Everything's Trash, But It's Okay

by Phoebe Robinson

  Non-Trash Moment of My Life #6: When One of My Black Friends Is Ashy and I Save the Day with Some Lotion

  Not only is it unaesthetically pleasing for a black person’s skin to look like the half-erased chalkboard that Bart writes on during the Simpsons opening credits, but dry skin feels awful, plus other black people judge you for not having your moisturizing game on lock. So it’s a trifecta of suckage, and much like when someone has their zipper down in public, tons of folks are reticent to say anything because they don’t want to embarrass the person by pointing out the faux pas. Well, when it comes to the appearance of dry, flaky skin on me, point away, y’all, so I can slather on some cocoa butter and be smooth like a criminal. #AnnieAreYouOkayAreYouOkayAreYouOkayAnnie. And I believe most, if not all, my melanin homies feel the same way, which is why when I spot ashiness on one of them, it’s an all-hands-on-deck, DEFCON 1 situation.

  It’s kind like on GOT when Sam Tarly helped Jorah aka White Drake* with greyscale removal so he wouldn’t die and could return to Daenerys. Remember how Sam was training to become a maester of the Citadel (aka a scholar and a healer aka the DJ Khaled of their time) and he was forbidden by his superiors to attempt to cure Jorah because greyscale disease is so dangerous and highly contagious, so Sam had to sneak into the library, steal greyscale-removal books, and then perform a laborious and multihour scale-removal procedure in which he used pliers to take the scales off one by one, applied a topical solution, and then White Drake just chugged alcohol and bit down on a piece of leather because it was so painful? Well, my helping a friend through a bout of ashiness is just like all of that except all I do is pass the person a travel-sized bottle of shea butter lotion, they apply it themselves, hand the bottle back to me, and we carry on with brunch.

  Non-Trash Moment of My Life #7: Graduating from Pratt Institute

  We all know by now that college is not for everyone, and I commend those who are in tune with themselves well enough to not go, thereby avoiding wasting four years of their lives and incurring soul-crushing debt. But for me, college was where I found myself and, most importantly, where I began applying myself after years of coasting on sarcasm and passable knowledge of science, much to the chagrin of my parents, who sacrificed so much to send me to a private high school, only for me to mostly waste the opportunity.

  I always wanted to live in New York City, so when I applied to college, it was half for geographical reasons and the other half because I simply didn’t know what else to do. Luckily, I was smart enough to know that getting into college bought me about four more years to figure out who I wanted to be and what I wanted to do, or more accurately, to have a serviceable answer when adults asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. This arbitrary expectation for you to have your entire life figured out while barely in your twenties is ludicrous by today’s standards. Maybe a hundred years ago, when people lived until thirty-one, it made sense to be a few years into your career as a farmer by eleven and go half on a baby approximately three weeks after your balls dropped. However, we’re living in an age where plenty of folks aren’t passing away until their nineties. So, in case some people haven’t noticed, life is operating on a bit of slow burn, so, grown-ups, enough with the full-court press about being a fully formed person by twenty-two.

  Unfortunately, it would take me until my late twenties to realize I didn’t need to have all the answers, but thankfully, I figured out something much sooner. And that realization happened when I arrived at Pratt Institute back in August 2002: I was no longer fine with coasting. Okay, okay, maybe that didn’t dawn on me exactly when I arrived. I was homesick, crying off and on for the first two weeks I was on campus, and really gave it my all with my school’s unofficial mandate that everyone must be super into The Royal Tenenbaums (I still don’t get the hoopla about the movie). In short, I was preoccupied, but once I got settled in my surroundings and ignored The Royal Ts, I discovered something within me that I didn’t know I possessed: I’m the type of person who thrives when her back is against the wall.

  Despite being notified about impending due dates I’m not paying bills until fifteen minutes before they’re due? Only way to live. Waiting to pack for a monthlong trip until the night before I’m supposed to leave town at 6 A.M.? Screw sleep cuz I’m staying awake all night folding sleeping bonnets! Being weeks and weeks behind yet scrambling to finish writing this very book you’re reading so it can be published on time? Bring. It. On.

