The Stories We Tell

I thought my story was about meeting my star-crossed lover, falling in love young, and getting married against the odds.

I thought my story was about becoming a Mormon feminist, working inside the system, and being the change I wanted to see.

I thought my story was about being a working mom, defying expectations, and making an unjust world work for me.

I thought my story was leaving the Mormon church, breaking my own heart, and voting with my feet.

I thought my story was about getting sober, doing the unexpected and impossible-seeming thing, and getting free.

I thought my story was about getting mentally well, untangling myself from the narratives that I wove into the fabric of my life after other people handed them to me.

I thought my story was about losing God and finding God and losing God and finding God in the places I never expected God to be.

I’ve lived other stories that I knew, even as I was going through them, were not for me: self-harm; bad men; infertility; pain upon pain upon pain.

My story is all of these things but none of these stories are all of me.

Quarantine Diary Day 323: Skin Deep

There was a time I would have described myself as low maintenance and thought that to be accurate self-assessment. There was a time when I thought low maintenance was something to aspire to. There was a time when I thought that low maintenance–in relationships, in friendships, at work–would keep me from getting dumped or fired. I was wrong on all counts. I am not low maintenance in any meaningful sense. I demand a lot from my relationships. I require attention and engagement and emotional intensity, or at least a degree of tolerance for my emotional intensity. There’s nothing remarkable or impressive about being a woman with no needs. Disappearing yourself will not keep people around.

I do, however, enjoy making as many things in my life as I can as easy–as low maintenance–as can be. I don’t dye my hair. I get cuts that can grow out for six to twelve months (or more!). I bite my nails down to the quick. I shop for clothes maybe once a year and when I do I spend too much money so I don’t have to do it again. Remember how at the beginning of COVID, introverts were like, “Social distancing, oh please. I’ve been prepping for this my whole life?” That’s how I felt when the salons closed and women started showing up in Zoom with their natural hair. I’ve been like this my whole life.

Periodically, relentless insecurity will collide with my penchant for wishful thinking and I’ll try to be somebody other than what I am. I’ll find myself at a J. Crew outlet trying to be my sister-in-law. I’ll find myself at an overpriced downtown salon asking for an undercut. I’ll find myself drooling over women with dewey skin on the internet and ordering $85 worth of product from Glossier. The skin care regimen was the thing, the brass ring, the hallmark adult womanhood I could never quite figure out. Surely, I thought, there must be a causal connection between the fact that I had yet to dedicate the time and money to figuring out what combination of products work best with my skin and the fact that I was still breaking out like a teenager. Surely, there must be a magic formula that would shrink my pores, calm the redness, and dry out the cysts on my temples, cheekbones, and chin. Surely the fault was mine and commerce was the answer.

Glossier was my gateway drug. I tried all the serums: Niacinamide + Zinc serum to “sort out texture issues,” Hyaluronic Acid + Vitamin b5 to “ease any tight, dry feeling,” and Vitamin C + Magnesium to look “fresh, recharged, and [of course] glowy.” Did they work? I don’t know. They definitely changed my skin, made it somehow…thinner…so I couldn’t pick my face anymore without making it bleed. I figured whatever it was doing, it had to be better than nothing, so I reordered the serums when I ran out, and kept doing it, though I eventually started buying inexpensive dupes from another company. In the meantime, other products kept showing up in my mailbox, after my husband bought me one of those subscription beauty boxes. He only meant to get me a year but forgot to cancel so the products just kept coming. I incorporated morning and evening toners into my routine, more vitamin C, expensive moisturizers and primers, masks, and yet more serums for morning and sleep, including one that I really liked that was fittingly called “Self Esteem.” I may be cheap and low maintenance but I’m not a total novice. I did my research. I didn’t use them all at once and I gave them time to work on my skin. I threw out the products that clearly reacted badly with my skin (okay, fine, I threw them into a drawer, not the trash because, like I said, I’m cheap). Eventually, I had a skincare regimen that…I don’t know…felt like it worked…I guess. Maybe? The products were expensive, and the steps were complicated and changed every other night, and my skin was smoother but still weirdly thin, but maybe I could chalk that up to aging, and I still broke out a lot, but that was probably hormonal and also I realized I need to wipe the screen of my phone down more often after stroking it with my fingers all day and then sticking it to the side of my face to use as an actual phone.

A couple of months ago, I cleared all the products out of sight and went back to the routine I used in my early twenties, when washing my face at night and wearing moisturizer with sunscreen felt like the height of responsible living: face soap + drugstore moisturizer. No toners. No serums. No primers. No vitamins. It was just a test, born out of taking a closer look at my finances. A couple of more expensive products were close to running out and I didn’t want to reorder them if they weren’t actually doing anything. Within a couple of weeks of putting down the products, my skin went back to the way it used to be, which is to say, not great, but normal, at least for me. I still have visible pores and blackheads and scars, but my skin isn’t so fucking fragile anymore. I can pop a zit without it looking like a crime scene. Breakouts happen and then they pass. I do use a clay mask once a week. I look in the mirror and I like what I see.

