by Jenny Mollen
I looked back over at the mom in sweatpants, who was now packing up her things and stuffing John Candy into a thin, gauzy sling across her chest. Despite my best efforts to exude confidence and congeniality, I was being overlooked on the playground, the way I’d been my whole life. I’d always suspected the dearth of girlfriends in my childhood was a result of being the new girl in school or my dad buying me clothes from T.J.Maxx, but I wasn’t any newer to parenthood than a lot of these bitches. Yes, my linen shirt might have been covered in holes, but I still overpaid for it at Fred Segal. What was I doing wrong?
That night, Jason and I did what all couples do once their kids are in bed: we stopped speaking and stared at our iPads. After a half hour of silence, I made an announcement.
“Well, I just joined Tinder.”
Jason turned to look at me, at last noticing that I’d camouflaged my acne in a thick coat of Sid’s diaper-rash cream.
“Jenny, I’m not having a threesome with some weirdo off Tinder.” He paused for a minute trying to make sense of my DIY Kabuki makeup. “Unless she’s hot.”
“I’m over the threesome idea,” I said, applying more cream.
“How do you always get over the threesome idea before I even get a chance to act on it?” he whined. “It’s not fair.”
“Because, Jason, I’m a mother now. I’m too tired for threesomes. Unless it’s me with two people that aren’t you.”
Jason gasped with mock horror, then went back to his iPad. We’d been together long enough that it was no longer offensive to joke about the downsides of monogamy.
“Besides, I’m not joining Tinder to find hot chicks,” I clarified. “I’m joining to find hot moms.”
“Wow. That’s sad.” Jason raised his leg above his head like a dancer and farted as loudly as his body would allow. The noise reverberated off the sheets and sent Gina flying across the room like she was escaping an air strike in Baghdad. Jason smiled at me, waiting for my reaction. Knowing it would give him far too much satisfaction, I ignored him.
“I might have just pooped,” he said, still hoping to get a rise out of me.
“ ‘Super-queer cuddle switch with a strong tendency toward big spoon,’ ” I read aloud. I held up a picture of a large butch black woman in a neon crop top. “But what’s a cuddle switch?”
Jason shrugged and swiped to the next picture.
For the next two hours we fell into a Tinder K-hole.
“What about Connie? She seems normal? She’s a wanderer, a reader, and a runner,” I said.
“Okay. Swipe right.”
“Diane could be fun. But her profile picture is just a close-up of one eye.”
“That means she’s fat,” Jason explained.
Before we could continue, a notification popped up on the screen. We’d swiped too many profiles and were being suspended from “playing” for the next six hours.
“Boo!” Jason flopped back down on his side of the bed. “Should I start an account?”
“No!” I said.
“Why not? I should get to if you are.” Though Jason often found himself playing the Desi to my Lucy, the truth was that he preferred being an Ethel. Yes, he was a rule dork, the type of guy who if he saw a line would immediately get in it, the type of know-it-all who would have gotten stabbed at my high school for not letting anyone cheat off his midterm. But there was another side to him, the freewheeling lunatic. The kind of guy who, if encouraged, would ask a Costa Rican cabbie for weed, eat street meat in Shanghai, or pay money to bungee jump off a rusty crane in Tijuana. He was impulsive and adventurous in all the ways I wasn’t. (Mainly the ways that lead to hospitalization and/or concussions.) He got a thrill out of life in the fast lane, so long as I made a convincing argument for why we needed to carpool illegally. In our early years, my harebrained ideas coupled with his joie de vivre had led to ill-advised tattoos, third-world urgent-care centers, and our almost going to prison in Turkey. But now we were parents, and we couldn’t afford to take the same kinds of risks. One of us had to be the designated driver—at least until Sid was old enough to see over the dashboard.
“Besides,” he continued, “I’m much better with women than you are.” Shopping for girlfriends was precisely the type of shenanigan that Jason loved. Not only did it give him an excuse to perform, but it also allowed him to compete with me. Aside from when it came to Sid, or our dogs, our therapist, our couples friends, or our dry cleaner Nick, I avoided competing with Jason, because it only made me frustrated when he won. And annoyingly, he nearly always won. He was faster, stronger, and able to answer almost any Jeopardy! question, or at least the ones they put in the backs of New York City cabs.
