Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman(11)

Little is known of Daniel’s whereabouts and associations in these dark interim years (when consulted for comment, David Coverdale of Whitesnake said, “Get away from me, please”), but he emerged in 1994, saw his shadow, and formed the band Spoon, stronger and taller and more full of handsome indie rock and roll than ever before. After the great big success of 2001’s Girls Can Tell, 2002’s Kill the Moonlight, 2005’s Gimme Fiction, and 2007’s Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, Daniel—along with Jim Eno (inventor of the bee beard), Eric Harvey (feral child success story), and Rob Pope (white male)—birthed Transference: in Daniel’s words, Spoon’s “orangest” and “most for stoners” album yet.

Asked about her son’s new record, Daniel’s mother, who is definitely “not” Cher, quipped: “Too metal!” Reached for comment on whether or not Daniel’s non-Cher mother is really qualified to judge the metalness of things, David Coverdale of Whitesnake said, “Seriously, how did you get this number?”



I am so, so sorry, the band Spoon.





Step Fifteen: Get a Job Blogging for a National Publication with Thousands and Thousands of Commenters Who Will Never Be Satisfied No Matter What You Write


At a certain point you just have to be like [jack-off motion] and do you.





Step Sixteen: Ask Pat Mitchell if She Is Marlo Thomas at a Banquet Honoring Pat Mitchell


Hollyweird Fun Fact: Pat Mitchell does not like this at all.





Step Seventeen: Break a Chair While Sitting on the Stage at a Comedy Show


I went to see my friend Hari work out some new jokes at a small black-box theater in Seattle. The ancient theater seats were too narrow for my modern butt, so I moved to an old wooden chair that had been placed on the side of the stage as overflow seating. A few minutes into Hari’s set, a loud crack echoed through the theater and I felt the chair begin to collapse under me. I jumped into a kind of emergency squat, which I nonchalantly held until the producer rushed out from backstage and replaced my chair with some sort of steel-reinforced military-grade hydraulic jack.





Step Eighteen: Admit that You Lied Earlier About How Old You Were When You Peed Your Pants in Class


Third grade. It was third grade, okay? Are you happy?


This is the only advice I can offer. Each time something like this happens, take a breath and ask yourself, honestly: Am I dead? Did I die? Is the world different? Has my soul splintered into a thousand shards and scattered to the winds? I think you’ll find, in nearly every case, that you are fine. Life rolls on. No one cares. Very few things—apart from death and crime—have real, irreversible stakes, and when something with real stakes happens, humiliation is the least of your worries.

You gather yourself up, and you pick the pepperoni out of your hair, and you say, “I’m sorry, Pat Mitchell, it was very nice to meet you,” and you live, little soldier. You go live.





When Life Gives You Lemons


I don’t keep track of my periods and kind of think anyone who does is some sort of neuroscientist, so I have no idea what prompted me to walk over to Walgreens and buy a pregnancy test. Maybe women really do have a weird, spiritual red phone to our magic triangles. I never thought I did, but for whatever reason, that day, I walked around the corner, bought the thing, took it home to my studio apartment, and peed on it. I probably bought some candy and toilet paper too as, like, a decoy, so maybe the Walgreens checker would think the pregnancy test was just a wacky impulse buy on my way to my nightly ritual of wolfing Heath bars while taking a magnum dump.

I always throw a decoy purch’ in the cart any time I have to buy something embarrassing like ice cream or vagina plugs. (Obviously, on paper, I disagree with this entire premise—food and hygiene are not “embarrassing”—but being a not-baby is a journey, not a destination.) Like, if I want to eat six Tootsie Pops and a Totino’s for dinner, I’ll also buy a lemon and a bag of baby carrots to show that I am a virtuous and cosmopolitan duchess who just needs to keep her pantry stocked with party pizza in case any Ninja Turtles stop by. The carrots are for me, Belvedere. Or, if I want to buy the super-economy box of ultra-plus tampons, I’ll also snag a thing of Windex and some lunch meat, to distract the cashier from the community theater adaptation of Carrie currently entering its third act in my gusset. Maybe I’m just buying these ’pons for my neighbor on my way to slam some turk and polish my miniatures, bro! (IMPORTANT: One must NEVER EVER use tampons and Ben & Jerry’s as each other’s decoy purchases, as this suggests you are some sort of Bridget Jones situation who needs ice cweam to soothe her menses a-bloo-bloos, which defeats the entire purpose of decoy purchases, Albert Einstein.)

So, peeing on things is weird, right? As a person without a penis, I mean. I could show you the pee-hole on any crotch diagram—I could diagram pee-holes all day (AND I DO)—but in practice, I’m just not… entirely clear on where the pee comes out? It’s, sort of, the front area? The foyer? But it’s not like there’s, like, a nozzle. Trying to pee into a cup is like trying to fill a beer bottle with a Super Soaker from across the room in the dark. On a moonless night. (This is one of those disheartening moments where I’m realizing that I might be The Only One, and I may as well have just announced to you all that I don’t know how shoes work. What’s the deal with these hard socks??? Right, guys?