Well, This Is Exhausting

by Sophia Benoit

  VIII. This part of the book is thematically parallel to when Tony sings “Something’s Coming” in West Side Story, except, unlike Tony, I don’t get shot.

  IX. It was Fisher, I remember this clearly. He also broke two iPads and crashed the forklift.

  X. I played hockey for years on an all-girl team and had the option to play on my high school team but I was too nervous to try out because… men.

  XI. I know not all straight cis men literally want this. Or they say they don’t. But when I was eighteen, the men I was meeting certainly did.

  XII. First of all, they did not fund abortions, and even if they did, good.

  XIII. Is going to a farmhouse that you own a vacation? Unknown!

  XIV. “Questionable sexual encounters” feels like it really lets him off the hook. I don’t know. I don’t know.

  XV. NO, IT’S NOT!

  XVI. Also, I was eighteen and he was twenty-three, remember? When people talk about the problems with age-gap relationships, what they really are wary of is the power and experience imbalance between the older and younger parties. This is especially true when you have an older party with more macro power, too, like being a man versus being a woman. Someone being five years older doesn’t matter much when one person is forty-two and the other is forty-seven; the amounts of power and experience they have are likely similar. But when older people target eighteen-to-twenty-four-year-olds—which seems to be the sweet spot for problematic but technically legal age-gap relationships—they usually have outsize control and influence. They’re usually able to say, “Hey, this is normal. Trust me, I’m older.” Or they make more money. Or they live away from their parents or from roommates and can isolate you more easily. For me, I didn’t know how to say no in relationships yet. I had no practice in drawing lines. And he knew that.

  XVII. If you are reading this and thinking about giving your partner a heart-shaped piece of jewelry, PLEASE reconsider. If this is the only thing you take out of this book, I will die glowing with the pride of someone who has saved a relationship.

  XVIII. After we broke up, he started dating a new woman and changed his Facebook relationship status (lololol) on our anniversary and then posted some almost-cryptic thing about “Everything happens for a reason; thank God I only wasted two years of my life.” And my friends got drunk and took my phone and liked his status, which is very funny now and was not as funny then. Anyway, he married that woman eventually, so I think things turned out fine. He did, however, unfriend me on Facebook after they got married, which is bullshit because if I’ve sucked your dick, you don’t get to hide your social media from me.

  SECTION TWO, in which I try really hard to impress shitty men, discover Skinnygirl piña colada mix, and learn how to do eye makeup.

  I. Kinda.

  One Time I Listened to the Sara Bareilles Song “Brave” to Work Up the Courage to Ask a Guy Out (I’m Embarrassed for Me Too)

  I. I myself have not done improv. Please do not let this impugn your heretofore pristine opinion of me.

  II. I’m kidding!!! I’ve slept with a lot of straight men! But also, the orgasm gap is real and basically it says that women sleeping with men have the fewest orgasms of all. Women who sleep with women have more, men who sleep with men have more, and, of course, men who sleep with women have the most.

  III. Yikes for me!

  IV. Every three days.

  V. Yes, lots of people saw through this and found me annoying! I know that now with hindsight!

  VI. Nota bene: there were thousands of women at USC who did not fit this description.

  VII. The creativity!

  VIII. Jerry was later my landlord and I can testify that this man was… wild. He offered that if I ever couldn’t pay my rent, we could work out a “comfort-girl” situation. In 2012, he claimed that he went to Syria to “sort things out.” He once came over to our house at 9 a.m., grabbed a beer out of one of the six fridges he kept there, cracked it open, and said, “I found out God isn’t real.” He also supplied all our toilet paper because he “got a good deal” on it.

  IX. I can’t use this guy’s real name, so I’m going to call him Gator because at least it’s funny to me and if I pick a normal guy’s name it will be… weird. Anyway.

  X. No, it’s not. Grow up.

  XI. For everyone out there who is a real Chan-Head (Channing Tatum fan), you will recognize this as a scene from She’s the Man, a flawless film.

