Quarter-Life Crisis

So I’m about 4 weeks away from turning 25.
Many people instantly say, “You’re so young! You have your whole life ahead of you!” I want to shoot those people. Because 25 is your MIDDLE TWENTIES. You know what comes after that? Your late 20s. And then there’s 30.
I met up with some people from High School the other night and they’re all just starting to get their lives together. They spent years jerking around, doing whatever the hell they wanted. A lot of them bartended to make rent and just had a great time. What was I doing while they were off having a good time? Forging a career for myself. Climbing the corporate ladder. And all the while wishing that I had the balls to go and do nothing. It’s not easy to do nothing. To pack up and travel and think things will figure themselves out when you get back, which is something I’ve always wanted to do, but was always too afraid of to take the plunge. And now, I’m 25 and I feel like the window of opportunity for that is over. After 25, it’s just irresponsible. I know that things go on your permanent record after 18, but people cut you a lot of slack when you’re 22 and do something stupid and fail. At 26, people want to know why you’re still bouncing around like a kid.
I know that just about everyone who’s reading this blog is thinking, “Oh that’s ridiculous.” Quick. Name two people over 26 that are just bouncing from place to place, doing nothing with their lives, that you don’t worry about and, slightly, look down upon. You couldn’t think of one, could you?
I know it’s ridiculous to think of your life as over at 25. That’s not what I’m saying at all. I just feel like my chance to be a kid is over. And I wasted it being a grownup.

Renaissance Man

When I was 18 and had just moved to the city, I met this boy named Lance. Lance and I worked together downtown and we would occasionally take the subway home together. Lance was in college studying to be a photographer and he always seemed to know interesting things about art. I kind of developed a crush on him, even though, looking back, he kind of looked like Doug, that Nickelodeon cartoon. And I think he fake-baked. His skin had an orangey glow that I didn’t notice in the throws of a barely-out-of-adolescence crush.
Finally, right before Christmas break, he got up the nerve to ask me on a date. He wanted to take me to the Met. I was still young enough to be impressed by a date that only costs the guy a suggested donation. We decided to go the first weekend we were back in the city.
The night before, my friend A came up from Ivy (where she went to school) to spend a night in the city. We were puttering around in my dorm room, getting me ready for my big date, when she brought up something I hadn’t even thought to be concerned about.
“How well do you know this guy?”
“Not that well. I mean, we work together, we spend a lot of time together, but I don’t really know him all that well. Why?”
“What if his favorite section is Arms And Armor?”
At this, we burst into giggles. “A,” I said. “Nobody’s favorite section is Arms And Armor!”
I met Lance at the 6 train at Astor Place and we went uptown. I felt so excited. I remember having these delusional ideas that this was exactly why I moved to the city instead of going to some state school with a campus. I was going on a “real” date, one that was full of culture, instead of getting drunk and hooking up with some random I met by the beer keg at a frat party. The thousands of dollars in debt that I was going to be in when I graduated all seemed worth it somehow in that one moment.
We get to the museum. He pays well below the suggested donation for each of us. We wander through the museum for a while, sit by the Temple of Dendar, and then find ourselves in Arms And Armor.
“This is my favorite section of the museum,” he says, gazing up at a suit of armor.
I have to bite my lip to keep from laughing. “Really?” I ask, trying to keep the smile from my voice. After all, this is a very mature date and mature people don’t laugh at their dates for no apparent reason.
“Oh yeah, I’m totally into this stuff,” Lance says.
“Really?” I ask again, proving my incredible conversational skills. I am still trying not to laugh at the ridiculous coincidence of it all.
“Yeah. In fact I have two suits of armor at home.”
“Two suits of armor like these?” I ask, gesturing to these massive steel suits. I can’t imagine where, except in a museum, you’d have room for one, let alone two. Unless you own a castle somewhere. And I was pretty sure he said he grew up in Long Island.
“Not like these. Mine are more chain mail, mesh things. I made them myself. I wear them when I go fighting.”
I’m not laughing any more. “When you go fighting?”
“Yeah, I do these Renaissance re-enactments sometimes. We go upstate in the woods and re-enact battles the way they would have been fought in the Middle Ages. They’re great. Usually, they take the whole weekend. It’s a lot of fun.”
We left the museum shortly thereafter and walked around Central Park for a little while before heading back home. I saw Lance at work, of course, but generally kept my distance. I’m just not the Maid Marian type.