  I thrive when there is no plan B and only a plan A, and that’s exactly what moving to NYC was. I always wanted to live there, but college was an expensive debt I was undertaking. Not to mention that I had to do work-study (meaning having an on-campus job) to afford going to Pratt, so I would be a fool if I put myself into massive financial debt (fifty-five grand), only to half pay attention and get Cs. Plus, I had teachers who were used to students’ nonsense and would rather fail you than deal with “the dog ate my homework” crap. Most importantly, it was fine during high school if I spent much of my free time home watching movies and TV shows, but if I wanted to have real-life friends in a brand-new city, I was going to have to stop clinging to fictional characters and get off my ass and meet some people. No matter which area of my life I examined—the financial, educational, or personal—just cranking up the charm and being laissez-faire and hoping things would work out was not going to cut it. I had to step it up or I was going to be chewed up and spit out. If I couldn’t cut it at Pratt, then no way was I going to survive New York City.

  Not only did I survive NYC, I thrived! I wound up being an A student, having a couple handfuls of friends, and telling people I wanted to be a writer even though I wasn’t entirely sure about that, and what do you know? That worked out! My telling people I was going to be a writer and then actually doing that is kind of like when you meet someone, immediately forget their name, and are in the awkward position of introducing them to someone else, so you go, “This is . . . Steve,” and Steve is like, “Haha. The only person who calls me Steve is my dad; usually, I have everyone call me Stephen. But yeah, it’s Steve, Stephen.” And you’re like, “That’s not all your dad and I have in common. We both like beer,” and then you immediately walk away because words aren’t your friend anymore. Jokes aside, I took a stab in the dark with the writing thing, and thanks to Pratt Institute, it has worked out better than I could have imagined, but that’s not the best part about going to Pratt. It was walking across that stage on graduation day and having my parents be proud of me. Not because I went to college but because I finally committed to something, and there’s nothing better than seeing someone you love figure out a part of their life, not because they were forced to but because they wanted to.

  Non-Trash Moment of My Life #8: Solange Telling Me That a Copy of My First Book, You Can’t Touch My Hair: And Other Things I Still Have to Explain, Is at Her House

  That’s it. She’s so cool, intelligent, and wise that I feel as though Sojourner Truth’s ghost visits her and maybe Solange puts in a good word for me to her? If not, I at least take comfort in knowing they use my book as a coaster for their container of Lorna Doone cookies as they sip tea and shit-talk Thomas Jefferson.

  Non-Trash Moment of My Life #9: Driving an ATV and Not Dying

  Just to be clear, I’m terrified of getting injured. I don’t play sports recreationally, nor do adventure-seeking things such as rock climbing, skateboarding, or jumping—lol—but when I was on a recent girls’ trip to Palm Springs, I had to take one for the team when someone suggested ATV’ing. When I think of Palm Springs, I think of unwinding in a cute AF house that I found on Airbnb, drinking tequila, and seeing old-ass white people with their Jamaican or Haitian caretakers at the grocery store. But I decided to go ATV’ing because the only thing I’m more scared of than hurting myself is FOMO. I said, “Yaaas,” and went with the gang to the ATV site.

  The place looked like the set of Fear Factor without the budget and possible accreditation. All kidding aside
, it was going for a cool Mad Max vibe, and it kind of succeeded. We immediately were told that we had a watch an instructional video before we could do anything else. One of the owners took us into a room with a VCR, put in a VHS tape, pressed play, and then left. It was clearly a video from the eighties, and any time there was important info, the sound and image would cut out. A safety video minus the safety is just a bunch of actors who thought this was their opportunity to be the Meryl Streeps and Denzel Washingtons of instructional vids, only to be the Mr. Beans minus the fame and success. This was equal parts sad and hilarious to us, and when the video was over, we went to the next step, which was to get gear, including pads and helmets.