The serums were worse than snake oil. They actively made my skin worse.

What other pointless pastimes have I been pursuing because I thought I was supposed to? What other hopeless habits have I picked up because I thought they looked good? What other random and purely imitative rituals did I mistakenly think were for me?

Years and years ago, after college but before I got married, I made short and sweet list of resolutions at the beginning of a new year. There were only five items on the list. I don’t remember three of them. One of them was to be better at writing thank you notes. The last one was to learn how to make a “heart healthy muffin.” What the fuck? Back then, I gave a shit about the size of my thighs, but not my heart, and I’d never baked a thing other than chocolate chip cookies using the recipe on the back of a Nestle bag. I was probably 22 and saw the phrase in a SELF magazine at the gym and latched onto it as a symbol of the kind of women I wasn’t and, therefore, the kind of women I should aspire to be. That resolution stayed on my list for years until I realized I didn’t want to waste the little bandwidth I have for cooking on a recipe that’s defining characteristic is that it’s good for your heart. I buy all my muffins at coffee shops, anyway.

Pandemic life offers some easy answers to the question “What kind of person did I think I was that I no longer have to be?” I don’t miss shopping for shoes and purses; I don’t miss getting the odd pedicure once a year and feeling guilty about the state of my nails the rest of the time; I don’t miss accepting every invitation for lunch, coffee, and happy hour that comes my way; I don’t miss waiting in line for brunch; I don’t miss going somewhere every weekend; I don’t miss working out every day. I’m not low maintenance, but I sure do like having my life that way.

Quarantine Diary Day 317: Tiny Victories

So what have I been doing while sheltering in place for the last eleven months? Like a lot of people, I’ve been cooking more. I don’t want to overstate my efforts. I did not undertake any ambitious projects. I did not, could not, would absolutely never commit to cooking a certain number of meals per week. I did not, could not, will absolutely never try a new diet or meal plan. I did not resolve to save money. I did not decide to work my way through a cookbook of note. I have no interest in being a more helpful partner, a more nurturing mom, more well-rounded person, or a healthier eater. I just had a little more time and energy after work and decided to spend some of more of it in the company of one of my favorite things: food.

I don’t have much to show in the way of results. At best, I have become a slightly less mediocre cook. Truly, the list of things I have not accomplished in the kitchen in the last year is neverending, but here is an abbreviated to give you the flavor:

  • I do not have a camera roll of well-lit and eye-catching dishes;
  • I did not make the perfect sourdough loaf;
  • I did not refine my knife skills to the point that they no longer make my family extremely nervous;
  • I did not successfully bake chocolate chip cookies under the broiler when our oven went out for three weeks;
  • I did not cook a single meal without a consulting the recipe many times and my more culinarily inclined spouse at least once;
  • I did not cook a single meal within the time allotted in the recipe; and
  • I did not find a single food blog or recipe site that did not make me want to pull my hair out or die from scrolling.

Lack of photographic evidence notwithstanding, I have amassed a small stockpile of wins:

  • I can respond to question, “Do you want to cook dinner tonight?” without having a panic attack or becoming irate;
  • I can poke through the fridge and track down a recipe that works with my skill set and the ingredients and time we have on hand;
  • I can roast any vegetable on a sheet pan;
  • I can braid and bake a gorgeous golden challah;
  • I can deviate from the recipe when it makes sense;
  • I can anticipate what flavors will go well together;
  • I can properly season meat;
  • I can make a meal that my seven-year-old likes;
  • I can make a meal that I like.

That last one is the reason I keep going back to my cookbooks and to the kitchen. In the early days of the pandemic, the frivolous thing I missed the most was going out for breakfast. Now I hardly think about it. If there’s one thing I have in common with my own mom, it’s that my family doesn’t appreciate my cooking. Most Saturdays my daughter asks for whatever sugar cereal is in the cabinet and my husband eats whatever it is that he eats and I take 30+ minutes to cook myself the perfect eggs over easy and the perfect bacon and perfect pan-fried hash browns and sit down to breakfast mid-morning with a huge mug of black coffee and, for the next twenty minutes, my life is exactly the way I want it to be.

Now that I can cook, though, I find myself missing things I never cared about before. The other day, my husband pointed out that we can’t just run out to the store for a fresh baguette. He used to ask me to do that occasionally, and I would complain about the extra errand. Now, I can’t get the idea out of my mind. Can you even imagine the luxury of making a trip to a public place for a single ingredient? Of perusing the aisles? Of picking up a loaf of bread and squeezing it and putting it back down? I’m drooling just thinking about it.

Of course, the real reason I can cook for fun and pleasure is because I don’t have to. I will make breakfast tomorrow morning, yes, but tomorrow night we will get takeout. When Sunday rolls around, I’ll pass the ball back to my husband to figure out breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and when the pandemic rolls around and I’m back in the office, I’ll pass all the balls back to him to figure out weeknight eats. I doubt I’ll give up cooking entirely, though. My breakfasts are really getting pretty good.

