Let's Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir

by Jenny Lawson

  My definition of a clean house is much simpler. I’m fine with the clutter of mail and magazines and toys lying around as long as it’s clean and sanitary underneath the clutter. As far as I’m concerned, a house should look lived-in, and I consider it clean as long as I don’t stick to it and it doesn’t give me cholera. I can ignore the piles of clothes on the guest room bed because I know they’re all straight from the dryer and just waiting to be folded. Victor, on the other hand, will glare at the growing pile and huff loudly over and over until I finally break down and ask him why he sounds like he’s deflating. We look into the same guest bedroom and see two entirely different things. Victor sees a dangerous volcano erupting with clothes that I must be intentionally refusing to hang up because I’m lazy and am purposely trying to make him have a nervous breakdown. I see it as a personal achievement . . . a physical manifestation of all the laundry I’ve done over the last few months. It’s like a strange trophy made of clothes that I’ve forgotten I even owned. Victor says it’s like a crazy person lives in our house and is sculpting Mount Vesuvius out of the sweaters that need to be in storage. This is when I remind him exactly why doors were invented, and I close the guest bedroom door. “See?” I say. “Problem solved.”

  “You can’t fix a problem by just not using rooms in the house,” he argues, and I point out how ridiculous he’s being, as I use that room all the damn time. I use it as a giant drawer for clothes that need to be hung up. And also to store my elliptical trainer. Victor then points out that I’m no longer even using the trainer “for its intended purposes,” and I calmly explain that he’s wrong, because I’d bought it years ago intending to work out with it until I got bored with it, and then to eventually use it as a frame to air-dry our freshly washed comforters and coverlets. If anything I should be getting points for being so farsighted, and also for not shrinking all of our comforters in the dryer. If it were left up to Victor we’d all be sleeping on comforters the size of hankies. I’m not even sure why I even have to explain this. Victor says he’s not sure either, but I suspect we’re not talking about the same thing.

  This exact conversation was still running through my mind this morning when I was cleaning up the house. I’d loaded and turned on the dishwasher, but a few minutes later I noticed that the laundry detergent container was out on the counter next to the dishwasher, even though I hadn’t done laundry in days. I felt a little sick to my stomach as I thought, “Fuck. Did I just put laundry detergent in the dishwasher?”

  And this is when I kind of panicked, because last year I’d accidentally put hand soap in the dishwasher, and when I came back the entire house had exploded in foam. It looked like one of those foam parties that teens have at raves, except not as awesome, because Victor was pissed and I didn’t own any cool techno music or Ecstasy. It had been a nightmare to clean up, and I was terrified that I’d just done it again, so I prayed that Victor would just stay in the bedroom and I logged on to Twitter. (For those of you who don’t know what Twitter is, it’s like Facebook except easier, and you can use it to tell people what your cat is doing and also to ask for advice. It’s like accessing the hivemind and it is both great and horrible.) I logged on to Twitter and wrote, “Hypothetically speaking, if I accidentally put laundry detergent in the dishwasher will that make my dishwasher explode? I kind of need to know as soon as possible.” Half of the people responding were all, “Oh, you’ll be fine, dumb-ass,” and the other half were like, “THE CALL IS COMING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE. GET OUT NOW.” One guy wrote, “Actually, it’ll help remove the bloodstains,” which just made me wonder what he uses his dishwasher for. But I was still worried, so I wrapped a comforter around the dishwasher in case it started to leak, because comforters are a lot like giant maxipads. I felt pretty proud of my ingenuity. This pride lasted for about ten seconds, until Victor walked in and said, “Why in the hell is there a comforter wrapped around the dishwasher?” and I didn’t want to explain it, because he still hasn’t stopped talking about the last time I set the oven on fire, and that was years ago, people. Like, let’s live in the present already, right? But then I remember that in the present I may have just destroyed our dishwasher by dumping a bunch of Tide into it. I wasn’t ready to admit that yet, though, because it was still vaguely possible that I’d used the right soap all along, so instead I just told Victor that the dishwasher was cold, and he was all, “What. The. Fuck?”

