platter of buttered carbohydrates, hitch up my overalls, and grab my watering can from the shed. That would be a dream. I’m sick of news, and buying stuff, and trying so desperately to have fun all the time. I just want to watch old Catfish episodes on the couch and record videos of Helen’s cat snores.

  Con: BUT WHAT IF I GET BORED?

  Please ignore that I have shunned all available social and physical activity on this lovely Friday evening in order to sit in my darkened apartment, bathed in the blue light of this computer screen while I gaze dolefully at a YouTube video of Justin Bieber singing karaoke in a car. Boredom is a fallacy in my tiny life. I have a fancy phone with lots of apps on it and relatively decent LTE coverage, I haven’t been truly “bored” since 2007. And even back then, there were televisions and books and Myspace and pets. But if I wanted to go out and get into something fun, I theoretically could put a jacket on and go do it.

  Pro: It’s just so goddamn beautiful.

  I’m tired of looking at stomped-out cigarettes floating in puddles and rotting old food stinking up the sidewalk. I am getting So Fucking Touchy lately, and I know the problem is me, that Americans have the unalienable right to fill their potholes with dirty diapers and the slimy celery they forgot was in the produce drawer; I would never deign to take that away from anyone. I’m sure nothing feels better than dropping a used Kleenex three feet to the right of a public trash can. But I’m growing tired of grimy cabs and the E. coli factory that is our stretch of Lake Michigan; I could stand to have some trees and weather in my life. I mean, I don’t really want to touch nature, but I do sometimes like looking at it.

  Con: Nature is terrifying.

  Last summer Mavis and I spent a weekend in a remote hippie cabin in the woods. It is the plot of every horror movie you’ve ever seen: white person convinces black person to pack up his/her hair grease, wave cap, and reparations money in the hopes of spending a long relaxing weekend in [vaguely authentic-sounding pseudo–Native American word] [Lake/Falls/Island/Coast] doing white-people things like lying in hammocks and eating fresh apricots. Black person dies before you’ve even made a dent in your popcorn.

  I had my sunglasses, my car snacks, and my road-trip music; I was ready to meet Mavis in the woods. I plugged the address into the GPS on my phone and waited for the pixels and gigabytes or whatever to plot my route. Finally, Siri heaved a long, weary sigh. “Bitch, are you sure?”

  WHAT? I restarted my phone and reentered the address.

  Another pregnant pause. “Sa-man-tha, there are no black people within a hundred miles of this destination,” bleeped the computerized voice. “Would you instead like directions to the Essence Fest? I think Mary J. Blige is performing.”

  “THAT WAS LAST WEEK!” I shrieked, pounding the address into the phone again. “JUST TELL ME HOW TO GET TO THIS COUNTRY SHIT.” Another long pause as she calculated directions. I watched a map slowly appear on the screen, my course charted in blue. “Anything in the whole town comes up missing over the next three days and your black ass is going to jail,” Siri warned nastily, and I threw the phone into the backseat. I spent three hours on tranquil highways and hilly back roads littered with raccoon and deer carcasses, vainly attempting to eat a sandwich like a civilized person while also dodging families of ducks as they toddled across the unmarked road. I passed dozens of tiny houses set back from the highway with ancient cars and boats rusting under the sun on their front lawns. I could smell the methamphetamines cooking in the air. “IN A QUARTER MILE, TURN LEFT AT THE COW,” Siri cackled viciously. “IN TWO HUNDRED FEET MAKE A SLIGHT RIGHT AT THE HORSE ONTO A DIRT ROAD, AND TRY NOT TO GET MAULED BY A BEAR FOR THOSE FIG NEWTONS HIDDEN IN YOUR BACKPACK, STUPID.” I could’ve died out there for real.

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  I am on the precipice of abandoning my whirlwind single-person existence for what is essentially a trust fall into my new relationship, but I cannot envision my life in a crib that has stairs. Or a crib with more than three rooms. Or a crib that has well-meaning neighbors who drop by without giving you a heads-up to take out the trash and hide your prescriptions prior to their arrival. I currently live across the hall from a person who, seemingly unprovoked, screams bloody murder. And upstairs from a person who sings arias in a lovely tenor at hours and decibels that regularly make me want to kill myself. Those people are referred to as Screaming Woman and Opera Dude, respectively. I am literally never going to talk to them. I will never know their real names. See also: Smooth-Jazz Guy and Bedhead Lady with Obvious Cats. If I walk into the building and see someone headed toward the elevator, I idle near the mailbox until I hear the gate slam shut, then hustle over to it before some equally awkward stranger comes home and ruins my meticulously executed plan for riding the elevator up to my floor in peace. I do my laundry at five on Monday mornings because I am generally very polite and four years ago I was forced into twenty minutes of witty banter with a decently hot gentleman while trying to hide behind my back a pair of underwear that needed pretreating. One night, Smooth-Jazz Guy and I exited our apartments at the same time, and I froze at my end of the hall, pretending I couldn’t possibly figure out which of the four keys on my key ring was the one that locked my door. I could just feel him waiting to
say something about Peabo Bryson to me, and once I could finally stall no longer I walked toward him as he exclaimed, “Hey, [fellow black]! I never knew you lived here! Come by for a drink sometime!”

  What’s worse than being stung to death by thousands of bees? Sitting in an apartment adjacent to yours balanced precariously on a stranger’s bed while sipping a glass of Chivas Regal and listening to Najee, or sitting in an apartment adjacent to yours balanced precariously on a stranger’s bed sipping a glass of Chivas Regal and listening to Najee?! I AM NEVER EVER DOING THAT. And it has nothing to do with him—I’m sure he’s charming and hospitable and has an incredible selection of Take 6 records. But yo, I would rather be mauled by that Revenant bear than strike up a friendship with someone who would inevitably do horrible things like “knock on my door” or “sign for my FedEx packages.” I have been alone for so long that the idea of community is legit terrifying to me. I’m anxious and easily flummoxed, and I don’t want anyone seeing the maxi pads in my trash or how many books I leave next to the toilet. I don’t want people to know that there’s only bologna and Crystal Light in my fridge. Seriously, I don’t want to have to explain why I have so many bottles of hand soap on each sink (I like variety, okay) and half-melted Diptyque candles scattered everywhere (I SAID I LIKE SOME GODDAMNED VARIETY).