Quarantine Diaries Day 226: Office Wars

I think my husband wants me to go back to the office. My presence at home distracts my daughter from e-learning and throws them off their routine. When I come up for coffee or walnuts or cheesy puffs she looks up from whatever screen is working best today and says, “Hey guess what?” and then we chat over her teacher and he has to redirect her when I leave. When I join them for lunch, he says she’s like a whole different kid. When he’s being whatever, she looks to me as if to say, “see what I’m dealing with all day?” and I give her a look that says, “tell me about it.” I get to be the fun mom and he is serious business dad. I don’t think he likes that.

The downstairs room where I work and he works out is a mess of cords. I have work laptop and another work laptop and the tablet where I do my writing and last week I brought out the space heater. I keep talking about how I want to tell my firm to stop paying rent downtown and bring all my office furniture home. We could put the futon in storage, or just throw it away (it’s not like anyone’s coming to stay) and move is $$$ stationary bike into the garage. He really doesn’t like that.

I think my husband wants me to go back to the office. But I used to eat cans of soup for lunch and now I eat roasted vegetables and pasta. I used to scour discount shoe retailers for boots sturdy enough to stand up to several miles of sloshing through the snow, professional enough to stand up in court, and sleek enough to withstand the withering stares of ladies who lunch and now I wear slouchy socks all day. I used to get sexually harassed when I changed into leggings to go for a run and now I know the freedom of almost nobody looking at me at all.

I think my husband wants me to go back to the office. But, look, I tried to go back in June and the man on the other side of the wall was coughing into a phone while hawking his gluten free bread products and the other man with whom I was once locked in a silent battle over the thermostat in my office was sweating buckets at his desk and the receptionist was walking around with her mask dangling from one ear and every month or so I get an email that there’s been a positive test in the building.

My husband definitely wants me to go back to the office. But, like, would you go back before there’s a vaccine? Would you ever go back at all?

Quarantine Diaries Day 211: Controlled Burn

For the first few years of my daughter’s life my mind and my newsfeed were consumed by stories of women leaving the workforce. That wasn’t an option for me but I was obsessed with the idea that my life would be better if I’d at least had the choice, as well as with the idea that everybody was doing it better than me whether they hired a nanny or quit their jobs to stay home or never went into the workforce in the first place, and I sought out story after story to test my highly self-centered and ultimately fear-based theories. When my daughter went off to school and I started peeking over the other side of early childhood parenting, I want to shake all the women having and raising babies with with men by the shoulders and implore them:

If any part of you wants to work, find a way to make it happen. It doesn’t matter if childcare eats up your whole salary* a significant chunk of your combined household income. If you can afford it and you want to work even a little bit make it happen. Early childhood is over fast unless you’re having a million babies and before you know it all your kids will be out of the house for 6+ hours a day and instead of scrambling and stressing about what to do with this next phase of your life you’ll be solidly into your career and thanking all the ladies who who showed you that life can be so good.

*Don’t measure the cost of childcare as coming entirely out of your salary. Your partner is paying for and benefits from childcare too.

It may have been un-nuanced, unsolicited, and unwanted, but that was my advice from Before Times and I thought it was pretty damn good. Now, another wave is here and it’s even bigger than the one that washed over my life when it felt like everyone in my orbit was having babies. 800,000 women dropped out of the workforce. One in four are considering leaving or at least scaling back. I don’t have that option but I understand why women would take it if they did. A mom of a kid in my daughter’s school works full time out of the house and does e-learning late into the night with her second-grader. A partner at a law firm is on the verge of quitting her job. A colleague is working double time to pay her kid’s tuition at his dream school that could close any week. My sister launched her second book and wrote and pitched a third with her three kids running wild at home and an essential worker husband working longer hours than ever. More friends than I can count have had to trust that their kids will be safe at daycare or bring caretakers into their already overcrowded homes, and are paying a premium to do it. Even more are running themselves ragged running e-learning themselves at home while also working full-time. Quitting, if it’s an option, must feel like the only one. Of course, the stay-at-home moms don’t have it any easier. My sister–in-law wrangled five kids entirely on her own while her medical resident husband finished out a three month rotation in another city. A friend who was supposed to go back to teaching this year is homeschooling her two kids instead. An acquaintance who was supposed to go back to school herself and figure out what kind of career she wanted when her youngest went back to kindergarten this year is instead watching herself disappear.

I don’t have a speech for these women who are raising children with men. I don’t have any idea what they should do. It’s not fair that the burden of all the extra childcare and attendant emotional labor is falling on women but I understand why they are the ones picking it up. I understand how it is easier to let even the most carefully constructed egalitarian marriage fall to pieces than to try to keep that wobbly tower upright in harrowing times.

Last week, when I was complaining yet again about how impossible it feels to raise a happy, healthy kid at this moment in time, my therapist gently suggested that some women might be envious of my situation. She’s not wrong. I don’t know a whole lot of women whose lives haven’t been made immeasurably harder by the pandemic, but when it comes to work/life balance–that ever elusive, always illusory, annoying buzzword–my life got easier.

