30 Before 30 Read online

Aside from my failed kiss and Ben’s vagina-grab, I hadn’t done much else. My eight-year-old brother, Sanya, on the other hand, was more educated on the subject than I’m comfortable with—I found this out during lunch one day.

  “Jordan and Dana had sex,” he told me while casually eating soup.

  “Shut up, Sanya, you don’t even know what sex is,” I replied.

  “Yeah, he put, um, his penis into her wah-gina,” my soft-skinned, doughy baby brother informed me. Game point. Even the eight-year-olds were doing it.

  One night, at one of the three parties I attended during my high school career, Otto found an empty room and we 69ed. Arguably one of the most acrobatic and advanced sexual things you can do with someone. The whole maneuver is absurd, like when newlyweds smash cake into each other’s faces. How are you supposed to enjoy someone caking all over your face when you’re too busy trying to cake on theirs? I spent the whole time thinking: Is this right? Is this it? Is my face supposed to be so close to his butthole? Going from an awkward first kiss to 69ing is like trying your first cigarette and following it with LSD. But there I was, nose to cheeks. He was on a different level, and it was up to me to figure out how to climb.

  I wanted things to work with Otto so that I could be his muse. So that he would write about me, to help define who I was. I wanted him to think of me as worthy and interesting enough to inspire his creativity. I was willing to do anything, including that stuff. Unfortunately, an imbalance of hunger in a relationship causes the bond to quickly corrode.

  As it happens with feeble-baby dating, Otto told me he wanted to “talk.” I hadn’t even had a chance to brainstorm more than a couple of song titles (I Sea You; Miss Marina; Hurricane Marina; When the Acne Clears), and this jerk was laying the groundwork for my first breakup.

  I got into my car (read: my mom’s Nissan Quest minivan) right as the first song off Yankee Hotel Foxtrot came on. I’d been playing his CD nonstop, and it had just restarted.

  “I am trying to break your heart, but still I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t easy, I am trying to break your heart,” the lyrics droned.

  I pulled my mom’s minivan up behind his mom’s minivan and checked my makeup in the driver’s seat visor. I made sure there wasn’t any eyeliner on my lower lids so that if I were to cry, it wouldn’t run, because, how gauche, you know? I got into his mom’s minivan and blankly stared out the windshield as he sweetly and softly ended our relationship. It stung but I didn’t cry, at least not in front of Otto. I saved it for my minivan, where Wilco was there to provide a soundtrack to my sadness.

  The breakup with Otto didn’t come as a surprise to me. I knew he was going to break up with me shortly after we met. My first clue was that we were both sixteen, all sixteen-year-olds break up. (Unless they’re religious, then they get married so that they can have awkward teenage sex, tons of babies, and possibly a reality TV show marketed toward stay-at-home moms.) I was also tipped off by my parents.

  “Marina, he’s too attractive for you,” my mother told me, while clicking through photos of Otto on my digital camera.

  My dad grabbed the camera and scrolled through too. “I agree with Mom, this is not going to end happy for you.” It’s nice that my always-bickering, polar-opposite parents can come together in a show of unity over my underwhelming looks. They were right. Two weeks later, he started dating my friend Kathleen, a wispy girl with a good singing voice and a spiritual vibe. She soon had a burned copy of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot of her very own. Honestly, their relationship helped me move past him quickly. We were children, after all, and there are plenty of other 69s in the sea.

  If we lived in any other era, this would’ve been the end of the Otto story. But the pesky internet kept him in my orbit. Whenever I was bored at my startup job and needed a break from wondering when Erez would call next, I’d go online. I watched as Otto grew from flaky teen with lofty ambitions into a talented musician with an actually good band. Meanwhile, I’d grown from listless and angry into listless and lost. I spent my days writing credit card reviews for a small website and my nights envisioning creative ways to kill myself in the office.

  It was one of those tech startups that keeps their employees slightly drunk so that they don’t notice they’re being taken advantage of. “Here’s the beer fridge!” my boss loudly yelled when he gave me my first office tour. “You get free drinks and lunches.” He reached inside the fridge to get me a drink. “But we can’t pay you anything to start,” he whispered to the glass bottles.

