Scrappy Little Nobody(66)

Maybe because he’s a little older, or maybe because Whitney is his sister, Luke scoffs. He’s right; it’s stupid. I just don’t know it yet.

We get back on the boat and go to sleep. I bunk with Luke but we don’t have sex after all because we haven’t known each other very long, and his family is on the boat, and I haven’t taken a shit since we left LA. The journey back is easy and beautiful. When we arrive in the marina everyone sets to work getting the boat back in order. Alex and I have no idea what to do but it seems like asking would slow the process down. We move objects around at random to give the appearance that we are helping. The second it becomes acceptable to say good-bye we run to my car, drive straight over a partition, and race home to the comfort of indoor plumbing. At home, we come out of our respective bathrooms, flop on the couch, and luxuriate in our freshly scrubbed bodies and vacant bowels.

For the first time in almost four days, we are sober on land. Did you know that land sickness is a thing? Spend too much time on a boat, and your body adjusts. We hadn’t noticed it when we went ashore in Catalina because the only thing on that shore was alcohol. But now it starts to overtake us. I go to the kitchen thinking food will help and I am tossed about by invisible demons. My ten-foot walk to the refrigerator is perfectly flat but I flail and grab at the walls like I am traversing the galley of a sinking navy destroyer. Alex and I look at each other, terrified. Surely this is just a delayed hangover; it will be over in a few hours. But the ocean is an evil bitch and she intends to torture us for days. I crawl back to the bathroom and throw up.

? ? ?

Why would grown people do this?! These are adults with money—sailboat money! Which would imply they are functioning members of society! Why go to an island and dress up like a pirate? The work of it—the expense, the planning, the last-minute acquisition of stick-on Captain Jack Sparrow? beards! All to come home and spend the next three days feeling miserable.

While I was there, I found this all bewildering but harmless. Yet I was undone by the simple act of husband and wife staying “in” one night in lieu of participating in what was clearly a collective psychosis.

Not long after that weekend, something started changing in me. I started to feel like I was just playing the part. The first time I noticed it I was in the middle of a herculean effort to enjoy dancing at a club in Vegas. Even while it was happening I thought, This will be one of those things I look back on that makes me glad I don’t do it anymore. Later that night, Buccaneer Days crossed my mind. I still didn’t know why anyone would want to go through all that trouble to behave like an idiot (to this day I behave like an idiot plenty and I don’t need a pirate costume to do it), but I realized: I’d want to stay on the boat. I’d want to stay on the boat, cook some mystery meat, and listen to a podcast.

So many people I know who are in long-term relationships have made the same boring comment to me about how they wish Tinder had been around when they were single. Seriously, you wish you could be on Tinder? Tinder seems like a gateway to years of therapy or having your organs harvested. These comments are usually made by married men who feel that they would “clean up” if they could only get their incredible faces in front of the masses of younger women who “they’ve heard” are way more into anonymous sex.

So many people say they wish they could be young again. You couldn’t drag me back to twenty-one. All the hiding, all the pretending, all the hanging out with people you don’t actually like. Going out three nights in a row? RuPaul’s Drag Race is on. Making out in the grass? I own a perfectly good couch. Always fighting with your friends? I am no longer confused about what the word “friend” means. And to top it all off, if you woke up tomorrow and you were young again, you’d have to deal with creepy married dudes feeling entitled to easy sex with you because your generation is supposed to be “more liberated.” Pass.

That new-crush feeling? It just makes me tired. I thought that urgency, that need for the new experience, always thinking the next one might be better than the last, and the terror of potentially missing out on one, would be there forever.

These days, if my hair got f*cked up in front of some cute boy I’d just think, Hey, at least we’re speeding up the inevitable. If you still want to spend some of your short time on earth with this whole situation, let me know, ’cause it’s what you’re gonna get at the end of the day.

Pitying the couple who didn’t want to semi-ironically hobnob with strangers in pirate costumes was pretty childish of me. But I’m glad I have the memory of that feeling, because now I can fully appreciate how wonderful it is that it’s gone.

I wonder how much of my hard-and-fast worldview will change as I get older. Surely I will always hate licorice, I will always love cheap scented candles, and my favorite movie will always be George Cukor’s The Women. Surely I will always put work before relationships, I will always think that children aren’t for me, I will always find Buccaneer Days baffling. Or maybe in a few years I’ll get the urge to sail to an island, spend the weekend getting hammered in a tricornered hat, and realize I was a fool for ever questioning it.





the world’s most reluctant adult


I was in a rush to grow up my whole childhood. Because I looked so young as a kid, I worked doubly hard to prove that I was independent and mature. I got called “precocious” A LOT. I did not know the word had pejorative connotations until I grew up and started using it as code to mean this kid is annoying . . . and the circle was complete.