  I asked the white guy in charge of this equipment, “Do y’all have helmets big enough for weaves?”

  “What?” he responded.

  And then us gang of five black women just laughed and laughed and laughed. And then he said some awkward mess about loving black women’s hair. There was pause that was pregnant with triplets, and we all moved on to quickly being walked through driving an ATV. And then off we went!

  Yes, I stayed in first gear the whole time I was driving. Of course, I wore a fanny pack that had three bent Band-Aids and a half-empty tube of ChapStick. Obviously, I was terrified of falling off most of the time. But I never felt like such a badass before going up and down hills and doing doughnuts in sand pits. Not only that, society is infamous for telling people of color that they don’t do thrill-seeking activities. That it’s just white people who are adventurous. Well, guess what? Five black women decided on a whim to do something they’d never done before. Something they’ve been programmed to think isn’t for them and they crushed it. So, tell me again, what else aren’t people of color supposed to do? I’ll be there with my fanny pack full of nonhelpful first aid remedies.

  Non-Trash Moment of My Life #10: Touched by an Oprah

  My first book, You Can’t Touch My Hair, was published on Tuesday, October 4, 2016, so for the next week, I would be on edge until I found out whether I made it on the New York Times’s best sellers list. The best chance an author (especially an unknown one like I was) has of hitting the list is the first week of publication, and if that doesn’t happen, it’s nearly impossible to build momentum to get on it as new books are coming out. A couple of days after You Can’t Touch came out, Robert, my lit agent, called me with some news. Since it was way too early to know about the list, I was surprised that there would be anything to report. So I was scared as I waited in line at JFK Airport’s Shake Shack.

  “I just got a phone call from Oprah’s people, and she has your book. She’s reading it and loves it,” Robert said.

  Sometimes you receive information that is so mind-boggling all you can do is roll with it because if you stopped to analyze it or let it soak in, your brain would be like the multicolored pinwheel that pops up on my laptop when I have too many tabs open on Safari. So I just responded, “Okay, sure. LOL. That’s a perfectly normal sentence to say.”

  He laughed. “Well, the exciting news is that she has your number, so she’s just going to call you directly, not go through an assistant, to talk.”

  At that point, I’m sure the sky turned purple, up became down, and my butthole took the express elevator to the penthouse of my body—my head—and then dove out of my ear and into the cup of nacho cheese I was holding in hand. OPRAH HAS MY BOOK, IS READING IT, LOVES IT, AND WANTS TO TALK TO ME?! Is this real life?! I was so excited . . . except I was about to get on a six-hour flight to Los Angeles and then had to go directly to the premiere of a friend’s TV show. I boarded my flight and hoped that she didn’t call while I was in the air.

  I landed and no missed calls, so I raced to the TV premiere, changed into a presentable outfit in someone’s office, and had a good time, forgetting to be on the lookout for a call. The next morning, I chatted with Robert and he asked if Oprah called. “Naw,” I said as I scrolled through my missed calls, “but there is ‘Unknown Caller.’ Maybe that’s just some rando.”

  “I’ll be back.” He hung up before I could say anything and then called me back maybe fifteen minutes later. “That was from Oprah.”

  Most people would have freaked out, but I just responded, “It’s tight she didn’t leave a voicemail. Playing hard to get. I like that. I’m sure she’ll call again.” Robert told me not to miss the next call, and then I got off the phone. “I’m sure she’ll call again”?!?!?! Y’all, now, I still don’t know why I was so Zen about it. I must chalk it up to her not being some lame guy who hits up people he’s “interested” in at odd hours of the morning. She’s Oprah. She only goes after what she wants because she’s serious about what she wants, and guess what? She gets what she wants. If she wants to talk to me, quite frankly, I have no choice but to talk to her. #ThePowerOfOprah.

