Does This Beach Make Me Look Fat?: True Stories and Confessions (20 page)

Honestly, I tried that and it doesn't work.

Mr. Nadella also said, “That's the kind of person that I want to trust, that I want to give more responsibility to.”

Of course, as soon as he said this, any woman worth her ovaries threw a fit, so he later apologized for being “inarticulate.”

I disagree.

I think he was articulate, and he said exactly what he thinks, and I don't accept his apology.

You can't apologize for being sexist.

The only thing he's sorry for is that he said it out loud, to a roomful of people with ears.

And ovaries.

What scares me is that his attitude isn't unique to him, CEOs, or even men, but there are plenty of women who feel the same way.

I myself was one of them.

I was a good girl, who did all the homework and got good grades, so I naturally assumed that if I kept quiet and kept doing well, success would follow.

I learned the hard way that it doesn't.

That you not only have to ask for what you want, but if they don't give it to you, you have to go out and get it, all by yourself.

Bring a club, so that you can bonk it on the head and drag it home, if that's what it takes.

And by the way, it might take years to get what you want, but don't be patient.

On the contrary, be impatient.

Ask, then demand, and if you have to, get out your club.

Karma might work, but it takes too long, and why wait?

These are the things I taught myself, because I had simply forgotten the lesson that Mother Mary used to say to me, which isn't exactly sweet and motherly-sounding, but is profoundly true:

She always said, “Lisa, don't take any crap.”

Only she didn't say “crap.”

Because she was cooler than that.

Mother Mary would not have done well in China.

God bless her.

 

Seeing Ghosts

By Francesca

Last night, I ran into my ex-boyfriend's best friend while on a date with someone new.

This wasn't a passing glance or a casual bump on the sidewalk; this was a full-on meet-and-greet. We were at a Brooklyn biergarten, and I had just put my purse down on the chair when I locked eyes with the person sitting at the very next table.

“Hey!” I cried, sounding like someone calling for help.

“Francesca!” He mirrored my expression of shock and fear.

But we hugged—I was with my ex for two years, so his friends had become my friends, too, and although I relinquished any claim on them now, I still had genuine affection for this guy. I just wished I'd run into him at any other time than this.

After making rapid, anxious small chat, my ex's friend introduced me to his three pals, which meant I had to introduce him to my date. As they shook hands, I could feel my smile twitching.

“Well, it was
so
good to see you!” I grabbed my date by the arm and wheeled him away.

“You don't want to sit with your friend?” he asked in my ear.

“Nope.” I didn't know how to explain it further without sounding preoccupied with my ex, and I didn't want my date to feel as awkward as I did.

We sat farther away, but over my date's shoulder, I could see my ex's friend sneaking glances in our direction.

Or maybe I was the one glancing at him.

Eventually, my date decided to sit beside me for a cuddle, and I realized two things, 1) we were now in full view of their table, and 2) I could no longer hide my discomfort.

I didn't want my date to think he was the problem, so I spoke the words that never need explanation to a man:

“Let's get out of here.”

Misleading, perhaps, but it got us out of there without finishing the beers.

When I told my mom and my friends the story the next day, the general take was: awesome! And some petty part of me did enjoy it. Running into your ex's friend has all the envy-inducing benefits of seeing your actual ex with none of the pathos. If I had to be seen by a member of the enemy camp, at least I was wearing a red dress, with a tall, well-built guy on a Saturday night.

If we were keeping score, I was up one.

But it didn't feel like a win. Seeing the ex-friend that night threw me off my game. He didn't fit into the version of my life I was trying to create with this new person. He was a reminder of the past, a ghost, and I wanted to feel carefree and open to indulge in the heady promise of potential.

And I definitely didn't want to think of my ex out with a new girl.

When a chapter of our life ends, we want the metaphor to be made literal. We want to turn the page and leave the past behind, completely. But that's not possible.

Not in a small town like New York.

Even without physically seeing an ex, we have Facebook and Instagram to sprinkle breadcrumbs of past loves, leading us backwards instead of forward. Before I ran into his friend, I had avoided my ex's social-media presence completely and without effort. But afterwards, I found myself creeping online.

The next morning he posted a picture with the friend I ran into. I wondered if he told him. I wondered if I wanted him to.

In other pictures, I saw he attended a friend's wedding, one that we had both been invited to before we broke up. He had told me to put it in my calendar, but I hadn't. I remembered wishing otherwise but knowing that we weren't going to make it to summer.

Now, I couldn't stop myself from combing through the photos, scanning for him, reading into body language, trying to see if he'd brought a new plus one.

It didn't look like he had, I thought, with too much relief.

You want to move on from your old life, but you don't want it to move on from you.

Past lives stubbornly live on in art. I write about past and present relationships often. But for the first time, it's a fair fight. My ex is an artist himself, a musician. It's been five months since we broke up, and although we didn't end on bad terms, we haven't seen or spoken to each other since. Now, all of a sudden, I feel a fleeting urge to go to one of his shows.

I'm not really sure what I'd seek to accomplish by doing so. In my fantasy, I don't go to the show to reopen any doors, or even to get an ill-advised drink with him afterwards. I simply feel a wish to go by myself, listen, then leave.

“So then why go at all?” my best friend asked when I confessed my thoughts to her.

I'm not really sure. Maybe to spook him. Maybe to spook myself.

“I guess I just want to listen to the music. Look for signs of happiness, of sadness.”

Look for signs of me.

But I probably won't go.

Because as hard as it is to accept that the ghosts of our past linger in our lives and surroundings, it's even harder to accept when they leave no trace at all.

