667 Ways to F*ck Up My Life

by Lucy Woodhull

  534. I barely remembered it

  535. But it had been hella fun

  536. I hadn’t ended up in bed with movie stars, though

  537. My own fault

  The Avengers had been really sweet. They listened to the whole story about Yash and told me that he must have really cared about me to be so upset. If he hadn’t cared, he would have just kept banging me. So they said. They added that they would love to bang me.

  538. I’d cried then, which was a super boner killer. So much for my reputation as a bad, bad girl

  Although I had let one of the Avengers grab my boob. Because come on.

  On the plus side, Khandye and I had created a new Mason jar salad. We called it the Breakup Bonanza—three donuts slid over a rabbit vibrator. Once you ate all the donuts. And washed the vibrator—

  539. You could cry into the empty jar so it caught your tears

  At least my work life was going well.

  Khandye was a nice lady, but the week had been surreal. At the pool parties, the hottest ticket in town at our rented bungalow, I was the person most folks wanted to meet. Me. I was told that I’d inspired someone to end a bad relationship, or try for a dream job, or to start painting again. It meant a lot that my—

  540. Literal

  Shitshow had made a positive difference to others, and their stories helped to shape the book as I wrote it. I also blogged about these testimonials.

  541. Yash had to read the blog, right?

  542. R

  543. I

  544. G

  545. H

  546. T

  547. ?

  A blizzard hit New York the night we returned from the west coast. I hid in my now-crusty bathrobe and tried to cry, but it appeared that I was already shriveling up into a dry spinsterhood.

  So I chose a different pursuit. I reached into the bowels of my email and pulled out the one thing I’d been avoiding—Yash’s second book. He’d sent it just before our relationship had pulled a Titanic. In this scenario, he is Leonardo DiCaprio, and I’m the iceberg. I hadn’t opened the book because I figured I didn’t have the right to read it anymore.

  But he wasn’t talking to me, and I would never share it, so what the hell. What was the harm? I’d already ripped his heart out. Might as well take a stiletto to it.

  I dived into a new tub of ice cream while dithering. Dither dither dither. Although how I still had the wherewithal for one dither—never mind three—was a mystery. My emotions had churned themselves into a lather, and the lather had solidified, like congealed fat on top of a pot roast.

  My heart yearned for him my every moment of waking. Yearn yearn yearn. Hell, even when I slept, my heart made pictures of him for my mind. I yearned to hear him again, and I couldn’t fight it anymore.

  548. I opened the book just to hear his voice

  Ooh, it was action-packed and heartfelt and funny at times—about three Indian women who cleaned a scientific facility. They came across a time machine and used it to try to prevent the Sikh genocide of 1984. The women were middle-aged, brave, and struggling to get by, and they risked their lives to try to save their families.

  I didn’t put it down for two hours.

  After that, sleep escaped me completely. After flailing in bed for a while, I pulled out my laptop and dicked around in the comment section of the last blog I’d put up. I answered people’s questions and snarked at meanies.

  But then one username jumped out at me. It was called ‘Scully’s Tentacles.’ I yelped into the empty apartment, and Myrtle ran to the other end of the bed.

  It was him it was him it was him…and he wanted me to know it!

  I searched for other comments from this user, but there was only one.

  I don’t understand why you couldn’t just tell Sexy Sex Writer Guy the truth. Why go so far with the deception? Did you think so little of him that he didn’t deserve the truth? To make a decision on his own? Do you think he’d never been through a tough time in his life? If he was half as great as you’ve said here, then he deserved to be in the know. PS: Good for the bird.

  It was only after I fell back against the headboard that I realized I’d been curled around the computer, tense as a growling dog. I started laughing—PS—Good for the bird. Ha ha ha! My laughter brought Myrtle back to me, and she walked right onto my lap, half covering the keyboard.

  I shooed her off so I could type a response. Better just do it before I overthought it to death.

