Fine, it was technically the night before the wedding, and we were at a hotel. Details.

I don’t know what your friends are like, but mine are generally drunkards. I imagine most people have very dignified ways of going about socializing. I imagine most people sitting up very straight while drinking tea, the corners of their mouths curling demurely around their cups as they exchange warmhearted pleasantries with dear pals, laughter as gentle as the tinkling of a spoon in a saucer. Then it’s to bed by 8:30 p.m. sharp because goodness, one needs one’s rest. Doesn’t one?

My friends, though, my friends more resemble human bumper cars. Colliding in great bear hugs, lumbering and staggering around, shouting to be heard over the others, making toasts, taking shots, shattering glass, demonstrating feats of strength and/or prowess, dragging wakefulness by the hair into the very wee hours.

So I was sitting in a hotel room by the sea with a bunch of drunkards, because that’s what we do when one of us in the group marries. We all gather the night before to drink and talk shout and bounce off the walls.

After a time, though, I grew weary of the noise. I slipped out onto the balcony and pulled the sliding glass door shut behind me. No one will probably even notice I’m out here, I thought, and allowed a few indulgent waves of self-pity to wash over me. Because deep down I still halfway expect all conversation to grind to an awkward halt in my absence, leading my friends to seek me out and — upon finding me — lift me to their shoulders amid a chorus of celebratory cries and jubilantly parade me back to my rightful place as the Life of the Party.

I crossed my arms over the balcony railing and rested my chin on top of them, staring absently down at the patio below. I was prepared to wallow in melancholy for at least several minutes, but the wallowing was quickly displaced by a growing revelation:

It would be ridiculously easy to climb from one floor of the hotel to the other.

Now, in order for this story to make any sense I need to stop and explain something. This hotel by the sea was built into the side of a hill. The level I was on was technically considered the ground floor — you could walk in from the lobby and straight back to the guest rooms. But because it was built into the the side of a hill, by the time you got there you discovered — surprise! — that an additional story of guest rooms had opened up beneath.

The room the party was in was situated in a corner of the hotel facing the hillside, away from the sea. The balcony overlooked a sunken garden of sorts on the level below; three patios separated by railings and just a strip of concrete between the railings and the retaining wall holding up the hill.

Did that make any sense? I know you didn’t read that last part. You just scanned it quickly because you are trying to read blogs at work without your boss finding out. Your brain condensed the last two paragraphs into a jumble of “SEA HILL SUNKEN STRIP RETAINING BLUH,” didn’t it?

Good. I’m glad we’re on the same page.

So there I was. Staring down at the railing directly below mine. It would be so easy. So easy. I could be on the ground in a flash. I could just drop right down. Boop. Easy as eating pie. Except I didn’t need to use a fork. Or actually eat anything at all, really.

I called an internal meeting with myself that quickly devolved into yelling. One side was like THIS IS THE STUPIDEST IDEA EVER WHAT IF YOU FALL and the other was all WHAT IS LIFE WITHOUT RISK?

And I said to myself, yeah. YEAH. What IS life without risk?

Before the cautious side of me could erupt in protestations again I tipped my head back, drained the last of what was in my red cup, and set it on the balcony beside me. Sans pockets, I shoved my room key card into my bra for safekeeping. I grabbed hold of the railing with both hands and threw my legs over. Then I crouched and dropped the lower half of my body, dangling my feet until they touched the bottom railing. I released my hands and balanced there for a moment, then deftly jumped to the ground with a satisfying thud.

I hoisted my hands on my hips and gazed up at the balcony from whence I had come, grinning like a feral idiot. I’d done it! I’d done it like a champion! I was a champion! A boss! I was the boss of railings! They should give me a Ph.D. in railing bossery!

I wanted to tell someone; I wanted to shout my accomplishment to the stars. Look! Look what I had done! BE IMPRESSED OR SUFFER MY WRATH!!!!

"On next week's episode of Railing Boss: Lyn learns the hard way that the only thing sweeter and colder than revenge is GRAVITY."

Well, that was fun.

Now how did I get back to the party?

I looked around. The room I had dropped down in front of was dark and shut tight. The curtains and patio door of the next room — I noted with some alarm — were thrown open to the night air, and light from the television flickered across the walls. The very last room, it turned out, was not a guest room at all, but the hotel fitness center — I could just make out the hulking shape of an elliptical machine through the glass.

Hmm. Around the corner of the building I went to investigate further, but I was immediately stopped in my tracks by a dead end. All that was there was an open-air stairwell I couldn’t access from the ground. The entire corner was surrounded by a high wall. I was standing there staring dumbly at the scene when a hotel employee suddenly appeared on a landing of the stairs.

“You can’t get out this way, Miss,” he said to me. “You’ll have to go out through your room.”

Right. My room.

Up there somewhere, on another floor.

“Thank you!” I called after him cheerfully, choking a little on my own spit.

Okay. Maybe I could try the fitness center? Cautiously, quietly, I darted across the patio, trying not to draw the attention of the person in the middle room. I jumped the railing in front of the fitness center door and tugged on the handle with all my might; it wouldn’t budge. I dug my key card out of my bra and swiped it in the reader on the wall. The lights blinked red over and over again. Shit.

Now what?

As I gazed around the patio in desperation, my eye fell on the retaining wall. It was a little high for me to scale on my own, but there was a pipe running along the bottom of the wall about a foot from the ground. If I used that pipe as leverage, I figured I could scramble up to the top, then scamper up the hillside and come back inside the hotel from the lobby.

I came at the wall at a run for momentum. On final approach I leapt, I bounded, I sailed off my back leg. And when my foot made contact with the pipe, the pipe… gave way. Its moorings were corroded and loose, and the whole length of tube snapped back at me like a rubber band.

CLAAAANNNNNGGG!

In an instant — no, a fraction of an instant — I was back in the farthest, darkest corner next to the fitness center, heart pounding in my ears. Holyshit. Whomever was in the middle room had to have heard that. And if they were anything like me, they would be coming out to investigate.

