Eat the Damn Cake

I am almost twenty-six. One week left. It’s coming up fast, like a velociraptor. I am running, but you know it’s gonna get me, and those things are wily. They’ve practically got hands. With giant claws.

(see?? source)

Twenty-six. That’s on the other side of the twenties. More towards the thirties, where all sorts of secrets about life lie. Where I think they’ve put adulthood, at least temporarily.

Anyway, I found a WHITE HAIR. Yesterday. Which is not such a big deal. People have been known to find those before the age of twenty-six. But it just seems symbolic, or something—the timing. The timing feels a little harsh. Like, yeah, this time next year, they’ll all be white, honey. Just so you know.

That’s OK. White hair is nice. I knew a girl with white hair in college. It was gorgeous until she dyed it.

But twenty-six? How much am I supposed have accomplished by now? I think probably more than I have. Maybe a Pulitzer? A Nobel? An Oscar? Some other kind of giant prize? Something gold and shiny, triumphant and permanent that I can stick on a pedestal in the middle of the room and everyone can think, “Well, she’s amazing forever.” And then they will stop asking me questions like, “So…you write? That’s fun. Anything else? Still looking for a job?” If not a prize, at least a six-figure book deal. I would accept that. “Young Author Catches Literary World By Surprise With Sheer Brilliance! Is Declared Greatest Writer Ever.”

I’m not going to get started.

I’m not going to retell the story of the college girls my friend overheard on the elevator who were like, “What is she, like, twenty-six?!” “No way! I thought she was young!” “No, dude, she’s like twenty-six.” “Shit…well, she looks pretty young for her age. She’s still cool.”

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I should have known it was a bad idea. What was I even thinking?

It all started when Bear needed a new suit rightthissecond. He only had one, and it had already been patched twice, and now there was another hole, in the same place. He needed it by, like, the next day, for a big meeting he suddenly remembered he had, and there was no time to get it fixed.

We went to Men’s Wearhouse near Union Square and got two for the price of one. It was very exciting. One was pale gray, and we both felt like it was really extra cool and a little daring. The other was dark gray, and it looked stately and solemn. I was unhelpful, because all suits look the same to me, and I think they all look good on Bear, and so I concentrate too hard, trying to figure out the differences, and then I focus on the wrong things and start to question my judgment.

(source)

“It’s too boxy. Except boxy is a flattering look on you. But I think the line of the bottom part is too straight. It looks severe. But I guess suits are severe, so that might be intentional. Wait, try the other one– that was less severe….OK, that’s not boxy enough.”

Bear seemed to trust his instincts, and, for a guy for whom normal jeans were a huge upgrade from the strange cargo pants he used to have, he has a surprisingly discerning eye for formal clothing. As far as I can tell. The whole thing took maybe twenty minutes.

And then, after we were very pleased with ourselves for getting two nice suits for the price of one, I thought it would be fun to stop in at Victoria’s Secret, just a couple blocks away. Valentine’s Day was coming up…My bras were all ancient and bedraggled. It might be fun. Did I already say that? You know that’s a bad sign.

(source)

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Dana, I tried to respond to your comment with this post, but it sort of veered off in another direction. I’ll try again later!

I think what you eat has a lot to do with your social class. I mean, it’s not just me– all of the people who do the studies about these things agree. Are you living in an upper middle class, multi-degreed, white collar community? (You don’t have to be upper middle class yourself– you just have to live there.) There are probably a lot of whole wheat options. There are probably a lot of fresh vegetables. Some people might think you’re being ironic if you eat PB&J on white.

Class is interesting. It’s something I think about a lot these days. I just took Charles Murray’s little class test. It’s from his new book Coming Apart. I actually didn’t realize when I first read about it that it was exclusively about white people. Oops. He says the upper middle class is totally out of touch with the majority of Americans– that the cultures are totally different at this point. That basically, if you have two degrees, like me, and live in Brooklyn, like I do, and are not an evangelical Christian, as I am not, then there’s a decent chance you’re in an elite bubble and have no idea what the rest of the country is up to. Personally, I don’t like Charles Murray’s tone. He’s just itching to call people snobs. I can imagine him using the term “Opera lover!” as a slur.

(A popular restaurant in the city. source)

Anyway, I took the test, and waited for Charles to sneer at me and say mockingly, in a snooty liberal voice, “It’s a lovely day for some croquet in Turks & Caicos, after we finish up these vegan cracked spout smoothies and our conversation about Derrida and the politics of identity marginalization.”

My score said that I’m a “first generation upper middle class person with middle class parents.”

Which is true in some ways, but there’s a little more to the story. Like, I went to college and grad school, and my parents didn’t. When I was little, we lived in a pretty rural area, surrounded by farms and a smattering of neo nazis, where we learned all the different kinds of hunting seasons so as to avoid being shot by various projectiles (everyone thought an arrow would be the worst). There were years when my dad did not draw a salary– he was running a business out of the basement. I wasn’t isolated from poor kids or even evangelical Christian kids (shocking! I know!). But my parents were self-educated and cocky about it, we weren’t allowed to watch TV, and my mom grew a giant vegetable garden and bought chickens from the Amish market down the road.  No one watched Nascar. No one ate Denny’s. We didn’t eat out at all. 