In March I realized my long-held dream of eliminating my commute and working from home. I sleep in an hour later every morning and eat a full breakfast with my family. When my husband stands up to clear the table for school and my daughter starts fussing about brushing her teeth, that’s my cue to head off to “work”–i.e., a leisurely walk around the neighborhood. By the time I make it back and set up my computer in the office downstairs, I can hear my daughter in her first video call of the day. I work for a few hours, come up for a quick lunch with my family, and disappear back downstairs for the rest of the afternoon. Sometimes sounds of my daughter’s cries or my husband’s mounting frustration drift down the stairs. My heart breaks and I put on a pair of headphones. I try to finish work early so I can exercise and then call my mom as soon as she finishes up her shift at a school where the kids been back for months. I come upstairs at the end of the day to dinner on the table.

The evening shift with our daughter is mine. It’s not always easy but it’s usually fun. We dance wildly to Parry Gripp and read Harry Potter and throw balls inside the house and play card games and go for walks and draw with sidewalk chalk. I used to try to look at her school work in the evenings but now I don’t bother because allowing her to maintain some sense of separation between school and home seems more important than proving I’m as involved as moms who don’t work. I used to shuttle her to and from activities in the evenings but now they’re mostly cancelled and I refuse to put her in front of a screen more than she needs to be. We eat dessert every night. We unload the dishwasher and put away a few toys and then it’s off to bed. After a bath and jammies and a few chapters and a few songs, she’s down and the night is mine again. My husband cleans the kitchen. He charges the devices for school the next day. I burn incense and read and meditate and play music and then sit on the couch to watch TV with a bag of candy corn on my lap. I go to sleep before he does.

The weekends are all different, but the balance is there. This weekend, I put in the emotional labor to plan a playdate for our daughter, but my husband cleaned the house on the off chance anybody might need to come inside to use the bathroom. I supervised the kids playing outside but my husband brought out the snacks. We both played for hours with our daughter and did chores and took a few hours for ourselves both days of the weekend. Our dryer that has been on the fritz for months finally gave up the ghost and instead of freaking out I let my husband order and arrange install of a new one while celebrated a week off of laundry duty.

I don’t have any advice for women trying to sustain an egalitarian heterosexual marriage with kids in a pandemic. What I do have is advice for constructing a marriage that will rise to the occasion when crisis hits:

Get yourself a stay-at-home husband. Switch the traditional roles so completely and shift them so far out that the seesaw hits the ground on the other side and you’re sitting up high legs swinging in the air. Make your income indispensable. You will feel the weight of responsibility but there will be no question your job comes first. Understand that everything that needs to happen in the home is also a job, and it’s not yours. Let your husband make the appointments and the beds or let them go unmade. You will feel the pain when it’s not done right but there will be no question whose job it is. Undoing all the cultural programming and fighting your way into social structures that weren’t built for families like yours will hurt like hell but one day life as you know it will fall apart and your kids will be home for 24 hours a day and instead of scrambling and stressing about how to keep all the balls in the air you’ll go off to work and leave your husband to deal with this fresh new hell and you’ll thank me for telling you that life can be so good.

It feels unfair, how much harder my husband’s life got this year while mine got easier. It is unfair. But it’s not like it was fair before, when the bar I was working so hard to clear was set to Perfect Mom instead of Pretty Good Dad. It’s not like the scales are perfectly balanced today. I probably still do too much, way more than my dad ever did, more than my husband would do if our roles were reversed. Luckily for our marriage, I’m not aiming for fairness; I’m playing the long game of self-actualization. The pandemic might have set me back, put me into survival mode. It might have destroyed my marriage. The only reason it didn’t is because we had someone at home to track down toilet paper and masks and wait in line at Trader Joe’s and take over our daughter’s early elementary education and that someone was someone other than me.

Quarantine Diary Day 129: Fuck Politeness

I’m listening to the audio version of Stay Sexy & Don’t Get Murdered, the memoir/advice book by Georgia Hardstark and Karen Kilgariff, the hosts of the true crime podcast, My Favorite Murder. I don’t actually listen to this podcast and I only started the book because it had a catchy (to say the least!) title and was immediately available on my library e-reader app and I hesitated before checking it out. I listen to a lot of podcasts and I definitely do dabble in true crime in several of the formats via which the culture/my husband has sought to force it down our collective/my own throat–see: Serial Season 1 (murder), Accused (murder), Bear Brook (murder), Last Seen (art heist!), The Staircase (murder?), The Jinx (murder), The People vs. O.J. Simpson (this one was not that good, right?) and probably so many more I don’t even remember–but I don’t consider myself a fan of the genre. I’m sort of squeamish and I’m sensitive to how people, especially men, sometimes talk about violence in a way that seems like they glorify or get off on or are just totally unmoved by it. I can also have a short attention span so if the storyline of the murder and/or investigation is not immediately gripping, you will lose me in the procedure and backstory and tangents that go nowhere. Also, I once read this post from Ask A Manager about an employee who was sickened by how often and gleefully her coworkers talked about violent crime and, honestly, I related to the prudish letter writer!