For The Couple Who Has Everything

I was reading CNN.com this Valentine’s Day and, in addition to the regular news, there was this blog entry from one of their correspondents on vaginal rejuvenation.
I kid you not.
Vaginal rejuvenation is when you have your vagina reconstructed. You can tighten your birth canal, change the size (and I’m assuming shape as well) of everything down there. And you can get a new hymen.
That’s right, folks. For thousands of dollars, you, too, can be a brand new virgin. Just like when you came out of your mother’s (yet-to-be-rejuvenated) womb.
The article goes on to say that a couple, married 18 years with two kids, had a new hymen installed for their wedding anniversary.
You’ve got to be kidding me. Did they just burn a big pile of cash last year? Because, seriously, if you have two kids already, who the hell do you think you’re fooling? Or is this to make up for the fact that you wouldn’t let him so much as unbutton your blouse until you said “I Do,” only for him to find out a few hours later that he wasn’t exactly going where no man has gone before?
And, men, really, is that even a gift? I know everybody wants to be somebody’s first, but when you know you’re not (as evidenced by the TWO FUCKING KIDS you guys have playing X-Box downstairs), isn’t it just a lot of pain and awkwardness for no good reason? Isn’t there a point when you’re in your 50s and you’re married, that you just don’t want to deal with that any more? Sex on a towel (just like sex in an extra-long, extra-narrow dorm-room bed) gets old really quickly. There’s nothing I’d like to particularly revisit about either one, and I’m only in my mid-twenties.
I think if you do go through with this though, you really should make an effort to have a full-on deflowering experience. Maybe you can have his mom walk in on you about three minutes in, leading to an uncomfortable moment where she stands there, mouth agape, while your husband screams “Get out of here!” voice cracking all the while, only to have to sit on the couch moments later, dressed now, hair still a mess, while his mom calls your mom and everybody gets a lecture on the importance of waiting until marriage and I hope to god she’s not pregnant and I don’t know how you raised your daughter but and my kid wasn’t the only one in that bed. Maybe your mom can haul you up by the arm and storm out and throw you in the car and start crying. I mean, if you’re going to spend all that money on a new hymen, you might as well go all out. Do it right.
And do you gift wrap it? Throw a bow down there. A few ribbons and a gift card perhaps? Although I tend to think presenting it as a gift is really misleading. “Honey, I could have bought the sexy lingerie but I opted to spend our kid’s college fund so that you could have the awkward experience I denied you by whoring around before we were married.”
Do you think Hallmark makes a card for that?

Where’d She Go?

I’ve been missing for a while. I know that. So many of my friends have been yelling at me to write. So here I am with my mea culpa.
Back in November, while I was on vacation at the happiest place on earth, I got robbed. They got a lot of my good jewelry (the stuff I never wear because I’m afraid I’m going to lose it but I still wanted), my good camera (that I didn’t want to bring because I was afraid I was going to break it) and my computer.
I refuse to blog at work because I don’t want anybody tracing it back to me and firing me for doing personal stuff on company time. This may sound a little outrageous, but I actually know somebody who got fired for posting on her blog from her office computer and it’s made me a little gun shy. Also, there are very few people at the office who I feel need to know about my personal life. We’re newsies. We gossip.
The other thing, though, is that I didn’t know what to say. Being robbed was the most violating experience I’ve ever been through. It wasn’t just the stuff he took. It was that somebody I didn’t know, somebody who had nothing but malice for me, was in my apartment, my cute little space, the two rooms I had spent so much time lovingly decorating and where I had felt so safe. He had gone through my stuff, picked and chosen what he wanted. He went through my drawers, spilled my stuff all over the place, and the left. The police came and went through all my stuff all over again. They put black fingerprint powder all over everything and came up with nothing. I walked into my apartment and had to put my life back together, put things away, clean up the powder that got everywhere.
In addition to putting things together physically, I had to pull things together mentally and that’s a lot harder, because nobody can really help you with that. I cried the entire first day I was in the house. I thought I had pulled myself together a little bit, although I never slept more than a few hours at a time that whole week. Then, the Saturday after I came home, I was in the shower when I heard what sounded like loud noises on the roof. The police told me that they think the robber came in through the roof. I jumped out of the shower and ran to see if there was somebody else breaking in. It was then, when I was dripping wet in a towel with shampoo in my hair in my hallway, that I realized I really needed to get a grip. Because, seriously, what the hell was I going to do to fight a robber?
It’s been very, very hard. I still jump at loud noises and I still feel sometimes like I’m a sitting duck. But what are you going to do? I finally bought a new computer and now, I’m finally starting to write again. It’s all part of putting things back in the drawers they belong in.