  A picture of the dishwasher being comforted that I took to show everyone on Twitter. Please note how nice and unshrunken the comforter looks. That’s all me, people.

  “Well,” I explained, “it has to heat up to wash the dishes properly, right? And I figured it would help save energy if I insulated it so it could get hot faster. And then our dishes would be cleaner. I’m always thinking.” Victor stared at me unblinkingly, with his arms crossed, and after about ten seconds I cracked and admitted that I may have used laundry detergent in the dishwasher, because I couldn’t think of why else the Tide would be out. Then he sighed and shook his head at me. “You’d make a terrible secret agent. Honestly, you are the worst liar ever. But no worries, because I put the laundry detergent out on the counter after you started the dishwasher just to remind myself to buy more.”

  “SO THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT,” I shouted, and Victor said, “What? How is this possibly my fault?” But I yelled, “J’ACCUSE!” and stormed off before he could say anything else, because it’s a refreshing change when Victor fucks something up for once, and I wanted to go and appreciate the moment.

  I’d venture that Victor and I fight about the state of the house more than anything else, which is really saying something, because Victor and I have had weeklong arguments about whether Franken Berry is a girl (he’s not) and which one of the Chipmunks is most likely to die first (it’s Alvin, probably from an overdose). But arguing about the house is the most common one. In fact, here is a typical argument Victor and I had soon after I decided to quit my job in HR and try to be a full-time writer:

  VICTOR: This house is a fucking wreck.

  ME: This house is a “creative haven.”

  VICTOR: No. It’s just a wreck.

  ME: Well, I don’t know why you’re telling me about it. It’s not my job to clean the house.

  VICTOR: Yeah, actually, it is. Remember? You were going to quit your job and work on your book? And clean the house. And do the errands. That was the deal, remember?

  ME: Not really. That doesn’t sound like a deal I’d make.

  VICTOR: “I’m going to be the best housewife EVER. I’ll just write and clean and cook.” Sound familiar?

  ME: Fuzzy. I was probably drunk when I said all that.

  VICTOR: “FREE BLOW JOBS FOR EVERYBODY!”

  ME: Oh. That does sound like something I’d say. Are you mad about the blow jobs?

  VICTOR: No. I’m mad about the fact that we both work at home and that this home is a fucking wreck.

  ME: It’s not that bad. You’re overreacting because you’re kind of an anal freak.

  VICTOR: You are using a Frisbee as a plate.

  ME: What? I’m not using a— Oh, hang on, this is a Frisbee. Weird.

  VICTOR: [glare]

  ME: Dude, calm down. I’ll wash it afterward. It’s probably dishwasher-safe.

  VICTOR: It’s not about whether the Frisbee is dishwasher-safe. It’s about the fact that you’re using a fucking Frisbee to eat on because there are no clean plates.

  ME: There are totally clean plates. I just saw this on the counter and grabbed it. Technically it’s a kick-ass plate. It even has a lip on it so you don’t spill anything.

  VICTOR: How does this not bother you?!

  ME: IT TOTALLY BOTHERS ME. I can’t believe I ever agreed to clean the house in exchange for quitting my job. I can’t believe you’d even think that would work. If anything you should have known better when you made that deal. This is all sort of your fault.

  VICTOR: I’m going to strangle you.

  ME: And I’m going to replac
e all our plates with Frisbees. Because I’m a motherfuckin’ visionary.

  VICTOR: I’m being totally serious here.

  ME: SO AM I. THESE FRISBEE PLATES ARE AWESOME. Besides, I don’t have time to clean, because I’m busy doing important social media stuff.

  VICTOR: Really. So what did you accomplish today?

  ME: A lot. Social media maven . . . stuff.

  VICTOR: No. What exactly did you do today? Quantify it for me.

  ME: It’s not quantifiable. There aren’t even metrics for the shit I do.

  VICTOR: Try.

  ME: Um . . . I drew this cartoon about Hitler?

  VICTOR: That’s . . . not even remotely funny.