  Cut to Monday. No calls from her since the attempt that previous Thursday. But I wasn’t panicking. She’s a busy woman, and I was in the middle of my first book tour, anxious about book sales, and walking into a meeting with a couple of partners for a pitch meeting. Since one of my business partners was still back in NYC, we used my phone to FaceTime her into the meeting. Halfway through, the screen on my phone changed as a call was coming in. I noticed and froze. It was almost the fifteenth of the month, so I knew it was either ACS Education calling again about the $45,000 in college student loan debt that I was egregiously behind on OR it was Oprah. My phone kept buzzing while I decided. I thought to myself, If it’s Oprah, she’ll probably leave a voicemail, right? But if I answer this phone in front of these white people and it’s a debt collector on the other end, and I have to get my “white voice” on, they’re going to know what’s up, and they’ll be the Whoopi Goldberg to my Demi Moore and say, “You in danger, girl.” So I let the phone ring until it stopped.

  The meeting ended and there was no voicemail. Hmm. I quickly deduced that it was not my student loan people calling because in the past decade that ACS has called me, they’ve never not left me a voicemail with detailed information. For real, they’re not the casual “I’m not going to leave a message and I’ll just try you another time” kind of folk. No one is when you owe them money. When you owe people money, they’ll leave clues like this is National Treasure. They’ll be like, “Let’s play Sudoku.” And you’re blowing through it because it’s strangely easy and they’ll stop you midgame and go, “It’s easy because these are my checking account and routing numbers. Direct-deposit a bitch her money.” So no voicemail when I owe Pratt Institute $45,000? Nah, the student loan people wouldn’t do that. Therefore, the call had to be from Oprah! NOOOOOOO! I was crushed! Still, for some reason, I had faith.

  Two days passed, and I was shooting a small part in a now-defunct TV show. Normally, I never take my phone on set, as I prefer to be present in the moment, but the previous day, I’d found out I made the best sellers list, so I wanted to have my phone nearby in case Robert had any other exciting news to share. The shoot went smoothly, and I ended up being done early. I grabbed my belongings, picked up my phone, and saw I had two missed calls from two different and strange numbers and a voicemail. I don’t know what I was thinking, but I assumed the voicemail was from my parents because they like leaving me silly voicemails, so I decided I would call them back when I got to my hotel. I was very confused about these unrecognizable phone numbers, so I just called one back.

  “Hello?” a man answered.

  “Um, hi, someone called me from this number and didn’t leave a message, so I’m trying to see who this is?”

  “Excuse me. Who is this?” His energy was now less warm, and he seemed a little more guarded, as if he was not entirely thrilled that someone had his number.

  “What do you mean ‘who is this’? Who are you? You just called me and hung up. This is weird.” Y’all, I have lived in New York City for far too damn long. It was so rude of me to take it from 0 to Joe Pesci in Goodfellas, but in my defense, all I knew was a strange m
an called me and wouldn’t tell me who he was.

  “Excuse me—”

  Something told me to get off the phone, so I said, “I’m sorry. I have to check something. Bye!” And I hung up. I took a beat and then checked my voicemail. There was a message from the other number I had yet to call. I pressed play.

  “Hi, it’s Oprah . . . as in Winfrey—” Before I continue, I just want to go on the record: L. O. L. Look, I’m all about being humble. When someone flatters me about an outfit I’m wearing, I go, “Oh, this old thing??” when I really mean, “Oh, this extremely brand-new thing I just purchased with the express purpose of getting compliments from women and peen salutes from random dudes on the streets?” But no one has time to hear all that, so I, like everyone, act as though everything incredible I’m wearing is from a dusty-ass box from the set of Little House on the Prairie. But at a certain point, you can be a smidge less than humble. I mean, duh! “Oprah . . . as in Winfrey”? No. She is the only Oprah, no further explanation needed! At this point, if someone named their child Oprah, they’re an asshole, and if the person didn’t change their name when they became an adult, they, like the people who put toilet paper on the holder in the “under” position, are sadists and not allowed to procreate. They possess wasted genes and are not to be trusted. Moving on.