  I was in the beginning stages of entering my shadow-career. Meaning my job had the potential to be fulfilling, but wasn’t exactly what I wanted to be doing with my life. I was writing, yes, but it was about the inanest subject matter on earth. Shadow-careers1 are easy to get trapped in because they bring you as close as possible to your dream job without the risk of failure. Failing at a job you don’t care about does not carry the breath-stealing pain of failing at your dream job. Otto, on the other hand, was pursuing the same dream he had when he was a kid, and it was spectacular to watch.

  I’ve always been drawn to people who are unapologetically passionate. I never had the balls to be that person. That’s why when Otto messaged me asking for a place to crash while touring, I jumped at the opportunity. Real musicians staying on my couch? I couldn’t wait to share this story with everyone at work. “Yeah, I’m probably going to be busy this weekend,” I told our graphic designer, “my ex-boyfriend’s band is staying at my place.” She didn’t respond because she had her headphones in, but I’m sure she would’ve at least been intrigued had she heard me.

  When Otto arrived at my apartment, I was surprised to see he was almost the exact same size as when we dated in high school. His outline had filled in, but it made him that much cuter. I learned that he had a long-term girlfriend and a completely lackadaisical attitude toward the responsibilities of being an adult—I felt a nostalgic draw toward him. This man knows how to live, I thought.

  Although Otto only crashed on my couch for a night, I would go on to attend nearly every show his band had. I followed them around like a little duck. Watching the five of them, night after night, performing with such gusto—it put me in a trance. Their psychedelic sound had catchy lyrics and an undercurrent of melancholy impossible not to adore. As I watched Otto on stage, I began to develop feelings for him, except this time those feelings largely consisted of jealousy.

  When Otto left New York, we kept in touch via postcards. He wrote from every city he performed in, and I delicately placed all his updates in a box of letters near my bed. I’d collected nearly eight postcards when he sent me one that said, “It will be so grand to hang out in Brooklyn.” With this addendum: “Also notably my girlfriend broke up with me.”

  A sensational thrill of implication ran down my spine. On a confidence scale of perfect-fitting jeans to vodka, having an ex semi-hit on you with goddamn pen and paper is pretty high up there.

  When Otto was back in town we grabbed catch-up drinks. There are few things more socially gratifying than getting a drink with someone you knew before you were allowed to drink. I was on that night: charming, coy, confident. God, I love tipsy flirting—you fool yourself into feeling like the best version of you. After shutting down the bar at Union Hall, we stumbled into the early morning mist and began dancing under the streetlights. “Do you hear that?” I asked.

  Otto listened for a moment. “No,” he admitted.

  “I know, it’s weird,” I told him. The city was uncharacteristically quiet, most likely due to Hurricane Irene fitfully coursing through the Bahamas (rumored to be on her way to New York). Irene created this odd, unfamiliar tension in the Brooklyn air. I shivered. “Let’s go home,” I said, hooking my arm through his.

  But he didn’t move, instead, he turned to me and said, “Hey, I love you.” Just like that. Like he had remembered a fact that he wanted to share with me, “Hydrogen is the first element on the periodic table, and, hey, I love you.”

  I had bagged m
y first adult “I love you,” and the person who said it was my high school boyfriend. I was back in Chicago, in his green minivan, only this time I wasn’t getting dumped, I was getting six years of insecurities reversed. I didn’t know what to say back, but it didn’t matter because he leaned in and kissed me. We went back to my apartment and that night, we 66ed.

  When we woke up in a hungover haze, Otto repeated it again, “I love you,” and this time he followed it with, “We should be together.” He was a rootless musician who was coming out of a serious relationship, but I believed him. I believed in a world in which my first boyfriend would become my last boyfriend. My emotions got wrapped up in the narrative weight that story held. I didn’t say anything right then, because, I felt, it wouldn’t be a respectable business practice—when given an offer, especially if it’s a good one, it’s important to “take a night” before giving your decision. I told Otto I needed time to think about it. “Of course,” he said. He kissed me the way you kiss someone you’ve known for years. It was tender and familiar. I became a sixteen-year-old who was being noticed for the first time. “I’ll be back tonight,” Otto said. “This is good. We are good.”

