My Misspent Youth (18 page)

By the following Christmas, Jan and Howard had stopped calling me. I had expected to hear from them around the anniversary of Brian’s death, the one-year mark of the Clinton administration. When they didn’t call I imagined them dead in their poorly decorated house. I imagined empty sleeping pill bottles on the night table, or a hose hooked up to the back of the Oldsmobile with Howard’s lifeless body five feet away. Since I’d never learned how they planned to kill themselves, it was difficult to put my finger on one particular scenario. Like “the situation” itself, there seemed so many variations on the truth, so many evil interpretations of events upon which to fixate. Through one of our mutual friends, I learned they hadn’t killed themselves. Like a normal person, this friend, in town for Christmas, had called Jan and Howard himself and then driven over to the house. Like a good person, he sat in the living room and spoke honestly about this horrible thing that had happened. Unlike me, he saw no reason to lie. Unlike me, he wasn’t hung up on some twisted symbolism, on some mean-spirited rationalization employed to keep fear at bay, to keep grief a thing depicted in movies rather than a loss felt in one’s own flesh.

Here’s another true scene from the movie. It’s a flashback, a time I remember with Brian from when we were small, playing with other kids. We stood in a circle and called off our teams, the reds versus the blues, something like that. Then we needed an “it,” a dreaded tagger who would tap us on the shoulder and freeze us. No one wanted the job, including myself, and I’d watched as Brian just stood there, silent amid the chants, bewildered as the shouting came over him. “Not it!” I yelled. “Not it!” someone else yelled. “Not it!” we all said until there was no one but Brian, a pale and clueless eight-year-old, suspended in those moments before realizing he’d lost the game. And so it was him. He was it.

Acknowledgments

These essays arose from my good fortune of being in the wrong places at the right times just as often as I’ve stumbled into the right places at the right times. I am indebted to a number of wise people who have shown me the value of not always knowing wrong from right. Thanks to Michael Scammell, for noticing; Joshua Sessions, for reading (and reading and reading); Sarah Wolf, Emilie Dyer, Sara Eckel and Alison Schecter for talking and listening (and reading); and Sloan Harris, for waiting.

Thomas Beller was one of my earliest champions. He’s one of the rare people whose taste fuels his energy rather than depletes it and I’m privileged to be a beneficiary of his chutzpah and goodwill. I am grateful to Robert Bingham, Daniel Pinchbeck, and all of the editors of Open City, especially to Joanna Yas, who doesn’t let her ability to actually get things done detract from her imagination, foresight, and talent.

The ultimate thanks goes to my parents; Glen Daum, who taught me, through music, everything I know about writing a sentence; and Rachael Daum, who passed along the drive to get those sentences read.

MEGHAN DAUM
is an op-ed columnist for the
Los Angeles Times
and the author of several books, including
The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion
(FSG, 2014). She is the editor of
Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not to Have Kids
(Picador, 2015). She has written for numerous publications, including
The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review,
and
Vogue,
and contributed to NPR’s
Morning Edition
and
This American Life.
She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two dogs.

MY MISSPENT YOUTH.
Copyright © 2001 by Meghan Daum. All rights reserved. For information, address Picador, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

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These essays have previously appeared in different form in the following publications: “On the Fringes of the Physical World” in
The New Yorker
and
Personals: Dreams and Nightmares from the Lives of 20 Young Writers;
“Publishing and Other Near-Death Experiences” in
The New York Times Book Review
; “My Misspent Youth” in
The New Yorker
; “Inside the Tube” in
Open City
; “According to the Women I’m Fairly Pretty” in
Nerve
; “American Shiksa” in
GQ
; “Music Is My Bag” in
Harper’s;
“Variations on Grief” in
The Bellingham Review
and
The KGB Bar Reader.

eCover design by Henry Sene Yee

Picador eISBN 978-1-250-06769-2

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First published in the United States by Open City Books

First Picador eBook Edition: December 2014

eISBN 9781250067692

First eBook edition: November 2014