Nevertheless, I am listening to Stay Sexy and Don’t Get Murdered, and I’m loving it because the authors are relatable weirdos, compelling storytellers, moving writers, and funny. They are also unabashed feminists, which, really, I think should be a prerequisite for any job that involves investigating/discussing/dissecting/preventing grisly crimes against women. The chapters in the book seem to be based on various catchphrases and credos from the show, one of which is “fuck politeness.” Fuck politeness because politeness will keep you stuck in dangerous situations when you are afraid of overreacting or being rude or hurting someone’s feelings. Fuck politeness because politeness will let you override your instincts, the alarm bells going off in your head, the red flags flapping your face. Please note: politeness is not the same as kindness. Do not fuck kindness. Never fuck kindness. Fuck politeness because politeness can get you killed.

As soon as I heard the Murderinos’ theory of why fucking politeness is a life-saving imperative, I knew it was true. Looking back over my own blessedly abbreviated history of finding my way into and out of all manner of nettlesome, nasty, and noxious scrapes, I see that the pattern was always the same: 1) I followed my own underdeveloped sense of self-esteem onto the outskirts of a shady situation; 2) social grooming to be polite and pleasant muted me as I followed someone else smack into the middle of the danger zone; and, eventually, 3) my survival instinct screamed at me to fuck politeness and get the fuck out.

I’m thinking of the time I let a fully-grown weather-beaten fifty-something man I met buying cigarettes at the 7-Eleven into the car with me and my nineteen-year-old girlfriends, let him tag along with for hours going to various parties, brought him into our house at the end of the night, nervously waved off my roommates as they disappeared into their bedrooms with their boyfriends, and then resigned myself to hanging out with this guy for however long he stayed at my house. I desperately wanted to sleep, too, and I was terrified that this man thought he was on his way to my room, but I was afraid to ask him to leave after spending the whole evening with him. I was convinced I owed him my company for as long as he wanted it. If my anxiety was through the roof even before we got high, it went stratospheric after. Somehow, my altered state made it clear: this guy needed to go. My mouth was moving a mile a minute but not saying any of the things it needed to say. I knew it was unforgivable to kick him out after taking his drugs and if I wasn’t going to have sex with him the least I could do was be entertaining. It wasn’t until he leaned over me that I figured out how to fuck politeness. I jumped off the couch, sprinted to the back of the house, and started pounding on my roommate’s door and screaming for her and her boyfriend to make him leave. They did. I woke up the next morning with huge bruises on my legs and no idea where they came from.

My conditioning for is so strong that when the man came back the next day I refused to see him but told my roommates to tell him I was sorry. My politeness drive is so strong that I put this man on a list of “people I have harmed” when I worked the eighth step years later. It really was shitty to smoke his shit and run. I’ve forgiven myself for the dumb choices that put me in that situation. It’s harder to forgive myself for not knowing a way to get out of it without acting like a bitch, a trainwreck, a hot scary mess, even though I knew in the moment that hopping that train was what it would take to save my life.

I’m writing this vulgar overshare of post for COVID-related reasons.

When the pandemic hit, I rarely wore a mask. I never went anywhere except for walks around the neighborhood and it was frigid for weeks, so I scarcely saw anyone. Even when the weather warmed up, it was so rare that anyone came anywhere near six feet and it was so easy to just cross the street if I saw someone coming my way. Around Memorial Day more neighbors started spending time outside. At first I tried to keep my distance and when their kids ran up to me I would panic and tug the bandana tied around my neck up over my nose. When the data started to come out about the relatively low risk of transmission outside compared to indoors, I started to relax. When experts started to suggest expanding shelter-in-place bubbles to include one or two other families as a means of preserving mental health and making this thing sustainable, I started to relax. When Illinois started to flatten the curve and move into new phases of reopening, I started to relax. I got comfortable talking to my neighbors outside without a mask. I got comfortable taking my daughter to the playground without a mask. I got comfortable leaving the house without even grabbing a mask just in case.

That’s changing, though. The summer–hell, the year–is halfway over and the pandemic is still going strong but people are pouring out of their houses onto the sidewalks, into the parks, onto the beaches and trails and streets. More people I know are getting sick. The potential long-term complications of the virus are starting to look scarier. Now, when I see people outside, I recoil like I did back in March. I reach for my mask. It feels awkward to don a mask outside when I’ve been walking around without one for so long. It feels rude to pull it up when I pass people who aren’t wearing theirs. It feels rude to wear it when I’m with people I’ve been hanging out with outside since May. Obviously, I know it’s not objectively rude to wear a mask, but it feels that way sometimes. Social conditioning is fucked like that. Even worse than feeling rude, it feels like an admission of fault for not wearing one in the first place. Luckily, I know how to override my stupid social anxieties to save a life:

Fuck politeness. Fuck what other people think.

