As Seen On Tv. Sarah Mlynowski
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by the time Mom was twenty-four, she had you.”
“I can’t believe you’re going to quit your job, give up your apartment, sell your car—you can’t bring a car, never mind a convertible to Manhattan, you know—to follow some guy across the country. Are you going to get married next? Take his name? Become a stay-at-home mom? Buy a bread-maker?”
I wish I’d been offered a fabulous job in New York first and then met Steve while buying a hot pretzel from a street vendor. “I’ve always wanted a bread-maker.”
“I worry about you.”
“Don’t.”
“What if you can’t find a job?”
“Then I won’t move.”
Dana snorts. “Don’t think you can bullshit me the way you do everyone else. I know you. Do what you want. But don’t come crying to me when you’re forty, have five kids, no life of your own and need help filling the two-car garage with carbon monoxide. You should live a little. Experience life.”
Instead of finding a job after college, Dana did a one-year women’s studies master’s (that’s why I did the women’s studies minor—she kept bugging me to do it). Then, she decided she needed a master’s degree in journalism. Dana never believed in settling down. Especially for a man. Last year she slept with twelve. A bona fide member of the Man-a-Month Club, she quantifies life experiences as men’s boxers over her bedpost. “You’re too inexperienced to make such an important decision,” she continues. “And you’ve been dating him less than a year. You don’t know him long enough to know he’s not a complete asshole. You haven’t done enough research. You’re making a mistake.”
I hang up the phone and turn back to my e-mails.
Millie has already written me back.
My phone rings. I’m not going to talk to her if she’s going to be annoying.
It rings again.
Still ringing.
I pick up. “Uh-huh.”
“I’m sorry. I’m going to miss you, okay? I like having you an hour drive away. If you’re sure, I mean absolutely one hundred and ten percent sure it’s the right decision, I’ll stop protesting.”
I imagine an army of stoned, ponytailed picketers waving felt-tipped marker-written signs and chanting at the airport, “No, no, don’t let her go!” “She’s too young, have more fun!” “She’s delirious for getting serious!”
“It’s the right decision,” I say.
Of course it’s the right decision. I’m in love. He’s in love. If it’s going to work, we can’t live in different cities forever, and he can’t leave New York. Saturday night was the ten-month anniversary of our first date, and after an hour of wine and sweaty sex he placed a little blue box on top of his pillow and whispered, “Happy anniversary.” My heart stopped, as if its plug had been ripped out of the wall. Holy shit, I thought. Is it a ring? Is he proposing? Am I going to get married? Do I love this man? I’m too young to get married. How can I marry him when we’re never in the same city for more than forty-eight hours? He loves me. I’m going to get married. We’re going to have a home. And then I opened the box. And it was a silver key chain. Smooth and silver, the inscription said, Move in with me? I love you, S. My heart turned over again, and still not sure if I was relieved or disappointed I kissed him, kissed him again.
Yes, yes, yes.
It’ll work. It’ll be perfect. I’m in love. Aren’t you supposed to take risks when you’re in love?
But if—and it’s a big fat unlikely if—I’m wrong about this (and I really doubt that I’m wrong about this) and he turns out to be a complete asshole like Dana warned, it’s not like my life will be over. I can find somewhere to live in New York if I absolutely had to. The Village Voice lists tons of people looking for roommates in Manhattan. Or if I discover I hate New York, I can always move back to Florida. I can stay with Dana until I find a place. Maybe Liza will give me back my job. Or I can teach English in Japan. I know someone who did it and loved it. She claimed it was the most incredible learning experience and that all she needed was a bachelor’s degree and that she made a shitload of cash. I could use the money to travel through Asia and even to Australia or New Zealand and I love miso soup and at least five Japanese schools have positions available immediately.
I checked.
The message from Millie:
Oh my God! You are so lucky! NYC! Very jealous. When am I going to see you? Save Friday—we’re having a major girls night! Lucy, Laura and some of her friends from work. Cocktails here, dinner and clubbing on South Beach. You’d better come. You haven’t been out in years. You missed a crazy night on Saturday! We all ended up skinny-dipping with a bunch of Italians in Lucy’s pool! lol. Want to go for sushi tonight?
Ding! A message from Dana:
Love you. Worried about you that’s all. You don’t use Purity tampons, do you? Do you think I should write a story about this? Of course you do, you crazy hypochondriac. I just sold a feature about American teenage prostitutes. Prada purse here I come!
The dichotomy that is my sister: She refuses to write about fashion, but is secretly obsessed with it. Before she got her news radio gig, she was offered a fashion column and she turned it down. She believes that publicly writing about clothing will brand her a frivolous journalist, a lightweight. I tell her that obsessing about fashion, spending all her money on fashion makes her a frivolous person. But that doesn’t seem to bother her.
Ding! Message from my boss Liza:
In case you’ve forgotten, I’m pregnant. What do I need tampons for? I’d appreciate if you don’t send chain letters during company time. Thanks, L
If I weren’t planning to quit, her e-mail would have annoyed me. Maybe she didn’t have her morning nicotine fix, after all.
I respond to Millie’s many exclamations:
I’m going back to NY this weekend for interviews. I have to keep looking for jobs this week. When I get back?
As soon as the message goes out, I delete it from the Sent folder. Then I delete it from the Deleted folder. I’ve got this Big Brother technology down pat.
I set out down the block in search of a less visited pay phone.
“No pay phone here,” a bald man says. “There’s one up the street.”
Pay phones are like men. Never a decent one around (by decent I mean in good working order) when or where you’re looking.
Take my Europe trip for example. Who doesn’t want a summer fling? I wasn’t still a virgin—it wasn’t as if I had my heart set on losing it in a hostel bunk bed or anything like that—but I believed that having a wild affair was part of the backpack experience. Isn’t that why college students go to Europe? I called dibs on the Scots and Brits, and Millie reserved the Italians, so of course we mostly met frat boys from Miami. I met one overly freckled, broad-shouldered, seemingly interested Scot on the overnight ferry from Brindisi to Corfu, but by the time we got to Greece, he had dropped two tablets of E and found his way into a sleeping bag that boasted a brunette and a foot-long Canadian flag.
Now, as I continue my hike up Flamingo Road, in search of a pay phone, the sun follows me like the evil eyes of a mysterious painting in a Scooby-Doo episode. It’s a good thing I have my sneakers on today. As I do every day. Dana tried to convince me to buy two-inch heeled pumps for the office. “But I’m allowed to wear sneakers,” I said.
“It’s about image,” she said. “Your ten-year-old sneakers don’t scream sophisticated, now do they?”
“At least they don’t scream pain.” I don’t get why anyone would choose to be uncomfortable.
Dana and I have very different understandings of the purpose