  Dear Scully’s Tentacles,

  You sound awesome, and I will pass your good wishes to the bird. It was a very smart and accurate bird, and I, a worthy target.

  Truth was, I was a coward. I thought I would lose SSWG if he knew I’d lied. The lie was silly and innocent on the first night. A silly bar lie to escape my life, which had bottomed out from under me not three days before. SSWG is wonderful—the most wonderful man I’ve ever met—and losing him terrified me. Although the lies guaranteed he’d be angry enough to dump me, I’d deluded myself into hoping otherwise.

  He deserved more, he deserved better, and I’ll regret my stupidity always. And now, I just pray he’ll be happy, because he deserves that. I love him so much, and I always will.

  I hit Publish and didn’t sleep a wink.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  F*ck-Ups Five-Forty-Nine through Five-Sixty-Eight

  Ppppphhhhppbbbbbbtttttttttttt

  In late April, I got a tattoo—something I’d always dreamed of doing, but had been too chicken to pull the trigger on. I’d Tweeted out a question about great female tattoo artists in NYC. Among the responses was DirtyLinens, asking for an exclusive interview while I got tattooed. Mel and Marlene flipped over the amazing free publicity. Marlene made sure to put the book on super early pre-order to capitalize on my inking.

  My tattoo wasn’t going to be any wild piece of surrealist art—I’d decided on quotation marks on the backs of my shoulders. Probably too stupidly literal, as several Twitter followers had said, but they would look amazing with a tank top, and would remind me to never again keep quiet when I wanted to shout from the rooftops.

  The day of reckoning came. A Saturday. I woke up on the weekend and, as I did most non-work days, reached for a breakfast beer. Then it occurred to me.

  549. Breakfast beers were probably bad

  550. When they happened ten times a month

  Having fun or drowning sorrows was one thing, alcoholism was another.

  551. Alcoholism was for old-timey male literary authors

  Ew, right? So I made a demonstrably un-fucking-up decision to stop day drinking.

  552. I still cried in my shower, though

  553. Let’s not get crazy with the good progress, for

  554. ‘Scully’s Tentacles’ had not left another comment

  Despite assuring myself I would not bring up Yash in the interview…

  555. She totally brought up Yash in the interview

  I lay on my squished boobs on the medical-ish bed at the tattoo parlor, my palms sweating. As the needle buzzed in the hand of a super-tattooed lady named, of all things, Giselle, I talked about how badly I’d fucked up my dream relationship. I’d sabotaged myself because I’d convinced myself it could end no other way.

  556. Then I fretted out loud about taking further advantage of him just by talking

  My nerves already jumped because Anna was the one interviewing me. I’d made sure not to wear the same coat to meet her this time.

  And I left my unicorn head at home.

  The needle made my tongue loose, for talking helped distract me from the pain. We discussed fear in relationships, choosing a path our family didn’t approve of—her family was made of lawyers…until her—and about behaving like good little girls. She got death and rape threats regularly online, just as I did. It’s the accepted cost of doing business if you’re a woman on the Internet.

  557. Ha ha ha no, the world is terrible and shouldn’t be that way

  Soon, one completed quotation
mark throbbed on my shoulder! We took a break so that I could take a break from the pain. Seriously—I was a wimp. I sat up and squeezed my eyes shut. Seemed I was always tired and hung over from either booze or emotions lately. Sometimes both. It had been months, and my heart was still a raw piece of steak chewed on by a mangy mutt. How could I let him go when he hadn’t ever been mine?

  558. That made no sense, but whatever

  My palms started to sweat anew, and I pulled Anna aside. “I-I shouldn’t be talking about him in this interview. It’s so disrespectful. He didn’t ask for any of this, and I—”

  “Okay, okay.” She yanked on my arms and pulled me in for a hug. My face landed between her tits. It was a very comforting place, I could tell why people liked it. “We’ll have a general conversation about relationships, not a conversation about one relationship.”

  I sniffled, fighting with all my might not to cry or mucus on her boobies, from which I dislodged myself. “Thanks. This has been, without question, the weirdest year of my life.”