It doesn’t matter if you think or know you should have done a thing a long time ago or if you’re embarrassed or afraid to just be doing it. It doesn’t matter how hard you committed to your earlier course of action or how far it took you off course. It’s never too late to course correct and do the right thing.

Quarantine Diary Day 61: Twenty-Seven Questions About The Fleabag Finale

We finally watched Fleabag. I say “finally” like I didn’t hear about it for the first time only a few weeks ago, and like I didn’t just figure out what it was–a British TV series starring Phoebe Waller-Bridge–last Friday. It took me a minute to get around to watching it because every time I saw it mentioned on social media or heard my husband say that someone had recommended it, I developed Memento-style short-term memory loss and immediately forgot all about it. Conversations about it went something like this.

Me: So, _________ recommended this show on Amazon, I think it’s called Fleabag?

Husband: Yeah, I know. We talked about it last week.

Me: We did? I’ve never heard of it before.

Husband: Yeah. It’s one of the shows the cashier at Trader Joe’s recommended. He said it’s great. Remember?

Me: No. What’s it’s about?

Husband: It’s a British comedy.

Me [groaning loudly]: Ohhhhh, never mind.

I say “Ohhhhh, never mind” like I historically haven’t loved them, like the UK Office wasn’t my gateway drug into the golden age of television just like everyone else in my generation, like I wasn’t obsessed with shows like Fresh Meat and Pulling and Gavin & Stacey and even, briefly, a pretty bad show about teen parents called Pramface, like the first few episodes of Breeders didn’t absolutely delight me as recently a few months ago.

Here’s the thing, though. I’m pretty bad with accents. I’m embarrassed to admit it, because I’m afraid it’s a trait that carries whiff of ethnocentrism or at least lack of sophistication, and when I go on to explain that it’s just hard for me to follow a show or a movie where most of the dialogue is spoken in heavily accented English, I feel lazy and selfish and like I should just try harder and be better, goddamnit! I don’t mind watching shows with closed-captioning. In fact, I prefer it, because I’m also pretty bad with rapid-speed dialogue and hushed voices and lots of background noise. Maybe I just have poor hearing? I tend to forget that closed-captioning/subtitles are an option, though.

Here’s the other thing. Without knowing anything about it, I assumed Fleabag was about a man. I think it was a quick association of the word “fleabag” with “dirtbag” and another quick leap to all the raunchy comedies out there about shitty dude and while it’s true that I’ve known and loved these comedies and the men who make them over the years, I don’t need or want to watch another show about a shitty dude. I don’t even want to watch a another show about a decent dude. I definitely don’t want to watch anything with a redemption narrative: shitty dude has realizations, tries to become decent dude, starts treating women like they have value instead of like garbage but ultimately still sees them as objects.

Back to last Friday. Just as I was groaning away the prospect of struggling through a British comedy about a dude, husband pulled up the show so we could watch a trailer and I didn’t need to see anything more than Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s mascara streaked face before I changed my mind.

Me: We’re watching this.

I’m very interested in female dirtbags, though, in women with unpleasant and irredeemable characteristics. I like women who are a little gross.

We finished the series in four days. It’s really short, but also really wonderful. Now that I’m finished, all I want to do is talk about it with girlfriends, but moms’ night out isn’t happening anymore, so I’m taking to the internet. Mostly, I have questions.

THE REST OF THIS POST IS ALL SPOILERS

Here are my questions:

  1. What is Fleabag’s name?
  2. What is Fleabag’s mom’s name?
  3. Does anybody care about the Godmother’s name?
  4. What is the significance of the breaking of the fourth wall?
  5. Is Fleabag insane?
  6. Or is she just grieving?
  7. Was she like this before Boo died? Before her mom died?
  8. Why was the Priest able to see her breaking the fourth wall?
  9. Why is the Priest so sexy?
  10. So, is Claire a lawyer or what?
  11. How adorable are Claire and Klare?
  12. Will Jake be okay without Claire?
  13. Do we agree that the bassoon is a cry for help?
  14. Do other instruments fall into this category?
  15. Can a guinea pig bond with a hamster?
  16. Is Hillary’s cage too small?
  17. How will Fleabag process what happened to Boo?
  18. Has Fleabag made amends for what she did to Boo?
  19. Why aren’t there more shows featuring women with unkempt hair and bad makeup?
  20. Is there any hope for a future between the Fleabag and the Priest?
  21. What is the significance of the bus being cancelled at the end?
  22. Does Question 17 contain the answer to Question 16? (Please say no (I know you won’t.).)
  23. What’s up with the fox?
  24. The Priest definitely has an alcohol problem, right?
  25. Would it be very foolish for me to open up a cafe when the pandemic is over?

Look, I know the ending was perfect, and that resolving any of these questions would have diluted the artistry of the show as a whole, but I am who I am and I want what I want and who I am is a sad sappy sucker and what I want is closure. Also, a happy ending for the characters I love and just desserts for the characters I hate. At least Fleabag delivered on the latter in spades.

I do have one more question, which sort of undercuts the last paragraph, and it is this:

  1. How is it that a show can leave so many major issues unresolved and still feel so satisfying?
  2. Is it because that’s how life is?

