We Are Never Meeting in Real Life

? a stainless steel shelving unit that serves as an “open-air concept pantry” eye roll

? a dresser whose bottom two drawers I am terrified to open

? a bookshelf I have inexplicably moved six motherfucking times

? one chair



There’s other shit in here (laptop, house phone I no longer remember the number to, prosperity candles from the occult bookstore) but it doesn’t count, since those are things that go on top of other things. Suffice it to say, I have no reason whatsoever to be comparing backsplashes. I have been a renter my entire life; my home-improvement joy is firmly grounded in novelty items like matching clothes hangers and interesting dish towels, affordable splashes of color and beauty that can liven up this space that’s crumbling at the corners and painted like a prison cell. The idea of owning a home feels stressful to me. Like, if the toilet breaks and it’s not my paycheck week, am I really going to have to shit at the gas station for nine days until my direct deposit clears? YES. Also I don’t understand how mortgages work other than a handful of scenes I can remember from The Big Short, and don’t quote me on this, but I’m pretty sure Steve Carell told me the dumbest thing I could ever do is sink my regular-person money into any type of real estate. Let someone else take the risk, and I can relax and waste the money I should be putting into a savings account on decorative pillows and champagne flutes I’ll never use.

But catalogs are a miracle, because you can design your very own dream house with none of the risk or expense. I’m like a little girl with my Post-it notes and red Sharpie: “I want the farmhouse sink and these marble countertops and a butcher block island in the center of the kitchen. These brass sconces would look good in the master bathroom, and definitely some track lighting in the family room, and ooh wouldn’t this leather sofa look amazing in the den?!” I could spend an entire weekend locked in a five-hundred-square-foot studio apartment circling armoires in the Crate and Barrel catalog that will never see the inside of any place other than my brain. I like to pull all the Bed Bath & Beyond coupons out of the Sunday paper and stick them in a drawer for the day I decide to stop living like a trash person and buy sheets with an impressive thread count. One of these days I’m going to move to a place in which a footstool might not look out of place, and I am going to need that 20 percent off, okay?





5. Your space, your rules.


Now, this is assuming that you haven’t made the fatal mistake of trying to be inside at someplace other than the one in which you live. People who don’t understand that my writing process consists of staring sullenly at my computer waiting for the jokes to come while willing myself not to get up to reexamine the contents of the almost-bare refrigerator I just took stock of ten minutes ago often ask if I like to write in coffee shops. I used to, especially before I caved and got a high-speed Internet hookup in my casa. Sometimes I’d roll down to the Heartland to pick at a bowl of vegan chili and soak up their Internet, but then my favorite bartender quit and they took the black bean nachos off the menu so BYE. There are a handful of coffee shops in Edgewater that feel cozy and relaxing, but the problem with that is I am never cozy or relaxed. Even with headphones on, I could never get over the idea that someone was watching me, that they knew I had a deadline or a draft due and noticed that instead of putting my head down and working, I’d spent the entire time glancing around wondering what everyone else was working on. And I live near Loyola University, so the answer was probably definitely “a term paper for Indigenous and Settler Colonialism,” but still I’d sit there with my laptop open to a blank page waiting to be filled with at least forty-five hundred words on the scintillating topic of my anus, wondering what the girl with the blue hair and hand tattoos had picked as her major. I would pack up my computer and the book I liked to carry in case I got frustrated with the writing and grumble as I banged out the door, take the train a few stops to a place with quality scones and iced tea, then sit there for hours paralyzed with fear that if I drank too much I would have to go to the bathroom and be faced with the dilemma of whether someone would steal a computer cheaper and more busted than theirs for the three minutes I was gone.

I am unfamiliar with coffee shop etiquette. Since I let the dude texting across from me hog the outlet, is he morally obligated to make sure no one runs off with my wallet while I’m in the can? If I take my wallet, will he keep an eye on my laptop? And what about my bag?! I am anxious, and I don’t trust anyone and would also never want to burden a stranger with my literal shit, but I had to buy a drink to get the Wi-Fi password and didn’t want to look like a cheapskate, so I got the big one, and a doughnut, and now I have to pee but I’m not ready to leave and Jesus God what can I do?! So I would take everything in with me, a mess of tangled cords spilling from my shoulder bag, my unfinished teacup balanced precariously in the hand not fumbling for my phone. I usually could manage to pee without letting my cup touch any contaminated surfaces, and when I emerged from the bathroom someone new would inevitably be sitting in my seat, unsheathing her gleaming MacBook Pro from its protective case, nodding with a smile at the outlet hog as he unplugged so she could use it. Defeated and deflated after multiple days sulking home with my work undone, I finally called RCN to come connect whatever wires I needed to get the fastest possible mature lesbian porn on my phone. I can make my own tea. Better yet, I can smoke a bowl, and drink an entire pitcher of Crystal Light, and finish that butthole essay in my nicest house jacket and take as many breaks as I want, and no one is going to steal my seat when I get up for a cookie refill or cause me to break out in a sweat when my battery is at 7 percent and the nearest outlet is in use. I won’t get sucked into watching a young man artfully arrange his latte and muffin just so for the gram, no eavesdropping on conversations about bands I’ve never heard of and am too uncool to understand, no nervously asking an irritated barista what “sumatra” means: just me and the cat and the bags of Lipton I shoved in my pocket at work because buying an actual box of tea in real life feels like a ridiculous, unnecessary thing. It’s fucking perfect. BRB, gotta go pee.





A Total Attack of the Heart


Samantha Irby's books