  She grinned. “I sure hope so.”

  “I have to have something left over for the book. Let’s get back to the inking. You can spend five hundred words mocking my low tolerance for pain.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Seems to me you have a pretty big capacity for taking tough shit and turning it into gold.”

  We started on the other shoulder with a new ease between us, and we cracked open beers to help me with the pain and her with the need for a beer.

  My phone dinged. Anna was closest to it, and her eyes flicked to the source of the beep before going very wide. Trepidation seizing my belly, I took the phone as she handed it over to me. The lock screen lit up again with four words.

  The first word was Yash.

  I almost fell off the table. He’d texted me. He’d texted me!

  The next three were That’s your explanation?

  My bottom dropped out. I jerked up, and the tattoo artist’s needle stabbed me. She called out, and I mumbled a “Sorry” while cradling the phone, the blessed phone. The text color had changed—he’d unblocked me!

  I made it to my feet and jumped up and down, my boobs bouncing perilously in the bandeau bra I’d worn.

  Anna opened her mouth and I fell to my knees at her feet. I was a drama queen—so what? “Please. Please don’t publish that you saw that. If I have any hope in hell of even making him my friend again, I can’t have people knowing this. It’s the first word he’s said directly to me since it all went down. Please, please, pl—”

  “Okay.” She held up her hands. “Okay, I believe in the cause of true, fucked-up love. But if you two crazy kids actually work out, I expect an exclusive on the wedding.”

  “You can take the first born I probably won’t have.”

  “Uh…that’s okay.”

  She and the tattoo artist stared at me, still on the floor. What to do? Should I answer now? Keep getting the tattoo? Act cool, calm, collected?

  Hahahahahaha what the fuck no. My innards were about to explode like an alien out of John Hurt’s chest.

  I scrambled to standing. “I-I have to go. I’m so sorry, can we continue the appointment at a later date?”

  Giselle gave me that eyebrows-together-you’re-a-loon face I often received from Mel. “Yeah, sure. You look like a dangling thought now, though.”

  I held a mirror in front of me and examined my partial tattoos in the mirror behind. One quote on the right, a partial outline on the left. She was right—I was the beginning of a sentence that yet had no end. She affixed clear plastic over the tattoos, such as they were.

  I yanked on my shirt while babbling. “Thank you. Thank you both. It’s just that I— I have to— He— I never thought I’d hear from hi—”

  “Go,” Anna said.

  “Go,” Giselle said. “Get him back. He seems like a cool guy, and his first book was great.”

  I smiled. “Thank you.” Then I kept talking like an idiot.

  559. “You should read the sec—”

  560. I bit my tongue to hold in the fact that I’d started his next book, which had made me weep in its heartbreaking wit

  He’d gotten better. The beautiful bastard had gotten better.

  Anna raised an eyebrow, clearly having almost heard my almost slip. I waved and ran from the building before I said or did anything else stupid.

  A few blocks down, under a weak streetlight, I stared at my phone. Seven minutes had passed since he’d sent the three words. I stood there, a pebble in the stream of people coming and going on either side.

  In my urgency to answer the blessed text, it hadn’t even occurred to me—

  561. What do I say now?

  A minute passed under the streetlight. Three. My head swam, and my shoulder hurt like the blazes. How could I form a proper sentence with only one quotation mark?

  I’d rehearsed the speech a thousand times in my mind. Infinite variations of explanation, all of which had fled my cerebellum at the crucial moment. All I could think of was his laugh. All I could see was his face. All I could hear was the murmured sounds of his words in my ear as he made love to me.

  Six minutes passed. Finally, terrified he would block me again, I responded.

  Me: Because I was an idiot. And then I was an idiot who cared about you, and I was in too deep. The lie was too big, so I got desperate for any time I could spend with you. You must believe me when I say I’m so sorry. And I never in a million years thought anyone would ferret you out. Please see beginning of message about me being an idiot.