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And now here I am– in the big city, where many of the people I know take it as a sign of weakness to cook with spices you didn’t grind yourself (my father also grinds his own spices). Where it feels like an act of rebellion to eat a donut. Where health is on everyone’s minds, at every moment. I am always the only one in the room who doesn’t belong to a gym (I tried it briefly). I am usually the only one to take a second helping of dessert.

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It’d been a long time since I saw my beautiful blond friend with the very put-together life. My friend who always knows what to wear, and always has the earrings that match it. My friend with the grownup life and the baby.

She looked great, of course. She was sparkling. The collar of her little dress sparkled. Her clean, contemporary diamond ring sparkled. Her eyes sparkled, too. Since I’d last seen her, a lot had changed. They were moving. To Connecticut. They were looking for a house now.

Whoa.

Connecticut? But– we used to think Brooklyn was too far away! I haven’t even been back to the Upper West Side since we moved down here. Wait. A house. That means you’ll have more than two rooms? And a car? And a yard? Impossible. A washer and a dryer? Amazing. More than one bathroom? Ultimate luxury! Unimaginable.

I tried to picture her new life. She was wearing pearl earrings in my imagination. But then, she does that sometimes anyway. She looked so grown up. So complete. She would drive her kid (her KID!) to school in her car. She would drive to the supermarket. She would return to her house. Her entire house. Her husband would commute into the city for work.

“What’s your plan?” she asked. “What are you thinking, for the future?”

I stared at her. I looked down at my plate. I looked up again, and I still hadn’t figured out what to say.

“Bear,” I said, later that night, “Do we know what we’re doing with our lives?”

“Um,” he said, “Maybe?”

“I don’t think we do.”

“Yeah, maybe not. But who cares?”

“We’re kids.”

“That’s what’s so cool about us.”

“I guess.”

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You know what I’m not? Cool. I care too much.

Being cool is all about not caring. It’s been that way since someone invented coolness, back in, like, the late fifties, I think. Wait– I feel like there were a few cool people in the Great Gatsby, so maybe it goes back a few decades farther.

There are a lot of variations on not caring. Kids are really obvious about it. They’re constantly standing around in mall parking lots rolling their eyes, going, “Whatever…” People in their twenties show how little they care mostly by wearing slouchy shoes. And then later on you prove your coolness by getting drunk the way you used to get drunk when you had less responsibilities.

I’m pretty sure.

(these should do it. source)

Sometimes I worry about myself, because I want to impress people. I want them to like me. It’s a little pathological. It’s a sign that I will not succeed at things. I am always hoping that I’ll grow out of it, and so far, that hasn’t happened, so I’m concerned that it might be permanent.

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First, I just wanted to point you guys to this really interesting post about what women want from work by Virginia at Beauty Schooled. In it, she gives the people who commented on my post about babies a shout out!

(me and my brothers and grandmother a while back, celebrating Chanukah)

This will be my first Christmas with my new family.

With Bear’s family. Who are also my family now. Isn’t it funny how you can sometimes just acquire a family?

Bear said, “It might feel weird. Someone might offend you by accident.”

We’re going to be in California with his family for about a week surrounding Christmas, which this year also happens to be the week of Chanukah (it starts tonight). So…Christnukah?

(source)

People always wish me a merry Christmas. And then I’m not sure what to say back, since I don’t celebrate it. Usually I just say, “Merry Christmas!” Sometimes I say, “Actually, I’m Jewish, but Merry Christmas!” Sometimes I sort of want to say, “Happy Chanukah!” but I never do, because that feels mean. Sometimes it’s obvious that the other person isn’t Christian either, and then we both kinda look at each other and then quickly walk away.

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Sometimes I think there’s an invisible baby in my life. It follows me around, waiting, gurgling and cooing in pointed judgment.

I measure stuff against it. “So if I can get this damn book published by the time I’m twenty-seven. Twenty-eight, maybe. Then I’d maybe be ready.” It reminds me that I’m getting older, faster,  all the time. “What are you, thirty-nine? Oh, twenty-five! Not so different…Your eggs are already shriveling and growing more diseased and lopsided by the second. You’re not a kid anymore. Which is too bad, since you hit the peak of your fertility when you were, like, sixteen, or possibly even younger, when you still had those braces that ultimately didn’t even make much of made a difference. You thought it was cool to get the bands in holiday themed colors. YOU WERE MOST FERTILE THEN. And now look at you! Scrambling around, trying to find yourself or something, as time runs inexorably out. The clock is ticking, woman! Don’t think the clock isn’t ticking, just because you’re covering your ears.”

(source)

People ask me, “So are you guys thinking about kids?”

That’s what happens when you get married. Even in New York City, the land of not-having-to-think-about-kids-until-you’re-30.

“I think I’ll have a baby when I’m thirty, man or not,” said one of my friends at a group event.

“What?” the other twenty-something women cried. “Thirty? That’s too young! How about thirty-five?”

The land of not-having-to-think-about-kids-until-you’re-35.

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