  I waited until he was safely out of the apartment before throwing myself back into bed. It smelled like band, I loved it. A new smell for my bored nostrils. My proclivity for sleeping with creatives made me mistakenly feel connected to art itself; as if sharing my bed with a hairy guy and his sensitive soul would eventually rub off on me. It made me feel eclectic and interesting; empty and dangerously addictive feelings.

  While I was too precious with my career to take any risks, my love life was on the opposite end of the spectrum. “Yes, let’s do this. Let’s be together and in love,” I planned to tell him. For me, it is easier to lose love than it is to live with the curiosity of an unexplored relationship.

  As I was melting into my bed, the Hurricane Irene headlines went from a murmur to a scream. The first hints of love diluted my brain cells while New York was bracing for The Big One. I spent the day cleaning my apartment, cooking perishables, and redoing my eyeliner. I wanted everything to look nice for when Otto returned … but Otto never came back.

  Instead, he retreated to Maine with his band to avoid the storm. He told me he loved me and then immediately left me, during a hurricane, in an apartment made of cardboard and wishful thinking.

  I tried to ignore the fact that Otto was sitting under the stars, in the safety of Maine, while I was watching my roommate Rob frantically fill our bathtub with ice and bratwursts. “In case the power goes out,” he told me as he stood over the brat bath. I spent that night drinking emergency reserve alcohol and refreshing my email. I got bored, straightened my hair, and shot a music video for my parents. In it, I danced around the apartment while blaring “Hello” by Martin Solveig & Dragonette. I posted the video to YouTube and fell asleep around two a.m.

  I woke up to a soggy but intact city. Irene had stood me up, just like Otto. I reached under my bed, grabbed my computer, checked my emails, and found one from him. The subject line said, “Song response, I’ll sing it when I see you!” I devoured the email so fast it gave me heartburn. Inside was an mp3 and lyrics to a song he’d written about me. I was a muse.

  As the headlines faded to punchlines, Otto and his band came back to finish their East Coast tour. Attending a show knowing that I’d be going home with someone on stage was electrifying. “Maybe he’ll sing the song he wrote about me,” I told Rob while pouring whiskey into a half-empty Coke bottle. By the time I got to the Knitting Factory, the band was on their second song and I was D-runk. Two syllables. One capital.

  I circled Otto’s sweaty body, waiting for a moment to steal him away and tell him, “Yes, I love you too.” He seemed cagey, but then again, he was performing. I filled my time with more drinks and wild dancing across the semi-empty venue. When Otto finally got off stage and came over, he was treated to my wilted “We should be together” drunk girl speech. He told me that it wasn’t the right time to have this discussion, which felt like a rejection. I pushed harder and my proclamation of love turned into more of a slurred growl. Then, I vaguely remember standing at a cab, hissing: “Are you in or are you out?” as his band members awkwardly slunk away from Hurricane Marina. If you ever need to ask someone if he’s your boyfriend through gritted teeth and a snarl, the answer is most likely “no” and, if it’s not, it should be.

  “I’m going to stay with the band tonight.” Otto’s eyes dropped to the ground. That was my last mental snapshot of him. He looked so ashamed. Later, the soberer version of me would realize it wasn’t shame, but embarrassment. I came home, turned on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, and cried until I woke up Rob.

  The next day I got an email from Otto, with the following statement:

  I want to be in this band, follow through this dream, and try as hard as I can to make it work.

  I want to show you that I care about you and that I treasure you.

  I do not want either of these dreams to impede upon each other.

  I stopped reading after the first line. He chose the band. I don’t blame him—it was a better decision. It turns out, the artist never chooses the muse over the music.

  Wanting someone to define who you are through their art, romantically known as “being a muse,” is not worth the effort. If you want the nuances of your character brought to the surface of the world, you either have to do it on your own, or get over yourself. Because in the end, it is better to be the artist than the muse. From that day forward, I became the boss of the words written about me.