I’m therapized enough to admit that my need to outdo Jason (and every man I’ve ever met) is the direct result of having been raised by my first husband, otherwise known as my dad, who encouraged me to do great things, but mainly so they’d reflect well on him. He allowed me victories, money, and attention, just so long as he always had more. When you grow up waiting in the wings, watching your dad-husband soak in a particular kind of spotlight, it’s hard not to resent a legitimately famous person.
When I first met Jason, I instantly rooted for his demise. Not because I didn’t like him; I didn’t even know him. What I didn’t like was that he was successful and famous and I wasn’t. It triggered me. Before meeting him for the first time, a producer friend (who was trying to get in good with me so he could fuck my sister) had sent me a password so I could watch all the audition footage for a movie I was up for. I was only supposed to watch the tapes that pertained to my role, but after spending two hours trying to decide who would win in a fight between Lauren German’s face and Lake Bell’s boobs, I stumbled upon the two guys they were looking at for the lead. One was Joe Schmostein and one was Jason Biggs.
“Fuck Jason Biggs,” I said to the producer, having never met him or seen any of his films.
“Really?” he replied. “Did you see his audition?”
“I don’t need to. I already think the other guy is better.” I had to root for the underdog, I was the underdog. And in a weird, Freudian way, Jason Biggs was my dad. (Please forget you ever read that.)
Eventually, my friend asked me to watch Jason’s tape, and to my surprise, he was outstanding. He literally blew me away. And somehow, through my desktop Dell, he made me fall in love with him. I told my friend as much, and within several days we were set up on a blind date. The rest is history—and by history, I mean in my first book.
Even though I love my husband and consider him the greatest thing to ever happen to me before Sid and after Teets, it still irks me when I am brushed to the side as people clamor to talk to him. It’s not that I’m not proud of him or grateful for his success. It’s that the last thing I need in my life is to feel eclipsed by another fucking man. Sure, I’m partly to blame for being attracted to successful people, but there is no denying that being around them tends to ignite a certain unhealthy resentment in me.
This is why I didn’t want Jason making a Tinder profile. Because I knew if he did, he’d probably have more mom friends than me. And that could not happen. Unlike my goal of dying with more Twitter followers than Jason, having more mom friends was something within my reach. It was something I knew I could do quickly, without great effort, and without showing my vagina. Or so I thought.
“Why am I not getting any matches? Do you think I need to show my vagina?” I said. I took Jason’s phone out of his hand and hid it on my side of the bed. “Baby, I’m the mom. We’re focused on me right now.”
Jason looked at my profile picture, a publicity shot of David Bowie juggling three crystal orbs from the movie Labyrinth.
“Jareth the Goblin King?”
“What? Bowie is awesome,” I said, defensive.
“Doesn’t he steal children?”
“I—” I didn’t have a great response, so I deflected by bursting into song. “Dance magic dance!”
Jason could see how desperate I wa
s, and so, like a true gentleman (who knows he is secretly better than you), he allowed Tinder to be strictly my thing.
For the next few days, I checked my matches every chance I got. But nobody seemed to want anything real. Two women started conversations with me, but they never went anywhere. After several quips like “Hiya,” “Psst,” and “You bi?” the correspondence would abruptly stop. After a while I started to realize that Tinder wasn’t about meeting people, it was actually just another way to avoid meeting people. If you can hide behind your phone and get your ego massaged by knowing people want to date you, what’s the point of leaving your house to physically engage with them? Even if it’s casual sex you’re after, after a few tries, the idea quickly becomes hotter than the act itself. The act is messy and awkward and requires someone knowing you’re ten years older than your profile pic. Having an ongoing texting relationship with a handful of strangers offers all of the intrigue of a budding romance with none of the disappointment. Frustrated at work? Fire off a “Hiya.” Get in a fight with your parents? Throw out a “What’s up?” Break up with your real-life girlfriend? “Drinks soon?” Instantly, you are back in the game and feeling strong. I didn’t need Tinder for validation; I already used Twitter for that. What I needed was a real-life woman who wasn’t all talk and was willing to put out or, at the very least, offer a nursery-school recommendation.