I stood pressed against the brick for one full minute, watching light and shadows play on the wall of the middle room. Yet no one stirred.

Whew.

I had only one escape option left. I skittered across the patio once more and leaned around the corner of the building. No one appeared to be on the stairs this time, so I approached warily. The lowest landing was well above my head, but if I jumped I could grab hold of the bottom part of the rail. By flailing my legs madly I was able to gain enough traction to inch my way up. It was… not graceful process. Panting, I made it to the ledge, where I at last heaved one leg over the railing, then the other.

I was on the stairs.

I had made it. I was out.

No time for celebrations, and no urge to return to the party. I dashed up the steps and down the hall back to my room. Fishing the key card out of my shirt one last time, I felt a spark of elation when the light flashed green. I closed the door with a quiet click behind me, then collapsed against it.

They didn’t catch me. I’d gotten away with it.

When the beau came back from the party ten minutes later, I was already in my pajamas. “Here you are,” he said. “I didn’t see you leave. What have you been up to?”

“Oh,” I said. “Not much.”

////////

Epilogue: here is where I should say something wise about learning lessons, but I don’t think I learned any. Doing stuff based on self-dares can never go wrong. Overall, an A+ experience. Should travel to weddings more often.

Keep your friends close and your railings closer.

////////

P.S. I made a graphic to go with this post because, surprisingly, I didn’t happen to have any photographs on hand of me clambering over a rail. Not that I would have used one anyway if I did, because I probably would have been making the ugliest concentration face ever in it and my ego won’t let me share those kinds of things. Anyway, the point is that I think I’ll do stuff like this in the future, when I can, if that’s okay? Is that okay with you? Does it seem kinda weird to you? Is it too weird?

***

Like almost everything else in my life, it started with a Craigslist ad.

Room for rent in a two-bedroom apartment downtown. $500 per month.

$500? In downtown Santa Barbara? Seemed too good to be true. I’d been trawling the listings for weeks, months, and the usual going rate to rent a room was $700-$900 per month. Which I couldn’t afford. But $500? I could manage to wring $500 out of my meager pay as a marketing coordinator.

Coordinating marketing, man. It’s serious business. You gotta say, this marketing goes there! And that marketing goes here! Kind of like Tetris. Except usually with Tetris you’re not on the phone with a print vendor begging for a faster turnaround. And also you spend a lot of time surreptitiously G-chatting with your friend who is equally miserable in her job. So maybe it’s not remotely like Tetris at all.

Where were we going with this, now?

RIGHT. ROOMMATE.

I didn’t have high hopes when I sent the email inquiring about the room. I figured it had already been snatched up, or maybe it was all a joke from the start. Haha 500 $ a month?? u must b STOOPID! !!! hehe

Because someone that cruel would have to spell like a middle school dropout, amirite?

The Craigslist poster wrote me back inside an hour. The room was still available, he said, and I could come by to check it out that night if I wanted.

The building was 1970s brown. The bathroom had coral tile. The tiny window in my potential bedroom overlooked a concrete wall. The poster — I’ll call him Kurt — sat on a threadbare couch wearing a ripped Nirvana t-shirt and rigorously avoided eye contact with me. I was 25 and he was 26. Via faltering small talk we discovered that we’d both taken German and done track and field in school. I asked why he’d listed the room so cheaply, and he shrugged. Even he didn’t seem to know.

I figured I could settle for a strange roommate if it meant discounted rent in a prime location. “Well,” I told him as I stood to leave, “I’m still interested, so just let me know.”

“I already checked you out, and you passed. The room is yours. You can move in any time,” Kurt replied.

Oh… kay?

***

One month later, I moved in. Unwittingly, I’d chosen to move in on the day of the Solstice festival in my town, which is when the yuppies take off their shirts and pretend to be hippies for a day. The closest street parking was three blocks away, which made carrying boxes somewhat, uh, challenging. I’d also brought a box of cleaning supplies, because there was no way I was moving into that place without scrubbing every common surface first.

I standing in the tub carrying out a furious attack on some scummy shower tile when the front door banged open. Kurt had arrived with two friends wearing shit-eating grins. They had been to the parade, and next they were going up to the Sostice celebration in the park. I should come, they told me. I politely begged off but Kurt grabbed my arm and pulled me into the kitchen, where they commenced gathering provisions for their jaunt to the park. First they all took a shot of Christian Brothers brandy, and then Kurt began to pour Tanqueray gin into a ratty Nalgene water bottle.

“Oh shit,” one of his friends said, digging in the freezer. “We’re outta ice.”

Kurt paused, wobbling slightly, to take stock of the situation, then reached into the back and pulled out a plastic bag of frozen brussels sprouts. He ripped the bag open and dumped the contents into the gin-filled Nalgene, stray sprouts rolling every which way across the counter.

He screwed the cap on and they left.

Two hours later, Kurt wandered back in with one friend, the other having seemingly been lost en route. He put on a VHS tape of G.I. Joe: The Movie as his friend passed out on the couch. Kurt nodded off in a recliner, head slowly dropping to his chest, fingers gradually relaxing on his Coors Lite until the can slipped from his grasp and emptied all over his leg and into the seat cushion.

The dude didn’t even wake up.

***

Kurt was a heavy drinker, which didn’t initially seem out of place because many of my post-college-age friends were heavy drinkers at the time. Over the following weeks, though, he regaled me with endless stories about “that one time.” There was that one time he was so drunk that he thought the cops were looking for him and hid for hours under a parked vehicle on the street. There was that one time he was so drunk at his work’s holiday party that he told his boss to fuck off. There was that one time he managed to pass through a DUI checkpoint while intoxicated out of his mind.

He was a person of curious extremes. During the weekdays he played a sober Jekyll to his drunken Hyde, huddled at home eating a can of soup in front of the television. He adored his mother as much as he hated his father. He was equally as likely to be found watching a UFC fight as he was his DVD set of Sex and the City.