  My stomach flipping into my throat, I hit Send.

  I stood there. The message had been read. I waited for those little ellipse marks that show you the other end is writing. I waited.

  562. I waited…

  563. Dot dot dot

  Nothing.

  I shivered. Spring had not yet sprung in New York, and my too-light jacket did not cut the mustard. Chill puffed from my mouth. I wound my arms around myself, phone still in my hand, and started walking home. The cold felt nice, actually.

  564. In the cold, I could pretend my shaking was from the temperature, not from terror

  I came to a dead stop under another light, the person behind me running me over with a “Move!” Ugh. I picked myself off the ground, brushed the grit off my hand, and sent three more words to Yash, because I couldn’t not.

  Me: I love you.

  565. I waited…

  566. I waited… Tears sprang to my eyes

  567. I waited…my heart breaking in two

  No, it had already split. My heart lay in fractions in my chest—a game of Plinko wherein they fell down, down, down.

  Nothing.

  That night was the worst in a long time, because before there may have been the tiniest glimmer of hope, but I’d said the wrong damn thing, and he’d responded with exactly nothing.

  There wasn’t enough buttercream in the world.

  * * * *

  The next day, my eyes puffy from being punched by feelings, I managed to drag myself to work. My phone had become a permanent fixture in my hand, just in case he sent another word.

  But one thing was different today from yesterday. Today I was still unblocked. He hadn’t shut the door. Oh, the thought made my heart race, not to mention my love-starved body. He hadn’t shut the door on me, even if he wasn’t taking a step through it.

  I mentioned none of this in my blog. A new piece had gone up today, about getting the tattoo. I’d written it before I’d gone to get inked, and people were demanding pictures.

  Latisha graciously took a photo of the one completed quote tattoo and I updated the post with it. The 666 blog was publishing company business now because we’d profit off the eventual book. The commenters wanted to know why I had only one quote.

  I thought my half-finished art was deep, in a high school poetry class sort of way. What would the end of my dialogue be?

  568. As of today, I think it probably sounded like a long dog fart

&nb
sp; However that was spelled.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  F*ck-Ups Five-Sixty-Nine through Six-Thirty-Five

  May with/out Yash

  569. May 1–5: Ate too many Mason jar salads and got the runs

  570. May 7: Tried six-inch high heels

  571. I now wear ankle brace. Ouch

  572. May 8: Wrote Yash a love song

  573. Was halfway to posting it on the blog when Mel wrestled my laptop away from me

  574–577. May 10–17: Adopted four kittens on four separate days

  Mel took two off my hands while she muttered about my spinsterhood.

  I named mine Gray Lady and Peeves. Peeves enjoyed annoying me and peeing everywhere, so his name was most apt. Gray was gray—I’m smart—and loved to hide, so very ghostly she was.

  578. May 18: Started hanging out in the flower shop across the street from Yash’s apartment

  579. Spent two hundred dollars on flowers in two weeks

  580. Spotted Yash once

  581. Dived behind a rickety table of bonsai

  582. Spent two hundred and fifty dollars on broken bonsai

  583. By the time I stopped being dizzy from the pot cracked across my skull, Yash had gone

  584. I hadn’t talked to him

  585. And thereafter my ankle and head were injured

  586. May 19: Attended a book launch party at Yash’s publisher

  587. Received sneers from Yash’s friends

  588. Tried talking to them anyway with a bright smile and tons of hair flips

  589. Accidentally flipped my hair in one guy’s mouth

  590. He cussed me out, and they scurried away while laughing that they didn’t want to end up in my shitty book

  591. May 20: Tried writing more of my shitty book, but cried instead

  592. Facebook-stalked Yash’s mean friends with Mel

  We printed their ugliest pictures and drew neckbeards on them. That was pretty fun.

  593. May 22: After resisting for weeks and weeks, I texted Yash. I sent him a link to a funny news article about the downfall of a mutually hated celebrity