“I think you just need some moral support,” Jason said one Sunday after watching me throw my phone across the room. “If you want, I’ll go with you to the park and just root from the sidelines. I’ve been seeing some cute moms up at Bleecker Street.”
Jason’s work schedule had recently opened up, giving him free time during the week to hang with Sid and be depressed about his work schedule opening up. Jason was the kind of dad that every mom dreams of. He knew his kid’s diaper size, shoe size, what buzzwords got him in and out of the bath. While I spent my mornings writing about how my parents ignored me, Jason focused his attention on Sid. They read books, popped bottles, and like all men, eventually settled in front of the TV. Their eyes as big as saucers, their bodies completely still, I could never tell who was enjoying himself more. When we were alone Jason would give me the abridged version of whatever cartoon they’d seen and what major facts I needed to know:
1. The Cookie Monster’s real name is Sid;
2. Dora the Explorer is a drug mule;
3. Caillou is going through chemo.
“Part of the problem is that I work and most of these moms don’t,” I announced arrogantly, as we rolled into the park with Sid that afternoon. The truth is that I felt superior for having a life outside of my husband—but also inferior for having a life outside of my son. I was torn between feeling too good and feeling not good enough.
For all the friendship game I talked, I feared relationships as much as Crystal did. Having mom friends meant trusting women. And trusting women meant opening myself up to heartbreak. Women were scary, dangerous, and always one step away from dropping me for a man. (Or at least my mom was. And so would Crystal, as soon as someone texted her back.) I pushed Pause on my wallowing for long enough to wonder whether moms were avoiding me or I was avoiding moms.
I looked around at the weekend crowd, composed of hungover dads playing on their Apple Watches, helicopter moms cautioning their kids about the dangers of Razor scooters, and random singles wondering why they agreed to brunch with their married friends. Despite our differences, we were all a mess, all trying to survive. Though it could be painful, I knew I had to jump in for Sid’s sake. I didn’t want him to be excluded from sleepovers and playdates because I was too aloof and hard to make plans with. I couldn’t be a loner just because it somehow made me feel special. Whether I worked or not, I was exactly like these women in that I was a new mom. And I refused to stay so closed off that the only kind of female validation I was comfortable receiving was the occasional Tinder text reading “Did you fall from heaven because fuck me.” Sucking up my pride and sucking in my stomach, I approached a rattled redhead trying to lift her tantruming toddler off a bike.
“Do you come here often?”
She looked up at me, then rolled her eyes toward her devil daughter. “Sorry, we’re missing naptime and about to melt down.”
Jason leaned against a picnic table, watching me and shaking his head.
I walked back over to him for feedback.
“Baby, no. You can’t just jump in like that. You seem too eager and weird.”
“Well, what do I do?”
“Think of it like picking someone up at a bar. First, decide which girl you’re interested in. Then talk to everybody but her. Make her come to you. Say some biting things that she happens to overhear. Maybe tell a story that you feel she might relate to.” I was suddenly Neil Strauss and Jason was Mystery. I gave him a look, completely weirded out.
“What the fuck, baby? Now I’m just some kind of lounge lizard—” I stopped, seeing an edgy mom with ombré hair. “I should have worn cuter shoes. I’m not peacocking enough!”
“Your shoes are fine.”
“I look like a militant lesbian.”
“You always look like a militant lesbian. You have penis envy and you’re afraid of your own sexuality. Now go track down that kid and position Sid next to it.” Jason massaged my neck like I was a boxer about to get in the ring.