  When it came time to put this story into writing, I dug up Otto’s song, read the lyrics with a clear head, and laughed at myself. Written there, plain as day, was Otto’s breakup note. It wasn’t a love song, it was, well, I don’t even know what the fuck it was. He clearly had a change of heart while he was in Maine, and I was too blinded by my own narcissism to see what he was saying. “You’re an idiot,” I whispered to myself while scanning through the email. I printed out the lyrics, grabbed a red pen, and translated them into my own words. That way, if I ever got carried away by a cute guy with a guitar again, I would be reminded of the truth hiding behind his pretty words.

  4

  TAKE A WRITING CLASS

  I am sprinting through New York. The audible thwap, thwap, thwap of my breasts knocking together is the only sound louder than my breathing. I’m wearing one of my loose bras, and it’s causing my boobs to bounce around like enormous pink pinballs. I have three types of bras: loose bras, tight bras, and sports bras.

  My loose bras are my favorite, but they do very little for my chest (other than make sure my nipples stay hidden from sight). My tight bras dig into my ribcage creating loose-leaf lines across my sides, but they hold my tits up like the trophies that they are. My sports bras sit unused in the back of my closet.

  I’m running because I’m late for my very first writing class—one I signed up for in a fit of anger. Otto left me with the realization that I was kind of a boring person and it made me furious. That’s the reality of growing up in the suburbs with parents who are happily married—you have a higher chance of being a dull adult. Sure, I have the immigrant thing, which is kind of different, but it only gets me so far. After the Admitting You’ve Never Been Back to Your Mother Country conversation, there’s really nowhere else to go. An easy way to counteract a bland existence is to move to a major metropolitan city, but after a while, that also gets very formulaic. Even city girls get trapped in the cycle of sameness.

  “I’m in a rut,” I whined over drinks with my close friend Rebecca. “My job sucks. My apartment is too small. I have no money. Everything blows. I need to do something more interesting with my life. Like start taking stand-up more seriously—become an actual stand-up comedian.”

  Satisfaction—much like allergies and smiling—just doesn’t exist in Russian culture. Part of me is thankful because my unquenchable drive for more increases the likelihood of success. The other part of
me is fucking exhausted from always being frustrated with everything.

  “You always get like this after you end a relationship,” Rebecca said as she fished a weird speck out of her beer. Her mom is a psychologist and her dad, a lawyer. That combination of personalities produced a small person with measured words and a blunt demeanor who absorbs all my anxieties and spits out the best advice. She has a talent for making me feel unimpressive and stupid when I deserve to feel unimpressive and stupid. If you can swing it, I highly suggest you find a Rebecca for yourself.

  “You date a guy, it doesn’t work. You get sad, you make a life change. You get bored again, so you date a guy, it doesn’t work…” She trailed off.

  She was right. Otto created a hole in my life, and it was more than just a romantic one—it was existential too. His profession of love and subsequent take-back made me determined to prove myself as the artist and not the muse—so I put in my two weeks’ notice at the credit card review shadow-job and decided to pursue comedy full-time. As my dad always says, “Success is the best form of revenge.” And revenge was the fuel I needed to get out of bed in the morning.

  I quit on a Friday—and asked for my job back the following Monday, after a total of two days pursuing the life of an artist. Surely a record. My two days as an artist involved crying, an unsuccessful, desperate job search, and little else. Monday morning, I marched into my boss’s office and said, “Upon further consideration, I will not be quitting after all,” and sat down at my desk like nothing had happened. My boss didn’t even dispute me because he was shocked into submission. It has since come to my attention that normal human professionals do not act this way. But after a breakup—even a small one—I become a revolving door of bad decisions.

  Signing up for a writing class was my take-two way of easing into a creative career. I wanted to learn the kind of writing that would maybe expose a little too much of my soul. I didn’t know what to do with this writing, but the nice thing about learning how to eloquently communicate via written word is it’s a skill that everyone needs. Whether it’s to convince employers to hire you or for the ever-popular reason of getting people to fall in love with you—it always proves useful. Plus, adding classes to your repertoire makes your résumé look more impressive than it is.