Jeneration X: One Reluctant Adult's Attempt to Unarrest Her Arrested Development; Or, Why It's Never Too Late for Her Dumb Ass to Learn Why Froot Loops Are Not for Dinner (14 page)

Gazing into the fishbowl of their lives was kind of what I’d expected back in the day when I ordered the sea monkeys advertised in my
Archie
comic books, except they didn’t run around in crowns carrying scepters. [
Anyone else still pissed off about the whole sea monkey thing? They were supposed to hang out in front of their castle and read and be our friends, but all they did was flit about in a bowl of brackish water.
] The best part was that I wasn’t spying
so much as simply walking from the bedroom to the bathroom—repeatedly—and I was able to keep my promise to Fletch. Hey, I’m not spying! I just happen to need to brush my teeth thirty times a day!

A while after we moved in, they rearranged the room and suddenly I could see what was on their computer monitor, too.
Oh, boy! Now it’s getting good,
I thought.

The wife was a big fan of Facebook and Zappos and LOLCats. She spent an awful lot of time uploading photos of her dog who had a shockingly large number of embroidered sweatshirts. Every time we saw Pippen, a highly strung Bouvier des Flanders, in the yard with a fresh haircut and a new shirt, Fletch would whisper, “How badly does she want a baby?”

As for the husband’s viewing pleasure?

That’s where it got troubling, bless his XXX-rated heart.

The (thankfully) odd part is he never seemed to be… um,
enjoying
[
If you know what I mean. And if you don’t know what I mean, please don’t make me explain it.
] all the bare-bottomed babes on his screen. His actions were never untoward. Rather, he’d simply click through page after page of GIFs for hours in a highly clinical manner, almost as if he were sorting, rather than ogling. He had all the passion of a gynecologist flipping through a bunch of pap smear results. I felt oddly comforted by this.

Now, you fellows out there, I’m not going to judge you if you like to see a little
strange
on the computer from time to time. Because, really? That’s why Al Gore invented the Internet in the first place. But I will say this: if you have so much porn on your
computer that it takes months and months to organize your stash, you either need to seek help or turn this into a business.

Perhaps you’re not a perv at all; perhaps you’re an entrepreneur.

The worst part of all this for me was that the vista was so clear that I could even determine the
era
of nudie photos he most favored. He must have come of age during the Olivia Newton-John Let’s-Get-Physical days because he was all about the shots from the eighties. How was I so sure?

The standards of grooming have changed since then.

I haven’t been this bothered by anything since I discovered my sea monkeys were essentially water lice. I felt like the universe was telling me,
“Hey, you wanna spy? Oh, I will GIVE you something to spy, missy.”

To put the situation in different terms, you know sometimes when you want a cookie of the oatmeal variety, so you make a batch of them? And you use the recipe from the smiley blue Quaker’s drum and it always makes way more than you meant? Like, you wanted enough cookies for a decent snack, yet you wound up with six dozen, even though you got super sick of touching cookie batter towards the end and made the last few dough balls big as baseballs?

And turns out you baked so damn many oatmeal scotchies that all you’re doing is eating cookies for every meal because they’re right there and you’re kind of hungry and, really, you don’t want them to go to waste because they took some effort to create? So you eat and eat and eat far past the point of actual enjoyment? And then you spend the bulk of your day in the washroom reading a George R. R. Martin novel because it’s the biggest book you can find
outside of the dictionary, cursing Wilford Brimley for being the only man on earth who has the time or inclination to process that much fiber? And at some point you’re all,
Sweet Baby Ray, I just want a nice steak
?

That’s
how I felt about the unfettered access to gossipy-type information. Much as I used to enjoy sneaking glimpses of people’s lives, this was too much. I wanted three cookies, not ALL the cookies.

I was exposed to so many intimate details of our neighbors’ lives that it made me squirmy, primarily when it came to the husband’s viewing habits. This guy was on nekkid sites ALL NIGHT, EVERY NIGHT. I figured that every time I climbed the stairs to come face to l-a-b-i-a,
that
was my Greek-tragedy-style punishment for having been nosy.

My life became an inadvertent version of
Rear Window
(minus the wheelchair and telescope) and I began to make my way to the second floor with my eyes clamped shut, muttering,
“We’ve become a race of Peeping Toms!”