I never quite knew what he did at his job. The best I could figure was that it involved some kind of programming. Then again, he was incredibly suspicious and rarely told the whole story about anything. He’d dealt drugs in high school, he told me, and then he invested in a lot of stocks. He’d used a chunk of that money to buy a white Mercedes.

He insinuated that he knew a couple of important “sources” that had helped him get his police record erased. He also insinuated he’d used those sources to run a background check on me before we’d met, which was a bit … unsettling, to say the least.

The other things I learned after moving in were just as amusing as they were tragic:

• Kurt had grown pot in the closet of my room before I moved in.
• He’d also peed on the carpet in my room while drunk.
• As you’ve likely gathered, he was obsessed — OBSESSED — with Kurt Cobain, and with Nirvana. He had a guitar that Cobain had supposedly played, and a shirt he’d supposedly worn. He swore up and down that if he played Nirvana while driving drunk, nothing bad would happen.
• He hated — HATED — the beau. He once told me about a girl in our apartment complex who’d asked him who that “short and fat” guy was after seeing Beau in the courtyard with me. I strongly suspected that he invented this conversation just so he’d have an excuse to diss my boyfriend.¹
• He had this habit of leaving the apartment door open so that he and his friends could hurl their cans and bottles outside as soon as the contents were consumed. Which inevitably led to me stomping downstairs and picking everything up in an self-righteous rage.
• He couldn’t be bothered to open anything else in the apartment, though. Mold had grown around all the windows before I moved in because he left them closed, with the blinds drawn tight over them, every single day.
• He never cleaned up after himself, which didn’t help my battle against the roaches in the kitchen.
• He was, however, obsessed with soaps. One day he went to Bath & Body Works and came back with no less than six different scents of the same hand gel. He lined them all up on the counter by color, and there they remained. Annoyed at the lack of counter space, I’d sometimes throw them under the sink, but the next time I went back in the bathroom, there they were again, proudly on display.

As if all this wasn’t enough, the worst came the night I got home from the bar to find the living room trashed; my couch turned over. I was a little drunk, quite honestly, and a lot angry, so I wrote a note about respecting my stuff, taped it to the upended couch, and went to bed. An hour and a half later I was startled awake by the sound of my door busting open and the sight of a silhouette in my doorway.

Mr. Hyde had found my note and had come to confront me.

“Fffffffffuck you,” he said. “Fffffuck. You.”

He had a habit of drawing out consonants when he’d been drinking.

“Get out of my room,” I croaked warily.

He staggered towards me. He was grinning, he was laughing, but he was still cursing. I was so confused and upset that I began crying. He sat down on the edge of the bed and put his hand on my stomach. I lost my shit. “GET OUT!” I yelled. “Go away! Get out! Leave me alone!”

After he left, I sobbed myself to sleep.

That was pretty much the beginning of the end.

I didn’t have enough money to just move out, so I made myself as scarce as possible. I filled the hours of the day with work and classes, and slept over at the beau’s house when I could. The nights I was home I came to dread hearing the front door open, and came to dread leaving my room to cook food or use the bathroom.

Months of living like this took its toll, though, and by the following spring I was at a breaking point. I was venting to my friend at work about how tense it was at my place when she took me by the shoulders. “We have got to get you out of there,” she said.

So she did. One Saturday she and five of my other friends descended on the apartment. I was relieved to find Kurt gone; that meant we could pack in peace. We boxed as much stuff as we could and hauled it to a storage unit. The plan was that I’d couch-surf until the beau’s roommate moved out, and then I’d move in with him.

Afterwards, sweaty and tired, we went out for celebratory Mexican food and margaritas. I felt lighter than I had in a long, long time. So of course I came back the following Monday to get the rest of my stuff only to find Kurt had changed the locks.

I eventually got my things, but not before paying him more money first.

I think of Kurt every time I see a white Mercedes, which is not an uncommon occurrence in this town. I consider this as all kind of funny now, in a wincing kind of way. At the very least I got decent stories to share at parties out of the experience.

LESSON LEARNED: Not every deal on Craigslist is a good one, y’all.

Okay, your turn. Who was your worst roommate?

¹ Come on, you’ve seen pictures of him. He may be the same height as me, but he is not “fat.”

I hate how I only ever put it on when I’m feeling like I’m looking my worst.

I hate  how every time women post pictures of themselves on the internet, they have to make squeaky noises about how sorry they are for how awful they look. A picture of a woman’s face, for example, is unfailingly prefaced with OMG please ignore all the crow’s feet and those dark circles and don’t even think about looking at the state of my brows!!!

I see my face a lot, because it’s always there in the mirror. I’ve learned a lot of things about it over the years. My eyes are a good feature. My nose looks better at some angles than it does others. I have a weak chin and a square face. My right eyebrow is still truncated from that day I got overzealous with the tweezers almost a decade ago. My eyelashes are still sparse from when I picked at them as a kid. My upper lip has lost a little definition from this habit I have of tugging on it.

I lean in closer to the mirror for a better look at my skin. I have a slightly oily forehead, slightly dry chin. A smattering of visible pores. The hint of a varicose vein alongside my nose. Scars from long-healed acne. Spots from a little too much sun.

I understand I’m meant to have smooth, perfectly even skin. This is important, because people spend most of their time looking at your face. I know flawlessness is the ultimate goal. But I can’t fathom how flawlessness is remotely feasible, unless you pack your face on ice every day and slather it with cream every night and never frown, smile, break out, or go outside.

Some days are better than others, of course. Some days I’m driven to pick up a brush and try to paint over all of my face’s mistakes. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Some days I’m an active voice in the chorus of physical flaws that seems to rise when women gather. My complexion! It’s awful! Oh no, honey, I would KILL to look that smooth! Me, on the other hand….

I try really hard not to succumb to this flagellation anymore, even on those days it feels disgusting to wear my own skin. I don’t expect perfection from friends, music, or the characters in my favorite novels. Why would I expect it from my body?

