I Know What I'm Doing

Thank you for downloading this Simon & Schuster eBook.

Join our mailing list and get updates on new releases, deals, bonus content and other great books from Simon & Schuster.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP

or visit us online to sign up at
eBookNews.SimonandSchuster.com

CONTENTS

Introduction

1. THERAPIST, MAY I?

2. IT’S A FAMILY AFFAIR (BUT WHY DOES IT HAVE TO BE?)

3. WHOMP! THERE IT IS.

4. TAKING LOTS OF GAMBLES

5. MAKE NEW FRIENDS BUT KEEP THE OLD. ONE IS SOME GUY YOU BARELY KNOW, THE OTHER WAS ONE OF YOUR BRIDESMAIDS.

6. MANHATTAN BURGLAR MYSTERY

7. NOTHING GOOD EVER HAPPENS AFTER THE SECOND ROUND

8. “C” IS FOR COOKIE, “D” IS FOR DIVORCE

9. JEN COUGAR MELLENCAMP

10. I’M OKAY, YOU’RE OKAY

11. NO NEED TO BE ALARMED

12. RENT (NO, NOT THE BROADWAY MUSICAL)

13. YOU CAN PICK YOUR FRIENDS, BUT YOU CAN’T PICK YOUR FRIENDS’ NOSES. ALTHOUGH SOMETIMES YOU CAN HAVE SEX WITH THEM.

14. DOCTORS WITHOUT BOUNDARIES

15. DROPPING THE BALL (OR A GUIDE TO STAYING AT HOME ON NEW YEAR’S EVE WITH DIGNITY)

16. THE RELATIONSHIP REMODELER

17. AUNT-ARCHY IN THE UK

18. PARIS IS ALWAYS A GOOD IDEA

19. FLYING BY THE SEAT OF MY SWEATPANTS (LOS ANGELES TO MELBOURNE)

20. NO LUCK OF THE IRISH

21. GRAY ANATOMY

22. TURNING FORTY AND TAKING STOCK(HOLM) OF MY LIFE

23. EVERYBODY’S WORKING FOR THE WEEKEND (EXCEPT FOR ME. I WORK
ON
THE WEEKENDS.)

24. THE BRIDGE OF BRISBANE COUNTY

25. WOMEN AREN’T FUNNY. THEY’RE HILARIOUS.

I Can Barely Take Care of Myself
Excerpt

Acknowledgments

About the Author

This book is dedicated to my friends, both men and women. I don’t need to name names. As Ice-T said in his song “M.V.P.S.”: “Too many to name. Y’all right here in the studio, so why I’ma name ya? Y’all know I ain’t even got to tell y’all, y’all are players.”

You’ve all kept me sane when at times it felt like things would never get better. You have the best senses of humor—once you’ve comforted me—you’ll make fun of me. I trust you all implicitly. Our love is unconditional.

This book is dedicated to my family as well. Mom and Dad, please don’t read this one. Just know that yes I got paid for it and that is all that matters. And if I was paying attention correctly at church as a kid, Jesus hung out with prostitutes, so really, nothing in this book can’t be forgiven. But just in case. Maybe just rewatch those videos of my preteen dance numbers instead of reading this book.

And lastly, this book is dedicated to anyone who is misunderstood because romantic relationships elude them. Being “normal” seems not meant for you in this lifetime. People who crave intimacy but settle for less. People who fall hard. People who want love but are afraid of being loved back. I. Hear. Ya.

INTRODUCTION

U
gh, my parents are going to read this.

I know that I’m forty years old (and even older by the time this book is in your hands), and I shouldn’t care. Just be a grown-up and don’t be afraid to speak your truth, Jen! And you know, funny person Bob Odenkirk once said that people should make their art, whatever it is, “as though their parents were dead.” Why am I starting this book with sentiments about dead parents? Look, you know what I mean (or he means). My parents will have to handle the information in this book in their own way, whether it’s calling to yell at me or just bursting into tears at the sight of me next Thanksgiving. They created another human being and that human being went on to live her own life, make her own mistakes, have her own sex, and oh, God. It’s not just my parents. YOU’RE going to read this.

For a stand-up comedian who talks about her life onstage, I’m weirdly, fiercely private. (By the way, I’ve also tried to respect the privacy of some people I’ve written about in this book by giving them aliases, including my sister Gail, who insisted that I call her Violet—not because she has anything to hide but she always wished that was her name.) I’m so afraid of being judged. And yet, I won’t even know if you’re judging me because you’re reading this and I’m not there. I can’t see your looks of disapproval.

Here’s the thing: I’ve never talked publicly about my secret on-again, off-again Friend With Benefits of twenty years. My ex-husband has no idea that while we were still married, I almost embarked on an affair with a new man I felt emotionally bonded to. (A different guy from Mr. Friends With Benefits.) It’s new to me to reveal that, yeah, I get really lonely sometimes and I think of myself as the surrogate girlfriend for my male friends who date twenty-six-year-olds but come to me for conversation. Oh, God, please don’t pity me. It’s worse than judgment.

I really want you to know how much I’ve learned from my less than perfect experiences. I hope I don’t make it seem like this short-lived boyfriend I had was just some idiot with abs—he also had a really great design aesthetic! And I promise, I really, really do
not
have hep C. (You’ll read about that . . .) My editor said I don’t need to include a picture of the lab paperwork. And if you know anyone in Dublin, please, again, apologize that I called their city a “bunch of cunts”—and I can’t believe that I just wrote “cunt” in my intro, to a
book. This thing could be in a library someday.

