Our home, my husband says, has the aesthetic of a couple of 12-year-olds who came into some money.
Glancing at my desk I have a mug shaped like a cheeseburger holding pens and bookmarks (one of them for the book Hope Rides Again with Obama dangling from a helicopter pulling up Biden); a chip clip covering my laptop camera because eww, surveillance state; DVD copies of When Harry Met Sally and The Fugitive; an “Elect More Women to Office” sticker; an actual congrats on adulting trophy my friend sent me; and a miniature stuffed thunder cloud keychain that my daughter said, “C’mon Mom, buy it. Thunder thighs.” So I bought it and now it’s attached to Rocky Balboa’s wrist like a handcuff inside the cheeseburger mug.
It takes a lot of work to have bad taste. Which is how I ended up at a Jersey shore art show. Let me add some qualifiers here: coastal New Jersey + community artisans = Jersey shore art show. There was no Snooki.
I know that we tell each other, once we hit a certain age, that it’s never too late to get started. That, no, we have not spent the majority of our lives fucking around and now we’re finding out. Maybe we’re the next Julia Childs or Toni Morrison. (Don’t do this. You are not and never will be the next Toni Morrison.)
Just like everyone else I get suckered into scrolling 40 over 40 lists or whatever patronizing shit the editors want to write in headlines about women over 25 daring to live and breathe like everyone else. But, y’all, I attended an art show where the headline would go something like this:
Local Punk Rocker Lets Community Arts and Crafts Fair Know He’s Going To ‘Fuck Shit Up’
My family and I were maybe five hundred feet from our suburban-issued sport utility vehicle, passing the rustic country signs and metal yard rooster selections when the chugga-chugga of a guitar — over what I can only assume was a PA system set up for assistant principals — began.
My ears folded in on themselves and fell right to my asshole. Teleportation could have dropped me into a daycare full of two-year-olds with ear infections and it would have sounded like Mozart compared to whatever MENace I was walking towards.
The guitar was so loud, the screeching so violently muppet, it sent me into an existential crisis. Did I, in my youth, listen to things like this by choice? And at such volumes? Did I, in fact, not know how to read a room as a young person? Could I not differentiate that maybe there is a time and a place for double bass pedal-pounding and it’s probably not in the open air unless that air is a festival and not, like, a pond with ducks and tiny shoppes near the rusted yard cocks.
Or am I just lame now?
As the punk rock scrambled my brain, I reserved more judgement. Maybe the band and the singer were young. A gig is a gig, right? Everyone starts somewhere. Yeah, sure, maybe it felt naughty, as a young person, to curse near the afternoon nappers and milk carton drinkers. And, okay maybe, letting the boomers have it on their grandbaby’s turf is a bit subversive.
But as I got closer and my eyeballs tried to focus on a punk ass book jockey cross stitch, I locked eyes on the denim coat with the arms off, circling inside the gazebo like a shark in an aquarium. With a mic cord wrapped around his hand, the singer was old. Like, his knees need some WD-40, old. Like, dude, c’mon now, old. Like, there are middle age women with Pinterest apps and an aesthetic to maintain here and you’re at the top of the food chain acting like a real dick, old.
Visiting the Jersey shore arts show I answered an existential question that’s been gnawing at my brain like a chipmunk with plans for my house that I did not approve: I am just as uncool and lame as I ever was. But now with less time.
I think this is called “40 and out of fucks.”
I do not have time for nonsense. No unearned fucks will be given. Middle age is fuck deficient. I will turn right around and head back to the car if I hear amplifier vomit assaulting my ear drums because I already have anxiety Cannibal Corpse playing in my frontal lobe at all times. I will let a grown man know he does not still have it (and probably never did). I will, from time-to-time, body mist myself in sweet-smelling cinnamon pumpkin while planning some hot cocoa and thick sock shit because this is me now. Is it kinda lame Yes. Do I care? Not at all. I have to focus on my bad taste.
CURRENTLY
Nightstand: The View From Flyover Country// Sarah Kendzior
Reading: Ignoring Haitian’s Humanity Exposes Biden’s Broken Promise // Will Bunch
Watching: Only Murders in the Building // Hulu
Listening: A rediscovered Joan Rivers interview // Busy Philipps is Trying Her Best
Coveting: These live streams from the National Aquarium // Giving me all the zen
Buying: Frankenstein & Bride of Frankenstein salt & pepper shakers // Cute Halloween 4 ever!
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