I rarely use powder and foundation these days. I want people to get used to it. I want to show them what a lived-in face looks like.

It’s not great.

But increasingly, I don’t believe I need to apologize for it.

Hold on. Just typing that makes me want to put on some Seventeen Seconds-era Cure and pour a tall stein of red wine.

Mmm. That’s the stuff.

I don’t want to beat a dead topic, but any rain around this time of year immediately takes me back seven years. I may have, oh, mentioned before that I moved back to California at the beginning of 2005.

I can’t underscore enough how weird things were during this time. I mean, my 2003 and all of 2004 were pretty miserable on balance, but during a particularly epic span of three weeks leading into 2005, I managed to:

• Get into a protracted argument with my estranged ex that involved driving to Michigan in a snowstorm to give him back a painting and then turning around when I got there and taking the painting back with me
• Quit my job packing and shipping parts for an airplane manufacturer
• Crash into another car on the freeway while driving to my very last day of work

I had no money. The jobs I’d held since college had nothing to do with my actual degree. I had no idea what I was doing in my life. My folks thought it unwise for me to move to California while unemployed but restrainedly told me You’re An Adult And You Can Make Your Own Decisions, which is parentspeak for “We give up, dumbass. Either you’ll figure this one out on your own or they’ll figure it out for you in jail.”

Kidding! I’m sure they didn’t think I’d end up in jail. Probably just community service.

And so at 5:30 in the morning on January 6, 2005, I found myself standing in line to board a plane to the golden coast when I dropped my drivers’ license through the teeny crack between the jetway and the plane. My mental rope, which had been slowly fraying over the previous months, snapped. Even though they found my license and gave it back before the plane took off I proceeded to spend half of the flight furiously crying.

An auspicious start.

I made it to California without setting anything on fire or causing anyone to punch me in the face. Unable to stand on my own two feet, I had talked myself into sleeping on a cot in my mother’s friend’s studio apartment while I tried to get myself sorted. She picked me up from the airport in Long Beach and drove me up to Santa Barbara. I watched the palm trees fly past the windows, enchanted. That night, from the studio, I watched the sunlight drain from the mountains while listening to the faint sounds of a high school marching band practice a half mile away.

When I woke up the next morning, it was raining. It rained that whole day. And the next. And the next. Nonstop. Absolutely pouring, spitting rain. On the third day, the mountains gave. Landslides wiped out houses and crumbled roads.

Welcome back to California! We missed you. Have some destruction!

Then something weird happened: my luck turned. Just like that. Relentless months of bad breaks had seemingly been washed away in the deluge. The day after the landslides, I got asked out on my first date since college. Three weeks later I landed a real job with benefits. A few weeks after that I flew back to Virginia to go to court and drove my car back. I got my own room in a house. I fell into a deliriously unwise crush on an ex-drug-dealing Jewish Marine. I went to shows by myself. I made friends. I met the beau. None of which was completely free of issues and worry, of course. But it was the first time I could remember experiencing such highs, and they were just as bone-shakingly intense as the lows — making everything about life that much sweeter and thrilling.

And now, as I turn that fragment of the past over in my mind in my quiet house on a rainy night, I can’t believe my life was ever that dramatic.

I think drama comes with youth, yeah. And stability comes with maturity, and long-term relationships. Generally speaking, that is.

It’s been years since life last turned me upside down and shook out my pockets. Which is fortunate indeed — I’m not looking to invite trouble into my house, sit it down in a comfortable chair, and fix it a drink. But sometimes, I guess, I get nostalgic for a time in my life when I had no idea what was coming next.

Or maybe more accurately, I am just nostalgic for that absolute shot of ecstasy that can only be experienced after you’ve finally climbed a colossal mountain from the valley floor and you’re standing at the rim, head thrown back, hair in your eyes, laughing and shouting at the wind and the epic view spread before you.

Because since then, my life has been lived on mesas and plains.

Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing bad about a plain. I like being able to keep watch on the horizon, myself.

But damn, dude. Sometimes I miss intensity. And I’m compelled to lamely make up for it by writing horrifically moody reflections about my past in the middle of a rainy night. While cuddling a bottle of red. Shh, baby. It’s going to be fine. We’re still interesting and exciting people, I promise.

I like my sturdy routine. I like my quiet spaces. Yet I don’t want to be someone who just rolls over and goes on choosing the flat, straight path, because it’s the least challenging. Yet I’m at an age where life experiences don’t just pound on the door of my house and demand to be let in. I have to go actively seek them out. Which means… doing something. Which means forcing my hand. Which means instigating shit instead of just dealing with the shit shoveled my way.

Which is scary. Period.

Tell me about your beautiful, dramatic lives. Do you ever worry about being overtaken by ennui and complacency? And doesn’t this entire post just have #firstworldproblems written all over it?

Image credit: dyingbeautystock

The first time came when we were visiting a quaint little town in Oregon with the beau’s parents. The beau and his dad decided they wanted to go get a drink at a pub, and his mom decided she wanted to browse the shops. They all turned and looked at me, waiting to see which one I’d choose.

Honestly? The very idea of shopping makes me want to stab myself in the face with a carving fork. But as I quickly assessed the situation I noted that:

• Beau and his dad could probably use a little one-on-one bonding.
• If I went to the pub, Beau’s mom would be completely alone.
• Having had two sons, Beau’s mom had never before had the opportunity to go shopping with a daughter-like figure.

Seriously, the decision was made for me. Browsing the stores it was.

The second time came when I attended a housewarming party. Everyone had just settled in to watch a sporting event on TV when the hostess of the party sighed, muttered that she hated sports, then turned to me and asked if I wanted to go upstairs and look at the dresses she’d had made by a seamstress. Uh… no? But I couldn’t say that, of course. I was a guest and the only woman there besides the hostess herself. If not by manners, then I was bound by a common set of genitalia. Up the stairs I trudged for an interlude in making my face look way animated than I actually felt.

