#92. "You should try it!"

Conversations with strangers at bars, plus a short retrospective on the first year of marriage

It only felt appropriate to write about marriage this week as I’m currently perched in an Airbnb just outside Palm Springs on the one year anniversary of flying here for our wedding exactly a year ago. I’m considerably less stressed about my appearance and the imminent threat of getting laid out with a migraine on this trip, though, which is nice! She’s relaxed and has zero itinerary, who is she?!

On Wednesday, Paul and I spent the evening getting our ear talked off by the woman sitting next to us at Bar Cecil. Just to set the scene, Susan is an energy reader from Chicago in her mid 60s who once stopped for a random woman in the rain because she didn’t want her purple coat to get ruined. She also always knew she wanted two or three children.

Me + Paul + Susan’s shoulder

When we explained we were in Palm Springs for our one year wedding anniversary, Susan’s eyes lit up. “Babies are so great, you should try it!” she gushed, before launching into a story about how she kept baseballs in her fruit bowl when her kids were growing up, and once broke a couch wrestling with her son because she didn’t want to raise a sissy (“If you want your son to be a manly man, you have to push him around!”)

I nodded politely as she explained how she once wrote an essay in college about wanting kids so badly she wondered whether she should have them outside of marriage (she ultimately decided she needed to be married first before procreating, and let a colleague set her up with her now ex-husband). Originally, Susan told him (“like any good businesswoman”) that she wanted six children, so she’d have some negotiating room. He said he wanted “maybe one,” and they settled on two children and 15 years of marriage before “restructuring their family.” (The word divorce is clearly too negative for someone such as Susan, who thrives on positive energy).

“No kids for us,” I said, flashing her my most dazzling smile. I didn’t go on or explain, letting those four words hang in the air like a complete sentence. She nodded politely back and didn’t press the issue, but her words ping-ponged around in my mind on the drive back to our Airbnb. You should try it! As if having kids is something you can try first to see if you like it, like smoking a joint or feeling like you’re about to fall to your death riding the Palm Springs aerial tramway (I hate both.) Even getting married technically falls into this category. Is there anyone here who doesn’t have a friend or family member who’s been divorced?

One month after our wedding, I wrote an essay about how I didn’t feel different after getting married. I’m not surprised to report I still feel that way; as does Paul. Neither of us would have changed anything about our wedding we didn’t already note last year, and we both say that we’d absolutely 10/10 do it again. The only bad thing about our wedding was how fucking quickly it went.

So far, my expectations for marriage have more or less matched my reality, and there haven’t been any big surprises or changes in our relationship. Although Paul couldn’t file his 2023 taxes without having his tax preparation person call me first, because I filed as “married filing separately” and he filed as “single”. Burn, lol. (Edit: Paul would like me to note that this was a miscommunication on his tax person’s part and not his fault – sure whatever!!)

But the most unexpected part of (finally) getting married was completely unrelated to me and Paul. About five months after we walked down the aisle, my sister called to say her marriage was in trouble. By late summer, she and her husband decided to get a divorce. They’d been married for 11 years and together for 19, and I’ve known my brother-in-law since I was in high school. The four of us had a really good thing going, so to say I felt blindsided is an understatement.

For almost my entire adult life, I’ve always been the one with the rough dating history. My mother’s most pressing goal in life is/was to see both her daughters get married, and for about five months this year, she had that. I’ve literally always been the chaos demon of the family, so it was a bit of a shock to us all when it happened. My perfect sister is getting a divorce??? That can’t be right.

People often talk about marriage like it’s a guarantee, but it isn’t. If you’d asked me if I had any idea my sister would be getting divorced this year while at our wedding a year ago, the answer would have been fuck no.

