Really Good, Actually(52)
They agreed, and a reunion was scheduled, with a plan to combine our intellects in pursuit of a free bar tab (or one craft beer–branded tote bag split five ways, results pending). On the day of the quiz—running thirty minutes behind for absolutely no reason—I texted Amy, who I also hadn’t seen in a while, to tell her to come along. When I got to the table, the group chat was fully assembled, and I was overcome with a wave of affection for my funny, stylish, oddball friends. I hugged them all and told them that Amy would be joining us.
“Oh,” said Amirah, sounding not particularly pleased. “That’s fun . . . We’ve never really hung out outside of work.”
I told Amirah I hadn’t known this and in fact had assumed they were close based on how highly Amy spoke of her.
“Amy speaks highly of everyone,” said Amirah. “She’d find something nice to say about Stalin.”
“That’s not hard,” said Clive. “Have you seen that picture of him when he was younger? Step on me, comrade.”
Everyone pulled out their phones, something that would shortly be disallowed by the rules of the quiz. It was agreed that the picture of young Stalin could get it, but that it was obviously a more complicated moral quandary to have sex or not with the man himself. Lauren suggested Stalin between 1897 and 1901 was “the sweet spot” and that she would do it with him during those years only. I proposed an elaborate time travel scenario wherein my powers of fellatio caused a young Joseph to abandon his political ambitions and devote himself to gardening. We caught Emotional Lauren with her phone under the table, googling what did Stalin do.
Amy rocked up as Amirah was telling us about a dog she and Tom had fallen in love with on an adoption website. “What are we talking about?” she asked, sliding in between me and Clive with an out-of-character bottle of IPA.
“Amirah and her boyfriend are getting a starter baby,” I said. “Guess it’s pretty serious.”
“It’s not that serious,” Amirah said, rolling her eyes and turning to Amy. “But look at him! What were we supposed to do?” She held out her iPhone, which displayed the adoption page for a tiny puggle called Jeremy.
Amy yelped. “That’s the cutest fucking dog I’ve ever fucking seen,” she said. “You have to get him, oh my god.”
“I think it’s a bad idea,” I said. “What if you break up?”
Amirah made a face like she’d tasted bad milk. “With Tom? No.”
“Well,” I said, “you never know. You said yourself it’s not that serious. Plus, I think I changed my mind on the concept of pets in general. A puppy is basically a down payment on a future dog funeral.”
Amirah put her phone in her pocket and went quiet. I nudged my chair closer to hers as Amy cheerily introduced herself to the rest of the table, shaking hands with Clive and Lauren and reaching awkwardly across the table to meet Emotional Lauren’s outstretched arms. Next to us, a team registered loudly as “Les Quizerables,” then looked around to see if anyone was jealous.
The first round of questions was themed around “Nineties Names”—the cloned sheep (Dolly), Phoebe’s twin sister on Friends (Ursula), the Princess Diana memorial Beanie Baby (somehow, incredibly, “Princess”). Our interest had started to wane by the music round; Les Quizerables was being annoyingly hard-core, and their furtive huddles and loud, urgent calls for clarification took the casual shine off the evening, revealing us to be engaged once again in Adult Hobbies.
“This is how I know we’re getting old,” said Lauren, as the Quizerables captain pulled his group in for yet another showy consultation. “Genuinely fun people do not need someone to organize fun for them.”
Amirah agreed, pointing out that we were probably the youngest people in the bar—a bad sign.
“I don’t know,” said Amy. “I wouldn’t want to be in my early twenties now. I have a few young gals on my floor, and they are stressed as hell.”
Lauren asked what they were stressed about.
“Everything,” she said. “They get anxiety about literally everything. This one girl, Kitty, she had to turn in a report to our floor manager last week, and she straight up . . . didn’t do it. When I asked her about it, she said, and I quote, ‘Deadlines give me anxiety.’”
The rest of the table was unsure how to respond. On the one hand, it was probably very annoying to have to do someone else’s report. On the other hand, anxiety is a real and often serious mental disorder affecting millions of people every day. On some third, more embarrassing but most important hand, nobody wanted to sound old for complaining about this stuff. We were about to turn thirty, not fifty-seven.
“I feel a lot of pressure to spit in Simon’s mouth,” I said, to change the subject. “Or at least put a finger in his butt. Do you guys do that? I feel like everyone is doing that except me.” Nobody responded, so I explained that although I’d asked him a lot of times about it, and even drunkenly offered to peg him without fully understanding what that entailed, he insisted that the normal sex we were having was fulfilling and good. I wondered aloud if he was seeing someone else who did all the ass play he secretly craved. “In general,” I said, “I just want to figure out what he’s getting from this arrangement. He’s always doing such actively thoughtful stuff, and I’m like . . . why.”