  ME: Dude, it’s totally funny. You know? Because people always say, “They only hate me because they’re jealous.” But then it’s Hitler, and everyone really does hate him and isn’t jealous at all?

  VICTOR: Not funny.

  ME: I think I just need drawing lessons. It took me, like, two hours just to work out how to put a scarf on a stick figure. And that’s why I didn’t have time to clean all the soup I spilled in the microwave. By the way, don’t look in the microwave.

  VICTOR: I’m going to lie down until the urge to kill you passes.

  Then he left and never came back. And I had to clean the microwave, because I’m the responsible one in this relationship, and also because it started to smell like clam chowder even in the bathrooms. This is why it sucks to be me. Also, I’m pretty sure that my husband is anti-Semitic.

  P.S. Victor says that not laughing at a joke making fun of Hitler doesn’t make you anti-Semitic, but I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what an anti-Semite would say. They have terrible senses of humor. He also says this is a conversation about “why I can’t act like a grown-up,” but I’m pretty sure it’s really about why he loves Hitler so damn much.

  P.P.S. I just want to point out that I actually am a fairly good housewife and that the only reason that I set the oven on fire in the first place was because we were trying to sell our house and I’d read that you should bake cookies before the open house because it makes your house smell homier. So I threw one of those frozen cookie logs on a plate and put it in the oven, and then ten minutes later there was a terrible smell and I raced to the oven to find out that if you don’t cut those cookie logs into cookie shapes they explode all over the plate. And also that when people install an oven they put the paperwork inside of it, because apparently they want you to die painfully when you catch the house on fire from the burning instructions you just tried to bake. Also, they put the instructions in a plastic sheet, which smells terrible when it melts, and it makes it very hard to sell a house when you have to tell prospective buyers that the oven was used only once but that it was used to cook a bunch of plastic and that’s why it smells so terrible at the open house. Also, Victor was surprisingly critical of the whole event, considering that I was only trying to help, and he told me that our insurance company was making us install a halon fire extinguisher system in the new house unless I promised to avoid the kitchen from then on. I did not think that was funny at all and was really pissed off, until the next day, when I tried to heat up the oven again in an attempt to scrape off all the melted plastic still in there, and I accidentally shut a tea towel in the oven and caught it all on fire again. I’m really glad we sold that house, because, honestly, that oven was a goddamn death trap.

  P.P.P.S. In my defense I just want to point out that I can actually cook a meal, although possibly not a meal by anyone else’s standard definition. For instance, I have never in my life intentionally made a dinner salad for my family and I don’t intend to. Using that many ingredients and utensils to prepare a dish that’s just served raw anyway seems like a waste, and I’ve never seen a family look at a salad as anything other than something you have to survive and drench in dressing just to finish so that you can get on to “the real food.” I’m not falling for it. Instead I jump straight to the real food. I recently made microwave macaroni and cheese, and when my family didn’t seem properly appreciative, I pointed out that it had taken me a half-hour to make it. Victor refused to believe it until he opened the trash can and found ten single-serving just-add-water macaroni cups. He stared at me in disbelief, as I patted myself on the back for taking out the other trash sack from earlier, which had included an additional ten single-serving macaroni dishes, which had sort of fused together into a single, melty pile. Apparently if you want to cook ten plastic serving bowls for three minutes each you shouldn’t just shove them all in the microwave all together for thirty minutes and then leave to take a shower. This is my advice to you, and is something Julia Child never covered.

  P.P.P.P.S. Also, if you try to make a shrimp boil but the bag of spices bursts and so you just toss it all in along with whatever spices you can find in the pantry, you can make homemade pepper spray. Unintentionally. And everyone at your dinner party will run outside for the next hour, coughing and tearing up as if they’ve been Maced. Because technically they kind of have been. Because mace was one of the spices I found in the pantry. I blame whoever makes spice out of Mace, and I reminded my gasping dinner guests that even if I did Mace them, I did it in an old-fashioned, homemade, Martha Stewart sort of way. With love.