The splitting of groups by gender has always made me feel extremely uncomfortable, not least because I usually end up getting shafted. I was once a guest at a wedding for which the day-before activities were segregated thusly: girls were to attend a spa day, and guys were to go golfing. Um… what’s the designated activity for folks who feel terrified at the prospect of either option? That would be sitting in your hotel room drinking by yourself, yes?

The point is not that girly spa days are stupid, of course, or that anyone who enjoys anything remotely “girly” is bad. I sometimes participate in girly activities, myself: I like dresses! I wear eye makeup! The other week I willfully watched the E! True Hollywood Story of Full House, and I was riveted!

What really gets me agitated is when these behaviors are just assumed of men and women. I’d like to think that we all know better than that, but go ahead and scan the comments of any YouTube video or news article if you need a quick reminder about how moronic most of the population is. I’d like to think I would have let go of even caring about any of it by now, because it’s such a needling little thing. A quick comment here. A tired joke there. A totally-missing-the-mark-gift there.

Like the Debbie Gibson cassette and purple hair crimper I got for my ninth birthday, when pop music and hair styling couldn’t have been more foreign concepts to me. I remember feeling strangely guilty about these presents, because they strongly hinted at markers of “normal” girlhood that I just wasn’t living up to. With her feathered bangs and coral lipstick and smart beret, Debbie Gibson looked exactly like everything I wasn’t, and was probably never going to be.

And I’m still not. Especially with regard to the feathered bangs.

We all try to assimilate as best we can. We all catch subtle cues from others about what’s expected from us. More than being the nice thing to do, I knew I was expected by the beau’s parents — especially his dad — to choose shopping over a pub. More than being the polite thing to do, I knew I was expected by the people at the housewarming party to prefer looking at dresses over watching sports.

What, then? I could just whine about how that’s unfair, and point to the usual suspects behind behavioral conditioning — patriarchy! media! toy manufacturers! gluten! — and maybe shake my head indignantly. What for? Stereotypes are dumb. People are dumb. We’re expected to do things we don’t always like to do. Boo fucking hoo, right?

Are these expectations really such a bad thing?

I wonder.

Here’s what I want to know: when does being polite become compromising ourselves? And are we sometimes… well, too polite?

Probably.

Would speaking up about our genuine preferences actually do anything to reverse the cavalcade of gender assumptions that filters through our fields of awareness on a daily basis?

The cynic in me says probably not.

But still, I wonder.

I like to speak up. Not at the expense of being kind when called to do so — in the end I’m glad I went with my mother-in-law on that shopping excursion, even if it did tear quietly at my soul. But every time I’m asked if I’m putting my husband in the doghouse, or if it’s insinuated that I’m withholding sex to get my way, or that all women want giant diamonds dripping from their bodies, or anything that makes me bristle, I try to say something.

Whether a brilliantly cutting joke, or a quiet reply: “Yeah, that’s not the way it is.” Anything.

It makes me feel better, anyway. A little more normal, again.

What do you think? Put up or shut up?

Congratulations, I’m sorry.¹

• I was entering expenses into Quicken and when I typed “D-O” it autofilled to “Dodge City Gun Shop ATM.” Which sounds like the start of a good short story that ends very badly.
• Apparently Hootie & the Blowfish are bonafide country music stars now. So that’s a thing. That is happening. And I don’t think it can be unhappened.
• I once got very tipsy and emailed former NHL goaltender-turned-commentator Kevin Weekes a semi-coherent message about how “awesome” he is. He never wrote me back. Now every time he’s on Hockey Night in Canada or NHL on the Fly, I feel kind of embarrassed, like he’s going to recognize me through the screen and then we’ll have to have one of those terrible conversations where we pretend like neither of us remember what I did but we totally both know, like Oh hey how’s it going pretty cool great to see you still doin’ that one thing right on catch you later dude all right man peace.
• Last weekend I was watching my friend’s band play at a bar and the dude behind me kept complaining that the Dead Kennedys stole his drum kit. Which had me ruefully wishing the Dead Kennedys had stolen something from me so that I could have an interesting story to tell at all the hipster cocktail parties I attend in my mind. And then he added that before the drum kit went missing the band had asked him to try out to be their drummer, and he’d politely declined because he was worried about what his mother would think. And friends, it took all I had not to whirl around and shout, “SOMEONE NEEDS TO REVOKE YOUR PUNK ROCK CARD, SIR.”
• I was a wedding photographer, once, when I was 20 years old. It was the second wedding for a couple who was friends with my art school classmate’s cousin. I used my dad’s old Canon from the 1980s with a boxy flash unit jammed in the hot shoe. I hadn’t the faintest idea what I was doing. I think at one point I asked the bride to rest her hand over the groom’s so I could get a picture of their rings, because I’d seen that same shot in my parents’ wedding album from the 1970s. At the end of the night I gave the couple 12 rolls of film and they wrote me a check for $180. Which I then proceeded to lose, and I freaked out and had to the call the couple while they were on honeymoon and ask them to cancel the check and send a new one. Yep. I was effectively the worst wedding vendor on the face of the planet.
• In the hours immediately following Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt’s private doctor treated him for a sinus infection by administering cocaine to his nasal membranes via cotton swab.
• That’s a fact I learned on the History Channel.
• Did you know the History Channel still occasionally airs history programs, and not just reality shows about men hunting alligators or running pawn shops? I was totally unaware.
• I feel like “Hey, remember when the History channel showed, like, history and stuff?” is the new “Man, remember when MTV showed, like, actual music videos?”
• Did anyone ever see Soap? Comedy Central ran the series in syndication sometime in the 1990s and I watched it every day after school. At least I think that happened, because I’ve never met anyone else who has any idea what the hell this show is. I’m left prodding strangers to recall Soap storylines with me, voice rising incredulously in pitch until I’m shaking them by the shoulders, screaming, “Remember? Remember it was the Campbells and the Tates? And Burt got abducted by aliens? And Jessica was captured by Communists? And BILLY CRYSTAL, do you remember BILLY CRYSTAL fell in love with the football player and nearly underwent a sex change operation!?” Someone out there has to know what I’m talking about. Anyone?
• Comedy Central also used to air Earth Girls Are Easy quite regularly, back in the 90s.
• I watched a lot of television in the 1990s because I had no friends. Thanks, frequent moving and cripplingly low self-esteem!
• Do you remember in college when you could go down to the Union Hall on Wednesdays and get a $5 medium Dominos pizza? Do you remember when you thrived on rice, noodles, canned beans, cheese sandwiches, I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter spray, Little Debbie snack cakes, and Apple Jacks cereal scooped right from the box by the fistfuls? Remember you’d wait until the offbrand fat-free whipped topping went on sale for $0.99 and you’d take it home and put it in your freezer until it had the consistency of ice cream and then you’d eat the entire tub in one sitting? Remember when you never bought meat because it was too expensive but you always had room in your budget for Diet Coke? Remember when you’d never heard the word “organic” used outside of science class and the base of your food pyramid was made of Red 40? DO YOU REMEMBER THAT?
• No, really. That wasn’t just me, was it?