 

Quarantine Me

By Lisa

Today we're talking quarantine.

In short, I'm in favor.

Quarantine me.

You know, of course, I'm talking about the recent Ebola epidemic, and it goes without saying that this epidemic is horrific and terrifying. My heart goes out to anyone in the world who has lost someone they loved due to this dreaded disease. And my prayers are with anyone who has contracted Ebola. And thank God for the doctors, nurses, and others who are going over to West Africa to fight the epidemic, because they are true heroes.

As I say, all of this goes without saying.

Still, I'm saying it.

Why?

First, because I'm a mother, and as you know, it's our job to say things that go without saying. For example, for years I have been saying to Daughter Francesca:

When it's cold out, take a jacket.

I said this to her when she was eight, and I say it to her now that she's twenty-eight.

Also, I still tell her, Eat your vegetables.

You know what's funny about that?

She's a vegetarian.

Maybe she listened?

So, when I read in the newspaper that an American doctor had returned from treating Ebola patients in West Africa, then decided to eat a meatball sandwich in a restaurant, then take the subway, and then go bowling, I instantly texted Francesca, who lives in New York. I said to her what goes without saying:

Don't take the subway.

Don't go bowling.

Don't eat meatball sandwiches.

Never mind that I can't remember the last time Francesca ate a meatball sandwich, especially now that she's a vegetarian.

Also I doubt that she has ever gone bowling, but you never know, the idea to go bowling could just randomly pop into her head, and as a mother, I had to nip that in the bud. Plus she takes the subway all the time, a fact I hated way before Ebola-bearing doctors started riding around.

So being a good mother, I texted her the things that went without saying. I give myself credit for not texting her the things that I really wanted to say, which were:

Come home now.

Don't touch anything in New York.

Avoid using the letter E altogether.

To stay on point about Ebola, I'm making a big point of saying what goes without saying because I know what a lot of you are going to say because of what I'm about to say next.

Which is that I'm in favor of quarantining for three weeks any health-care worker who has treated Ebola patients in West Africa.

Don't think that I'm being hysterical about Ebola. I know that it isn't easy to spread. And I'm not being mean about these health-care workers, because as I said above, I believe they are true heroes.

But everything is a cost-benefit analysis.

And in this case, the cost is me getting a dreaded disease or you staying home for three weeks.

Guess which I choose.

My answer is informed not only by the fact that I think I'm adorable, but also by the fact that I don't think being quarantined is the worst thing in the world.

I would love being quarantined.

It would be like a permanent snow day.

I wouldn't have to go out to run errands and I might not even get out of bed. I would just watch TV or read. I could have someone deliver me my groceries. I would finally organize my closet.

In fact, I already live in quarantine.

All writers do.

I'm always inside, especially when it's cold outside.

Brrrrr.

Also, inside is all the food I like to eat, right in my very own refrigerator.

I could wait three weeks to go bowling.

And I don't eat meatball sandwiches because I'm a vegetarian, too.

But a lot of people don't like the idea of quarantine, and someone made the point that quarantine would be a hardship for returning health-care workers because they would be unable to make a living for three weeks.

Good point.

So I propose that the government pay them to stay home.

And if the government won't pay them, I will.

Because they need to earn a living, and I need to keep on living.

Living, all around, for everyone!

And no bowling until Ebola's in the gutter.

 

Keeping Abreast

By Lisa

I saw in the newspaper that some genius conducted a study on what constitutes the perfect female breast.

Oh, good.

They decided that the perfect breast has a 45:55 ratio, and if you're wondering what that means, it is the “ratio of the upper to the lower pole of the breast.”

These people might be crazy.

If you have poles in your breasts, you're in big trouble.

But the way they describe it, the nipple is the dividing line between “the upper and lower poles.” So in a breast with a 45:55 ratio, 45 percent of the breast is above the nipple, or the upper pole, and 55 percent is below the nipple, or the lower pole.

If you ask me, these people are splitting hairs.

Nipple hairs.

By the way, they conducted the study by showing one thousand three hundred people pictures of breasts.

I wonder how much they paid the people to look at breasts all day.

Or if the people paid them to look at breasts all day.

Because the one thing that's true in this world is that people never, ever get sick of looking at breasts.

Generally speaking, men look at them because they're sexy, and women look at them to compare them to their own.

This means that after looking at breasts, one group will feel really great, and the other will feel really crummy.

Breasts have made tons of money for magazines, websites, restaurants, and beer companies. In fact, there is probably no company on earth that has not used breasts to sell something.

Breasts are busy.

And they work for almost nothing.

Of course they do, they're female.

By the way, of the one thousand three hundred people in the perfect-breast survey, 53 of them were plastic surgeons.

This surprises me.

I would have expected all one thousand three hundred to be plastic surgeons.

Because if I made my living out of making human beings look perfect, I'd make damn sure that I got on the Perfection Committee.

The funny thing is that if you were a girl growing up a while ago—let's say you were born in 1955, hypothetically speaking—you had no idea what breasts looked like.

Okay, I'm talking about myself, really.

When I was little, the only way to see breasts was in
Playboy,
and you better believe we didn't have any of those magazines around the house.

Mother Mary didn't approve.

But when I was fourteen, I started babysitting, which was the same age I discovered
Playboy,
because I found it accidentally on purpose, in the bedroom drawers of the couple I was sitting for, after the baby was in bed.

Sorry, unnamed people.

Anyway, I looked at the breasts in
Playboy
magazine, and all of those breasts were perfect.

Perfectly large.

I don't know what the poles or ratios were, but all I knew was that when I got breasts, I wanted them to look exactly like that.