  1. After I read this chapter to my editor she pointed out that I’ve been using the phrase “whip-its” incorrectly for my entire life, as it really refers to getting high from nitrous oxide and can totally kill you. Which explains why people look at me so strangely when I tell them that some of my most cherished childhood memories include doing whip-its with my grandmother. My editor consoled me with the fact that maybe people thought I was talking about the dog (whippet), but then admitted that didn’t make it much better.

  The Psychopath on the Other Side of the Bathroom Door

  A few weeks ago my friend Lotta told me that her doctor told her that her antidepressants weren’t working because she had too many toxins in her body, and that she needed to use a “colon cleanse” to flush everything out of her system. It sounded completely insane and I told her that, but then she mentioned that when she took the colon cleanse she lost three pounds that very day—I was immediately in. I convinced myself that I owed it to my family to have my crazy pills work properly, but really I just wanted to lose three pounds without working out. And that whole last sentence kind of proves why I need to be on crazy pills. Awesome.

  So I went to the grocery store but I couldn’t find the colon cleanse. I considered asking the pharmacist, but as I was waiting in line I had a conversation in my head that went like this:

  ME: Yes, I’d like some colon cleanse.

  PHARMACIST: I’ve never heard of that. Sounds like something deviants use.

  ME: It’s something that cleans out your colon so your antidepressants work better.

  PHARMACIST: I think you’re using your antidepressants wrong. They go in your mouth.

  ME: You are surprisingly unhelpful for a health care worker.

  PHARMACIST: I’m calling the police, deviant.

  I’m not sure why I jumped right to the pharmacist calling the police, but once the thought was in my head it was stuck there, and so I panicked a little when the pharmacist asked what I needed. I paused awkwardly and then asked where the reading glasses were, and then he said they didn’t carry reading glasses, which is weird because most pharmacies do, and I always like to try them on and pretend that I’m a naughty librarian. So instead of the colon cleanse I decided I would just take a bunch of ex-lax, because I figured, next-best thing, right? I bought the extra-strength stuff because it was the same price as regular strength, and so technically it was like I was saving money, and I thought that would help my argument when Victor demanded to know why I bought twenty dollars’ worth of “unnecessary” laxatives (although it turns out he didn’t really care about cost-effectiveness because he hates being economically feasible, or wants me to be fat or something). I already knew he’d be all judgy about the whole thing, because he w
as also very unsupportive when I wanted to buy those Chinese foot-pad things that suck all the toxins out of your feet while you sleep. He claimed the whole Chinese foot-pad thing was a scam, but I think it’s just because he wants me to suffer, or maybe that he’s racist. Then when I called him racist he got all mad and screamy, and I was like, “I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT I’M SAYING! THOSE ARE THE TOXINS TALKING,” but he still wouldn’t let me buy them. And this is exactly why I waited until the week he left for a business trip to New York to actually do the cleanse.

  I took two chocolate squares of ex-lax that night, but then I noticed that the directions said it would bring “gentle results,” and it seemed like a good colon cleansing shouldn’t be “gentle” at all, so I took three more tabs. And they were chocolaty and delicious and I was kind of hungry, so I ate another one. And then nothing happened at all. So then next morning I took two more (because at this point I thought maybe there was something wrong with me, and that I had some kind of freakishly high laxative tolerance), and then I went to Starbucks and picked up a giant Frappuccino. This might have been a mistake, because apparently coffee is kind of a laxative too, although sadly I wasn’t thinking about that at the time, because I was too busy thinking about the phone conversation I’d had with Victor last week about Frappuccinos when he called me at work:

  [Ring]

  ME: This is Jenny.

  VICTOR: So why don’t they make chocolate Slurpees?

  ME: Um . . . what?

  VICTOR: Chocolate Slurpees. Why don’t they exist?

  ME: They do. They’re called mocha Frappuccinos.

  VICTOR: Nope. Not the same thing. Frappuccinos don’t have that little spoon on the end of the straw like Slurpees do.

  ME: Those are Icees. Not Slurpees.

  VICTOR: Next time I go into Starbucks I’m going to be all, “I want a spoon on my straw, a-hole!” How else are you gonna get that little last bit in the bottom, huh? Spoon straw!