So why did I write all of this down, then? Because Simon & Schuster paid me to? Partly. But I begged them to. I wanted to write this book. I think that people, not just women, will relate. I know I’m not Ernest Hemingway, although I do agree with him that my only regret in life is probably going to be that I did not “drink more wine.” (I’m not totally positive that Hemingway actually said that but according to some drink coasters I purchased at a museum gift shop he did. The quote is printed right on them.) My job isn’t to win Pulitzer Prizes and stuff like that, but to provide a voice in your head, other than your own, that sounds like you. My voice is here to say, “Hey, I have those same thoughts and do those same stupid things and am generally awesome despite what people might think about my lifestyle choices.” And I’m also here for your voyeuristic pleasure. I’m happy to show you what it’s like for a single-and-not-so-good-at-the-mingle woman of forty.

The thing is, the other stories that make up who I am—devoted friend and family member—just aren’t that funny. This is supposed to be a funny book written by a funny person. I’m not going to tell the story of how I stayed home one Friday night to do laundry and return e-mails. There’s no funny story about how much I love my best girlfriends and how many times we got misty-eyed over a bottle of a blended wine and Trader Joe’s Camembert Cheese and Cranberry Sauce Fillo Bites about how lucky we are to have one another. Or my male friends who are like the brothers I never had. The kind of guys I can text late at night and they listen to me instead of sending me pictures of their dicks.

There’s nothing funny about the fact that about seven months after my divorce, I met Jake. I was afraid that getting involved so quickly after a marriage ended wasn’t smart. I felt that I should play it safe, keep my options open, see other people. I wouldn’t commit. Eventually, because I decided to stay open to every other possibility but a committed future with him, after two years he told me that he had to end our “friendship.” I spent a year of my life not speaking with him. Luckily, I had this book to write.

Since then we’ve both had relationships, careers ups and downs, and lots of therapy. We put our past resentments to rest and now—we have an actual, normal,
friend
-ship, not some ambiguous, co-dependent bowl of crap. Things always change if we let them. We don’t have to be freaked out by change, says the woman who is freaked out by all kinds of change—including pennies. Seriously, Congress, ban them.

There’s nothing funny about the fact that I mention “Fish N Chips” and cheese often in this book, but over the two years it took to finish, I renounced my pescatarian ways and went back to being a full vegan. I just couldn’t ignore the fact that red meat was
easy to give up
—I never liked it. But the dairy and fish industries are just as bad for the environment. See? I can see you not laughing. I can
feel you
not laughing at my plant-based existence.

There’s nothing funny about the time that my dad hit his head, his brain swelled up, and he could have died but for the quick decisions of my family members who still live near him and surgeons who saved his life. I flew to Boston to be by his side before the operation and after. He couldn’t speak and there was nothing behind his eyes except a childlike fear. We used to go to Disney World every year together so I bought him a Mickey Mouse stuffed animal at the airport. He loves Mickey. But see, that isn’t funny. It’s sad. I guess the one funny part was when his mean, lazy nurse was loudly placing a phone order to Dunkin’ Donuts instead of changing his bedpan and I went over to her, in what I call my Mark Wahlberg moment, and whispered in a thick Boston accent, “Yah gettin’ some cahffee fah yahself? That’s nice. My fathah needs his fahckin’ bedpan changed.
Now
.”

My mother was mortified that the daughter she had been bragging about, the one from television, just put on a fake Boston accent and then called the nurse an asshole. That’s a little funny, I guess.

But this book also isn’t about me being a hero or a shero. This book is about what a confused jackass I can be, have been, and will continue to be—though hopefully the ways in which I am a jackass will keep changing—just to keep things interesting. For example, did you know this is not my first book? It’s not. That one was a
New York Times
Best Seller called
I Can Barely Take Care of Myself: Tales From a Happy Life Without Kids.

While I was writing
I Can Barely Take Care of Myself
(and do you mind if I call it
ICBTCOM
? Thanks. It’s a lot to type.), my life was going crazy. I was going through a divorce—one that my husband and I mutually wanted but still, it was sticky and legal-y and cost-y. I had promised I wouldn’t write any details about it in my book such as, “I was crawling out of my skin being married,” and would instead focus on the crazy, uninformed things that people say to childfree people like me. As it turns out, that really is enough material for a book of its own.

This book is about what happened next in life. Which was just more . . .
life.
Finally getting divorced (it’s been a couple of years and I think it’s okay to admit that I really
was
crawling out of my skin being married), living alone again, having boyfriends, continuing to avoid children, having breakups, traveling alone, turning forty, and getting some gray pubic hair.

My divorce blew up life as I knew it, and I saw all of the pieces of me fall back to Earth and spent two years putting them back into place. I mean “blew up” in a positive way, not like an asteroid that came to Earth and took out my family farm that wasn’t insured. This blowup was more like a fuse box exploding. I was left in the dark for a while. Had to rely on others to help me figure out where I could find the light again. And I had to finally buy my very own toolbox—even if it was a pink one called “Just For Her.”

People tilt their head with concern when I tell them that at age thirty I met someone, dated him for four years, was engaged for another year, and married for almost two years, but that at age thirty-seven, it ended in divorce. Which is just a legal term for “No one has farted in my bed in two years.” There’s no need to pity me.

Having been married and now having married friends, I’m familiar with the sentiment, usually worn as a badge of honor by spouses, that: “Marriage is hard. We work at it. After our fight last night we decided we need to start communicating better.” And those of us who aren’t married nod in support. Sometimes I feel like there is no badge of honor for the divorced or the single. That if we admit to being lonely, or feeling like a failure sometimes, or wanting someone there while we take our morning vitamins in case we choke, we’ll be bombarded with, “See? You should pair up with someone. You can’t go through life like this!”