JETZT BIST DU DRAN. Now it’s your turn. Tell me something. Anything. Tell me about the stupid thing your coworker said, or about how your uncle had that run-in with the law.

Or tell me something you want me to write about. Or ask me a question. Any question.

I’m here to serve you.

¹ Not as good of an album as New Miserable Experience, in my opinion.

I see you out there, rolling your eyes. Come on, you say. If you’re a decent, reasonably self-aware person, this shouldn’t be an issue. You will raise your kid to be intelligent and kind and loving, and to solve problems and take responsibility for themselves, and to remember to put on fresh underwear every morning and wear a coat when it’s chilly outside, and not to bite or kick anyone unless they really had it coming. You will love your kid and your kid will love you and everything will turn out fine. There will be hard and dark times, sure, but they will be balanced by the amazing heart-swelling times; those moments you look at your partner and say, wow, having children was such a fucking good idea and totally not a disaster in the least, let’s high-five on this.

Right? You folks out there who are parents already are nodding along to this, aren’t you? Well, I call shenanigans because I don’t trust you. It’s like you’re in a cult and you’re all simultaneously trying to hand me a cup of the Trust-us-it’s-worth-it-you-should-totally-have-kids-flavored Kool-aid. You’ve been brainwashed to say the exact same things. It’s hard to explain, It’s an amazing experience, He/She is just the best thing ever, You won’t understand until you have your own. WELL FINE THEN. Let me just test your theory by having OH SHIT TOO LATE NOW I’M ONE OF THEM ARRGHHHH!!!!

That was your plan all along, wasn’t it, you sneaky and malicious parents?

But seriously. I’m being serious, now. I put on my serious pants and everything: they have pleats and a button-fly. Taking the long view, what if you go ahead and have a baby and it turns out to be someone you wouldn’t even want to invite over for dinner if not for the bonds of family? Someone you may love but you don’t necessarily like? And then what if you have multiple children and you end up getting along with one more than the other(s)? How do you reconcile the guilt and weirdness?

I think about this a lot because of my in-laws’ relationship with the beau’s younger brother. Now, the beau and his brother were each raised by their parents to be kind, respectful, and responsible people. And indeed they are. Yet personality-wise, the two are complete polar opposites. His brother is difficult to get along with. The beau’s parents genuinely don’t understand their second son, and they don’t quite know what to do with or say to him. I see it on their faces and hear it in the long, awkward pauses at the family table when he’s is in attendance.

And I always think, wow. Wouldn’t it suck to pour all your knowledge, experience, and love into a child; to power through the teething, tantrums, midnight trips to the ER, and sleepless hours when they start going out late with friends; and that kid finally grows up into his or her own person and you can barely figure out how to even talk to this person? All that investment and so little return, if I want to sound like a heartless jerk about a love that’s supposed to transcend all.

I feel like the rising chorus of responses here would be, “Well, if you’re already thinking about it this hard, it couldn’t possibly happen to you.” And again, I call shenanigans. This is the same kind of hippy dippy faith-conjuring that once assured me that since I’m a decent person who values my actual marriage over chair covers and centerpieces, my wedding will just be full to the brim with magic. Well, it didn’t happen like that, okay? Life doesn’t always just work out all nifty-like, no matter how good and clever we are as people. Even the good and clever ones don’t automatically get handed children whose personalities gel with theirs.

I should really write my congresswoman a strongly-worded letter about that.

Part of why I’m so terrified to have a baby is because I’m keenly aware that a baby is also a person, a person who could grow up to disappoint you or break your heart — and vice versa. No matter how hard I try not to let it happen, I know I could end up passing on some of my bad behaviors or negative personality traits on for my kid to deal with.

Maybe that’s the scariest thought of all.

I have no idea why I’m taking this whole thing so seriously. Maybe it’s because we always hear about babies in the context of joy and blessings. Greeting cards depict angels blissfully sleeping in the curve of a crescent moon, storks delivering pink and blue bundles, teddy bears and lambs and tiny booties and all the other markers of innocence and wonder. There are no greeting cards for the inadequacy you feel when you encounter breastfeeding issues, for the confusion and shame you feel when you don’t immediately forge a bond, for the guilt you feel when you drop your baby off at daycare on the way to work, for the derision you sense from others when you quit your job to stay home with the baby, for the irrational anger that comes when you haven’t slept and baby hasn’t stopped screaming in three hours.

Because nobody would buy those cards, I guess.

Children aren’t easy. My lands, no. They’re not ornamental. They’re not accessories. They’re not miniature versions of you. You can’t send them back. You can’t possibly know what you’re in for until it quite literally comes out of you (and rather violently I might add). You’re signing a contract without knowing the terms of the agreement.

Yes. Yes, this is why I think the decision to have babies is, for me, infinitely harder than the decision to get married was. I mean, at least I got to take my partner out for a test drive before I initialed all the forms, amirite?