On top of all the deeply scarring nudity, the wife’s mommylust couldn’t have been more obvious and clearly no one was in the business of making babies because the guy never left his damn Aeron chair to go to bed already. His habits were tearing them apart and I wanted to help fix them. I wanted to post a sign begging him to PLEASE GET OFF THE INTERNET AND ON YOUR WIFE because I thought it might help. [
Fletch said no because he hates to be helpful.
]

And even though we were experiencing the most beautiful spring on record, I started keeping all my windows closed on their side of the house because, inevitably, they began to spiral
downward as a couple. Their marriage—which had seemed so fresh and shiny and happy when we moved in—hit more than just a rough patch; it slammed into a bridge abutment going eighty miles an hour in a Smart Car.

As I’d sit in my office trying to organize my notes for my next book, I’d hear the wife screaming at the husband and I’d inadvertently start rocking and murmuring,
“I hate when Mom and Dad fight.”

Every day the hostility got more intense. Although no one ever threw a punch or a vase, the accusations they’d hurl at each other seemed equally damaging. Like it or not, I had a front-row seat to an unraveling marriage. I felt like I was watching a Chekhov play against my will.

When Gladys Kravitz witnessed the occasional confirmation of her suspicions of the Stevens family, she was triumphant. She
knew
there was funny business afoot in that household! Whereas I liked to giggle and speculate about the antics of the amateur Larry Flynt next door, I didn’t actually want any of my ridiculous theories to be
true
. Addiction isn’t funny.

Every day when they came home from work and the fighting began in earnest, I felt like they were a horrible accident by the side of the highway and the last thing I wanted to see was the carnage. I wish I’d never taken that route in the first place but I had no choice but to drive past.

When they’d start in on each other, I’d head to the farthest point in my house away from them but their words seemed to follow me. I stopped sitting on my deck entirely and took to blasting talk radio on our house’s intercom system.

I’d fallen down a rabbit hole and the only way out was to move away.

Fortunately, I won a brief reprieve in May when I had to tour for
My Fair Lazy
. Normally I dread going on the road, not because I don’t love meeting fans and doing live events and media, but because I get so homesick. I hate being away from Fletch and the dogs and, to a lesser extent, the cats. I miss them so much when I’m not there. Plus, I’m the kind of person who isn’t happy unless I’m sleeping in my bed with my blankets and my decades-old down pillow. [
Yes, it’s as gross as you’d imagine, or would be if I weren’t buying fresh pillowcases for it all the time. At this point, the feathers are just little sticks, so it feels a lot like buckwheat. I know it’s weird.
I know.
Listen, don’t worry about it. If you ever sleep over, I’ll put a new pillow in your room, okay?
] I’m so weird about being away that I even bring my own toilet paper because no hotel ever stocks the aloe stuff that I like.

But this year?

All I wanted was to get the hell out of Dodge.

Even on the road, I couldn’t escape the drama of their lives. On my first night away, Fletch called to tell me the following news.

“The husband quit his job.”

“Wait, are
you
spying now?” I asked. I am the worst influence ever.

“Wasn’t eavesdropping. Ran into him in the backyard with Pippen. He was very excited to tell me that he’d quit his job.”

“In
this
economy? To do what?” My hope was that he actually was starting a porn site if for no reason other than to justify his extracurricular activities.

Fletch exhaled long and hard before he told me. “He quit his job to pursue his dream. Says he wants to be an actor.”

“He was a mechanical engineer!” I protested.

“And now he’s not.”

“Oh, God, this is not going to end well,” I said.

“Yeah. That’s why I bought new headphones.”

By the time I returned from book tour, the wife had moved out and the husband had done some redecorating. Specifically, he’d taken sheets and used them to cover all his windows, securing them up to the ledge of the transoms with two-liter bottles of generic diet cola. We never heard anything after that, and thank God, we never saw anything else either. If this guy was so cavalier about what he looked at with an uncovered window and an angry wife lurking about, I haven’t any idea what he’d view behind closed blinds.

Not long after that, we found our home in the suburbs. Although we considered a number of contenders in a variety of neighborhoods, ultimately we opted for the one surrounded by the most trees. Except when we’re by one particular window on the east side of the property, we can’t see or hear anything happening in the neighborhood and that has been a blessing.