  XII. Sorry that I chose this name and did this to all of us.

  XIII. Please, please note—if you take nothing else from this book—that hanging out with someone more will not make them like you, nor will it make them realize that they’ve always liked you. If your crush wants to date you, they will.

  XIV. I was very emotional at the time; of course I had a journal.

  XV. Why were there balloons in a closet? I don’t know.

  XVI. To be fair, I was cool with this, but also… why would you do that? What?

  XVII. I am not by nature a runner. Except while drunk. When drunk, I get superhuman endurance, like how moms are able to lift cars off babies, and then all of a sudden I have not just the urge but the ability to sprint for long distances. I don’t know what this is about.

  XVIII. Not be sexist/racist/homophobic/etc.

  XIX. Have a reasonable expectation and be disappointed in them when it is not fulfilled.

  Everything I’ve Ever Done to Impress Men (and How Successful Each Was)

  I. Just kidding: this is only a very small selection of the things I’ve done to impress men.

  II. Again, this is a St. Louis thing; they’re amazing. Imagine a cake batter–flavored lemon bar.

  Cracking Open an Ice-Cold Bud Light

  I. Since then, I have had one other cigarette at age twenty-seven for another, different picture. And yes, I was reluctant to post said pictures on social media in case anyone thought I was promoting smoking.

  II. No offense to Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny but they are boring as all hell. They’re jazzed about doing chores and coming home on time and mending socks or whatever kids in the 1930s did.

  III. I was also sober in middle and elementary, but can you really be sober when no one around you is drinking? Or are you just a kid?

  IV. I’m really not even sure that this happens, now that I think about it. I feel like colleges are aware that most teenagers drink before they arrive on campus.

  V. Okay, her plan was just “Why don’t you hold a can of beer and not drink it?” The other theatrics were my idea.

  VI. Yes, I’ve tried IPAs and stouts and sour beers; I even tried a Guinness, which someone had the audacity to tell me would taste like chocolate milk! They all taste like piss.

  VII. Not that most people in my family would actually seek professional help for a problem.

  VIII. Presuming that you can say sorry once per second endlessly, it would take you 31,688 years to apologize a trillion times.

  IX. My guy friends started calling this Penis A Lotta and I can’t think of it any other way.

  X. I Irish goodbye’d so much in college—and so well!!—that I ended up getting a tattoo of the word goodbye in Irish. (As a footnote to this footnote for the pedantic Americans: the language is called Irish. I know you’ve heard it’s only called Gaelic, but it’s called Irish. Chill out.)

  Good Coffee and Why Pierce Brosnan’s Voice in Mamma Mia! Is Perfectly Fine

  I. Look, everyone wants to pretend that leagues don’t exist. Absolutely no one is above you and no one is beneath you as a person, of course. But are there conventional attractiveness levels? Yes. Saying someone is out of your league/you’re out of someone’s league is a very useful shorthand to describe social situations and nuances, okay? Plus, nothing is set in stone; you can always sleep with/marry/date people out of your league; straight men do it all the time!!!! So, to recap: the concept of “leagues” is harsh, but so is social and romantic interaction.

  II. I KNOW THIS IS A BAD OPINION AND I’M MOSTLY
KIDDING.

  III. I still had sex dreams about him for about two years after this. But I also had a sex dream about the guy from the Dyson commercials, so grain of salt.

  IV. In my book (literally), well-off is defined as: you’re not living paycheck to paycheck. Which I am just barely not doing. But also I have parents I can call, a boyfriend I could borrow money from, etc. I’m well-off. You might be, too! That might seem depressing to consider yourself well-off when you make $47,000 a year, and you’re doing complex math to see if you can afford a new TMJ retainer. It is depressing!

  V. Jk, he probably stole his ideas from marginalized people too.

  VI. I especially love calling it “b-ball.”

  VII. Yes, I mean labia. No, you aren’t smarter than anyone for correcting my usage since we all use the word vagina to mean labia all the time. It’s the informal word for labia. Get over it, Andreas Vesalius.