I made a choice to love the person I’m with. With a kid, there is no choice. You’re bound to each other in ways you can’t necessarily understand. And somehow, this feels a lot more volatile. More vulnerable. More raw.

Maybe that’s the genesis of why I’m putting on the brakes so hard. Maybe it’s why I’m so hesitant to take this leap of faith.

In the end, there’s really nothing I can do but cross my fingers and hope for the best. That’s all we can ever do, is our level best. As a parent I’ll make mistakes. My kid(s) will make mistakes. Hopefully we can all forgive each other and move on together.

And hopefully, in the end, we will manage to share more high-fives than disasters.

***

I don’t know. Does anyone even have any thoughts to spare about that ridiculous ream of thoughts I just spewed? Any actual card-carrying parents care to weigh in? Are there any other baby-reluctant people out there? And those of you who are currently gripped with babyfever, can you tell me how that even happened? Pharmaceuticals, perhaps?

I haven’t told anybody about this, really. In fact, the entire thing is embarrassing to admit.

Because my in-laws are paying for the whole trip.

Except for the plane tickets. But then again, they sent us a check for Christmas to “help” with that. So. Yeah. Paying for the whole trip, essentially.

It sounds so chichi, huh? So pinky finger; silken goods. We’re terribly afraid we must decline your invitation to go yachting off the coast of Greece, darling, for we shall be in Belize during that time. This is how rich people talk, right? Pretty sure.

I have no idea where all this came from. One day out of the clear blue sky last summer, the beau’s father emailed him with a suggestion for a family trip. “Our current thinking is Belize,” he typed. “We would either do a kayak tour and jungle expedition with guides all inclusive or we would get rooms on an island on the reef (like Caye Caulter or Ambergris) and go on trips from there (snorkeling, fishing, diving, jungle, etc).”

He signed off with, “If this isn’t something you are interested in, please let us know.” Solemnly, your father.

Beau forwarded me this email without comment and I basically wrote an all caps reply along the lines of ARE YOU FUCKING SHITTING ME.

Internally, I worried that the beau’s parents had received bad news about their health and they wanted to take this trip with their adult children as a kind of last-ditch chance to spend quality time together. His dad has a record of being notoriously mum about medical stuff; once when we were visiting for Christmas the beau’s mother had to wait until he got up from lunch to use the restroom to sneakily tell us he’d been diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes. Uh, what?

He must have wondered why we were all chewing silently and staring at him when he came back to the table.

In short, this is weird, and this is awesome, and this is also weird. I’m still not quite sure how to feel about it, so I sat down and made a list of pros and cons.

Cons:

Spending nine days with my parents-in-law, my near-mute brother-in-law, and his peculiar girlfriend might be trying at times.

Pros:

BELIZE.

So I think I got that sorted.

And don’t think for a second I’m taking this for granted. I’ve rarely gotten anything for free in my life, let alone a trip to a tropical oasis. During my childhood, “vacations” meant surreptitiously squirting Cheez Whiz in my mouth in the backseat of the car on some grueling drive across country and staying in discount motels along the way. I never dreamt I would just… get… to go to Belize. Just like that.

However. There is always a “however.”

I was standing in front of my closet the other day, gazing vacantly at its contents, when some thoughts occurred to me:

• This closet is very small.
• I hate all of my clothes and they should be set on fire.
• I have nothing to take to Belize.

I don’t think my ratty Asics are gonna make the cut. Or my stretch leggings and long tunics and heavy cardigans and boots, which are my usual daily uniform of choice.

Two months. That’s what I have to prepare my suitcase. And so far, I’ve got nothin’ except a swimsuit to put in it.

So, consider this my plea for crowdsourcing. I need help, guys. Have you ever been to a tropical region? What did you bring? What gear or apparel did you find useful? My best guess is that I need a combination of loungewear and activewear. We will be spending time both on the beach and in the jungle. We will be hiking and doing other active-type things in addition to sipping booze-based fruit in the sand.

In my dreamiest of dreams, I would like to collect some clothes that are:

• Cool-looking and unique.
• Not made by a minor earning pennies in an overseas garment factory.
• Inexpensive as possible.

In other words:

So basically, the best I can hope for is two out of these three things.

Tips? Advice? Recommendations? Gentle prodding? Links to where I can find this stuff on sale? Unabashed rage that I’m a lucky, lucky bastard?

“What defines a relationship is the work that’s involved to maintain it, and it’s constantly changing. Sometimes I’m deeply in love with David and head-over-heels, and sometimes I question whether it’s going to work out and is meant to be. It’s like a business relationship, as well as a personal one; we have a business together and that’s maintaining our love for one another.”

Uh, FUCK YEAH. Fuck storybook romance and resentful ball-and-chain, relationships are a BUSINESS.

***

Last Tuesday night we roused ourselves off of our butts after 8 p.m. and walked to a bar to see the Montreal-based band Handsome Furs play. I knew little about them outside of the fact that they consist solely of the vocalist/guitarist from Wolf Parade and his wife. I’d spent the majority of 2006 listening to Apologies to the Queen Mary on repeat, so I figured that was impetus enough to go check out the gig.

It was a small space and a short set, but the pair put forth a good effort. By the second song the tall man in the leather jacket standing in front of me had gone from tapping his toe to shaking his whole leg. In terms of middle-aged-white-man-dressed-in-lawyer-casual, this was the equivalent of straight-up poppin’ and lockin’ to the beat.

I enjoyed their songs, but I think I mostly enjoyed watching their dynamic. I’d never seen music performed by married people, so I hadn’t known what to expect. Subtle nagging? Glares of contempt? Jaws set in resignation? Falling asleep on the stage early in separate beds because their lives were over?

Nope. Instead we saw two people who were watching each other joyfully, playing off of each others’ energy, and exchanging grins and in-jokes.

Sure, maybe it helped that they were both absolutely high as kites.