That was two questions. Goddamnit. This is the last one, I swear.

  1. Will I resort to this Question/No Answer format for future posts?

Almost definitely. [Wink]

Quarantine Diary Day 54

What are we wearing these days? For the first two weeks, I was still reaching for things that you put on a hanger in the closet. You know, blouses and button downs and cardigans and slacks. Work clothes. When it dawned on me that nobody I know in a professional capacity was going to see my lower body for a very long time I switched to jeans, but kept the work shirts because the threat of spontaneous home invasion via Skype, Zoom, and Teams loomed large. But the video calls did materialize in the numbers I thought they might. And when they did, I was startled to realize that it is not a forgiving head and shoulders shot that people see, but rather an unfiltered image of my whole head that dominates the screen. When the weather shifted a few weeks ago, I realized I have a whole drawerful of perfectly good baggy t-shirts and tanks just begging for their time in the sun. My whole professional life I’ve mourned the fact that I can’t just wear a fifteen year old raggedy concert tee to work, and now that time is here. So, these days I wear t-shirts to work, and oversized housecoats, because that’s the kind of future crazy old lizard lady I am. I gave up bras years ago, so nothing’s changed there except for any residual guilt I might have had about, well, you know. As yet unclear as to the next time I’ll have to appear in court or take a client to dinner or speak at a conference, I packed away my suits. And if you’re worried about weekdays blending indistinguishably into weekends, don’t. Remember we’re not leaving the house on weekends, either. They are, therefore, suitable for athleisure and by athleisure I mean full body sweatsuits. There’s still the matter of the ultra closeups of my face and head, but I can’t do anything about the fact that the pixie cut I was so stoked about in November is growing out into a floofy triangle and it’s not like I’m about to start wearing makeup now. I don’t think it’s too much to ask the people who have to look at my face to look at it the way I do every morning, which is to say, with admiration and appreciation and understanding that this is just how I look. Now, I know I had a head start on my sartorial unschooling, having left my office job over a year before social distancing started, but still, I’m eager to see what happens to professional mores if work from home continues for much longer. I hope we all go feral.

 

Quarantine Diary Day 46

I commuted over an hour a day for the first nine years of my career. For the last half of that, I was in transit over two hours a day. For many years, my route to work included a long walk, a train, and a water taxi. When I changed jobs a few years ago and moved into an office a few miles north of downtown and closer to my home in the suburbs, I thought the trip would get better. Instead, I had to take two trains each away, and almost every day included multiple 20+ minute waits on the platform. I defended my commute to people balked at how much time I spent getting to and from work. Sitting on the train with a book, walking on the riverwalk with a podcast, cruising down the Chicago river with music in my ears, that was my me time, the only time in my long days that I wasn’t busy with work, or childcare, or chores. Still, more often than not I arrived at work already exhausted, and by the time I made it home for the night, I was done. It’s no wonder that I spent so many of those train rides home, especially after I got sober, thirsty and resentful, envious of the men in suits drinking Daisy Cutter from a can with another in a paper bag. I wondered if it was the beer or the suits or the fact that they weren’t going home to a second shift that made them able to cope with a life that was grinding me into the ground. 

Last summer, my employer allowed me to rent an office in my town. After that, I walked to work, about twenty minutes each way. It was still a commute, but it didn’t feel that way, except on the coldest days, and the rainy ones. I marveled at the pleasure of watching the seasons unfold in my own community, up close. More than the walking, I embraced the gift of time. Moving my office gave me 1.5 hours back on my clock every day. Before I got that time, I assumed I would use it to work. I’m an attorney; there are always more hours to bill. I thought I might spend the rest of it with my daughter. I’m a working mom; there is always more to do at home. So for the first few weeks, I rushed off to work early on days that I had client calls and walked my daughter to school on days that I didn’t. I raced home for family dinners. As the weeks wore on, and I adjusted to not having a train to catch, I started to wonder why I was rushing. I also started to wonder if I wasn’t still entitled to a little me time that didn’t consist solely of listening to podcasts while hauling my ass to and from my job. I decided to reclaim the time that I’d been so eager to return to my family and my job. I let my morning runs go longer, up to seven, eight, and nine miles from five or six. I let my husband get our daughter ready for school while I played the guitar before work. I did daily tarot pulls.   

When I realized that I’d be working from home last month, I knew it would be a challenge. Our home is small, with no dedicated home office, and I’d be sharing the space with my husband and newly homeschooled daughter. But I was excited about the prospect of another gift of time. My forty-minute walk commute was going down to zero! Imagine all the quality family time, all the productive work hours! Imagine all the writing! I could barely contain myself.

Of course, you know what happened next. The first few weeks of self-isolation were more about surviving than thriving. I stopped waking up at 5:00 a.m. to work out because what was the point. I stopped making my kid get dressed for the same reason. I woke up late, walked downstairs, and arrived at the futon that is now my office already exhausted. I spent the day trying to maintain a veneer of business as usual with my coworkers and clients and by the time I made it upstairs for the night, I was done. I powered through dinner and bedtime and then collapsed on the couch to eat ice cream and watch comfort TV.   

