We Are Never Meeting in Real Life
Samantha Irby
This book is dedicated to Klonopin.
My Bachelorette Application
I am squeezed into my push-up bra and sparkly, ill-fitting dress. I’ve got the requisite sixteen coats of waterproof mascara, black eyeliner, and salmon-colored streaks of hastily applied self-tanner drying down the side of my neck. I’m sucking in my stomach, I’ve taken thirty-seven Imodium in case my irritable bowels have an adverse reaction to the bag of tacos I hid in my purse and ate in the bathroom while no one was looking, and I have been listening to Katy Perry really, really loudly in the limo on the way over here. I’m about to crush a beer can on my forehead. LET’S DO THIS, BRO.
Are you: Nominating someone [ ] or Applying yourself? [ x ]
Name: Samantha McKiver Irby
Age: 35ish (but I could pass for forty-seven to fifty-two, easily; sixtysomething if I stay up all night)
Gender: passably female
Height: 5'9"
Weight: Lane Bryant model? But maybe on her period week. I have significantly large ankles.
Occupation: My technical job title is client services director at the animal hospital where I’ve worked since early 2002, which loosely translates to “surly phone answerer and unfriendly door opener.” I’m pretty lazy, although I am quite good at playing the race card and eating other people’s lunches in the break room.
E-mail: [redacted]
What is the next big city near you and how far is it? Chicago. And it’s zero miles away. I mean, I’m in it right now, doing Chicago things. You know, eating a deep-dish pizza while wearing a beat-up Urlacher jersey and sprinkling pieces of the Sears Tower (no real Chicagoan will ever call it the Willis Tower) on top and reading Oprah magazine. CHICAGO.
How did you hear about our search? I have a television. And I do most of my reading while waiting in line to buy diet yogurt at the grocery store.
What is your highest level of education? High school, but I took a lot of honors classes.
Where were you born? Evanston, Illinois. A suburb along the lake, due north of Chicago and the birthplace of hella luminaries like Marlon Brando, the Cusacks, Donald Rumsfeld (gross), Bill Murray, Becky #1 from the TV show Roseanne, and possibly Eddie Vedder. At least I think so? We all believe that the song “Elderly Woman in a Small Town” is about us, but we have three motherfucking Whole Foods. That most certainly qualifies us as a medium town, at the very least. Maybe that dude really is from someplace else.
Where did you grow up? EVANSTON. And I’m still basically there. All the time. Unlike Eddie Vedder, I can’t get out. I work there, my doctor is there, and even though I technically live within the Chicago city limits, if I need to go to the supermarket or the movies, I always think of the Evanston ones first. It’s a trap. No one ever leaves this place. Not kidding, I see my junior-year English teacher at Starbucks every morning, which is down the block from the bagel shop this dude I graduated with just bought. It’s gross. I gotta grow the fuck up.
Do you have siblings? How old are they? When I was born my parents were almost-forty and almost-fifty, which means I have never seen either of them: chase a ball, get down on the floor to help construct a Lego set, or run along behind me as I wobbled on a two-wheeled bike. I have three sisters who are currently, brace yourself, fifty-six, fifty-four, and fifty-one years old. HILARIOUS. My sister Carmen is going to be sixty real years old in a few years and that blows my mind. Is your mom even sixty yet?! S-I-X-T-Y.
Have you ever been arrested, charged, or convicted of a crime of any type? If so, please give details: I was arrested for shoplifting once, when I was fourteen. Before you write me off as a wayward little thug, hear me out. So I have that disease that a lot of poor people who claw their way out of the miserable depths of poverty suffer from, the one that makes you want to blow your paycheck on all the special things because never before in your life could you ever have had anything even remotely fancy or expensive. But I was a teenage girl and I needed lipstick and I couldn’t wait the two years it would take for me to pick up regular babysitting work, so I went to the Osco in downtown Evanston one afternoon and slipped tubes of Revlon’s “Toast of New York” and “Iced Coffee” (it was the nineties, brown lips were the thing) into my coat pocket and tried to nonchalantly waltz out of the store like they hadn’t had what I was looking for. I was met at the door by a stern-faced manager, an older black gentleman whose disappointment in me was palpable.
“Is this what Martin Luther King marched for?” he grumbled under his breath as he led me to the room with the mops where a handful of morose-looking degenerates were eating lunch. Pretty sure Revlon is owned by white people, but I didn’t want to further piss him and the ancestors off. He sat me in a rickety office chair and I surveyed discarded Employee of the Month photos fanned like a deck of cards across the threadbare carpet while he called the police. When the portly, red-faced officer showed up, I was deep in a REM cycle, snoring hard with my head on someone’s particleboard desk. As the cop escorted me to the waiting patrol car, we passed Morgan Freeman dragging a homeless-looking black dude with bottles of Tylenol and Advil spilling out of his overstuffed pockets back to the makeshift holding cell. Blood trickled from a gash on his forehead. “That guy must have some headache, eh?” The officer chuckled. What a tacky asshole.
“Arrested” might be a stretch. What happened next involved me lying as flat as humanly possible across the backseat of the police cruiser as the officer drove like he was in a fucking parade, seven miles an hour, through throngs of my recently dismissed classmates. I imagined them straining on tiptoe to see who might be in the backseat. My mildly disappointed sister met us at the curb and assured the officer it would never happen again. That is the extent of my criminal history.
Have you ever had a temporary restraining order issued against someone or had one issued against you? If so, please give details and dates: No, but when I was nineteen, I used to stalk this dude I went to high school with. I would close up the bread shop where I worked, take one of the loaves that was intended for donation to the soup kitchen, then drive my car to his parents’ house and park close enough to see inside, but far enough away to be inconspicuous. Then I would sit there with the engine running, tearing off chunks of apple-cinnamon bread and listening to De La Soul while imagining our life together.