But I remained heartened by seeing a couple that just seemed to like each other. So much is said about the importance of love in marriage and not enough about the importance of like. The aim of which, of course, is not to like each other 100% of the time. Most of the time is an admirable enough accomplishment.

Most of the time is a good deal in the hard business world of relationships.

But no, instead I kept my hands and feet inside the moving vehicle and quietly turned questions over in my mind. So many questions. Questions like:

Does some FAA regulation require that classic rock stations play at least one Led Zeppelin song every half hour?

And:
Dear Boomers, was Three Dog Night really that great the first 100 times you heard them, let alone the last 3,496?

And:
Is this our collective fate? Is this just some predetermined condition of human nature? Do we all inevitably hit a certain age when we realize we can no longer connect with nor understand the Music of Today, so we run back to the comforting and familiar arms of the Songs of Our Youth? Is there a future radio market waiting to capitalize on the memories of aging Gen-Yers that will play the Postal Service’s “Such Great Heights” and MGMT’s “Kids” on endless loop?

My best friend Kim and I promised each other this would never happen, that we would never become one of those people who fixated on the tunes of their teens and twenties, but then again we also promised each other we would 1) never become our mothers and 2) never get old, and look how well that’s working out for us so far.

***

If you’re like me, you’ve never actively sought out classic rock. Classic rock simply knows where to find you. It’s ubiquitous. Endless. Humming from the portable radio of the dude painting the house across the street. Spilling out of the open windows of pickup trucks. Blasting from the massive speakers of sports arenas. Reverberating from the guitar your arrogant ex-boyfriend is brandishing. I’m fairly certain classic rock is a union regulation. I think they might pipe classic rock into the hospital bassinets of newborns. “Here, babies,” the white-clad nurses whisper, leaning over their tiny beds. “Listen up. You’re gonna need to memorize this shit.”

And that? I think that is what set me up to trip off the mental edge, somewhere in the middle of Day 2 of our trip. They were playing all of the same songs I’d heard since before I can even remember first hearing them. And I’m thirty-fucking-one years old. I began to suspect that some great invisible hand pauses classic rock when you stop listening and presses play when you start again. It’s like stumbling upon a musical Groundhog Day where NOTHING EVER CHANGES. And if anything EVER DID CHANGE, it would probably cause some kind of tear in the lining of the universe, and the tear would explode outward from its center, and with a deafening David Lee Roth-like yelp all would be turned inside-out and sucked into a massive black hole.

And your ex-boyfriend would look down and wonder why his guitar was, quite literally, weeping.

At the rawk show.

I really do think I began slipping somewhere around there, on Day 2, because I started hearing things I’d never really before heard in classic rock songs. Specifically, PENISES. A penis here, a penis there, EVERYWHERE A PENIS. Classic Rock Radio Land is so chockablock with penises that if you were to play classic rock backwards, all you would hear is Angus Young repeating the word “penis” over and over. I mean, consider the opening segment from AC/DC’s “Thunder” alone:

PENIS! paaaayyyaaayaaaaaanissssss PENIS! payayyyyaayyyyaaaanissss PENIS!

Based on my own casual research, I estimate that anywhere between 82 and 136% of classic rock lyrics either directly or indirectly involve penises. “Scientists” will try to tell you these statistics don’t add up, but then again 419% of scientists are men who listen to classic rock. LOOK IT UP ON WIKIPEDIA.

Let me tell you, once you’ve heard a penis in a classic rock song, you cannot unhear it. Gradually it became a strange game; a personal challenge: Spot the Penis(es) In the Classic Rock Song. Which made me, of course, listen to the words more closely. Which in turn brought me fascinating insight into the male/female classic rock dynamic. Allow me to present my findings!

The men of classic rock are:

• Playin’ in a rock ‘n’ roll band
• Partyin’
• Chasin’ tail
• Totally fuckin’ awesome
• Prone to droppin’ the hard ‘g’ at the ends of words

The women of classic rock are:

• Sexy
• Crazy
• Strippers
• Muses
• Cruel heartbreakers
• Sexy crazy stripper muses that cruelly break a man’s heart

Yep. There it is. According to my research, the women of classic rock aren’t even permitted to play the music. I mean, Janis Joplin is sometimes allowed to air on classic rock radio, but she didn’t play so much as sing, plus she was weird-looking and definitely crazy. She’s like the Kid Sister to the Gods of Rock, the one who shouted into a hairbrush in the living room as a kid for attention and then cried a lot and drank too much Jim Beam and died tragically young.

This was all fine, of course. I was weathering the musical conditions fairly well, all things considered; smirking from the backseat of the car at all the amped-up sexuality and idly wishing it was common for classic rock stations to play Bikini Kill. BUT THEN. The station played a clip from their morning show in which the disc jockeys shared their incredulity over a story of a rock god who was flashed by a very well-endowed woman at a concert and responded by noting that ”Once you’ve seen one pair, they all start to look the same.”

Well. The DJs were flabbergasted. The rock god had been given a great gift! He’d been given the gift of a glorious rack at which to stare! And he’d nonchalantly shrugged the whole thing off! They were gonna have to call him and set him straight about those boobies!

Yes, they said “boobies.”

And it was here, on the third and final day of my trip, that I thought I truly snapped. I looked out the window and suddenly there were penises everywhere, raining from the sky. One crashed just to our left, narrowly missing the car. I yelled at the driver to pull over, PULL OVER, and I scrambled out of the car and took off at a blind run. I dodged and weaved between other cars as I peeled my shirt off and tossed it emphatically in the air, shouting something about pulling the trigger of my love gun as highway patrol officers chased me on foot. Just as they were closing in to tackle me I awoke with a startle, knocking my head against the glass of the car window.

It was just a dream. It was all just a dream.

The raining penises, that its. The classic rock was still disappointingly, tragically real.

But don’t bother trying to listen for yourself. Because you know what? Take my word for it:

Once you’ve heard one classic rock song, they all start to sound the same.