We Are Never Meeting in Real Life



I didn’t eat for two days so that I could spend all my Weight Watchers points for the week last night on a nineteen-dollar octopus salad from Longman & Eagle. WOULD DO AGAIN. I grew up eating the kind of boxed trash you heat up and pour milk in for dinner: macaroni and cheese, Hamburger Helper, imitation Trix. Poor people food is my food; banging a couple of cans together over a shallow Pyrex dish before sprinkling some noodles and cheese on it then baking it for twenty minutes at 350 degrees is like tugging a threadbare thrift-store sweater onto my stomach, a warm comestible hug. I love all that homestyle shit: casseroles and bundts and cobblers and sheet cakes and rolls; recipes that require Crisco and food coloring and have oxymoronic names like “cheeseburger pie” and “lasagna soup,” recipes that cost eight dollars to make and last for a week.





Con: What if I forget what ramps and garlic scapes and morels are?!


If I had to pick a favorite food to eat while sobbing over the kitchen sink, it would probably most definitely be beanie weenies. There is no greater sad joy than cutting up a dollar-store hot dog and putting it in a simmering saucepan of Bush’s honey baked beans. To further illustrate the direness of my current situation, I should disclose that I am writing this while eating a frozen bean burrito that might not really be cooked all the way through. I can count the number of fancy meals I have in a month on one hand, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want the option of rejecting your invitation to go to them. Living in Chicago spoils you, because there are hundreds of places fifteen minutes from wherever you happen to be at any given moment where you can find locally sourced farm-to-table organic meals made by a chef who’s probably been on TV. I might not take advantage of them as often as I do, say, Pizza Hut’s two mediums for $6.99 deal, but the point is that if I wanted to I could stick up a bank, steal an outfit from a person who doesn’t wear pajamas as regular clothes, and order the lily bulb/rambutan/distillation of caviar lime at Alinea any time I want. (Yeah right, I could never get in there.)





Pro: Life would be so simple.


I could wake up to the sound of crowing roosters or methheads at sunrise, consume a platter of buttered carbohydrates, hitch up my overalls, and grab my watering can from the shed. That would be a dream. I’m sick of news, and buying stuff, and trying so desperately to have fun all the time. I just want to watch old Catfish episodes on the couch and record videos of Helen’s cat snores.





Con: BUT WHAT IF I GET BORED?


Please ignore that I have shunned all available social and physical activity on this lovely Friday evening in order to sit in my darkened apartment, bathed in the blue light of this computer screen while I gaze dolefully at a YouTube video of Justin Bieber singing karaoke in a car. Boredom is a fallacy in my tiny life. I have a fancy phone with lots of apps on it and relatively decent LTE coverage, I haven’t been truly “bored” since 2007. And even back then, there were televisions and books and Myspace and pets. But if I wanted to go out and get into something fun, I theoretically could put a jacket on and go do it.





Pro: It’s just so goddamn beautiful.


I’m tired of looking at stomped-out cigarettes floating in puddles and rotting old food stinking up the sidewalk. I am getting So Fucking Touchy lately, and I know the problem is me, that Americans have the unalienable right to fill their potholes with dirty diapers and the slimy celery they forgot was in the produce drawer; I would never deign to take that away from anyone. I’m sure nothing feels better than dropping a used Kleenex three feet to the right of a public trash can. But I’m growing tired of grimy cabs and the E. coli factory that is our stretch of Lake Michigan; I could stand to have some trees and weather in my life. I mean, I don’t really want to touch nature, but I do sometimes like looking at it.





Con: Nature is terrifying.


Last summer Mavis and I spent a weekend in a remote hippie cabin in the woods. It is the plot of every horror movie you’ve ever seen: white person convinces black person to pack up his/her hair grease, wave cap, and reparations money in the hopes of spending a long relaxing weekend in [vaguely authentic-sounding pseudo–Native American word] [Lake/Falls/Island/Coast] doing white-people things like lying in hammocks and eating fresh apricots. Black person dies before you’ve even made a dent in your popcorn.

I had my sunglasses, my car snacks, and my road-trip music; I was ready to meet Mavis in the woods. I plugged the address into the GPS on my phone and waited for the pixels and gigabytes or whatever to plot my route. Finally, Siri heaved a long, weary sigh. “Bitch, are you sure?”

WHAT? I restarted my phone and reentered the address.

Another pregnant pause. “Sa-man-tha, there are no black people within a hundred miles of this destination,” bleeped the computerized voice. “Would you instead like directions to the Essence Fest? I think Mary J. Blige is performing.”

“THAT WAS LAST WEEK!” I shrieked, pounding the address into the phone again. “JUST TELL ME HOW TO GET TO THIS COUNTRY SHIT.” Another long pause as she calculated directions. I watched a map slowly appear on the screen, my course charted in blue. “Anything in the whole town comes up missing over the next three days and your black ass is going to jail,” Siri warned nastily, and I threw the phone into the backseat. I spent three hours on tranquil highways and hilly back roads littered with raccoon and deer carcasses, vainly attempting to eat a sandwich like a civilized person while also dodging families of ducks as they toddled across the unmarked road. I passed dozens of tiny houses set back from the highway with ancient cars and boats rusting under the sun on their front lawns. I could smell the methamphetamines cooking in the air. “IN A QUARTER MILE, TURN LEFT AT THE COW,” Siri cackled viciously. “IN TWO HUNDRED FEET MAKE A SLIGHT RIGHT AT THE HORSE ONTO A DIRT ROAD, AND TRY NOT TO GET MAULED BY A BEAR FOR THOSE FIG NEWTONS HIDDEN IN YOUR BACKPACK, STUPID.” I could’ve died out there for real.

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