It was my therapist who suggested that I bring back the commute, on the theory that our pre-pandemic routines can offer much-needed stability in a time of crisis. So I started walking, first around the park, and then around the block, and then around the neighborhood. Sometimes I call a family member on the phone. Sometimes I listen to a podcast. Sometimes I do nothing but walk. After years of wishing my commute away, I’m finding that most days I cannot walk enough. Walking outside, when I can’t go anywhere else, is a pleasure. I like watching the trees bud and the flowers bloom. I like peering into my neighbors’ yards and waving at people walking their dogs. The thing that drained me is now giving me life.    

At the beginning, I invited my daughter with me every time I left the house. She needs to get outside as much as I do, and I like her company. In fact, our walks our glorious. We collect sticks and rocks. We photograph flowers. We race as fast as we can. At least once every walk, my daughter peels ahead of me or drops back, lost in thought or in the wonder of it all. When she remembers I exist, she sprints back to me shouting, “I love you mama!” 

Lately, though, it’s getting harder to get my daughter to leave the house. As much fun as she has when she’s out there, she is getting tired of walking. She is tired of our neighborhood, tired of me. She misses other kids, and playing on the playground. Feeling obligated to make the most of this time, I keep pushing her to join me, and the walks are turning into a battleground. I think, if it were up to me, I would be walking four or five times a day, but I can’t, because I am a working parent and my time belongs to my family and my job. I start to get bitter. 

Just in time, I remember that the gift of this season is the gift of time. This weekend, we finished dinner, and I asked my daughter to pick up her toys. The family room was a disaster and she was starting to fuss. Outside, it was a gorgeous spring evening. The sun was setting, and the neighborhood was all gold. I thought about how much I’d rather be out there than in here. I thought about how there was no reason to rush through the evening, from dinner to chores to bathtime to bed. I walked upstairs, told my husband I was going for a walk. “Supervise the clean-up,” I said. “I’ll be back in fifteen for dessert.” I came back in twenty minutes to a clean house and ice cream sundae ingredients lined up on the counter. 

I am entitled to time to myself. I am entitled to do something enjoyable without turning it into an opportunity for my child. I am entitled to a life that doesn’t feel like a grind, that doesn’t turn me into dust. If I want to go for a walk, I can go for a walk. I don’t have to have a reason. It doesn’t have to be a commute. 

Devil’s Haircut

I cut off a foot of hair today. This is not without precedent. I can’t maintain a hairstyle for the life of me. I go months or years between cuts until I am so sick of my hair that I chop it all off. This is my first time going pixie short, though. Though there is really nothing pixie-ish about how I look now. The cut is decidedly androgynous. I’m fairly certain my husband hates it, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that was kind of the point. When I booked the appointment last week, I was planning on a chin-length layered bob. When I mentioned that I planned to cut my hair short, my husband reacted negatively, worried I would cut it “too short.” It annoyed me he even had an opinion. To be fair, he does ask me about my preferences about his hair, clothes, etc., and I mostly don’t have strong ones, but when I say I like something, he does try to do that thing, even when it is not exactly advisable from a fashion standpoint. I’m thinking of the year we were super into Sons of Anarchy and I kept telling him to grow his hair out long like Jax. And he did it! I know he knew it was a questionable look because he kept asking, “Are you sure?” and I kept saying, “Yes, yes,” even though a clean cut style is for sure more flattering on him. Preferences aside, I would never dream of criticizing a style he likes even if it doesn’t match my aesthetics, so, like I said, it irked me when he did. It didn’t help that his knee jerk reaction against short hair aligns with sexist societal beauty standards. Fuck that. Not fuck him, just fuck that. The beauty standards. So when I got in the chair I asked the stylist to take it all off, and she did, and I love it. I couldn’t quite picture how my face would look with short hair and it turns out it looks like…my face…but more in YOUR face, if that makes sense. Do I look better with short hair? I don’t know. Probably not. I like that I look less feminine, though. I think I look like my friend M, who is a badass (an overused label that I myself use sparingly…M is one of my few friends who deserves it). I like the way my neck looks, like a swan, and my jaw, all defined. I don’t miss the knotted curls on the back of my head or the ragged ends or the frizz around my crown. I am all about the unbrushed flower child look in the summer and feeling like a witch in the fall but now that the cold has set in leaving the house in the morning with a wet mop hanging around my shoulders is unappealing, as is trying to stuff an oversized top knot into a winter beanie. This evening I ran into a male acquaintance at the church and he did a double take and then freaked out, in a good way, when he realized it was me. He took in my all black, my work boots, and my new short hair. “You look like every girl I had a crush on in middle school.” I liked hearing that. So clearly I’m not exactly trying to escape the male gaze. I’m not flouting all the beauty standards. Just the ones that don’t suit me at this particular moment, which is nothing admirable. I still want to look sexy. And I do. Except now I look like the women that I think look good.