Sid looked at me and instantly turned stiff as a board, making it nearly impossible to lift him. It was as if he was aware of my plan and didn’t appreciate being used as bait. When I finally got close to Ombré’s kid, a pudgy blond Aryan Youth candidate in a “Will work for sugar” T-shirt, Sid was flailing in my arms, crying. After clawing me across the face didn’t work, he decided to bite my ear. I reflexively let go of my Kid Dynamite, dropping him on his diaper directly on top of Ombré’s kid.
“Bunny! Biting is not allowed!” I shrieked.
“Dylan? You playing nice?”
I turned to see Ombré mom approaching. She was beautiful in a plain French-person way. She wore a gold wedding band, minimal makeup, an oversize sweater, and cropped jeans. On her ankle I noted a Japanese character tattoo, informing me she’d spent 1999 making the same mistakes I had. Sid looked up at Ombré, unimpressed by her heavy roots and clearly judging her for being stuck in 2007. Dylan, who was several weeks younger than Sid and didn’t yet possess the vocabulary to say the word “balayage,” stared vacantly at his mother.
“I’m Ulrika. But my friends call me Ricki.”
“I’m Jenny. I don’t have any friends.”
Ombré laughed and sat down on a bench beside me. “I hate this park. I always feel like I’m in that Sartre play No Exit,” she said.
“I played Inez in No Exit in college!” I said excitedly, as if I was telling someone I’d won an Oscar for The Color Purple.
Ombré swept her calico locks to the side and looked around. “There’s no escaping because we are in New York and what the fuck else are we gonna do with our kids? Let them play on the subway? Have you been to the park on Sullivan Street in SoHo? It’s way better.”
“No, but my husband probably has.” I pointed at Jason, who was hiding behind a tree like a TV vampire that’s impervious to sunlight as long as he’s wearing a black leather jacket and sunglasses.
Ombré held up her hand to say hello.
“We should go sometime. What time does he nap?”
“Afternoons.” I looked to Sid to make sure he noticed that I’d answered the question correctly. “I work during the week, but maybe next weekend?”
“Perfect.”
Sid stabbed himself in the mouth with a shovel, officially becoming that belligerent drunk friend who gets you thrown off your Southwest flight to Vegas.
“Give me your number.” Ombré took out her phone and typed in my digits as Jason rushed over to honor Sid’s feelings, liked he’d read in one of his child development books.
“I can see that you’re frustrated about not being able to fit the shovel in your mout
h. I get frustrated when I can’t do something, too. Let’s calm our bodies and figure this out together.”
“I’ll text you.” Ombré winked and walked off.
Jason continued negotiating with a still-convulsing Sid. “Do you want to calm your body now or five minutes from now?”
“Looking forward to it!” I waved.
“So, like, when do you think she’ll text?” I sat on the couch next to Crystal, replaying the day’s events. “She seemed into me, right, babe?”
“Totally into you, baby,” Jason called out, his body half in the freezer as he sated his sober sweet tooth with spoonfuls of butter-pecan ice cream.
“Wow. Slow down. It’s been like three hours. She’ll probably text you in a few days.” Crystal sounded more levelheaded than I’d ever heard her.
“But this is different. We were exchanging info. We made a tentative plan to go to that park on Sullivan Street. She should have texted her details right away. Maybe the text didn’t go through or she forgot or—”
“Or maybe she’s just not that into you,” Crystal offered sadistically, for once not the girl having the meltdown. “I think White Tank Top fingered me in that park,” she added, before slinking back into her cell.
“Just breathe. You’ll hear from her,” Jason mumbled through a full mouth of whatever other shit he’d foraged out of the freezer.
Like White Tank Top, Black Dildo, and all the other players who’d come before, Ombré was either going to text or not, and there was nothing I could do to change it. But with each day that passed, I felt more and more hurt. Every time I thought about going to our usual park, I fumed. I’d always used romantic disappointments to my advantage in the past. Even now I’d still sometimes pick a fight with Jason just so I’d be depressed for a week and have an excuse to eat a Benadryl for dinner. So I spent the week combating my feeling of rejection from Ombré by getting my eyebrows waxed, creating an Adele playlist on Spotify, and setting the treadmill to 7.5.