More than anything, I think this first year of marriage has reminded me that you never really know what people are going through unless they share it with you. Assuming is easy; going underneath the surface is harder. I’m not going to say much about my sister’s divorce (she was very lovely in giving me permission to mention it here at all), but it’s reminded me how important it is to talk to the people you love about the real shit, even when we’re drowning in work and life and everything else. Early and often, if you can. A lot (or nothing) can change in a year.

And no shade to Susan, truly. She was actually a lovely person, even if I felt like we had almost nothing in common, other than our love for Bar Cecil.

I just wish people (especially random strangers at bars) wouldn’t treat the subject of having kids so flippantly. I know Susan had absolutely zero ill intent (nor did she have any idea who she was talking to, lol 😂 ), but I would literally never say to someone I didn’t know, in response to learning they just got married: “hey maybe you shouldn’t have kids!” It’s none of my fucking business, and I don’t care whether people have kids or not. I just wish (endlessly, always, forever) that having kids didn’t feel like a thoughtless default.

“How Jonathan Franzen Learned to Write a Franzen Novel” by Adam Moss for Vulture

This piece is long as hell but it was super interesting, even though I’ve never read The Corrections. Reading about how the sausage is made is pretty much always going to catch my attention. There’s also some writing advice at the end, which I liked:

“I mean it’s easy for me to outline a book. I can spin out a plot — this happens and then this happens. I can bullshit anything you want. Tell me the story you want. But it’s a performance. It isn’t anything. And then you try to write it and it’s not very interesting. And so the next step is actually delving into yourself and trying to get to the roots of the anxiety, the root of the shame, the root of what you don’t want to talk about. It’s a sunny day — who wants to go to the dark demon place? The good stuff has to come from some problem in oneself — going to the place no one else can access. Then you’re doing something no one has done before.”

“Put Down The Vacuum” by Annie Lowrey for The Atlantic

It’s a tale as old as time – women perform more domestic labor than their male partners, and women are judged for spaces not being clean and tidy (not men). I’ve been actively working on lowering my standards of cleanliness to varying degrees of success…

“Yet men are perfectly capable of recognizing a mess when it is not theirs. The sociologists Sarah Thébaud, Leah Ruppanner, and Sabino Kornrich asked people to look at photographs of an open-plan living room and kitchen; half saw a living space cluttered with dishes and laundry, and the other half saw a tidy area. The participants rated how clean the room was on a 100-point scale, and said how urgent they thought it was for the owner to take care of it. Men and women had essentially the same ratings of how clean the space was and how important tidying up was.

In a second experiment, the same researchers told study participants that the photos were taken by someone looking to rent out their place on an Airbnb-type site. Some participants viewed rooms hosted by “Jennifer,” some by “John.” The participants thought that Jennifer’s clean space was less tidy than John’s, and were more judgmental in their assessments of the female host.”

“People Aren’t Sure About Having Kids. She Helps Them Decide” by Jamie Ducharme for TIME

I’ve read Merle Bombardieri’s book, and it’s excellent. This essay goes a little deeper into the woman behind The Baby Decision and her POV and plans for the future:

“She hoped the book would help other people unsure about parenthood and destigmatize the choice not to have children—which she argues should be the default position unless people are confident they want to bring kids into the world. Bombardieri hated the stereotype that child-free adults were selfish Peter Pans who just wanted to “lie in the sun and go on vacations,” because she felt the exact opposite tended to be true. “If you’re not going home and spending all weekend nurturing a young child, you have time and energy to do other things that make the world a better place,” she says.”

Brat won Rolling Stone’s #1 album of 2024, because of course it did. Hit Me Hard and Soft came in at #5 which I find acceptable, along with Eternal Sunshine at #8 (though Short n’ Sweet at #4 feels high). The Tourtured Poets Department clocked in at #23, which would be fine except for the fact that Vertigo only landed at #31, which was a better album in a similar vein. So sorry. (It’s not like I’m bitter about waiting this long for Rep TV or anything!!)

What’s the weirdest thing a stranger has ever said to you about marriage/babies/whatever?? Come tell me about it!