I went to a book lecture earlier tonight, and it took me forty-five minutes of bewildering indecision to figure out what to wear just to sit in an audience in an indie bookstore next to your aunt Jill and her second husband, Craig. Craig took copious notes the entire time, filling his battered Moleskine with scribbles about how to structure a piece of short fiction, while I squirmed in a folding chair and wondered if the leave-in conditioner I’d used made my hair look dusty. Or was it too crunchy? I have a very specific textured look that I hope to achieve whenever I let my hair grow out, and maybe this new stuff I tried isn’t working right, but now I’m stuck in a place where pulling out a mirror would definitely draw an inescapable number of eyes. Plus, it wouldn’t be appropriate, and I pride myself on knowing things like when and when not to use the reverse camera in your phone to make sure your curls are poppin’ (but not poppin’ too much, because you’re going for a natural kind of thing). Frankly, none of the middle-aged white people in this room could explain what a C4 curl pattern is, but when you spend your life in a near-constant state of unease, details like that don’t matter.
This is the particular prison my anxiety has created: I can go and do the thing, and say the other things, but I gotta spend an hour wrecked because the only clean daytime pajamas I have available to me are the ones that don’t do enough to conceal that crease in the upper arm fat under which my triceps are buried. Or trying to preemptively answer any question I might be asked, by anyone. Or worrying that this is the kind of place where you have to actually interact with a person to get the key to the bathroom. A person who will be counting the minutes it takes for you to return with that key, a person with whom, once you cross the six-minute mark, you will definitely have to construct an awkward joke to deflect from the fact that you just took a shit in their bathroom. My mind is a never-ending series of shame spirals. Do I have to go to that? And if I do agree to go to that, who else is going? In what capacity do these people know me? As an Internet joke person, or as a sad real-life person who sometimes makes jokes? Sad people make not-sad people uncomfortable, so I better think about smiling. Or will that be off-putting? If someone asks me a question while I have food in my mouth, how am I going to deal with that? Should I answer and cover my mouth and gross everybody out, or sit there chewing for an eternity while they expectantly wait? Are the chairs sturdy at the restaurant? I better look the place up on Google images. If they don’t look sturdy, how do I tactfully suggest someplace else? OMG, remember that time I broke a chair? I wonder if anyone who was there still thinks about that time I broke a chair? When they get together, and no one is paying attention to how much is on their plates because they are thin, do they ever bring up that time they got to watch as a cartoon fat person had to get up from the floor after she— I’m not going. I’m just not going to go. My nice clothes are not nice enough for this place and I’m not sure whether there is enough money in my bank account to cover a dinner this extravagant and what if my card gets declined? What if my card is rejected because I never signed up for overdraft protection? I thought you had to pay more and I’m sure one of these people with good credit will cover it, but how will I be able to get up and walk out of that fancy restaurant since my face will be melted down the front of my shirt? Why do I feel so embarrassed all the time, and why can’t I figure out how to not do the things that embarrass me? Like pick good shirts I actually like and sign up for overdraft protection and look people in the eye when I talk to them and just get over whatever is holding me back and ask the lady at the M?A?C counter in the mall how to correctly use concealer instead of walking around looking like a trash panda?!
We are never meeting in real life.
Acknowledgments
My undying devotion to my family and my friends and my heroes. Thank you to everyone who has made me laugh and helped take care of my rotten heart + brain, especially my chosen family: Laura Daener, Anna Galland, Caitlin Pinsof, Carl Cowan, Jessie Mae Martinson, Keila Miranda, Giancarlo Olvera, Lara Crock, Emily Barish, Vanessa Robinson, Keith Ecker and Mario Calhoun, Kate Packard, Dolores and Jeff Strom, Damon Young, Kiese Laymon, Kaitlyn Greenidge, Chris Terry, Akilah Scott, Julia Goldberg, Brian Sweeney, Kirsten West Savali, Erika Nicole Kendall, Julia Borcherts, Sarah Hollenbeck, Kate Slagoski and Erin Kahoa, Fred Owens, Zachary Jones, Laura Munroe and Mark de la Vergne, Megan Stielstra and Christopher Jobson, Brooke Allen, Melissa Fisher, Jared Honn, Jeremy Owens and Andy Fine, Mariyam Hussain, Carly Oishi, Luvvie Ajayi, Danielle Hahn Chaet, Debbie Pressman, Ian Belknap, Torean Wilson, Christine Wolf, Roxane Gay, Keely Jones, Angie Frank, Katy Maher, Cara Brigandi and Ted Beranis, Marina Hayes, Mel Winer, Lindy West, Samantha Bailey, Pauline Vassiliadis, Mya Seals, Amy and Ryan Warren, Amelia Tomlinson, Mark Bose, Danielle Henderson, Regina Burris, John Sundholm, Issa Rae, Megan Reynolds and Sarah Hill, Jenny Lawson, Kelly Knabb, Jason Van Fosson and Tell Williams, Alex Hardy, Allen Makere, Joanna Parzakonis, and James E. Hagedorn.
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I would like to thank Crissle and Kid Fury for making the brilliant podcast The Read, the only thing I consistently have to look forward to other than television courtroom dramas. Thank you to Ben Affleck for making The Accountant so good and punchy, and God bless Forest Whitaker for existing. Plus, big thanks to my imaginary friends and various Internet communities. I would not be alive if not for your hilarious memes.
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Actually, without Drs. Lori Jackson and Manoj Mehta I would definitely be dead? Thanks for humoring my awkward jokes and not making fun of my disgusting body while prescribing many things to keep it alive. Dr. Mehta, who has looked in my gross, gaping butthole so many goddamn times and never recoiled in horror, deserves some kind of award.
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It feels so weird and pretentious to, like, have an agent but who am I kidding: without them I would be handing out photocopies of this trash I make on whatever street corner is closest to my house, because I am very lazy. Anyway, all my love (and a portion of my earnings) to Jason Richman and Kent D. Wolf, especially Kent, who is the exact same amount of horrible I am, thus making this the greatest working partnership of all time. And, holy shit, I couldn’t have done any of this without my editor, Andrea Robinson, who didn’t seem disappointed with me during any part of this process even though she absolutely should have been.
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THANK YOU, WIFE. YOU ARE PROBABLY THE BEST PERSON I HAVE EVER MET.