Jen Kirkman - I Can Barely Take Care of Myself

Jamie dumped me after running into Paula when he went home for a weekend to visit his mother. He said they fell in love that weekend and it just “happened.” As I type this I realize that he probably didn’t “run into her” but had been talking to her all along, and his visit with his mother was really just his planned rendezvous with Paula. Oh my God, I was so stupid back then. But at least today I don’t have lopsided boobs after two kids, like Paula does. Oh, and she didn’t end up with Jamie. He was just a detour on her way to marrying a different guy from high school.

I’d just assumed that Jamie and I would be together all summer and our love would be my backup plan in case the getting-famous thing didn’t happen right after graduation. I definitely didn’t want to have kids with him—we were both professionally undiagnosed but in my opinion clinically depressed. Any offspring of ours would probably fight to stay in my womb because it would be too despondent and tormented to want to be born. I didn’t necessarily want to get married to Jamie either; I just wanted to continue to be distracted by him. When he broke my heart, it felt like he stole my future or, alternatively, was making me face it. I was devastated and unable to get out of bed, like a mom, somewhat ironically, with an unfortunate case of postpartum depression.

I swore I would never love again until a few weeks later, when I went to a party and met a junior at Emerson named Blake. I know his name makes him sound like a rich kid from Pretty in Pink but he was actually the son of a single mom from a working-class town in Massachusetts, which is way more hot—it’s like getting the dude from a John Cougar Mellencamp song who’s going to make out with you in the back of his truck.

Blake was an actor (still is) and a damn good one. He was skinny and small with a slight underbite and watery blue eyes, and he dressed like he was wearing someone’s hand-me-downs from the Partridge Family. One of my friends once told me that she thought that he looked like a mouse, but when Blake was onstage—he was a man. He touched off something in my DNA that craves and lusts after very skinny guys in bell-bottoms with 1970s-inspired shaggy haircuts. It probably has something to do with all of those full-color booklets inside the Led Zeppelin albums that my sister had in our bedroom. I love outgoing and gregarious men who want as much attention as I do. I’ve always had a thing for guys who make a living doing something in public (with the exception of someone who hands out sandwich shop flyers or dresses up like Pluto at Disney World).

Blake was the opposite of what I was faced with in my real life. He was a free spirit who stole cans of tuna fish from the grocery store while I was saddled with student loans, credit card debt, and the reality of moving back in with my parents. Blake spent his days wearing essential oils like Egyptian musk, reading books about the Stanislavsky acting method, and playing the drums, while I was gearing up to take a nine-to-five job in the sales department of the Boston Ballet.

Once I moved back in with my parents, I just assumed that it was tacitly understood that as a grown woman, I’d sleep over at Blake’s apartment sometimes. It’s not like he could come over and sleep with me. I had a single bed with wheels. One thrust and my bed would be on the other side of my room and my mom would probably yell, “You’re scratching the floor up when you scrape the wheels against it like that, Jennifah!”

I’d assumed that four years of college had matured both my parents and me. I’d assumed that since I was twenty-one, there was no way they could think that I was still a virgin. (I mean, not that I think they sat around thinking about it. That would be creepy. Although I imagine if I were married and raising a teenage kid, their sex life would in fact be all I’d be able to think about. If I had a boy, I’d stop walking in his room unannounced once he turned eleven for fear that I’d catch him masturbating. If I had a teenage daughter, I imagine I’d sit there trying to watch TV at night but instead be wondering, Is she out having sex right now? Do husbands and wives have quiet nights at home when their teenagers aren’t around and casually throw down, “How was your day, honey? Hey, do you think Susie has lost her virginity?”)

My parents were very strict with me growing up. I wasn’t allowed to have a telephone or a boy in my bedroom. If a boy happened to call me, I had to talk on the kitchen phone. My only hope for privacy was dragging the cord around the corner from the kitchen to crouch and whisper underneath our upright piano in the dining room. Sometimes I had to sneak into my parents’ room to use their phone. That was even worse because the line would get staticky once my mom picked up the downstairs extension to eavesdrop. I don’t know what she thought she was going to hear. When I was in high school, I had no idea what talking dirty was. The only earful my mom got was overhearing me nervously ask Adam the cute skateboarder, “Um, so, what’s your favorite Cure song?”

During my senior year of college, I had lived in an off-campus apartment with two boys, Tim and David. It was like a reverse Three’s Company, except unlike Jack Tripper, I didn’t have to pretend to be gay in front of the landlord and I had no interest in seeing Tim or David naked. They were like brothers to me. (I never had a brother, but I’m assuming it feels like having a male friend whom you don’t want to bone.) When I told my very Catholic mother that I’d found somewhere to live… and it was with two guys, she said no right away. Actually she said more than no. What she said was, “Jennifah, the boys will rape you.”

I don’t think my mom quite understood the difference between a rapist and a male roommate. It’s hard enough to share an apartment with a friend, because things can get pretty awkward if you owe him rent money. I can’t imagine how delicate a situation it would be in the kitchen the morning after your roommate has forced himself on you.

Tim and David drove out to my parents’ house in the suburbs to meet them, so that my mom could put faces to her daughter’s future rapists’ names. Their goofy demeanor and general innocent vibe won her over. She agreed to cosign the lease and let me move in with the guys who were such sweethahts—and I’m happy to say they never sexually violated me.

EVEN THOUGH I didn’t think I had to ask permission to sleep at Blake’s house now that I was a college graduate, it wasn’t really a one-on-one, eye-contact-filled conversation that I wanted to have with my mom. I knew it would be awkward enough for her to see me leaving the house with an overnight bag. On my first night back, I finished unpacking and setting up my childhood bedroom to my liking and then turned right around to head into Boston to spend the night with Blake. I left a note on the kitchen table for my mom and dad— Staying at Blake’s tonight —and hopped in my dad’s spare Oldsmobile.

Blake and I were tangled up in his paisley sheets while Nag Champa incense burned in swirls around our heads, and my parents didn’t know where Blake lived and had no way of contacting me. I think cell phones existed in 1996 but nobody I knew had one yet—if they did, it was in the form of a car phone with a long cord connected to the cigarette lighter. My folks never crossed my mind once. Why would I go home for the night? I’m an adult in the city and there’s no need to drive home at two in the morning—and I have an irrational fear of getting in my car in the middle of the night and forgetting to check the backseat, only to be stuck on the road with a monster behind me, ready to strangle away. The next day, I walked in the front door and saw my mom sitting at the kitchen table. It was unusual for her to still be in her bathrobe at noon. That was her physical signal for “I’m so upset that I can’t even get dressed.” My mom sat there and flipped the pages of her newspaper very quickly, staring at me instead of the articles. I got the same feeling I used to get in my stomach when I was a little kid and I was in trouble. (Not that as a kid I ever got in trouble for sneaking out to sleep with my stoner boyfriend, but you know what I mean.) My mom said, “You didn’t come home last night.” I said, “I left a note.” She said, “I know you did. Your father and I found it to be very bold.” I said, “I have a boyfriend!”