  VIII. Arguably, if they’re still being evaluated by institutions like the Academy, which are full of rich, able-bodied white cis dudes, these movies are never going to be respected or recognized, fully. And of course, this begs the question: Should we even want to be recognized by institutions like these?

  IX. Yes, I am.

  X. And the Incredibles sequel was… meh, while Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again was one of the best theatrical experiences of my life. Pierce Brosnan is a gem and anyone who has anything to say about his voice has no room for joy in their life.

  I’m Pretty Sure My Insatiable Capacity for Desire Stems from the Scholastic Book Fair

  I. Good news, you’re reading the right book: it curls eyelashes upward so that a person’s eyes look bigger and therefore the person ostensibly looks younger. Because of course that’s the goal.

  II. Of course, that’s false math. There is space for a lot of people to create things. And given that I’m a white woman, my odds are fine.

  III. Sylvia Plath wrote this whole section in The Bell Jar about life branching out before her like a fig tree, where she can’t decide which juicy fig to eat and so she sits there and starves as the figs rot.

  IV. I should make it clear, for both you and my boyfriend, that there isn’t anyone who has actually made me want to cheat. It’s more the abstract idea of myself in the future, being a little tart.

  The Greatest Joy on Earth Is Getting Ready to Go Out

  I. I genuinely cannot think of a non-douchey way to say “the entertainment industry.” I think ranked from worst to best the options are: showbiz, show business, The Industry, Hollywood, entertainment (as in “I’m in entertainment”), and the entertainment industry.

  II. I interviewed three times to be a tour guide at USC and didn’t ever get the job. They say they have a 4 percent acceptance rate or something, but I’m still miffed.

  III. In Kelsey’s words, “You seemed really intense.”

  IV. One time, years ago, Olivia visited me, took one look at my makeup, and pointed out that I was wearing powder instead of foundation. She was like, “That’s powder. It goes on after foundation.” And I was like, “I don’t think so; this is foundation. I swear.” But she was right. Do you know how humiliating it is for a seventeen-year-old to come into your own home and have to teach you basic things? Yeah. Within two years I became a skincare expert so that no one could dunk on me like that ever again.

  Adventures at a Lesser Marriott

  I. Depressing, obviously.

  II. If you’re wondering, rightfully, about the experience for LGBTQIA+ people on this clearly heteronormative-as-hell app, for non-hetero matches, either person can message first.

  III. Perhaps suffering is not the right word for there being few men around.

  IV. Mom, you count as a member of my family!

  V. There is no such thing as a slut, actually. There’s literally no way that you can have too much sex. Too much sex for what? It doesn’t exist. There is no difference between sex a thousand times with your spouse and sex a thousand times with different people. It doesn’t exist. Slut here just means “fun, horny girl.”

  VI. A sizable amount of my wardrobe is from the lost and found at various jobs I’ve had, and frankly, it shows.

  VII. I don’t want to derail this perfect story but I do feel like I need to explain LA Live because it’s so central to this story and to my Los Angeles experience. LA Live is this massive indoor/outdoor shopping/sports/entertainment complex. It’s anchored by the Staples Center where the Kings, Lakers, and Clippers played. (The Clippers are eventually moving; in the future when you read this book they will be gone. Please don’t write me mail to correct me.) Once Justin Bieber rented out the entire Staples Center to play the movie Titanic for Selena Gomez. There’s also a movie theater which he didn’t rent out, the Grammy Museum, and some restaurants. But they have extensive, if slightly expensive, parking, which is key for this story.

  VIII. Are you supposed to come out of your front door just running?

  IX. Once, my friend was on a trip across Europe and she slept with a guy in his hostel (steamy, right?) and she forgot she was on her period and ended up getting blood on his sheets and he was like, “What happened??” so she just said, “Oh, you’re so big.” And he was perfectly satisfied with that answer. I love that story and thought you’d want to know.