The whole first month we lived up here, we used to sit on our new porch enjoying the sounds of silence. Once in a while I’d ask Fletch, “Hey, do you hear that?” When he’d say no, I’d always smile and reply, “Me neither.”

After fifteen years of city living, I could not have been happier to let the whole Constant Vigilance™ thing go. I was done being the neighborhood’s hall monitor and I was delighted to hang up my good whacking shovel once and for all. Rest in peace, sweet Gladys Kravitz. Rest in peace.

Having spent so much of my life minding everyone else’s beeswax, I finally had the chance to mind my own.

And it was bliss.

Until I got bored.

But I’ll get to that later.

E
very day I feel more and more like a full-fledged adult.

Even though it was (metaphorically) only yesterday I was sloshing in the door at four a.m. after Dollar Beer Night, [
Or more accurately, what started as Dollar Beer Afternoon.
] I find myself with a mortgage, four types of insurance, and a non-laundry-quarter-based retirement fund. Every single one of my bookcases is made of wood, not milk crates, and I don’t own a stick of garbage-picked furniture anymore.

Okay, mostly that last bit is because Fletch won’t LET me garbage pick [
What he calls “junking.”
] anymore. Before I can even finish the sentence,
“Hey, that looks like a perfectly nice—”
he hits the accelerator and we speed away before I can throw open the door and claim my prize. The last time we were driving through Lincoln Park, someone was
tossing out a really luxe, squishy Crate and Barrel–type love seat and I felt a physical ache when he forbid me to lay a mitt on it to see if it was chenille or Ultrasuede. Given no choice, I’ve stopped junking, yet the desire to junk remains. [
Maybe that’s why I’m so into antiquing now; it’s like garbage picking, only with fewer bedbugs.
]

Regardless, I’ve managed to grow up… to the point that I’m experiencing the existential angst from having done so. I’m no longer surfing the waves of a Count Chocula sugar high, nor am I kiting checks to the grocery store. Not only do I own the proper glassware for any beverage, but I have seven different kinds of cheese knives. Knives! Exclusively for cheese! Seven kinds!! What kind of bizarre, Dockers-wearing, Kenny G–listening, Williams-Sonoma-credit-card-having alternative universe have I fallen into?

Where I am in life—i.e., coupled up—means I never have to pretend to be interested in techno music or the Golf Channel or, sweet Jesus, NASCAR racing again. Now I’m left wondering, where’s the rush I used to get from being a perpetual adolescent? Where’s the torment of no one
really
understanding me? Where’s the self-righteous self-pity over having to put up with silly rules established by my folks, my school, or my boss? Oh, that’s right—by design I’ve arranged my life in such a way that I’m really only accountable to myself now.

Yet somehow always being able to locate my keys, shoes, and underwear has left a void in my life.

Did not see that coming.

Fortunately the solution to my midlife crisis is sweet and helpless and cuddly with a pink belly, so Fletch and I are adopting… a pit bull puppy!

Recently we contacted A & S Rescue to discuss a possible dog adoption. Because of Maisy’s precarious health, we have to be extra careful whom we introduce to the household. The dog needs to come from a foster home situation, rather than straight out of a shelter because of exposure risk. Our vet said from a safety perspective, buying a dog from a breeder would be best, but considering one out of six hundred shelter pit bulls actually gets a forever home, I could never in good faith do that.

Maisy has always loved puppies, so our thinking is if we bring in some fresh blood, that will rejuvenate her. From a selfish perspective, we understand she’s a gift with an expiration date, so we’re hoping that if we adopt another dog, he or she will be a little mini-me and Maisy will live on through them.

After an extensive screening process [
Which I absolutely appreciate and expect, given the breed.
] the agency introduced us to a possible new pet. He was a beautiful, energetic, adolescent golden boy with an enormous head and we instantly fell in love with him. With elegantly muscled legs and broad shoulders, he was powerful and handsome and sweet. The rescue organization brought him over to the house and we all went on a long walk to acclimate everyone. The big boy adored us, too. Everyone was on board with the adoption… except for the two spoiled, surly middle-aged dogs that live here.