  X. Yes, I was texting at red lights; I’m sorry and I deserve bad things.

  XI. If you’re not familiar with LA, Marina del Rey is a geographical wonder in that it is somehow far from everything.

  Kirkwood, Missouri

  I. Literally no one can do that. I’m not perfect—CLEARLY—or even all that good, and I’m nowhere near doing enough to dismantle systems of oppression.

  II. None of this stuff is actually political. It’s not political to want Black people to stop being killed by police. It’s not political to want ICE to stop deporting people, to stop policing and terrorizing undocumented folks. It’s not political to want better lives for people, to want them to have money and health care and educational opportunities and to not be priced out of being alive. That’s not politics.

  The Internet Made Me a Better Person

  I. The US also killed Osama bin Laden that year. Unrelated to LMFAO or the Smurfs.

  II. To be fair, he totally called it.

  III. My father has yet to disown me, mostly because I’m the only one of his children who has sworn to keep his hair dyed if he’s ever in a vegetative state. (I know the color combination, too. It’s a mix of Just for Men A-45 and M-45.)

  IV. USC did not rescind my admission despite my occasionally participating in hashtag games like #rejectedcandyhearts and #WorstVacationEver. I think they should have.

  V. I still remember the first tweet I did that I didn’t want teachers or parents to read, the first time I actively thought, I’m making the choice to attach my name to this semi-sexual joke and I’m moving slightly away from being clean on here. It was June 11, 2014, and I tweeted out, “I can’t be responsible for where my nips end up in a sports bra.” WHICH IS SUCH A TAME TWEET!!! But after that, the summer between my junior and senior year of college, I finally let myself get dirty.

  VI. I know her better now and have actually spoken to her before and she’s brilliant and hilarious and cares so much about people and is a very cool, fully formed, nuanced individual and not just a Twitter account. I fully admit that I was a weirdo at eighteen.

  VII. I haven’t changed at all.

  VIII. I know I’m in the middle of writing an entire essay about this, but I think talking about Twitter off-line is excruciating for all parties involved. There’s no way to bring up Twitter without sounding like a douche. Really, it’s the most gross thing. That said, I don’t think you can get a full picture of my life without me writing about Twitter and how much it shaped me. So here I go again on my own, walking down the only road I’ve ever known.

  IX. I know that we’re on like fourth-wave feminism currently; however, the feminism that I saw online from female comedians in 2012 was not that.

&
nbsp; X. Or at least I didn’t understand when I was.

  XI. I said something about male comedians not calling out other people because they benefited from sexism, and some random person tried to tweet to David Spade and GQ to fire me, as if David Spade knew who I was or as if Mr. GQ was going to call me and never let me write again.

  XII. One of my favorite details about this insanely creepy thing that did in fact happen to me is that the guy who sent me that script—and a few more!—always pretended that he was Shigeru Miyamoto, the game director of Nintendo, emailing me. But he used his own email address, which had his name in it.

  XIII. Disgusting of them.

  XIV. Most of the time. Obviously, sometimes false information spreads quickly and widely, too.

  XV. This is very wrong! You can’t just rephrase what marginalized people are talking about and then post it. Just share what they said! Share their writing!

  XVI. Seriously, like 99.9 percent of the time, no one is asking me to weigh in.

  XVII. I do make a really good arugula salad that is a hit pretty much everywhere I bring it. But other than that… no.

  XVIII. If you are unaware of Shrek porn, it is exactly what it sounds like. No need to look it up unless you’re actually interested in seeing Shrek in a sexual light, and then by all means.

  Imaginary Dinner Party

  I. People love saying “throughout” after “hardwood floors.” Fuck “cellar door”—“hardwood floors throughout” is actually the most beautiful phrase in the English language, if Zillow is to be believed.

  II. TV shows.

  III. Please note that while I’m calling it a lawn, there will not be grass, because grass is bad for biodiversity. I will have a lot of native plants that attract pollinators and lots of drought-friendly landscaping.